Can't Touch Me

A Chapter by Caroline Bell

In this chapter you find out a little bit about Lena and the life she has with her dad.

"Oi, Girl! Get your damn a*s down those stairs this instant!" I rolled my eyes. Here we go again, he's yelling up the stairs, I bet the whole bloody town can hear him. I trudged to the top of the stairs, "Alright I'm coming." Jeez, what the hell had I not done this time or, s**t, was it something I had done. No he couldn't know , he couldn’t have found out I was using magic to get most of my chores done, I was so careful, I never left any evidence. I practically flew down the stairs and skidded to a halt in front of Jean-Luc Deverux, Aka My dad, yeah right some dad. Dads are supposed to treat you right, make you feel special, not like a slave. I could see why people might mistake him for a nice guy, he's a tall well-built man in his mid thirties. An ex-quarterback. He is handsome, I guess, with his wavy brown hair and dark brown eyes. I've always called them dead eyes, as they hold no emotions ever.

"What the bloody hell took you so long?" He yelled into my face, he had obviously come from a recent Voodoo ritual or spell because he was covered in blood and chicken feathers, which were dropping all over the floor I had just cleaned. Goddess couldn’t he give me a break? " I… I…I got down here as quickly as I could, Sir." I stuttered. He never could tolerate me reminding him that he was my father. "Go and clean out the dogs, now! And don’t tell me you've already done it, that house looks like a bloody pig-sty!" He raised the machete that he was holding and I ran for the door, the bade narrowly missing my back. I fumed silently as I left the house through the back door and let the Louisiana summer heat settle around me. I had already cleaned the damn dog house, but it was more than likely that one of my half-brothers had gone in and messed it up again, just purely to get me in trouble.

I reached the dog house and marvelled at how the stupid mutts lived better than I did, with three lots of fresh meat a day, soft mattresses, blankets and their own heating and lighting system. What did I get three lots of table scrapes, a broken mattress, a thread bare blanket and a draft attic. As I cleaned the dog house, again, I caught sight of my reflection in a window pane. I wasn’t all that bad looking, with long wavy black hair, emerald green eyes and a curvy build, along with my olive skin tone I looked exotic. Well I would be curvy and exotic again once I regained all the weight I had lost over the last three years, since I had been force to move in with my dad. To look at me, this skinny, bed-draggled waif in ripped jeans that were really no use and a t-shirt that was at least 4 size to big, you would never have thought I lived in a huge plantation house, had designer clothes and used to look like a normal human being.

I'd never really wanted to move in with my dad and luckily, when I lived in New York with Mama when I was 8, the judge had seen just how bad a parent Jean-Luc really was. So Mama kept custody until I was 16 then she met Nico, an Italian Doctor who was really nice to me, but when they eventually got married they wanted to move back to Italy. Some how Jean-Luc got hold of this and of course was a completely concerned father saying, " You can't do this, you can't separate a father from his daughter." Unfortunately this time the judge had to grant my dad custody, purely because my dad had threatened to raise the judges dead wife and get her to admit that the judge had had her murdered. Jean-Luc would have done it as well, being one of the most powerful Voodoo priests in the U.S.A. Well that and he was a mean sonofabitch.

I jerked out of my Reverie and went back to cleaning the dog house, filled their bowls with fresh water and then with that done, I did a final check before going back to the main house. As I walked, I looked out towards the swamp and wished that I could run, that I could escape. I entered the house through the kitchen, as Jean-Luc always wanted me to, because I was such a dirty little secret, and took the old servants stair case up to my room to shower. After my shower I put on a t-shirt and a pair of cut off jeans, well shorts, and headed back down the servants stairs to do whatever stupid chores they had for me tonight. When I reached the kitchen the racket they were making could have woken the dead, without magic or at least made them reach for earplugs. Oh Great, they’re drunk. I saw a good dozen beer bottles littering the kitchen. I stood still in the middle of the room and had a quick shall-I-shan't-I moment, but decided that if I didn’t go to them, they would probably come looking for me.

Taking a deep breath, I entered the living room and the noise level suddenly dropped to nothing, Oh S**t, I turned to go back out of the door, only to find my half-brother Joseph leaning against it. "Well, well, well look who finally decided to grace us with her presence." He drawled. The thing with Joseph is that he looks like such a nice guy, with his blonde hair and blue eyes, until he opens his mouth and then every word is pure venom. I took the natural pose that had been instilled, well beaten, into me since day one, Submission. I stood there as close to the door as I dared with my head hung, gritted my teeth and prepared for what was bound to be coming.

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