The opinions offered by me are strictly from of my viewpoint and not to be taken literally. I offer them so you may understand my thoughts at the moment for my reasoning. If these are of use, take them. If they are not of use, by all means disregard them.
Title: "A Prayer For You, For Me" 
Chapter: EntryA Prayer For You, For Me
A young girl's last memories.
Author: C. T. Hill  
Plot: A little girl learns of death and learns even more how it occurred.
Style Voice: First person, direct.
Referencing: Death, family suffering of a daughter's death. A father who abused his daughter and his wife and her father.
Scene/Setting: Little girl's home.
Characters: Believable?Absolutely UniqueAbsolutely
Grammar: Any Comments are in the line by line.
Sentence structure, fragments, paragraph-line break, hard breaks, word count: Any comments are in the line by line.
Personal comments of certain POV or other unique opportunities. Any comments will be in the line by line
P/T Past tense
Rewrites. Being respectful to the author's work.
Comments or suggestions:
Any notes are in the LBL. I discovered very little to add.
My Personal Opinion:
This story crushed my heart in so many places during the read. Sometimes I might think our laws could bend to allow a cruel punishment to be allowed. This was a very powerful read that pushed my mind to limit, I wanted to stop reading but I also wanted the truth. This drove me, I was driven with anger, hatred and sorrow.
This was for the sake of writing, a fantastic read. One I hope I never come across again. Excellent work.
A Prayer For You, For Me
By Elemenopy
Mother told me a prayer once, one that explained my death, though I cannot recall it.
Death is an odd thing to consider if you really stop to think about it. Mother told me about death, about what it would be like. All white lights and comfort, outstretched hands and welcoming smiles.
Sadly, death is nothing like that. It is neither glamorous nor special, though some might call it simple.
But no, I am afraid that it is a bit more than what Mother thought.
The wood floor creaks the same with each step, but the sound remains lost to the world, somewhere unseen, somewhere unheard. The walls look the same, ever enclosing, that dull off white that surrounded my childhood, my every memory.
The world is different, as if I had been dropped into a deep hole with no escape, but there is no hole, no dark cellar responsible for my creeping fear. The fan moans with every pass, flickering shadows while the incandescent light baths the room in a dull, yellow glow. I push through the door and out of my room. The hallway is just as narrow, the entryway just as empty.
A warm breeze kisses my face when I step outside, making its way to everywhere, to nowhere. There is still wind, though I suppose I should not be surprised.Breeze and wind are essentially the same when referred to the out of doors. You may wish to avoid repeated sentences and thoughts by restructuring the second sentence as it is a direct reflection to the previous one. I shouldn't be surprised the wind still blows with the state I'm in. The sentence I reworked also left me with a question which cleared the thought with my rewrite. I look around. The paint still separates itself from the weathered wood beams that surround the porch. The house continues in its drab existence.
How similar being dead is to being alive, almost like I am simply dreaming.
Father swings open the screen door and spills himself into one of the porch chairs. His white t-shirt displays remnants of last night's dinner. He rubs his hands over his scalp, through nonexistent hair. I stand directly in front of him, but remain unnoticed, overlooked like everything not in a whiskey bottle. His eyes are glazed. His breath is sour. He tugs on the bottle of whiskey and slouches farther back into the chair.
Mother would be in the kitchen sitting at the table, stacks of papers and unopened envelopes surrounding her. Her eyes would be locked on the wall at the far end of the room with an almost invisible line of tears trailing down her cheeks. This view tells me the young girl now in ghostly form has made this trek several times to know this.
A can pops open from inside the house. Grandpa found his recliner. There is no TV in the sitting room. The beer would be a substitute for any visual entertainment. He will greet one large gulp with another, each helping to wash away the burden of consciousness. This scene also represents her seeing this process unfold before.
I glance at my father. His face twitches. His knuckles clench. It will not be long now.This scene that never left her father reinforces my intuition of her mother sitting midst a clutter of paper and her grandfather chasing his beer and she never gave a view of either. I go back into the small house, through the sitting room where Grandpa sits silent, mutesilent and mute are repeating., and into the kitchen where Mother sits crying. I move closer to her and place my hand on her shoulder. She cannot feel it, at least not in any physical sense, but I watch with a quiet smile as her mood lightens and she slowly begins wiping her tears away with her sleeve.
She turns her head to me, slightly to her left and over her shoulder, as if acknowledging my existence, though I am sure she did not fully understand. With a silent resolve she lifts herself out of the chair and pushes through the screen door into the backyard. Sheets, blouses, coveralls, and faded jeans litter the weighted lines. I follow her out, but stop at the wooden steps that lead down into the small yard. I suspect the little girl learned from previous excursions she's bound to the house.
I hear the front door crash shut. Grandpa mumbles something in dissent and catches what sounds like the back of Father’s hand. The yell comes next. “The hell you at woman?”
Mother’s face blanches. Her eyes search frantically for any source of refuge, but the backyard is small, too small even for a child to hide.
Father stares through the door; his face full of color, his words ripe with venom. “I thought I told you to clean that shit up!” He punches open the screen door and lumbers down the steps. Oh boy, this guy needs to be put out of his mind. Either he's grief stricken of his daughter's death or this is his natural way, I don't know yet.
He moves straight towards me. His face contorts into its usual display of disgust.I fear this is his normal self, I don't pity him anylonger. He passes right through me and continues on to Mother. She remains fastened to the ground, arms at her side, head lulled at her chest.
“She’s gone damn you, gone forever.” His eyes rage with drunkenness. He pulls her eyes to his with a slap that snaps her head to the side. “How many times do I have to fuckin’ tell you? Dammit woman, between you and your piece of shit father, God knows how I survived this long.” I'm beginning to really hate this guy. He needs a bottle to bring some form of control to himself and all the while his family suffers the loss and his drunken state of mind.
Tears make their way down Mother’s cheeks once more, but Father is too enraged to care. He tears down the sheets in his path and stomps his way back towards the house. “Get this house cleaned up or I swear by Jesus I’ll punish you.” He doesn't even waste the effort of turning over his shoulder while speaking before he disappears back into the house.If this is his way of dealing with his daughter's loss he needs to be dealt with severely.
He will grab the bottle again, buying mother a brief respite before the next rage. Mother drops to her knees, gasping for breath in between sobs. She looks around, lost, distraught. “I’m so sorry, baby. I’m so sorry,” she says to the empty backyard.Oh hell, why do I feel the father is at fault for the little girl's death.
Grandpa peers out into the yard cautiously before finally coming out. He crosses the yard to where Mother sits and helps her up. “Why? Why do you stay?” he asks her, though I am sure he knows the answer as well as anybody.
Mother shakes her head. “He’d find me. No matter where I went or how long it took him, he’d find me. You know what he’s capable of.” I really hate this guy, the girl's father.
Grandpa nods his head, sullen in his agreement.
Not long after my tenth birthday Father started sending Mother away on pointless errands and time-consuming chores. Grandpa hadn't moved in yet, so it left me at home alone with Father.Damn, I'm starting to wish I'd left this one alone. Once Mother left, he would make me take baths, even when I didn’t need one and even though I no longer needed help. Father insisted, and if I ever said no, well, I only made that mistake once. Sick bastard!
Mother knew. I suppose mothers always know. She tried everything possible to stay home, or to take me with her, but Father would say no with words first, then with his fists. Mother called the sheriff, but he and Father were old friends, so he paid us no mind.
One day Mother fought back. She sunk a knife in Father’s back, but it didn’t do all that much. She almost paid for it with her life. She didn't come home from the hospital for almost two weeks. Father wouldn’t let me go and see her. “She is being punished,” he said.
She could barely look at Father after that. God knows what he did to her.
When she finally came home she looked terrible, like she had been in a train wreck. Grandpa moved in a few days after that. “Grandpa’s sick,” Mother told me, but I thought he seemed pretty healthy.
The baths stopped for a while, but I noticed Father drank more. He looked at me with his hard eyes, and every time he did I just knew that he hated me.It's a real shame children have to live such scenarios.
One night a few weeks later, he decided that he didn’t need baths anymore. I don’t remember much about that night other than the stink of alcohol on his breath and pain, lots of pain. Mother and Grandpa screamed and banged on the door, but Father had wedged my chair up under the knob. Father didn't need baths anymore and I am led directly to a vivid moment of him raping her. It's pretty clear he did this in her bedroom. He didn't have enough with his wife I suppose.
The world faded in and out after he left, but I remember a commotion outside. When Mother’s face appeared I saw that she had already taken a bruise, and part of her hair was matted to her head, though it was too dark to see with what.
“Oh God, my baby. Oh God,” she said through the sobs. She cradled me. The world faded in and out as she rehearsed a quiet prayer. “Lord, we will be leaving....” But her words drifted away, lost to the darkness.
I don't recall what happened after that, though I know I felt safe.
Some days later, when I woke, all of the pain was gone. Everything was somehow the same, but unmistakably different. I heard Grandpa talking to a man that I assumed was a doctor. “She will make it, though I am not sure how with wounds like hers, not to mention her…” His voice trailed off as he thought about what to say, and more importantly, what not to say, but he recovered quickly. “She is a fighter.”
The doctor looked right at me, or through me, but couldn't see me. Was there something dividing them?
He shook Grandpa’s hand. “I am truly sorry... for everything,” he said with a sympathetic nod before leaving the house.
It took almost a week for Mother to get out of bed, another two before the men stopped coming. I assumed they were different kinds of cops, for they were always with Father’s sheriff friend, but I could not be sure. They never stayed long.
Mother cried. Father drank. All the while I remained unseen. I soon began to wonder what exactly had happened, though I was sure I did not want to know the answer.
Grandpa’s voice brings me back to the yard. He shakes his head in disgust at the house, at Father. “If only I had been here sooner. I could have helped.”
I know he is talking about the time Mother fought back.
Mother falls to her knees again, her body racked by the same relentless sobs. “It’s my fault,” she cries. “It’s all my fault that she’s dead.” This is horrible, the mother takes all this on herself but her husband was a very cruel sort to his entire family. How could she be blamed.
“Oh honey, no. It isn’t your fault.” Grandpa does his best to console her. “There is no one to blame but that…that evil man.” He raises his eyes back to the house.
“You don’t understand, Pa. He didn’t kill her.”What? Her body shudders with the revelation. Her sobs come stronger, faster.
Grandpa’s face is etched in confusion. “What are you talking about, dear?”
“She was still breathing when I went in there. You were unconscious. I couldn’t stand to see her like that, not my baby. She was broken. Her little body was broken.” She coughs momentarily, barely able to hold it all together. “I tried to go with her. I wanted to go with her. I don’t know what went wrong.”
Slowly, she pulls up her sleeves up one at a time, revealing two long, white scars that traced up from each wrist.Oh hell. How can anyone take so much? I think she killed her daughter out of grief. “They saved me somehow, brought me back, but I wanted to be…” She pauses, unable to finish.
Grandpa gulps as he tries to hold back the tears. “You… you killed her?”
Her body rocks forward, her hands are in front of her face. “God I’m sorry. I’m so so sorry.” Oh, how could this be. The girl's father needs to be tortured, ruined until death. I'm at a total loss to think of the mother. She suffered horribly also, but does this warrant what she did. But still to be in her shoes, who could really understand this life.
The screen door swings open and Father sloshes his way down the steps. His whiskey bottle is in his right hand. Anger is clear on his face. “What the fuck did you just say?” he bellows through slurred lips. Oh hell, now he knows. The S.O.B. must accept a large portion of blame but his ties with the sheriff probably keep him in a train of thought of unanimity. He single evenhandedly destroyed his entire family with his sick desires and drunken state of mind.
Mother looks up in horror. Grandpa places himself between her and Father, but he is no match for the younger man. Father tosses him to the side like a twig and moves on to Mother.
I watch in terror as he wraps his hands around Mother’s throat, as the blood builds up in her face and she coughs and gasps for air. “You took her away from me, you bitch! I should have rid the world of you long ago!” Sick bastard. His only thought of her was what he could do with his own daughter.
She sputters, but manages to choke out a few words. “I… saved… her…”
He squeezes harder, and for the first time since my death, I cry.
I didn’t see the shovel until it made contact with the back of Father’s skull. His hands fall away from her throat and Mother collapses to the ground, gasping for air through a crushed wind pipe.
Father stumbles forward. He slowly turns to see Grandpa holding the shovel in both hands, ready for another swing.
“Go to hell you son of a bitch,” Grandpa says before sending one more devastating swing straight at Father’s head. The metal crushes into the side of his face with enough force to make a sickening crunch. Father's knees buckle and he crumples to the ground. Too bad the grandfather wasn't in a stronger shape and force the girl's father to torture before killing him.
Grandpa runs over to Mother, discarding the shovel as he kneels down next to her. He hugs her head in his arms and speaks in the softest voice. “I’m sorry, sweetie. I’m sorry for everything.” The smallest smile crosses Mother's face, ever so briefly, but before she can answer her head sinks forward, limp in his arms. With a shudder, Grandpa lets out a terrible, sorrow filled cry. Oh hell.
The world brightens. I look around, unable to figure it out. And then, I see her walking towards me. I run to Mother and she catches me in the warmest embrace. She looks deep into my eyes and starts a quick prayer, one that I am sure I have heard before. “Lord, we will be leaving, we have to leave. Help Pa understand. Tell him not to forget you, not to forget us. Tell him that we will meet him again in heaven. Amen.”
She kisses my forehead and hugs me once more. “Come, darling, there is somewhere I want to show you,” she says through a loving smile. She takes my hand and leads me away.
I see the light shimmer, the light Mother spoke about before, and somehow, I know that everything will be okay.
Word Count: 2,268
This was so cruel. Still I recognize such things happen each day.
Imagine.
Imagine. |
|
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
My review has been submitted for consideration in "
