The Fifth Time

A story about a girl and her broken home.

Through the dark cold night, she went on. Her eyes bloodshot with the cold and tears stained upon her cheeks. This had been the fifth night in a row which she had rummaged through her things and gathered supplies preparing to leave. This is the fifth time she ran away. And this would be the fifth time she thinks about what she’s done and what’s happened and forgive those people she’s forced to call parents. What kind of parents would constantly beat their child? She has never loved them. She had not asked for them. But a pretentious and yet almighty God had ultimately caused her lucky soul to be brought forth by a pair of people so distraught and unsettled with their own lives they took out their anguish and despair on their innocent daughter. What mother doesn't take mercy on her daughter as she pleads for it? What kind of father watches in some sort of disgusting and twisted plot to retain a form of sick and detrimental power over everyone?

Questions piled on to more and more questions. She cried and cried and her legs were sore from being lashed at for hours on end. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't speak. They had taken her voice; her strength. Her everything was ripped from her as they pulled on her heart. She grew weaker, she grew colder. How weak and unable had she become? How much of a masochist much she be to want to return? But most of all, how pathetic is it that she continuously dreams of her parents accepting her? Of her parents telling her they loved her.

She looks up, brown hair all in a mess in front of her and her dark eyes growing darker with every passing second... Her hopes and dreams were shattering in her hands. She grasped at them, she gasped and grabbed for air. She screamed and yelled and thrashed her arms all around her. Was there really no one around to save her? Was there really no one around her hearing her and witnessing this crime scene that would surely be the end of her? She hadn’t known where to run and she just went. She could hear the sirens in the distance... She could hear the shouts for her, and strangers screaming out her name.. "Dawn!! Dawn!!" they chanted. What did they want -- for her to return to that hell? Why should she come home? No one loved her there. No one needed her.

So then she picked up her clothes which had splattered on the ground when she screamed. Putting them back neatly in a random arrangement and pulling her bag closed, she trudged along into the wilderness. Right then and there, she gave up her old self who had let her parents beat her and break her bones. Who let those students walk over her already tattered body. No, she was giving up that life. No more would she take it in, and no more would she let the torment of her past corrupt and hasten her mind into a temporary sort of bliss. She was a fighter and she knew she was a fighter. Trudging into the bitter darkness and cold, she knew she was going someplace where no one could harm her. And as the light approached, she knew she was right.

In a count of 5 she would be free...

5.

4..

3...

2....

1.....

And with that, Dawn walked away into a new tomorrow leaving behind only a trance of crimson red blood in her wake which, when discovered, finally allowed her parents to realize that this time, they had hit her too hard. They had finally killed Dawn with their constant punching and bruising of her. There was no waking up. She had escaped her life. Now, it was her parent’s turn to be kept behind bars. Justice was finally done that night when the police came. Only one question remains..

Did she ever find her paradise..?