As Usual The Screaming Starts, I Am Jolted Awake In My

As I helplessly watch my fifteen year old roommate fall to pieces in front of me, I feel everything around me slow to a crawl. Blood pounds my ear drums, I feel the color drain from my cheeks, and my feet take me forward as if they have a mind of their own. I fall to my knees and suddenly everything speeds up again – the pounding in my ear drums intensifies, my hands are trembling but I manage to grasp the side of the bed in an attempt to bring myself close to her. Her face is buried into her sheet. Muffled screaming escapes her as I whisper gentle reassurances in her ear, hoping with everything I have that she can hear me. I know she doesn’t. Even if she does, she can’t make sense of it right now. She’s stuck somewhere else, somewhere she revisits every day of her life and every time she closes her eyes to sleep.

I could feel the breeze skim through my hair as my loose shirt caught the brisk air behind me. This was my sanctuary, the feeling was bliss. I made my way home, bracing myself for the approaching argument I was about to have with my mother. That feeling of pleasure left my body as quickly as it arrived. I stepped into the front door, and closed it behind me as quietly as I could, maybe she wouldn't notice I was late home. But before I could even take the first few steps inside, I heard mum coming from the kitchen,

I haven’t been able to sleep for the past month. I hear my door creak and I look at the door. I see someone open the door very slowly before coming in. I look to see Maria tiptoeing into my room. “What are you doing?” I ask “You know your mom would kill me if she saw us.”

She vicious placed the piece of paper in my hand then ran away. Curiously I opened the envelope and three crumpled pieces of paper fell out. I opened then and they read “Hello stranger, my name is Anabel I am 16 years old and female. I live with Mum, Dad and older brother(Jason). My older brother is 18 and finished school. I hate my life… and everybody that I care for hates me. My parents are happy together but they hate me. They beat me up, swear at me, deprive me of food and don’t love me.” I read the start of the letter with a smile but then it took a vicious turn. I continued to read with my chin hanging from my jaw. “Every night, morning and during the day I have to find my own food with the money that I make. On school days’ struggle to get there. At school I have no friends everybody teases me for having colourless and holey clothes. I am thinking of moving out of my house because at home all I receive is violent abuse. I lay in my bed every night thinking of what I screw up I am. At about 11:00 o’clock at night Jason comes home extremely drunk he is so tipsy that it looks like he is trying to walk on a sailor’s boat. He storms into my room banging on everything in his attempt to walk. Jason then grabs the first hard thing he sees and starts to hit me with it. I never know what to do because my parents wouldn’t care. In these situations, I grab a blanket run outside and sleep in the tree in our backyard.” My eyes

We were walking for a few hours. My feet throbbed and my ears were ringing from Taylor’s whining. Finally I could see it, the old abandoned house I discovered one day while riding my bike. The door was barely hanging onto its hinges, and there were several windows missing or broken. I pried open the splintering oak door. In the house there was two rooms. One, the one you first enter, was most likely a kitchen and living room. There was a sofa with faded fabric and springs popping out everywhere. An old furnace sat in the corner with rotting charcoal inside. The door of the furnace was missing rendering the whole thing useless. The other room was much smaller. It was a bedroom. There was a twin sized bed. The frame was rusty and missing a leg. I pulled the mattress off of it, so we could sleep on it. There were springs and stuffing sticking out of the mattress. It wasn’t too dirty to sleep on because I pulled off the moldy sheets. We laid down on the mattress. Taylor started snoring within minutes. I was worried about Mom. She had had a seizure before. It was because of her failing liver. Last time, social services took me and my sisters to a girl’s home. They served cooked vegetables that smelled like rotten seafood and chicken noodle soup with frozen chicken. After Mom got out of the hospital she got custody of us, but the judge told her if it happened again she wouldn’t get us back. My older sister, Becca, was eighteen so she didn’t have to

I peered through my window at the gang of children; four of them were kicking and clawing another child curled on the asphalt — his knees to his face, covering his head from their pummeling feet. My chest tightened knowing that there were too violent and too many for me to stop, being a child myself I knew that I has no chance of pulling them off without being hurt as well. The reason for this attack escaped my knowledge as I was isolated inside my room, detached from the outside world. I contemplated what I could do and something inside me instinctively pulled for me to run for help but the beating stopped as quickly as it started, I watched the others disperse. The victim got up and walk away, jeering fists at the retiring children, spitting

I am going to sleep in my own bed in my home; as I sleep, a familiar scent slowly starts to fill the air. I wake up in a cold sweat; I know he is there, in my house. I don’t open my eyes because I don’t want to know how close he is, but I can tell he is still in the hallway; the scent is not strong enough yet. I listen with all my might, hoping I can hear the carpet moving under his feet or maybe I will hear his breath first. The carpet gives it away, he is entering my room; I can feel him standing over me for what feels like a lifetime. I’m so careful not to change the pattern of my breathing for fear he will know I’m awake. He turns and walks out. Now I’m listening even harder, and my heart sinks when I hear it. My mother’s gasping breaths, I know he has her by the throat. What do I do? I’m only fourteen, by no means large enough or strong enough to stand up to him, so I stay and pray he won’t hit her again. Then the shouting starts. He accuses her of running around on him, with her boss, the neighbor, and every other male she has come in contact with. He screams at her to take off her clothes, he wants to see her

After our neighbors let me stay with them for a few hours, I began my Plan-B immediately. I downloaded an app that could pinpoint the location of a sound. However, no shrill cries came today. “How could that be?” I asked myself, and set out for help. I asked one boy, James in order to help me. “Of course!”, he enthusiastically said.

No sounds come from inside the home. Just the twinkling of the stars overhead, and my breaking into someone’s home. Perfect. Nothing unusual here. It’s eight p.m. on a Friday night, and the entire house is pitch black. Hopefully, that means the bastard isn’t home. Nobody goes to bed at eight, right? He has to be out, probably cracking up over the girl dumb enough to lose her family’s heirloom. I heave the window the rest of the way up cringing at its squeal. I go completely still, gulping down breaths to stay quiet. My heart nearly

I woke to shouting and banging on my door. I grabbed my pocket watch from the side of my bed; it read 4 o’clock. Who would be at my door this early in the morning? I thought. My body was dragged from the bed as I trudged along to my front door.

I jumped through the kitchen door with the intent of regaling my family with a tale of the firetrucks and ambulances which raced by me during the bike ride in pursuit of their own mångata, but the thought elapsed as trivially and quickly as the vehicles had passed me on the road. Instead, I waved at Mom and Dad watching TV in the living room and headed upstairs to the rhythm of the sirens stuck in my ears. I've always abided by the theory that my bedroom should be a zone solely of relaxation, so I was a little startled to hear the phone binging: “Jake Robertson just died in a car accident,” the screen told me. I pulled up the covers, and my head hit the pillow before the truth hit my

We figured out it was dad when we went to get him and he was climbing into his window.

“What’s wrong, Daddy?” I questioned in my still high pitched, girly voice. Dad stepped aside. I saw a young man with a convoluted scowl spread across his face; I could not recognize my brother in the expression he painted with his features. This person did not resemble my amicable, benevolent older sibling. Something was definitely wrong.

Ellie and I lay in our beds, neither one of us knew what to say. In the other room, our host parents were arguing. We didn’t know what about, but we knew it was serious. Then we heard a “THWACK” followed by silence. Ellie and I sat up in our beds and looked at each other, I could tell she was as scared as I was. “Was that? Did he just?” she asked me. Then the arguing started back up again. We calmed back down until we heard it again. “THWACK” We knew then, the noise we heard, was him beating her. We got up, our hearts racing; neither of us knew what to do. We got our nerves together to go get help. When we opened the door to our room we saw the children sitting on the couch crying out for their mother. I could see the fear in their face and I knew something needed to change.

It was cold and raining that night, nevertheless, I had no intention of backing out of my plans. I was going to show her that she messed with the wrong person. Luckily for me the rain had cut the power out, so the house was perfectly dark and gloomy. I could see her bedroom window from my window. It was on the second floor, but that wasn’t a problem. There was a tall, old, creaky oak tree right next to her open window. I carefully maneuvered up the old tree branches, making sure that no one heard the creaking branches or the rustling of the leaves as I climbed up to the window. Once her window was in my eyesight, I sat back and waited for the right moment. I could see her sitting in the dark at her makeup mirror, the only light illuminating her face was the dozen of fruit scented candles around her. I waited in the dark like a black cat in the