Chapter 1

Gun shots sounded and bodies fell. Many bodies littered the ground that had already been covered in blood. The ones still living were still fighting against the enemy, limping, bleeding, cursing, screaming. So much noise; so much chaos.

A man a few feet away crawled over the ruble and dirt, rolling over dead bodies, begging for something. "Please," he gasped. "Water, please." But no one came to help him. He passed away, on the cold hard ground. And no one was around to bother saving him.

A bomb was dropped from a nearby helicopter, shaking the ground and causing many to stumble and fall down. Some never got back up. Others struggled to survive.

It was war; it was a bloody, agonizing war. It seemed so real, yet Lucy knew it was a dream. She had to wake up, needed to wake up, but when she awoke she knew it wouldn't be any better. Chaos, yelling, and noise. Struggles, blood, and tears. The same bloody agony, the same pain. Gun shots boomed but eventually died out, and the war had ended. The horrible chaos ended when all were dead and gone.

But then, blood leaked toward Lucy’s feet, swarming around her in a large puddle, as if she had been the reason for the deaths of these soldiers. She knew she wasn’t. She knew it was whoever had started the war.

In her mind, she knew exactly who it was. 

 

Lucy woke up in the morning to the noise of glass shattering in the kitchen. Though it was a shock, she didn’t scatter to go see what happened. She knew what it was already. Her father breaking more wine glasses or throwing beer cans across the room. It was the fearful sound Lucy awoke to nearly every morning but never thought anything more of it.

The smell of smoke, likely from her father’s cigarettes, filled their small townhouse. Lucy opened her window to allow the smell to leave, only slightly helping her breathing. Lucy’s room was the only place in the townhouse that wasn’t moldy and smelly from the alcohol and filth covering every corner. There were no wine bottles or beer cans, no cigarettes or marijuana stashed away. Her room was the cleanest room in the place by far.

But even then it wasn't very decent.

She stumbled over to her closet and threw on a pair of jeans and a blue t-shirt. She opened her bedroom door to the hallway, feeling as if she just opened her door to another realm. A deeper, darker, more horrific world.

And the devil himself was just in the kitchen downstairs.

Instead of going in the kitchen, Lucy took her time in the bathroom. The cracked mirror gave Lucy her broken reflection of her disheveled hair. She ran her brush through her hair quickly and then brushed her teeth with the same toothbrush she’d had for years.

When she was done, Lucy walked down the stairs and to the living room. The smell that occupied her room of course lingered in the rest of the townhouse as well. It’s something Lucy had grown quite accustomed to but never developed a liking for it.

Lucy noticed broken glass on the carpet and a cigarette left in her father’s ash tray still burning. “You’re going to burn down the place…” She whispered.

“What was that?” Her father yelled from the kitchen in a harsh tone. “I don’t want your crap today, little girl!”

Then don’t give me crap to complain about, Lucy thought. She began to pick up the larger pieces of glass in the carpet in an attempt to keep her father from cutting his foot on it again, like he did so half-wittingly last week. He still had the stitches in and complained about it every day, especially when he’s drunk, which is nearly twenty-four/seven.

Lucy heard footsteps coming from the kitchen and quickly looked up, only to look straight in the dazed eyes of her father. “What the hell are you doing? Get off the floor!” He yelled, cup of wine in his hand that was only half empty.

Lucy looked back down for a slight second but then felt a hand on the back of her head, and then a tight grasp on her hair. Suddenly, her father yanked her hair as hard as he could in his current state, and lifted Lucy to her feet. “Ouch!” She yelled, grasping her hair to keep her father from pulling it harder.

“When I say get off the floor, I expect you to listen to me!” He yelled. Lucy didn’t respond, knowing better than to back-sass him while he’s drunk. “You disrespectful little mutt . . .”

“Let go of me.” Lucy begged. Her father had pulled her hair before, and much harder, but it gets on Lucy nerves more and more each time.

Her father let go of her but not before slapping her in the face. Lucy quickly brought her hand up to her cheek as she felt it getting warmer. “Don’t tell me what to do.”

Lucy nodded and quickly ran to her room.

She hated her father with every fiber in her being. He started drinking and smoking when Lucy’s mother abandoned them thirteen years ago. About the time when Lucy turned nine, her father became abusive. He had slapped, punched, shoved, kicked, and scratched Lucy daily. Lucy tried to spend a lot of time away from home, by the river in the woods down the street, at the book store, taking a walk, or just walking around aimlessly. But her father got even more strict and aggressive when Lucy was home after dark. 

Sometimes even going to school was easier than being at home. Home was worse than school by millions, and school was a living Hell. Lucy had been struggling with her grades since Junior High. She'd never had many friends, just one she'd met in seventh grade. Marylou Red. Not a best friend, but not just a face in the hall either.

Marylou had been the closest thing to a friend Lucy had ever had. No one else wanted to even speak to Lucy because of the scars and bruises that polluted Lucy's body, and the horrible personality everyone else tended to see in Lucy. It was an embarrassment. Fear and loneliness was written all over Lucy's face whenever someone came close to her. She simply didn't have the strength to hide it. Not yet.

Lucy sat on her bed, which was just a mattress in the middle of her bedroom floor. It had many holes in it but it was better than sleeping on the dirty carpet. Lucy had had this mattress for a long time. She remembers every story behind every hole in it. The biggest one, the one next to her one pillow, was from when she had a horrible nightmare one night and got so scared she ripped open the stitching. The other ones were either severe cigar burns from her father falling onto the mattress when he was drunk and smoking, or when she got so mad she stabbed the mattress with the army knife she secretly keeps in her pocket.

Lucy looked down at the two notebooks she kept by her bed side. They were filled with poems, lyrics, notes, diary entries, anything Lucy thought of. Whenever Lucy wanted to scream and cry, she took a deep breath and opened her notebook and wrote down what she was thinking - whether she could explain it in her own words or in lyrics she'd heard before. Lucy didn't have an iPod or a radio, but she loved music more than anything else in the world. She went to the book store and cafe down the street every day just to hear the different songs they would play every day. What she would give to have a radio, or anything to play music . . .

Remembering how she got the two notebooks, Lucy finished getting ready for the day.

It was two years ago. Lucy's dad had been at his friend's house - if you could call them friends, they were more like drug-trading buddies - and he was completely wasted, and had tripped on a misplaced wine bottle and hit his head on his friend's glass table. The glass broke through his skull and he was rushed to the hospital with a concussion and covered in blood. It was well passed midnight, somewhere around 3 A.M., and Lucy was called to come down to the hospital as her father's only known relative.

Turns out her dad's "friends" hadn't come to the hospital, just called 911 and let them take him away. For two hours the nurses were trying to get out of him any relatives above the age of eighteen that could come to sign some papers. He had passed out seven times but eventually told them he had a daughter, and that's when they called Lucy. After Lucy walked three miles to get to the hospital, she told the nurses that her father's parents lived about an hour away. She called them and her father's mom and dad came to the hospital and took care of everything, except the hospital bill.

Lucy had never met her grandparents on either side of her family, so she was curious to see them. While they were waiting outside her father's room for news from the nurses, Lucy's grandmother gave her ten dollars to go get food for herself from the hospital cafeteria.

Lucy never used it to get food. Instead, she saved it, and later spent it at the book store to get the two notebooks.

That was the first time Lucy ever met any of her relatives other than her mother and father, and they had given her the money that was later spent on one of the few things that kept Lucy sane. Lucy had wanted to get a few notebooks or novels from the book store for years, but she wouldn't dare ask her father for money, and she's never had a job.

Lucy's never asked her father about any other relatives. In fact, she never brought up her grandparents, even after meeting them at the hospital. Lucy doubts that her father even remembered any of that night. He was drunk, and he had a concussion, and  Lucy would never dare bring it up again. But every once and a while Lucy could see the scar on the back of her father's head where the glass penetrated his skull.

It looked similar to the dozens of scars scattered on Lucy's body.

Eventually, Lucy got up from her mattress. She closed her bedroom window and grabbed her backpack and notebooks to head out to . . . wherever Lucy's feet led her. It was Saturday morning, Lucy had all day to do whatever she wanted. Her father didn't care where Lucy was until it was after dark, and if Lucy came home after the sun set she'd face some serious consequences.

Lucy looked down at her arm to see one of the biggest scars on her body. She got the scar from coming home to late and her father just happened to have a broken piece of glass in his hands when she finally came home. He yelled and screamed at her and then threw the glass straight into her arm. The scar went from her elbow to her wrist. After her father threw the glass and it got plunged into her skin, Lucy had screamed in pain and fell to the floor. Her father then got up and told her to stand up, but by then she was getting dizzy so she fell back against the wall, which pushed the glass down to her wrist. That's when she finally pulled it out.

It took all of Lucy's strength not to stick her father with the piece of the bloody glass afterwards, but she knew what would happen if she did. She would have probably gotten much more than just a scar that night if she had.

After that, Lucy made sure to get home whenever the sky showed all those colors of the sunset. Better to be safe than sorry.

Lucy quickly got out of the house as her father searched for food in their tiny kitchen. He never asked where she was going or why, because he didn't care if she were in the house or not. It was one of the freedoms Lucy could never live without. If she had to spend all day in that house, she's as good as dead.

She quickly decided to visit the park. It was a nice day, but not so nice that the park would be crowded with people. In the city of Rochester, Michigan, many people thrived for nice weather. In the Winter, they were bombarded with the bitter cold snow, and in the Summer the humidity was unbearable. Today, the air was warm and moist - not the kind of weather where small children would prance around the park.

As Lucy wondered the park she saw a few bikers, a few joggers, and a few just walking around the same as Lucy. The peaceful serenity was so enjoyable, Lucy couldn't help but fall into one of her daydreams of living in a treehouse in the middle of Rochester Park. It was something Lucy had dreamt about often. But it was so hard to picture something as wonderful as that. Happiness has never been a part of Lucy's life, and it made it hard to imagine any happiness in the near future.

But Lucy's adoration for nature and all its beauty overtook Lucy from dwelling on her real life. She fell back into daydreams of living at the top of all the trees in the largest tree house possible. Waking up to the sound of birds chirping and wind whistling through the leaves of her brilliant, magnificent house. Lucy couldn't help but smile like an idiot at the thought of it.

Lucy lost track of where she was going and accidentally ran into someone walking toward her and ended up tripping over her own feet and stumbling. "Oh, sorry!" The person exclaimed as they helped her get her ground again. When Lucy looked up, she was sad to say she recognized their face.

It was Brandon Ligon, the boy Lucy had had a crush on for years. They went to school together at Rochester High, but she's never really spoken to him other than a few encounters with Marylou or when they worked on a science project together a few months ago.

Lucy held back a gasp when Brandon looked her in the eyes. His eyes were so magnifying, it took her away every time they made eye contact. Lucy realized Brandon had his hand on her arm and quickly flinched away. She was completely embarrassed in front of Brandon and his friend, Trent. She was speechless, so she quickly took another step back and got the courage to mutter, "Sorry." She pulled her hair behind her ear and looked at the ground.

"No problem." Brandon said, and then the two continued walking.

As they walked away,  Lucy's cheeks quickly heated up, but she knew very well that they were probably already bright red when Brandon was looking at her. She gave a loud sigh and turned to walk away, wanting to run as fast as she could out of Brandon's eyesight.

Lucy quickly found a bench behind a patch of bushes and buried her head in her hands. Oh, God. Oh, my God . . . that really just happened, Lucy thought. I really just made that much of a fool of myself!

Lucy sat like that for a few minutes, listening to the trickle of water in the nearby river. She focused on the sound for a long time. It was one of her favorite sounds of nature, it always relaxed her, even in the worst of times. After a few long minutes of getting over the embarrassment of what had happened, Lucy finally leaves her bench and continues walking throughout the park.

Embarrassment was one of the few emotions Lucy could still feel. In fact, she felt it nearly every day when someone at school teased her or she did something to embarrass herself. No one at school paid much attention to Lucy - the girl who kept to herself and felt like a train wreck on the inside and looked like one as well on the outside. To everyone else, Lucy seemed like the depressed girl who had no friends. No one knew Lucy well enough to tell that the bruises, scars, and cuts littering her body weren't from herself but from her father. No one would ever dare get to know Lucy either.

It had never been easy for Lucy to make friends. She remembered back in her early years of school that she steered clear of most of the kids, too afraid that they would be scared away by her life at home if she ever told them what goes on. None of Lucy's teachers had ever known about it either. No one knows about Lucy's life. Her best friend Marylou knows some of it but not all. Why Lucy trusted her enough to tell her any of it, she'll never know...

It's been a lonely, depressing, painful life for Lucy Ditorni ever since her mother left. That empty feeling Lucy has had all her life in the pit of her stomach is the worst kind of pain she's known. And something in the back of Lucy's mind tells her that that pain won't ever, ever go away.

Author's Note

Really long, sorry. I really like this chapter though, I like how it turned out. Tell me what you think :)

Reviews

[Jacques]

You spelt Rubble wrong, you spelt it as Ruble. It's not a big problem, it's only minor.

I loved how you described the dream scene. But i would be careful, be steady when describing. Sometimes you can over- add to the sequence and you can repeat words or it can become over- enthused and complicate what you're trying to say. I'm not saying you do it, i'm just giving some pointers as i know i do it a lot.

WOW. This chapter surpasses the Prologue and exceeds my expectations. The "Prologue" really paved the way for this well- written chapter. It was so well- written, how you describe everything and you're writing is too die for. If this was a published book, i would buy it. If i had a bad life like Lucy and had ten dollars to buy a novel, it would be this one. :)

I love the name "Marylou" I hope we get to see some of her interaction with Lily. I want to read some of Lily's school life and see how in comparision, To actually know if it's one and the same as her homelife.

You wrote Lily so well. Her emotions and for a moment, it felt like i was reading an actual person. I know things like abuse happens to people in real life, but you're understanding and perception of it shines through Lily and the story.

I want to see her Mother return somehow and see if she's just as bad as her father or if she'll save her daughter in the end.

I've gotta say i'm overly impressed with this. It's just sooo good. Great chapter, well done. 100/100