What these eyes have seen.

A sixteen year old girl named Anna struggles to escape an abusive home life with her two siblings, Sarah and Eden.

Anna waited nervously for her older brother to come home. If he wasn't home before mom was there was, without a doubt, going to be hell to pay. Anna fidgeted with her fingers, remembering the beating her brother got from their mother the last time he was late. She glanced at the partially broken clock that hung crooked on her wall. 

10:28 p.m

Mom will be home any second. Deciding she should wait out side for her brother, Anna went to the living room, sat on the dirty couch, and gently roused her eleven year old sister from sleep. "Sarah I'm going to go outside and wait for Eden, okay?" Anna whispered while caressing her sisters hair. Sarah just mumbled and tried to fluff her extremely flattened pillow. Anna got up and opened the front door and immediately her heart dropped into he stomach. Standing right in front of her was her mother.

"Where do you think you're going?" the filthy woman snapped. The air around Anna's mom was potent with the smell of alcohol, which wasn't unusual. Anna just stood in horror as she watched her brother walk up into the driveway behind their mom. "Oh, God help us." Anna thought, as her mom turned around and saw Eden. Anna's mom then turned back and slapped Anna hard across the face, bringing tears to her eyes. The hideous woman then shoved Anna out of her way, like trash, and grabbed an old baseball bat that rested behind the door. Anna ran towards her and tried to wrestle the bat away from her mother while screaming,

"RUN, EDEN! RUN!" Anna's mom then shoved the bat forward, slamming it into Anna's stomach. Her mom then ran outside after Eden, bat in hand, while Anna was crumpled to the ground in pain forcing herself not to vomit. With tears of pain streaming down her cheeks, Anna stood ran to the couch, grabbed her little sister and the pillow and blanket she was wrapped up in, and darted to the bathroom where she immediately locked the door. She would have taken Sarah to one of the three bedrooms but the bathroom was the only room in the small, rundown house, that had a door. There was no calling the police, for the land line was disconnected long ago and none of the kids had cellphones, and there was no running to a neighbor for help either, since the nearest neighbor was two miles away. There was no way for them to get help.

Sarah began sobbing, " I'....s-so...sc-scared."she whimpered.Anna hugged her sister tight, and whispered,

"I know. Me too." Suddenly they heard the front door slam followed by incoherent screaming. Anna slowly unlocked the door and said to her terrified sister " I can't just leave Eden, lock the door as soon as I leave, if you hear nine knocks on the door open it because then it will be me, okay"? Sarah just nodded and as Anna closed the door behind her, she was reassured by the sound of the lock clicking.

 Anna slowly walked into the hallway and listened to what was going on. "You were with that w***e again weren't you!" Their mother screeched.

"Annelise is not a w***e! And maybe if you weren't a raging alcoholic and pulled your head out of your a*s for one in your Goddamn life I would've been able to tell you I have a girlfriend!" Anna cringed. Eden always did have an insane amount of courage when facing mom.

 " HOW DARE YOU SAY THAT TO ME YOU WORTHLESS PIECE OF S**T!"  Anna peeked around the corner and watched her mother's tyrannical rage as Eden yelled in pain as she beat the hell out of him. " I RAISED YOU AND THIS IS THE THANKS I GET! YOU WHORING AROUND AND SCREAMING AT ME! YOU SON OF A B***H, I SHOULD HAVE DUMPED OFF SOMEWHERE WHEN YOU WERE BORN!" Anna just watched her brother collapse to the ground and cough up blood, while their mother switched between kicking him and hitting him with the bat, when something in her snapped. Anna suddenly became enraged that this was a normal thing, that she and her siblings were always living in constant fear. Anna looked at the baseball sized bruise on her arm from a beating she received two days ago for forgetting to make her bed. She then felt along a gash she had along the right side of her face, barley missing her temple, that her mother had given her with a kitchen knife only yesterday. 

Yesterday, when their mom had come home at eleven at night, Sarah ran up to her and said "I was worried about you momma, where were you?" Sarah always thought that kindness and caring would some how get through to their mother's shriveled heart, but it never did. Instantly their mother began to scream at Sarah stating "How dare you question your mother! You have no right to ask me where I was because it is none of your business!" She then slapped Sarah so hard that the area under Sarah's left eye began to bleed. Sarah began to cry when their mother screamed, "PIPE DOWN YOU LITTLE B***H!" Anna then yelled back, in defense of her sister "All she wants is for you to care about her!" It's then that Anna saw a plastic bag with a white substance inside of it, sticking out of their mother's pocket. "You were buying drugs weren't you. You said you were done with that two weeks ago! You know what, I'm sick of you treating us like trash! You're a horrible mother and you need to stop living your self-centered fantasy world and wake the hell up!" If looks could kill the look Anna's mother shot her would have killed all the kids. Her mother went to the kitchen, came back with a kitchen knife, kicked Anna in the stomach then pinned her to the ground and carved into the right side of Anna's face, while Anna flailed around and screamed in agony. Sarah tried to help but was shoved away by their mother and Eden wasn't home yet. When he finally did get home he got a beating for letting their mother have an earful about what she had done to Anna.

Anna just fingered the gash as rage welled up inside her, not only from the memory, but from hearing Eden scream from his current beating. "Twenty seconds of insane courage is all it takes." Anna whispered to herself. The screaming stopped, but shortly began again. Anna peeked out to see their mother carving into Edens face with a kitchen knife, just like what she did to her yesterday. "Twenty seconds of insane courage is all it takes" Anna repeated through her older brother's screams of pain. Quickly Anna darted passed the two and into her mothers room, and began to quickly search through the drawers; adrenaline pumping. Just as she found what she was looking for in her mother's nightstand, she felt a painful grip on her arm. Anna grabbed the item and hid it behind her back as her mother whipped her around and held the knife up to her throat. 

"You know what Anna? I've had it with you!"Her mother snapped. She began to press the knife to Anna's throat. "What do you have to say for yourself?" Blood began to flow down the knife as she continued to press it into Anna. Anna stared straight into her wretched mother's eyes and said with a voice shaken with fear, "Twenty seconds of insane courage is all it takes." She then pulled the item out from behind her back; the small loaded pistol that was hidden in her mother's night stand. As blood began to pour out of Anna's throat she quickly closed her eyes and pulled the trigger.

Author's Note

Ignore my issues with grammar because I am working on that, but I do want to know what you thought about the substance of the story. It's my first one so I'm really excited! So I decided to break this into two or three stories and I'll probably have the second part tomorrow! Hope you liked it! YAY!

Reviews

[lady pilot]

i liked how you dived right in, sometimes long intros bore me. i think the pacing was good and the characters. i really like how the little sister still tried being nice to her. maybe if you gave your mom some tragic then she would seem less over board you know? uum yeah, good job.

[Marie]

You didn't make any mistakes, at least not bad ones. In fact this is written pretty well. Of course, child abuse is a pretty old subject; everybody writes about it, including me.

[thisandthat]

I read through it all. And I don't do that unless it's interesting. So...good job.
Mama is a little too hardcore though.

[books1697]

Yeah I didn't realize how crazy I made her until I published. I thought "oh she does drugs and alcohol so I'll make her violent. And then I published and read through the third time and thought Whoa, a little over board! . So I completely agree with you. But all in all I'm glad you enjoyed it! :)