Hidden lie

A story about a girl with a dark secret and an unwanted life with her father.

Footsteps getting closer and closer to her door, that is the sound Erin Johnson became all to familiar with in her short 15 years of age, but like most

This story has a beginning.

Crystal clear icicles hung from the roof of Erin’s house, she had lived here for a little over a year now, a year in which she wished had never come. The chilly January air had a fresh smell of rain from the night before,

The sound of birds tweeting, recently flying back from south, the sun was out shining and a slight breeze was blowing through the spruce trees outside, but despite the peaceful scenery there was a deep dark secret buried in the walls of this little house nestled in the heart of the woods, a secret that Erin was hoping would remain silent.

Staring out the window Erin dreamed of a better place, a better family, or any family at all.

It was about 4:30 pm on a Tuesday, and she was as most days, preparing herself for her father to come home. 5:00 pm was an hour she would everyday dread, wondering what would happen this time.

Her father, Rick a 50 year old man, divorced from his wife years ago and having no other children, lived alone with Erin, just the two of them, a nightmare for Erin. Frequently drifting off into her mind, Erin lived a life she deserved, a life that every child deserves, most people said Erin wasn’t the type to listen,

She lived in a make believe world and was rarely in the real world with everyone else, Erin lived inside her head, and that was how she liked it. All to suddenly she heard the deep low rumble of her fathers diesel pulling into the driveway, she bolted into her room and shut the door, sitting down onto her bed and trying to steady her breath, but the fear was eating her up a little at a time. For 15 years she had lived in fear of her fathers very presence, cowering in fear as he passed her, doing everything he said, at anytime he said it.

The slam of the door, and then the footsteps leading to her room, Erin held her breath as she saw her door whip open and hit the wall of her room, standing there her father seemed to have an invisible power over her, willing herself not to crumble to the floor as she so wanted to do, Erin uttered a quiet hello to the man standing in front of her. Staring her down, he said nothing. Not knowing what to do, Erin sat there, as usual wishing she was anywhere but there. After what felt like an eternity he said “why haven’t you done the dishes like I asked you to?” relieved that this was all he had to say Erin muttered a sorry, and walked out of her room to go and do the few dishes that scattered the counter. While doing them she could feel her fathers eyes watching her, when she was finished she turned around and told him she was going for a walk, she needed out of there.

Outside Erin took a deep breath of the frosty air, and wrapped her hoodie around her shivering body.

She speed walked away from the house, and went to her favourite place in the world, about a 20 minute walk away was a cliff overlooking the valley, where she could peacefully sit and write, she loved to write. As her mother once said, she would have a book written by the time she was 4 years old, her mother died shortly after Erin’s 5^th birthday, she had been on her way home from getting Erin a final birthday present, there had been a blizzard and icy roads, Erin remembers the moment like it was yesterday.

Five year old Erin had perched herself on the back step, awaiting the moment her mother got home. She was all to excited to see her present that her mother had ranted and raved about, despite the freezing cold air she sat, and waited and waited. It had been hours since her mother had left, and night time had arrived and she had still not come home. That’s when she heard it, the ear-splitting ring of the telephone ringing inside, Erin ran inside to find her father sitting at the kitchen table in tears, Erin desperately wanted to ask him what was the matter, but the fear of that man sitting there was a fear so overwhelming, all she could do was run to her room and lay in her bed, dreading the news she was about to hear not long after.

A roar overhead startled Erin out of her thoughts, and reminded her it was time to get home.

After arriving back home, she tried to open and shut the front door as quietly as possible, hoping she could sneak into her room without her father realising she had come home. “Erin?” her fathers livid voice shouted from the living room, frightfully Erin dragged herself reluctantly into the room where he was, “yes” her tiny voice barely spoke, “where the hell have you been” he roared, “out for a walk” she murmured, “I checked the dishes, there was food stuck all over them” he shouted while pushing her to the ground “I didn’t raise you for 15 years for you to turn into a useless slob, did I?!” he questioned her as she sat on the floor beneath him silently praying he would just stop. He grabbed her by the collar of her shirt and lifted her to her feet, with a final smack in the face he told her to get out of his sight. Thankful she ran to her room and hid herself under the covers sobbing, wondering over and over again why she had to live like this.

She must have fell asleep because the next thing she knew it was 11:30 at night and all the lights in the house were off, staring at her ceiling she listened to the rain patter against her window and the occasional crack of thunder overhead. Then when she had almost fallen back asleep she heard the creak of her fathers footsteps outside her door, and then the flick of the hallway light switch. She could feel herself start to shake, holding her breath she saw her door slowly open and then the silhouette image of her father standing in her doorway, about to make his way over to her bed.

However, she knew the routine. She waited as he walked closer to her bed, and then as he laid down beside her. Ever since she had been a little girl this was the way her night would end. He caressed Erin’s skin with his hands, moving them up and down her legs, to her thighs and then making his way up her shirt. Her eyes filled up with tears as she felt the all to familiar touch of his rough hands against her skin, and the feeling of his breath against her neck. Laying there silently crying to herself, she waits for it to be over. The sickness in her stomach making her dizzy as she did her job and ran her hands along his penis, in a slow motion rubbing it and feeling her heart drop at the sounds of his appreciative groans and sighs. Trying to stop she moves away from him, and tries to run out of her room, he as usual grabs her arms and throws her back down, she feels his powerful fist slam her in the side of the head and his furious screams telling her to finish her job, so she does. Her sobs grow louder as the night goes on, his screams try to deafen them, shouting at her to be quiet, hitting her until she made no sound at all. Then satisfied, he briskly gets out of her bed, pulls up his pants and leaves her room, walking away from the girl limply laying on her bed with barely a breath uttering from her.

Laying there Erin’s wipes her burning eyes, and curls into a tight ball of safety, crying herself to seep for the last time, for tomorrow the day she had been waiting for would finally come, the day her life would end.

 

Author's Note

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[cloister]

There's one key lesson of creative writing you need to focus on most of all: "Show, don't tell." Wikipedia has a decent article on this, so I won't explain it overly much, but it's critical. Also, pretty much any good book on creative writing techniques will have a section or a chapter covering it. I would suggest finding such a book and spending some time working through it.

In a nutshell, "Show, don't tell" is an admonition not to explain to your readers what's going on all the time (that is, don't "tell" them), but instead, to show them actions, dialogue, thoughts, emotions, reactions, et cetera which, when taken together, allow the reader to _infer_ what's going on. Take, for example, this paragraph:

> The sound of birds tweeting, recently flying back from south, the sun was out shining and a slight breeze was blowing through the spruce trees outside, but despite the peaceful scenery there was a deep dark secret buried in the walls of this little house nestled in the heart of the woods, a secret that Erin was hoping would remain silent.

You're drawing a nice contrast between the world outside the house and the world inside the house, but you do it by simply _telling_ the reader that there's a big secret. Instead what you should do here is show some kind of emotional response or some of Erin's inner thoughts that will _hint_ at this but not give it away exactly. Maybe something like this:

> The sound of birds tweeting, recently flying back from south, the sun was out shining and a slight breeze was blowing through the spruce trees outside. Erin watched the trees in their gentle swaying dance. "What a nice life that would be," Erin thought. "So quiet and peaceful."

When you write something like that instead, what you do is you make the reader curious. Most people don't look out the window and wish they were a tree instead of themselves. So you've surprised the reader by giving them an unexpected and unusual thought from your main character. Naturally, they will wonder _why_ she wishes this. What's going on in her life that would make her wish that?

You want to do this because a) it's more fun to write, b) it's more fun to read, c) making your readers curious is a very, very good thing. When you can put questions into the reader's mind, you compel them to keep reading in order to learn the answers. But if you eliminate all the mystery up-front by flat-out telling them what's going on all the time, well, you leave them with nothing to be curious about. They get bored quickly and stop reading.

So, Show, don't Tell. That's rule-number-one. Learn it, live it, practice it, and you'll be amazed at how much your writing comes alive.

Finally, another brief comment from that same paragraph. You end the paragraph with:

> a secret that Erin was hoping would remain silent.

This doesn't ring true. Speaking (unfortunately) from experience, I can tell you that most abuse survivors _don't_ want that secret to remain hidden. They don't want to be the one to spill the secret, of course, because they're afraid of the anger of their abuser. But just the same, they hope and pray more than anything else for someone, somehow, to find out the secret. So that maybe someone will help them. Save them. That, more than anything else, is what abuse victims want: someone to find out so the abuse will stop.