No one says anything about the events that transpired the night before. The three of them just sit together at the table and eat the leftover ham with fresh scrambled eggs and toast. Laurel doesn’t eat much though, mostly she just stares at the wall. There are no windows in the dining room, it’s just plain beige walls that turn yellow when the lights are on that stretch unperturbed by anything but a few picture frames so to make up for it Laurel just imagines that there’s a window.

Mornings are Laurel’s favorite time of the day because she loves how clean the sky looks and the smell of fresh dew. In the evening the sky is all muddied up by too many pinks and oranges, but in the mornings it’s just crystal blue and gold. The reason she dislikes winter is because the winter solstice pushes her mornings further and further back. Laurel likes the feeling of being isolated in the early morning dawn hours to watch her sunrises in the peace and quiet when it feels like no one else is alive.

“I’m thinking we should go down to the church and put some new varnish and wax on the pews.” Laurel’s father says to her in an attempt to drag her out of her thoughts.

“Right.” She mutters while still lost in thought looking out her imaginary window.

Laurel’s father, not for the first time, wonders what’s going on in the head of his daughter. Her constant wandering offs left him baffled sometimes. It seems to him that at least once a day he had to remind her to stay more focused on the real world around her. He likes to tell her sometimes that the world was built by doers not thinkers. Laurel, always brushes this absurdity off immediately as it is stated. There are countless men who had achieved great things with their thoughts alone. The classics philosophers like Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates were all thinkers, there were men like Leonardo da Vinci who could barely be bothered to finish a painting let alone actually construct half the inventions that were tucked away in his sketchbooks, and there were men like John Locke whose thoughts became the foundation of democracy. No, the world was not built by just doers.

“Laurel?” Her mother reaches over and gently touches her hand with a smile, “Is there something on your mind?”

Laurel blinks herself back to the here and now and stares into the blue eyes of her mother. It’s amazing really when she thinks about how similar they actually look. If her mother was still young and happy they would look like identical twins.

“Why do you let him hit you?”

Out of everyone in the room Laurel is most surprised that this is what comes out of her mouth. The words fill every available space in the room and force even the air to vacate. The elephant in the room suddenly becomes a very visible and living creature in that moment. The thoughts of sickness and the need for morning sunrises are no longer prevalent in her thoughts, rather Laurel’s entire being becomes dependent on the answer to this one question.

“I-I don’t, I don’t…” Laurel’s mother stutters and stops, “He’s your father…” She trails off hopelessly before trying to say this instead “I love-”

But Laurel cuts her off before that sentence can be brought to life, “People in love don’t hurt each other. You let him hurt you.”

“Laurel…”

“Laurel! This is not an appropriate conversation to be having at the table!” Her father’s face is dark red with lividity.

“That’s because it’s not appropriate for a husband to abuse his wife. You’re suppose to protect her, and be kind, and thoughtful, and patient, that’s what love is! Not beating her until she can barely stand up anymore!”

There’s an almost inhuman roar as Laurel’s father stands to his feet and grabs Laurel’s arm, pulling her to her feet too. “That’s enough!” he growls at her.

“Not even close.” She breathes out as the flames of years of pint-up rage and bitterness burn through her. She sends her knee into his groins and while he’s doubled over in pain and surprise she punches him in the jaw.

Laurel has never laid a harmful hand against anyone in her entire life despite her scathing attitude towards people, but the moment her fist connects with his face she finds herself unable to stop. She punches him again and again as he lays there on the ground knocked out of his senses. Her mind just becomes a white-hot inferno consumed with only one purpose. In the background she can hear her mother screaming, but Laurel is completely incapable of stopping.

She doesn’t know how much time has passed when her anger finally runs dry. When she looks down at the face of her father she finds it not there anymore, in it’s place is a pile of blood and mush. The top of his skull had caved in underneath her brutality, one of his eyes had actually turned into a pulp in its socket while the other one bulges out at an awkward angle. He nose had also been caved in and mixed with the blood is the mucus oozing out.

Laurel breathes in and out with ragged breaths as she assess what she has done. Looking down at her own hands she finds them covered in blood and more startling thorns. Squinting she holds her hands up closer to inspect them. They’re green and protruding from her skin in a wicked curve just like a rose’s.

“Laurel? What have you done?” Her mother whimpers kneeling on the floor behind her. Laurel turns to her and watches her face turn to shock, “Oh my God, your face!” Laurel reaches up and touches her face gently to feel more thorns growing from her cheeks. “Oh my God, oh my God!” Laurel’s mother repeats over and over again in her shock while clasping her hands together and rocking back and forth on her knees in a type of prayer.

Laurel blinks and drags herself out of her daze. She stands up and turns away from the thing lying on the ground that used to be her father. With steady steps Laurel makes her way through the living room and goes through the front door. The morning sunrise greets her like every preceding sunrise has greeted her: with nothing but its thought provoking silence.