Chapter Two
Raven barely made it through the gate of the lawn leading to her house before five. Her messenger bag bounced painfully against her right leg, and she winced as she took the last sidewalk with long, graceful strides that made her appear to fly rather than walk.
The house on Northern Avenue arose suddenly and without warning, an old house that had been converted, no doubt by the former owner, into a set of six tiny apartments. The windows were all shuttered tightly, although one on the third floor drooped its green, battered body towards the ground. The front door stood open, letting a little rectangle out onto the porch in the cold fall air, showing the time and the shortening of days.
A familiar fear flooded Raven, starting in her mind and working its way through her body. Already winded from having run the almost fifteen minutes- a game she was by now an expert at- she felt her limbs turning to lead. Her steps became slow and ungainly, and she lowered her head.
Remember, she told herself firmly, walk slowly, keep your eyes down, and for the love of God, don't talk.
Raven's biggest problem was not talking. Despite the fact that she had learned to keep her cards close to her chest, a kind of fury would always burn in her that manifested itself in easy-to-say words that were never worth the pain that followed them. She hated her father; she knew that she hated him, and had known since the death of her mother Arella that it would never change. She knew little of her mother; all she knew was that, with the loving supportive figure of her mother gone suddenly and unexpectedly (and perhaps not entirely naturally) one night, the demon that was her father had ruled over her life.
In her head, she referred to him as The Monster. When she could avoid it, she did not use the word 'father' to describe the man that co-inhabited Apartment C6 with her. Instead, he was The Monster, and she never spoke of him to her friends. She knew they were all curious about him, but avoided their questions with simple shrugs or nods. They had learned, way back in her sophomore year when she'd transferred to Jump City High School.
She could remember transferring, could remember moving to this ugly little apartment complex, as though it were yesterday. The entire week had been but an ugly impression; her father had beaten her, told her people were asking too many questions, and sat in his large, ugly leather chair, drinking, while she'd packed their meager possessions into a box. Judging by the fact that the move was sudden and occurred at night, she could only assume they were running from something.
Raven's thoughts of the past had carried her inside, to the narrow lobby area. Hurriedly, she fished her key out of her pocket and opened the mailbox, cursing her own slowness. She knew her father was likely to already be home, knew she was walking right into punishment, but knew that there was no escape.
She had tried to escape him once, in the other city they'd lived in. She winced with the memory of how there had been no escape. He had found her. Just as he would find her now.
She glanced through the mail as she took the steps two at a time, trying to get home. Her mentality was one of simply 'getting things over with'; she did not want to risk making The Monster any angrier, not when he would simply find her and make her life worse.
The letter on top was from Princeton, the official seal catching her eye more easily than any of the numerous ads, bills, and other papers. Despite her nagging fear and apprehension, Raven felt a tiny lift to her heart. This was her application, her one ticket to freedom. More than almost anything in the world, she wanted to attend school somewhere with a kind of prestige to it. It was not any kind of arrogance on her part; it simply seemed like the fairytale ending to a nightmare that had been playing out almost eighteen years.
Naturally, The Monster was against the idea of her attending a university. "Garbage!" He'd spit at her. "You're garbage and the shit they teach you in those places is garbage. You want to learn about life? Go out on the street. That's life. Your damn books aren't life, girl. You can't hide in a storybook! Nobody can hide in a storybook forever!"
The conversation always ended in screaming. He would be screaming at her that she was not worth enough to attend college, and she would be screaming as he kicked her in the ribs. She had tried not giving her the satisfaction of her tears, but that resolve had broken when she was younger, broken by the time he'd broken, quite literally, her right arm. Arella had been alive then. Arella had held her, had tried to fix the pain. But the fact that she withheld her tears only made him try harder to cause them.
She threw the door open as she reached it, not delaying the inevitable. Even though she cried, Raven Roth had a certain inner strength. She lived through the hell. She accepted the hell. Hell was but a place, a place to be until something better came along.
"You're late," came the voice of her nightmares.
He sat in the middle of what was meant to be a combination of a living room and a kitchen. Only a bare bulb and the light from the broken shutter lit the room, casting shadows into the long, bare corners. A simple table was set up in the middle of the room, with a large, hole-filled leather recliner and a single broken-legged chair beside it. The kitchen was worse for wear, but perhaps the worst part of the room was the man sitting in the center of it.
His eyes were small and beady, his hands clamped around a large can of beer as though it were the most precious item in the entire house. The arms were largely muscled, and the hair black and thin atop a pointed, nasty face. The Monster looked at its daughter, and its daughter looked back in pain and fear.
"I'm sorry. I was helping my friends, like I told you I would be."
The Monster laughed. The beer can in its hand was suddenly crushed flat, and Raven dropped her bag to the floor, knowing that if she held it, he was likely to either destroy its contents or use it to hit her body with. "Drop the mail and come over here where I can see you, my lovely daughter." He laughed again, a laugh that held no joy, no love, only a darkness that Raven could feel even before she stepped towards him, dropping the mail on the table.
"What's this?" The Monster asked, holding her application aloft.
"A letter from Princeton."
"A society full of idiots," he said, and spat on the envelope before putting it down and rummaging through the mail until he found what he was looking for; the envelope was undeniable, but obviously important, for the man laughed and set it aside before turning back to his daughter.
"I want to go." As soon as the words were out they sounded too direct, too harsh, and Raven knew she had played the cards wrong.
"No daughter of mine," he said in a soft voice, "Is going to pay good money, my money, to go to a school where they teach nothing but liberal bullshit!" He stood then suddenly and Raven tensed her legs, prepared for the blow that she knew was coming, and backed towards the bare white wall.
He hit her before speaking, a square smack across her cheek. "You are going to stay at home. You are going to get a local degree and work at a reasonable job, and take care of your fucking father. Don't you think I've earned that? Don't you think I've earned being taken care of?"
Raven let out a little gasp as the blow hit her face and pressed her palms to the wall. Don't say anything, she reminded herself. Just don't say anything and you'll be okay…
"Answer me!" He hollered, his knee catching her in the chest and making her double over. He laughed as her breath came out in a sharp cloud.
She could not answer, and so the beating continued. She received blows to her chest and neck, her knees, and her face. She could not stand, could not think, and finally she whispered the word she never wanted to say to him:
"Yes."
He picked up the letter and threw it at her form, which was still prostrate on the ground. "Get the hell out of my sight. Clean yourself up, you disgusting slob, and then make me dinner. I never want to see that garbage in my house again. Unbelievable."
Raven rose weakly to her knees, grabbing both the letter and the bag on the way to her tiny room. It was little more than a closet, with garnish off-wish walls and minimal furnishing. Her bed stood unmade in the corner, across from her tiny desk. She dropped her things to it before falling on her bed and picking up the only other thing of any value in the room; Arella's mirror.
The tiny, jewel-encrusted hand mirror had belonged to Raven's mother years before. Raven held it and used it to look at the sizable cut on her cheek. Dabbing at it with her finger, she looked over at her desk to see the only other thing there that she cared about; a photograph.
During her junior year, her friends had convinced her to be Garfield's date to the dance, and the five had gone to homecoming together. Back then, Victor had been dating a girl- Raven forgot her name- and the six of them had gone together. The picture was taken outside of Kori's house, and it was the only photo of the six of them in which Raven wore two things that were extremely limited in her life; a sleeveless dress of the deepest midnight blue and a smile.
It was the closest they would ever get to being in her house. Her father hated the fact that she had any kind of friends, any kind of support system, and told her to keep them away. He made it clear what he thought of them, made it clear that she was good enough for no one.
Sighing to herself, Raven stood up and prepared to go cook dinner for The Monster, the letter forgotten with her school papers.
How long, she thought until I can just be free?
(Please review? I had a hard time writing this chapter... Mostly because its hard to reflect.)
