hurt girl

Chapter 1 Frances... Age 5

The darkness envelopes her like an old friend's hug.. and she is comforted. Her eyes are now useless to her so she feels around on the wood floor with her hand and finds the loose floor board. Before she pulls up on it, she listens for her Mother's breathing. Sometimes she lingers by the door listening to her cry.. She leaves only when the crying stops. After hours of listening for her Mother's presence and hearing nothing, will she finally pry the floor board up and reach inside. She feels the softness of it and touches it to her face. It feels like what she imagines a cloud must feel like. She has named it "Happy," because that's how she feels when she holds it. She pets it over and over careful not to pull out its hair because lately she's noticed that its hair is falling out and this makes her so incredibly sad... and she cries again, eventually to sleep.

She dreams that she can fly. She has iridescent pink and silver wings and wears a bright white silky dress that is long and flowy. It ripples through the air and makes a flapping sound when she flies fast, a sound she finds calming and comforting. She flies among the sparrows and cardinals, her friends. When she tires of flying, she naps on billowy white clouds and she is happy... until she wakes up and realizes it was just a dream.

She knows it is morning from the smell of percolating coffee and it turns her empty stomach. She tampens the bile threatening to come up her throat and she frantically feels around the closet floor for 'Happy.' When she's finally got it tucked away back into the floor, she waits. She sits with her back to the wall and her legs tucked underneath her and she won't move out of this position until her Mother unlocks the door and sees her. While she's waiting, she prays:

"Dear God, it's me, Frances," she whispers. "Please help me to be the best good girl I can be. Please, please , please," she begs. Before she can say another word, she hears the scariest sound she knows... her mother's footsteps descending the basement stairs. She sits up straight and runs her shaky hands down her lap, trying to smooth the wrinkles out of her dress, all the while holding her head down so that she doesn't make eye contact with her mother. That's one of Audrey Setters' ten rules. Making eye contact will get her three lashes on her backside with the horse whip, and the pain from a horse whip is indescribable. It takes almost a week for the blood red welts to stop bleeding and another week for them to start fading, although they never really fade completely. Her heart beats hard and loud, so much in fact, that she doesn't hear the key turn in the lock. She is squeezing her legs together as hard as she can in the hope that she won't pee on herself as she sometimes does. "Please God let me be the best good girl I know I can be," she silently pleads.

"Get up, you ugly bitch," her mother hisses and jerks her up by grabbing a handful of her hair and practically swings her out of the tiny closet and tosses her like a rag doll onto the floor. "What the fuck is that smell... Did you shit your pants retard?" Her mother towers over her with an evil sneer. "Well, did you?" she screams at the top of her lungs. Without looking up, the little girl answers her mother just above a whisper, "No ma'am, I did not." Her mother cackles so loud that the little girl jumps. She knows it isn't a good thing when her mother laughs at her. She squeezes her legs together as hard as she can, silently pleading to no one in particular, that she doesn't pee on herself. If that happens she'll have to spend most of the day naked in a dog cage outside... and it's so hot outside. She knows this because she spent most of yesterday in the dog cage and it was so hot that the metal cage burnt her skin every time she moved. Her mother takes hold of a handful of hair again and lifts her up onto her feet. "Get upstairs you filthy little fuck!" She spats as she pushes her from behind, then kicks her just as she reaches the stairs. She stumbles and trips a couple times until she finds her center of gravity. She moves fast and swift up the stairs so that her mother doesn't kick her again. And so begins another day in hell for Frances Ruth Setters.