The Introduction

She was awakened by a loud crash and then a louder shriek. She was sure it was her mother and father arguing again. It always bothered her when they would argue but this was all too common in her household. Her father would arrive home drunk and pick fights with her mother, just for the he** of it. Sometimes they’d argue about food, other times it would be about dirty dishes in the sink, other things about the way her mother drove the car. But it was never anything worth the violent arguments they had, until tonight.

The argument was about her. She and her little mistake she had made. She knew she’d messed up. She just didn’t know it would be this bad. What I did wasn’t even that bad she said over and over again under her breath.
“She’s just a wh***! A wh*** like her mother!” she heard her father yell.
“Don’t say that, Lee! We all make mistakes. What I’ve done in the pass is between me and you don’t put this against her. She’s only 13” her mother pleaded.
“Oh, Janet you’re always taking up for her. You’re always on her side. And now… she’s pregnant. Now you want to protect her now! You should have been doing that when she was running around with every boy in town Janet.” Lee yelled. “I hate both of you! I knew something like this would happen” Lee yelled.
Janet tried to reason with him. The girl tried to ignore their argument about her. But then the girl heard her father grunt and then she could hear her father’s fleshy hand as it slapped her mother across the face. Her mother screamed. She cringed, knowing he’d done some damage. Every strike to her mom’s face seems to have its own shudder against the house, one stronger than the last one.

The beating seemed to last forever but was eventually over. She looked over at the clock on her night stand. “Only 10 minutes”. She said to herself. Like always, she climbed out from her bed and walked across the rickety hardwood floors to her bedroom door. She opened the door, and like always, paint chips would fall from around the door handle. Before stepping completely out from her room, she peeked around the doorway and down the hall. Just to make sure her father was nowhere in sight. All clear she thought as she began to walk down the hall.

Walking down the hallway slowly, the floors started to squeak. She tried to take more gentle steps as she got to her mother and father’s bedroom door. The door was cracked open with the light of the lamp in the room seeking out.

She walked into her mother and fathers room, checking once again, to see if her father was around. He wasn’t. She saw her mother lying down on the floor; her back was turned to her. She walked closer to her and kneeled down next to her.
“Mom?” she shook her shoulder. “Mom?” she called again.
Her mother coughed, and tried to roll over. When she saw how badly beaten her mother was, the tears automatically began to fall from her face. Her mother’s face was all black, blue and bloody. One of her eyes was swollen shut and her lips were badly bruised and cut on her face. She’d never seen her mother beaten like this before. She’d also never felt a rage like the one she was feeling now.

As she cried by her mother’s side, she heard footsteps creeping behind her. “What the f*** are you doing?!” Lee slurred. She turned to see him with a bottle of Jack Daniels in his hand staggering towards her. Just the sight of him made her blood boil. “Get the f*** outta here Michele! Leave her be!” he grabbed her by her night gown and pushed her out of the room. He’d never put his hands on her and that only made her rage even stronger. “Stay the f*** outta here.” he yelled just before slamming the door in her face. She’d figured there was nothing she could do. She could only let her anger subside and go on about her night, until she heard her mother whimpering for help.
That was the last straw.
Slowly, she walked into the kitchen “I need something sharp” she said quietly so Lee wouldn’t hear her down there. They never let her cook in the kitchen and she never knew why but she knew somewhere, they kept the sharp objects in one of the kitchens drawers. She started to look for a knife and she dug around in the drawers until she found the biggest, sharpest knife she could find. She then stared at the knife. She knew this was the only way she’d ever stop him.

She crept back down the hallway, breathing heavily because she was not believing what she was about to do. And even though her mind was telling her no, something in the back of her mind was pushing her to do the unthinkable. It was like voices giving ideas to what to do with him. When she got to her parents room she could still hear Lee doing things to her mom. She pushed her parent’s room door open and stalked towards them. “I thought I told you to stay the f*** out.” her father said lazily as he continued to do what he wanted with her mother. She raised the knife above her head in anticipation to strike. “What the f*** are you doing with that god damn knife” getting up from Janet “Get the f*** out!” he yelled and turned around, just as she brought the knife down.
With a shocked expression on her face, she slowly backed away from the couple. She saw blood all over the center her night gown and between the wooden floor panels.
“Look what you’ve done! Look!” Lee yelled with a crackled voice as he got up off the floor.
She’d stabbed her mother. All thanks to that cowardly bast***. A voice laughed in her head. Lee put out two fingers on her neck, checking for a pulse. He could fill her pulse fading until it faintly expired. Lee started to breathe hard. He put his hands on the back of his head and looked at the ceiling hardly.
“She’s dead! You killed her, you b****! You killed your mother!”

She couldn’t believe what she had done. Some of the voices in her head started to scream to her about what she did:
What did you do? How could you do this? Did this really happen? Are you a murderer now? Will you go to jail for this? And what will happen with you and Lee? They screamed in her mind.

Lee looked at her liked he didn’t know her, like they weren’t even related. Suddenly his face started to become pale with a dead blank expression in his face. She saw hate in his eyes, it was like his blue eyes became pools of black boiling hot lava. She could feel the anger shooting through his eyes. She saw him getting ready to hurt her like he was about to hurt her mother. Just as he was about to strike she tired to bolted out of the room but Lee with his excellent reflexes he caught her. She screamed. Lee put his strong hairy hand over her mouth. She couldn’t get him off of her. She knew he was going to try something on her.

She couldn’t let him do her like her mother. She was tired of him and she got enough courage to bite his palm and enough strength to elbow him in one of his ribs. She broke free from Lee’s grip and didn’t waste time to run out the room as Lee chased her down the stairs. She managed to get out the front door of the house and far enough away from the house that lee couldn’t see her. Lee looked through the bushes and trees around the house. Still drunk, he couldn’t see a lot around him. The next-door neighbor’s lights came on, Lee panic to the front door and staggered up the stairs. He shut the door behind him.
Walking down the cracked black road, she started to think: Where can I go? Will Lee catch me before I get there? She had a grandmother that lived about two miles away. But how will she get there? She couldn’t drive there because she was only 13 and had no driver license. She never even put the key in the ignition and turned the car on. Driving was all foreign to her. She wanted to cry but nothing came out her eyes so all the emotions were building in her chest. She felt like she was going to explode, she then realized she left her mom in the house and god knows what Lee is doing to her mother’s stiff lifeless body.
But then she remembered there’s a bus stop she always saw when she would come home from school in the car. The bus stop was about two blocks over and she could see the flickering bluish white light from her street. She was nervous to walk this far from her house this time of the night and when she get there how was she going to get on the bus because she didn’t have any money, and she couldn’t go back to her house to get her stash that she kept at all times. She would put a dollar a day in a small blue wooden jewelry box but never jewelry. She hid it in a crawlspace that was in the back of her closet where she stored it for anything like this to happen to her and her mother. She didn’t expect it would turn out like this.
When she got to the end of her street’s road and into an intersection she heard something coming up the road. She thought it would be Lee in his pickup truck looking for her because she could only see two very bright headlights. She prepared herself to run if it was him. The lights got brighter and bigger when it got closer to her at the end of the street. She started to breathe heavily. Her heart started to pound in her chest, her hand started to sweat heavily. The headlights got closer to her. She kept telling herself to run but her muscles froze. They were like concrete that was stuck to the ground.
A red mustang appeared in the dark. She felt her eyes producing tears. The car passed her up and didn’t bother stop to see why she was on the road at that time of the night. When it went by it drove over a puddle, and splashed the muddy water all over her. Some of the water cleaned some of her mother’s blood stains off of her gown. It’s faded little bit she thought. Even though she was splashed in her face with disgusting road water she was relived it wasn’t Lee. Thank you god. One of the innocent voices said in her head.
Making her way up the road, she finally saw the bus stop. A smile appeared on her face, something she thought would never show on her face again. Walking the broken concrete path down the street, she was getting closer to the bus stop. When she finally got to the platform under the bus stop bench, there three other people standing there also waiting. She saw two men and a woman. The only one to notice her was the short hefty woman standing between them. She looked down at her.
“Well honey are you all right?” with a country ascent.
“I’m fine” the girl said, not looking at the woman.
“Honey you’re in a night gown and its soaking wet!”
“I said I’m just fine!” lifting her voice so she would get her point.
The woman had a question mark on her face and then frowned at the girl. She looked back up. They all saw the bus coming up the street, the girl smiled in her head. Then another voice in the back of her head asked:
Ok, you see the bus coming up but are you going to get on it? You have no money. What are you going to do?
The voice was right she didn’t have any money, what was she going to do? She looked over to the woman that questioned her earlier; she was putting away a pocket book that had loads of money within the pocket book. The girl thought about asking the woman for a dollar but a voice in her head interrupted her thoughts and said:
What, are you stupid? The way you just spoke to her she would never give you a fucking dime. The only way to getting onto that bus is to take her stuff!
The girl thought NO! Why would I steal her money? I’m not a thief.
The voice replied but you’re a murderer! Now gets that pocket book! The girl nodded in her head.
The woman put the pocket book in her back pocket of her jeans. The girl’s hands started to sweat and shake heavily. She walked around them on the other side of the platform. When she got behind the woman, she slipped her hand in her pocket and slipped it back out with the pocket book. She was so scared that the woman would notice, but she didn’t. The girl smiled in the back of her mind again. Then she waited for the bus to arrive at the platform.
The bus slowly pulled up to the platform. She made sure she was the first one to step on the stairs of the bus. She reached in her gown pocket for money. She got out three singles and handed it to the bus driver. The driver glared at her in humor. He scratched his long grey goatee and smiled at her.
“What are you doing?” he chuckled, not noticing her stained gown or either what she was doing out at night with a gown on.
“What?” getting defensive in her voice.
“Um…. well you’re not supposed to give me the money” with voice a lot of bass in voice. The girl looked at him confused. “I’m guessing you’ve never been on the bus before? Huh?” he said to her. She looked down at her slippers “no mister” He laughed “well when you on the bus, you first put your money in the machine here” he pointed “And then now you just go sit anywhere there’s an open seat.” He smiled.
She followed his instructions. She put the money in the machine and went back to a seat and sat down. She found a seat in the middle of the bus. The two men were next to get on the bus. They did the same as she did. Then the short lady came up the bus stairs. The girl ducked her head down so she wouldn’t see her. The woman smiled at the driver and started to dig in her pockets for her money. “Hurry up lady I got somewhere to be!” one of the passengers said in the back of the bus. “I know I got it somewhere in here.” checking her purse. The woman began to get nervous. The girl could tell she was nervous because the woman’s hands started to shake.
“Ok! You know what? Just get off the bus.” The bus driver said.
“Wait! Just wait!” the lady said. She was digging through her purse rapidly. The girl wanted to feel bad but something in her mind was telling her not to feel that way. “Get off my bus lady!” The lady stepped off the bus just as he hit the gas. The girl watched as her window passed the lady by. For a brief second the women and the girl locked eyes tightly but the girl looked away she could see any emotion grow on the woman’s face. Oh well, she should’ve kept up with her s***! A voice nodded.
Its over she thought. But she didn’t know what’s lying out in her future……