Daddy’s Little Girl (revised)- a short story

It was 3 a.m. and she still sat in her corner. She had been there all night, sitting alone in the darkness of her little room. Her corner comforted her. It was the one place she could go to that was always there, just how she wanted it; quiet, simple, and solid. This was where she felt the safest, though she knew it was always a false sense of security.

She peered out across her room and stared into the bright sliver of light glaring in from the gap under her door. She noticed the dead silence…for once, there was silence. It made her feel uneasy. He’d be home soon. Her curiousity grew stronger: she wondered where her mother was. She pushed the blanket off of herself and stood up slowly. Cautiously creeping her way to the door, she realized how eerie the sound of the floorboards cracking and moaning beneath her feet sounded. It made her feel uneasy. She approached the door, leaning into the frame, and listened carefully for a sign of life downstairs. When she heard the back door fly open and slam against the mangled faceplate, she felt her insides twist themselves into a knot.

Her father was drunk again. She hated when her father came home like this. She hated when he was there regardless, but the alcohol made him a beast. She didn’t understand how her mother could have justified taking him back after so many years of his abuse and degradation. Her mother was in denial. She couldn’t bring herself to accept the fact that the only man who had ever “loved” her was the portrait of evil. Evil has a way of blinding it’s victims. He had chosen her as his victim, and she had introduced him to Sara. She could have blamed her mother, but she knew it was irreversable now.

Sara hurried quickly back to her dwelling and pulled the worn blanket from her bed over her, as though she felt it might shield her from her father. She hoped he would forget of her existance. She prayed he wouldn’t come upstairs to yell at her. He only acknowledged her when her mother was hiding herself away and he had given up on trying to find her. She sat on the floor, patiently, frightened, sobbing into her bandaged wrists, rocking herself back and forth. She wanted him to die. She wanted to go away.

When she heard the noise of her father’s footsteps drop heavily onto the landing at the bottom of the staircase, her body jolted with terror, her sweet face grimaced. She frantically scanned her mind for what to do, how to escape this; she knew there was no safehaven. This scene was familiar to her, constantly replaying itself in excruciating slowmotion through her head. He showed no humanity, no capability for feeling even the least bit of compassion. She didn’t want to be put through another night of his rage. She’d witnessed on prior nights nearly all of her possessions tear through the air, exploding against her walls. Hateful words that ripped right through her- that made her question her worth as a human being. Repetitive beatings and mutilation, all from the man that used to take her to the park, carried on his shoulders, every Saturday evening. This man used to read her her favorite bedtime story, no matter how much he hated hearing it, just because she was his little princess, and he loved her. That man died so long ago.

She heard his footsteps nearing her door and pushed herself even further down into the crevace created by the two, cold, hard walls behind her. She raised her tattered blanket to cover her head. She focused on the doorknob through a large moth-eaten hole in the cloth’s corner. Her whole body began to tremble, and she could feel every violent beat of her heart quicken in pace. The blood was painfully pulsating through her veins.

She closed her eyes tightly and tried to pace her breathing. She listened to his footsteps loudly pounding on each level of the staircase. They stopped outside of her door, interrupting the line of light beneath her door, casting a shadow on the wall directly beside her. He grasped the doorknob tightly, but was unable to turn it. Her door remained locked. It began to rattle as he persistently attempted to enter the room. A hot, salty tear ran down her pale cheek, and the rattle became a violent vibration. The door burst open, launching splinters of jagged, rotted wood outward into the room. Sara looked up quickly with tears in her eyes and shreiked as the large man came at her, staggering. She withdrew under her blanket and raised her battered arms to protect her head and waited, expected a hard blow to the head. She could hear his destruction. She winced at the sound of glass and wood shattering against the opposite wall. She cringed with tightened eyes through hearing various random crashes, bangs, screams, obsenities, and grunts. She didn’t want to watch. Trying to remain invisible to the drunken man, she glanced toward the open door. She very tactfully eased into to a crouching position while he aimlessly tore through her room. She watched her father carefully, hoping he would remain too busy demolishing the things he had once bought her with loving intentions to notice her movement. She conceived of the easiest way out of her room in her mind, straight to her door, and out of his way, before he noticed her. She wondered if she had even been discovered yet. She took for granted that she hadn’t.

She made a quick dash for the door, reaching only the hallway. She felt a strong grasp pull forcefully on her left ankle from behind her. She tumbled to the ground, landing directly on her face and hitting her forehead on the hard, wooden floor. She panicked, grabbing anything solid nearby to free herself from the strong hold on her leg. She kicked furiously and pulled away quickly as his grip loosened. Pulling herself upward on the banister, she started to run to the end of the hallway when she was jerked back around to face this demon. She couldn’t recognize him as human anymore. He raised his hand high above her head and struck her with a blinding force across her face. She drew back and fell into the wall behind her. He stood in front of her, laughing in a sinister way, as if he had unleashed the best of his being. She stood there, leaning against the wall to support herself, holding her face in her hands, sobbing. She didn’t know what she could have possibly done to this man to make him abuse her this way- she was only a child. She had endured this treatment for so long, powerless against him. Not this time. No… she wasn’t frightened anymore, she became empowered.

Something arose in her at that moment that she had never felt before, and couldn’t explain. She had no desire to attempt to explain herself. She looked up at her father with a glowing fire in her eyes, and the grin on his face sickened her. Suddenly, she charged at him, springing forward her weight from the wall for extra needed force, and pinned him up against the wooden railing behind him. He had a look in his eye she had never before seen. She thought she could sense his fear. She had begun to think he was incapable of this primal emotion. He strained to lift his hand to her again, but she wasn’t going to let him win this time. She couldn’t let him win. She kicked him in the shin to disable his leg, if only just a little, and when his step was unsure, she took advantage of his unstable position. She pushed into his upper body with a forceful thrust and backed away slowly as his body plummeted to the first floor below them.

As she felt the wall behind her, she sank down to the floor, now shaking, not yet realizing what she had just done. She sat there silently for an hour, or maybe more, weeping. When the trembling had subsided, and she had regained partial strength, she arose slowly and walked forward, leaning over the rail to view the downstairs floor. She cringed slightly when she saw her father, lieing there lifelessly. A feeling of nausea overcame her. She ran into the bathroom at the end of the hallway and collapsed onto the floor. She knew she’d have to deal with this nausea for quite a while- she hadn’t eaten in days and the dry heaves made her feel so much worse. There she stayed, for what seemed like hours, silently. She needed time to think.

She stood up and walked out into the hallway, down the steps, very slowly, one at a time. She wasn’t in any hurry to get downstairs. When she had reached the landing at the bottom of the staircase, she stopped for a moment to take one long look at her surroundings. She knew this place would never be the same.

She walked into the sitting room, the room directly below her own, directly below the balcony. She walked to the middle of the room where she saw her father’s body draped lifelessly in a twisted position over the frame of a shattered, glass coffee table. She concluded that the fall had broken his neck, and he had probably died on impact. She knew he deserved more pain than what she had brought to him. He needed to know that what he had done to her and her mother was unacceptable, and vengeance was due. She looked down at his cold face in disgust. She couldn’t bare to be in his presence any longer, even in death.

She was now out to find her mother, more than likely unconcious somewhere in the house, hiding herself from the man she was sure she “loved.” She walked into her parent’s bedroom. It saddened her as she looked around. The antique mirror she had bought for her mother on Mother’s Day the year before he had broken and so many times that any reflection was distorted to the point of unrecognition. She glanced around the room, reminded of the torture her mother had tolerated for so long. There was an empty pill bottle on an end-table, next to the bathroom door. She walked over to the dresser and picked up the bottle, reading the label. This was once the bottle containing her mother’s pain medication that she had received a week ago at Dr. Harvey’s office for a broken wrist – Emptied. She returned the bottle to the table and eased open the squeaky bathroom door. What she saw at that moment would never leave her being. Her mother had seen too much. She did the only thing left she felt she could do. She had set herself free.

Sara ran to her mother’s body, curled up on the cold bathroom floor. She cried. She felt so alone, it burned inside. She had no one. She glanced around once more, embracing her mother’s limp body. Now she knew she’d never see this place again. Her mother had been the only one she felt was on her side. Her mother had been just as frightened, just as tormented, just as angry.

Standing in front of the sink, Sara poured herself a glass of water from the tap. Her face was freakishly pale, and her nausea had now become an unbareable pain. She took a small sip of the lukewarm water. Leaving the glass full, on the sink, she sat next to her mother’s body and rested her head on the cold, white toilet seat, hoping she could force herself to vomit. It would ease the pain. She drifted to sleep there, and lingered in a disturbed slumber for two more hours.

When she awoke, it was nearly 7a.m. The sun was showing it’s face over the trees outside the narrow bathroom window, and a single yellow beam shone in on her face. The light hurt her sunken eyes, she turned away. The bus would be coming for her soon. She went upstairs to dress herself. Rumaging through a pile of wrinkled clothes at the foot of her bed, she pulled out a decent pair of jeans, and slipped on a clean long-sleeved shirt. That was all she owned, the sleeves hid her scars. She grabbed her bag and walked out the front door, refusing to look back. She never wanted to look back. She didn’t shut the door behind her; she figured the police might appreciate an open door when they arrived, if they arrived. She walked past the bus stop, and on down the muddy, gravel road. She came to a convenience store after she had walked nearly a mile and stopped to use a payphone. She walked around to the side of the small, white building and reached into her pocket for the adequate change. Fortunately, she hadn’t been buying lunch at school lately, and had change to spare.

She placed an anonymous phone call to the local police department stating that the Smith’s were dead, John in the sitting room, Debbie in the master bathroom. She hung up the phone immediately. She’d be gone by the time they reached the area. Cops always took their time, sadly, she new that too well.

She continued walking southbound down the nearly deserted country highway, not knowing where she would find herself, not caring. Not caring if she were to live, or if she were to die. For what was life now? Her father was gone, but she couldn’t make herself feel accomplished. She had no more enemies- yet no friends, no dreams, no hope. She had only gained a new life, destined for death. There was a void, a terrible emptiness growing inside of her, and she wondered if death was what could release her. She pondered this for hours, walking down that endless road. She had nothing left to live for… absolutely nothing.