Bill was ten years old, but most days he felt like he had already lived a lifetime.

His world was small — a peeling blue room with a bed that creaked and a window that barely opened. The paint was chipped, the air was always cold, and the silence at night was never peaceful. It was heavy. Tense. The kind of silence that warned of storms.

Every night, Bill closed his eyes and built a new life in his mind. In his dreams, he had a family like the ones he saw on TV — a smiling dad flipping pancakes, a mother humming as she helped with homework, and an older brother who taught him how to ride a bike, how to throw a football, how to be brave.

In those dreams, Bill laughed. He laughed so hard his stomach hurt, and when he cried, someone always held him.

But the dream always ended.

And when he opened his eyes, reality returned like a cold slap.

His real dad was nothing like the one in his dreams. He was a man who smelled like whisky and cheap perfume, who disappeared for days and returned home only to remind everyone why they feared his presence. His voice was loud even when he whispered, and his hands were never kind. Most nights, Bill heard him yelling at his mother, calling her names he didn’t understand but knew were ugly.

His mom used to sing when he was younger. She had a soft voice once. But life with a man like that had worn her down. Now, she was angry more often than not. When things broke, when the house was a mess, when his dad exploded — she looked at Bill as if he were the problem. “If you weren’t so difficult,” she would snap. “If you didn’t always make him mad.”

Bill didn’t understand what he’d done.

So Bill kept to himself. He drew pictures of the family he wished he had. He scribbled little notes to God, folding them and hiding them in a box under his bed. Sometimes he prayed out loud, but mostly he just whispered.

Please, just one day — one day where everything is normal.

One cold Thursday night, the wind howled outside and the house was quiet, too quiet. Bill sat in his bed with a flashlight under the blanket, sketching a new drawing — his dream family at a picnic, his dream dad tossing a football, his dream mom laughing. He smiled softly at the picture.

But then the front door slammed open.

Bill froze. He heard the uneven thud of boots, the stumble of someone drunk. The curse words. The sound of something breaking. The fear set in — deep and instant.

His bedroom door opened slowly, creaking like it always did. His father stood there, swaying, eyes bloodshot and wild.

“You been hiding in here?” his father slurred.

Bill’s heart raced. He didn’t move.

The man stepped inside, bottle in hand, fury in his eyes.

“You think you’re better than me? Hiding in this damn room like a little rat?”

Bill backed into the corner of his bed, his tiny body trembling. His voice was barely a whisper, a plea from deep inside him — one he had whispered a thousand times before, but never with such desperation.

“God… please,” he choked out, tears rolling down his face. “All I want… is a normal family.”

And as his father’s shadow darkened the room, Bill shut his eyes and escaped one last time into the world of his dreams — a world where love lived, where laughter echoed, and where a little boy was just a son, not a burden.