This is just a one shot piece about Sara's past. Hope you enjoy and please please leave a review. I love to know what you would have thought.

5 September 2002

There would be times when my father wasn't there when she would chase us around the house. If mine was a normal family, it would have been a normal game of hide and seek. If she found us, she would tickle us until we had tears of laughter rolling down our cheeks. But it wasn't a normal family because she always had a butcher's knife in her hand. So when she chased us, we ran, and made damn sure she couldn't find us. The consequences didn't bare thinking about. Thank god she was never good at seeking.

There were six of us kids- three boys and three girls. I was the youngest of the lot. This had its advantages and disadvantages. Usually I was the one they protected, but at times, I was the one she picked on especially. My elder siblings told me of times before I was born and life had been much happier at home. In my tiny childish mind I had blamed myself for causing all the conflict.

Despite the fear my mother had driven into us, there were also times when she was loving and caring. My earliest memory is baking cookies in our kitchen. The sun was shining gloriously through the windows and I was measuring out the chocolate chips into a huge glass bowl. I must have been about two. I remember it was one of the few times she wore make up and her hair was freshly washed. The rose smell of her perfume was faintly lingering in the air and I truly think it was the happiest moment in my childhood. Those times were rarer than Christmas.

Tamales Bay, 1975

Five of the six Sidle children hid outside in the large neglected garden. The sixth child, three month old Sara, could be heard inside the house crying. Laura liked her children quiet and away from her, so the constant loud wailing of her youngest daughter infuriated her to no end. Walking into the kitchen, she found Sara lying in the center of the floor, her malnourished body covered in week's worth of filth.

The tallest Sidle peeked through the window and watched as his mother lifted the baby by the wrist. A loud snap was heard and the baby cried louder. Everyone knew what that meant. Laura had broken the child's wrist. Lizzie, the oldest at thirteen, had felt guilty immediately. By the time they knew Laura was coming, there was no time to fetch Sara from the floor before rushing outside to hide. Lizzie swore she would need to be faster next time.

Las Vegas, 2002.

I'm not sure how any of us managed to survive in that home for so long. Lizzie left when I was four, so I don't remember much about her. Marcus left a year later, but he still came back for visits. Eleanor run away a couple months after Marcus moved out. She was fourteen and was found dead in Mexico a year later. Strangled. I think that really deterred the rest of us running away.

So there were three of us left. Mom's episodes had become more and more frequent, and serious. Dad forced himself to ignore it. He worked long hours at our B & B in the nearby town so he was away from Laura most of the time. As I got older, I spent more and more time in school, my only escape. I became known as the bookworm, but I didn't care. Most people avoided me anyway because of my people issues. I was very quiet and our family had become known as the black sheep, so most kids stayed away from me and my two brothers.

When I was eleven, my mother became more and more angry. She stayed in bed most days, only getting up to urinate or scream at us to do things for her. We later found out my father was having an affair with a nearby teenage waitress. Any my mother knew about it. Of course, the majority of her anger was inflicted upon us kids, but for once in my entire childhood my father accepted punishment too.

After one specific liaison with the girl my father packed a suitcase and prepared to leave his family for her. We were eating dinner at the time; it was a rare time my mother had bothered to get out of bed. And my father told us of his plans. I remember how my mother stood up without a word and walked to the kitchen. A drawer was opened and my brothers and I shared a knowing look. By the time she reached the door, us three had already left our seats and crouched under the table. We had no idea who her intended victim was meant to be, if it was specifically our father or all of us. But we know that my father was the one who did not see the knife coming; he had always avoided the knife chasing sessions and was unaware of how mother liked to release her anger.

The first stab took him by surprise and from under the table my brothers and I watched as our dad collapsed from his chair, blood spurting out of the hole mother made in his arm. His manly screaming alerted us to the seriousness of the situation, and the stabbing continued. We had no idea how long we watched the scene in front of us only two feet away. We discussed it later, Paul thought it was a mere five minutes but Robbie swore it was at least ten. I wasn't much help; to me it felt like hours. The police concluded it was approximately 7 minutes the whole attack lasted. Thankfully, mom didn't come after us when she was done. She stood shell shocked watching our father's lifeless form as we crept out from under the table and bolted for the front door. We never returned to that house.

Foster care wasn't so bad. I got moved around a lot, lost track of my brothers and was prone to a lot of abuse. But I dealt with it. Wish I could say that about my siblings. Paul and Robbie got messed up in drugs. Paul died on his sixteenth birthday from an overdose and Robbie ended up in prison. That's where he died. Got involved in a fight and ended up with his neck broken when he was 23.

So out of six it's just me, Marcus and Lizzie. They both still live in California. Marcus sells used cars and is a recovering alcoholic. Lizzie became a single mom when she was 19. She now has five kids. But she is a good mom, she works hard as a waitress and has some help from her boyfriend Chad. And the funny thing is, I never blamed our mother. As I got older I realised she was sick. It was textbook Bipolar Disorder. Her severe mood swings, agression, denial. It makes sense.

So don't say I have problems. I am alive and that is more than I can say for half my siblings. And I have a good job and I work my ass off. So maybe I like a drink, but I didn't end up like Marcus, drinking mouthwash just to numb the pain from our childhood. The chances of creating a good and decent life from living through that unstable youth are very slim. So I think I've done a great job of my life so far… and that's all I have to say about my childhood.

The man in front of Sara finished writing a few notes on a clipboard before giving her a reassuring smile. He glanced at his watch. 'Well Sara. That's time for today. So I shall see you again this time next week.' Sara nodded her head and stood up from the shrink's chocolate brown chair.

Sara hated these departmental shrink chats. She always hated people knowing her thoughts and her past. But she could deal with it. She was always good with adjusting to life, because she knew from experience that life wouldn't adjust for her.

So please let me know what you thought.

If you have some spare time please check out some of my other Sara-related stories.