Scene IV: Wrath

A strange enveloping mist creeps into the stairwell reducing visibility to a few feet, muffling the sounds of crying ahead of them. Suddenly Dante recognises the voice in the whimpering as his own mother's and urgently pushes his way past Virgil who tries in vain to grab at his jacket and prevent him from surging ahead. But it is too late and he's disappeared into the mist.

Ahead Dante bursts through a flat door to find himself in what seems like his own house back on the other side of town. Photos of himself and his brothers on the corridor walls assure him he's right and he steels towards his parents bedroom, following the whimpering and crying.

Inside his mother is crouched on the floor by the side of the bed, a large, red mark across her face, hand prints indented into her neck and one of her forearms. Dante falls to her and cradles her in his arms, his eyes darting around the dark room in search of the attacker.

Looking up at her son, Dante' mother, Dawn, tells the story of her broken marriage, fraught with her husband's drinking, verbal and physical abuse.

She says she always loved Dante's father and could never break away from him, no matter how bad he treated her. She says she always loved her sons and as much as she wanted to protect them and run away with them, she just couldn't find the strength to do it. She always knew he loved Bea and when she died she knew it would break him for sure. She pleads with him to find strength inside and break the chain of violence around their family's neck.

He hugs her close and swears he'll keep them all safe but they both freeze when the front door slams open, bouncing off its hinges, and the drunken, towering gait of his father rumbles down the hallway.

Bruno is a big man, six foot five at least, and almost as broad. He's always been a bully, insecure and ignorant, unable to read and barely able to write after he was shipped from Jamaica to the UK with his uncle.

He grew up in squalor, regularly beaten by his uncle until he was old enough and big enough one day to hit back, hard. He broke his uncle's face and arms with a snapped chair leg and left what home he had for good, falling into a string of hostels and shared accommodation, fuelling a life of manual jobs with an ever growing alcohol problem.

One night he was nearly killed with a snooker cue in a pub fight and it was there, in hospital, that he met Dawn, who nursed him on the ward. He couldn't take his eyes off her and quietly he thanked god he hadn't died and still had a chance to discover something good in his life and turn things around.  

They were married later that year and Dante was born the following spring. Everything was great, two more kids followed and work was paying enough to even support a holiday or two every year.

Then the accident happened.

It was his fault and he knew it. Safety hat off in the sweltering summer heat he'd taken the full force of a scaffolding buckle square on the top of his head and the fall to the concrete three floors below broke both his legs and a compound to his arm. The bones recovered with time but the head wound left the deepest scar of all.

Work dried up for him, he wasn't allowed back on the site with the head wound, uninsured and plagued by self-loathing and frustration he turned back to drink and with it came the bitterness and resentment that he took out on Dawn and the kids.

He hadn't full on hit her before as far as Dante knew, he'd pushed her around loads and threw things across the room but now here he was cradling her mother's bruised, shaking body as his father's swaying bulk swung across the bedroom doorway.

Dante rose, stood and faced his father, hatred and disgust boiling up inside him. He unleashed a torrent of howling reality at him, pouring out the truth of his sad, pathetic life, shaming him for making the lives of those closest to him a misery for all these stark oppressed years. Bruno, unable to contradict a word of it, slumps in the hallway, head bowed, fearful of the very monster he's become.

Dante turns to Dawn, lifts her in his arms and steps over the hollowed shell of his father, walks down the corridor and out of the front door where, completely overcome, he collapses into Virgil's arms and slides to the floor exhausted.

Looking up, Dante's staring at Virgil but his mother is nowhere to be seen and the landing is bare. Virgil pulls Dante to his feet, they stare at each other for the longest time and slowly turn from the front door back up the stairwell.