by Dawn Lewis

Created on: October 29, 2009

Chapter 1 The Bridge

I had come to terms and accepted the fact that at any given moment she could kill me. What I had not, could not wrap my mind around was the idea of losing my brother and being left alone. When she would be really bad off, she could no longer keep us at the house. The pain she was going to inflict on us could not be carried out in the confines of our little block, of our little town in Christian county Illinois, small town USA. It was not that my neighbors were not used to hearing the sounds of our screams as it was pretty much constant background noise for anyone of the blessed angels quietly watching our corner lot. No, these screams were special. They were horrific more like animals in the wild. These screams were for her ears only.

She would drive us out into the country in our big yellow station wagon. Out where there was no one to hear us scream for ten or twenty miles. I would scream so hard that it would take days for me to get my voice back. The sounds of my poor sweet hero howling in agony broke me down to my very soul. All the while, she is screaming in our faces. Sometimes it took days for the ringing in my ears to subside. It always took weeks for our bruises to heal. Although, it was hard to tell because we would receive a fresh batch of bruises every day. She would torture us at home but sometimes that was not good enough. If she wanted more, she would drag us to the car and we would drive off. She would rant and rage, on and on with the rear view facing us so she could see our horror. We had to sit on the edge of the seat leaning forward so she could reach us. Sometimes she would quickly apply the brakes just to make us slam into the front seat. These trips were very common. However, this trip was bad even by normal standards.

She had been drinking heavily and driving for hours. She was screaming about people snooping around again. Those nosey pieces of shit from the school, the church and the cop who is harassing her were all talking again. She told us again how she was going to kill us if we kept talking. I had every reason to believe her and no reason to doubt. It was for this reason that we kept our silence. I know I did not say a word. If anything, I tried my best to play it off as if I was a normal kid. I did not want anyone to know how bad it was. I am quite sure Garry had not said anything either. The reason people were snooping was that a child could not sustain that kind of abuse without someone noticing.

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