My Little Sunshine
"The worst things in life come free to us." –Ed Sheeran, The A Team
…
The lightning strikes, and she feels the thunder tremble in the pit of her stomach. He's back, and that's never a good sign. She hears the tinkling crash of yet another bottle against the stained tile floor, and she cowers against the dirty covers.
"Come out, little sunshine," he sings. His breath is stale, and she smells him from her hiding place, shivering under the bed. "Daddy misses you!" Something dark – she can't quite tell what it is - falls on him from a broken shelf above, but he brushes it away with one violent wave of his large hands.
"You are my sunshine," he croaks, drunk and horribly off-tune, and something that would ordinarily be quite funny just makes him seem all the more terrible. "My onlysunshine." In one large, sweeping movement, he grabs her wrist and drags her out. He stands her up, and she whimpers as his pudgy fingers dig into her skin.
"Haven't I taken care of you for six good years, sunshine?" he mutters. With each words, he digs his fingers in deeper. "Haven't I given you everything you ever wanted?" She wants so badly to scream out her true answer, because she knows that he'll hurt her anyway, but she keeps it in. Last week's cuts still haven't healed completely.
"Why don't you ever give me what I want?" he roars, throwing her back against the floor as a punishment for her silence. "Your mother-" He stops for a minute, and for one miraculous second, she thinks maybe she'll be okay. But then he keeps talking, over the sound of her haggard breaths, ignoring the silent streams of tears running in rivulets down her face to form a small puddle on the floor. "Your mother always gave me what I wanted. Why can't you give me anything, you worthless whore?"
And then he picks her up and carries her bony frame into that terrible, terrible room where he takes her and he breaks her until she's past repair, just like he does every other day.
And she tries to forget, she really does. But the echoes of her screams are etched into her forehead with bloody paint, and the words drip down into her eyes and seep into her skull until that's all she knows. It's hard to forget what's been knifed into your arms and legs and chest and heart, and she cries with the memories of the blood and the dirt.
...
Ten years later, she lies broken in yet another grimy bed, dollar bill-stuffed clothing strewn across the floor, and this time, the tears don't stop.
Aaaaand I make my return to fanfiction. Well, not really, since I wrote this as an English assignment. Um. Please don't favourite without reviewing, thanks!
-Drishti