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Didn''t Dare

Ten minutes to eleven… he will be home soon… my heart started pumping harder, faster as if it was trying to escape the body in which it was encaved. I paced my room careful not to stand on the creaky floorboards. I knew she was listening downstairs. She would tell him. She always did. When he is not in the house I am to sit in my room in silence. I’m so scared. I can feel my own breath becoming heavy, filling the room, searching for a way to escape, unable to find one. My bedroom door consists of locks and bolts and my tiny window constructed of a sheet of glass and six metal bars. I don’t see why they put bars on it, not even my fragile frame is small enough to fit through the window. Eleven PM. “Bang” He’s home…

“Sarah, downstairs. NOW!” I couldn’t, he knew that, he knew the many locks were impossible for me to open, I had no energy hadn’t eaten in days. Even if I did they were locked from the outside so I couldn’t escape. He came crashing up the stairs. The bolts started to click loose and the door thrust open. I stood there, frozen, unable to move. Like a tree rooted to the ground. I didn’t blink, didn’t breathe, and didn’t dare. He swaggered in, still clutching a can of beer, a smell of stale cigarettes and booze invaded my nostrils. His voice was loud and slurred, “So who do you think you are then, you? Think your better than me do you?” I didn’t know what to say, his voice running through my mind. I wet myself, I couldn’t help it… I often did. The fear took hold and it just sort of, happened. I help my legs together hoping he wouldn’t notice. As always, he did. He punched me… not once, or twice, but seven times.

After punching me so hard even he got tired, so he kicked me… they hurt the most, I could feel the steel toecaps of his work boots digging into my flesh, my bones were crunching under the weight. I felt that the scars from previous attacks would never compare to this. The worst thing though, wasn’t the physical pain, I could deal with that. What hurt the most was that he was my father, my own flesh and blood. I shielded my face from the blows, yet he continued to carry on, my sobs rose louder than his shouts. His spit frothed from his mouth and hit my burning skin. I screamed in agony, but he didn’t care.

My ‘mum’ came running upstairs… “Stop, stop! Derek she’s just a kid! She hasn’t done anything wrong! Leave her!” He stopped, spat on me and walked out. I could hear him traipsing down the stairs. Does he really have no remorse? No regard? She just stared at me, towered over me in the doorframe. Blood poured from my wounds. After a couple of minutes she just walked away. I clambered into my bed, too shattered to do, say or think anything. I tried my hardest to get to sleep. My body was weak but my mind was telling me not to sleep. Just in case he came back.

I must fell asleep; when I woke up that morning it was 07:03am. Mum was sat at the table clutching a cup of coffee in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Her eyes were red and puffy, he’d probably hit her too. I walked over to her and put my hand on her shoulder. Even if she couldn’t help me I still loved her. She didn’t flinch, didn’t move, I guessed my dad was out…

I climbed the stairs. My head throbbed. Reminding me of the pain I had endured the previous night. As I got to the top I realized my door had been left ajar. Voices came from inside, I poked my head round the door, there sat my father he was looking at something, I don’t know what it was but he seemed worried, shocked even. A sight I am not used to seeing. He was fiddling with the something in plastic bags. All of a sudden he stood up, clutching the bin bags he had been so fascinated by, he opened the wardrobe, thrust the bin bags inside, closed the door and locked it. Whatever had gone in he obviously didn’t want it to come out. As he bundled out of the room, I was faced by it all, blood. Everywhere, up my walls, on the floor, in my bed… everywhere. It oozed from my dad’s arms, had he been trying to kill himself? Wouldn’t be the first time… He walked out completely ignoring me… this was strange. He always had something to say. I wanted to know what was in that wardrobe, I couldn’t look now, I would have to wait until they had gone to bed.

I lay on my bedroom floor and curled up in a ball, I drifted off into a deep sleep. That’s the best part of my life, my dreams, and my imagination. A place to escape the beatings and abuse. A place where I can be me.

It was 02:07AM. They were in bed. I crept down the uneven stairs, careful not to make a sound. I knew I wouldn’t be able to find the key but I had a better idea, the medicine cabinet, I rooted through discarded plasters and paracetemol, careful not to make a sound. At last I found it, a long twisted safety pin, not a key. But still able to undo the most difficult of locks. I stuck the clip into the lock and fiddled it until it came loose. The door creaked open, and echoed throughout the room, I stopped but the house remained silent. The bags were there were they had been left. I peeled bag the layers of plastic, inside were dismembered body pieces. I reeled back guffawing, I threw up all over my bedroom floor, it was disgusting. Whose body was this? More importantly what was it doing in my bedroom? I had to know, as much as it hurt and made me sick I continued to peel back the bag. At last I was faced with my victim, the last person I expected to see, there looking up at me, blue eyes stone cold, black and blue with bruises. Was me. A hurt little girl, finally at peace.

I spent weeks recovering. They removed the body pieces from the wardrobe. I didn’t care, they didn’t care, nobody cared. I felt empty, I was a ghost. None of them could see me, none of them wanted to see me, they seemed so much happier without me. I guess I was the route of all the problems. I didn’t like it. Why should I be dead and he get to run free? I had to do something. In a rage of madness I grabbed the closest thing to me, a knife. No longer did I need to sneak around, I raced upstairs, piled into his room, screaming, “this is for you daddy, payback for everything you did to me” I dug the knife into his skin. It felt good. I did it again and again. He deserved it, he was lower than scum. I continued to pierce the knife into his body. I knew he was dead but I couldn’t stop. I was like a woman possessed, but it felt so good, so happy. Like I was finally free. I dropped the knife and walked out.

I ran away, nothing felt bad anymore. I was crying, not sadness though, I was happy, I was free, free to be whoever I wanted to be. I left that house for two years. Wandered in and out of the afterlife. I still went back there but I couldn’t stay long, it was weird walking past people you knew and not being able to talk to them. I often went to the graveyard, the only place I felt truly accepted. I liked to look at the graves and see the other people that had died. On this odd occasion I decided to look at the newer ones. I looked at them all, they were all so beautiful. Just one spoiled the rest. A little wooden cross embedded into the ground stuck out like a sore thumb. I walked over to it, not sure of what I’d find. And what I did find shocked me to the core, there it was glistening in the rain… ‘Here lies Sarah Johnston 1993-1999 Resting in God’s arms. Also Derek Johnston 1968 – 1999 together forever.’ My eyes widened in the realization that I would never be truly free.