Chapter 1
You know how people say that when your on the brick of death, you life flashes before your eyes? Well I seem to get that feeling quite often. Sometimes it's the good times with my friends. The fun times at family or friends parties. The embarrassing days during school. School excursions and celebrations. The times I spent with my boyfriend.
But there are some times, memories, that are not so welcome in these quick and occurring flashbacks. Some that I can only imagine, for I have forgotten the true memory of what had really happened. And the real things that I sometimes wish I could forever forget. Yet no matter how hard I try they will not disappear. and the most commonly appear when I hear of his name , see his face in an old photo of him or even hear something that reminds me of him.
My fathers.
There are three types of fathers in my opinion. You have your good father that'll do just about anything for you. They'll do all that fatherly, child stuff. The one that will love you unconditionally. Not matter what. Then you have your so called bad fathers. These ones could also be associated as criminals and such. They neglect their child/children, hurt them, beat them, punish them for no apparent reason. All of those kinds of stuff. And then finally we have our last candidates.
The fucked up idiots who combine both of the previous parties together. This particular group of douche bags are by far both my most favorites and my worse enemies. My most favorite because I have an excessive love with combining two totally different things to create something else entirely. I guess you could say I have a fetish for all things ying and yang. My worst enemy because it can do serious damage to their victim. Wife or child, they will never be the same and their minds would end up warped and broken as would their hearts. The unlucky few might not make it without a few tears in their soul.
They make then believe that their father/husband is one of the good fathers, the good guy, the hero, their night in shinning armor that will protect them from anything bad and horrible. And then, the ones that aren't to afraid or to oblivious to what they see, will notice that their so called good father has a bad side to him. A very, very, bad and dangerous side to him.
I happen to be one of those ill-fated children who was unfortunate enough to have one of these fathers. There is also my other two sisters. But one had lived with her real mother for most of her life and the other was much to oblivious to notice that her 'good father' wasn't exactly the good guy his façade made out to be.
You see my older sister, Alice Brandon, is only my half sister. We both may have the same father, but our mothers are different. Even though she had mainly lived with her mother, she still had known of our fathers behavior. Even though it was only to an extent.
My little sister Rosalie however, is a different story. She only new about the usual parental fights. Nothing to drastic ever happened as far as she was concerned. She was just to young, naïve, stubborn and oblivious notice anything.
I remember her playing by herself under our two story house. Mum had sent me down to check on her while they were in the middle of a heated fight. She knew I was going to try and stop it. I always did. So she had me go and make sure that Rose didn't have any friends over. You would think she did but she was fine, just playing boss with her friendly rocks. Yes she treated rocks as her friends. That girl had a very wild imagination, always doing her own thing.
I turned around and climbed back up the old, falling apart, outside stairs. Unlatching the lock on the gate at the top of the staircase and walked across the small breaking balcony to the sliding glass door. I could see him yelling in her face, arms flailing around his head as he tries to explain something. His face quickly turning red with fresh hot anger. Her face has become blotchy, eyes red and puffy, hair a strangled mess atop her head.
I continue to watch as she backs into the half-wall/ counter that separates the kitchen from the lounge room. He's towering over her, yelling louder now. I can hear him just not the words. I cant understand what is being said. I don't make any sense of it. I don't want to. But somehow I know he's making it seem like it is all her fault, that she is the one to blame for whatever the argument is about. He does this all the time. I know it's true when I look into the eyes of my mother now. She's sobbing, trying to apologize for something that no-doubly, she didn't do. Her cheeks, hair, hands and the top of her shirt have been coated by her never ending tears.
And then he slaps her across the face. A red handprint appearing on the side of her left cheek. Everything seems to slow down. I see the pain in her eyes as clear as if it was written on a highway bill-board. She tries not to show it. Her head is facing the floor, her hair covering her half of her face.
I start to hit the door with the palms of my tiny hands, finally released from my frozen state and yelled as loud as I could at my father to stop before it gets to far. She looks up at me before she faces her husband. He's yelling again as I try to get his attention.
After a minute he finally realizes I'm there and storms over to the door. I stumble backwards for a quick second as he reaches it, almost tripping over in the process. He takes a fleeting glance at me before pulling the blinds across the door. Effectively blocking my vision of the scene in front of me. But I can still here them. I run the short distance back to the sliding door, yelling for him to stop.
The yelling ceases and I think it's finally all over this time and I'm glad. I knew they would need time to cool off, so I start towards the stairs again. As I push through the breaking gate I hear the loud thudding of my fathers foot steps, my mothers stumbling patter quickly and clumsily following his. I didn't want to hear them argue again. I couldn't stop them. So I continued down the stairs and ran over to the small, rusted old playground that was in the middle of this little community that I lived in.
I wiped the tears from my eyes and put on the happy 'everything is fine and my parents aren't having another wild argument again' face that I had already mastered. No one knew what I was really thinking. Or feeling.
I must have only been about four at the time. But they had had those arguments for years before that. And ever since I knew what was going on, I had been trying to fix it. For to anyone else, I was daddy's little girl. But they didn't know I was also mummy's little therapist. That was just the way it was.
My name is Isabella Marie Swan, but forget the formality and just call me Bella. And these are just the stories of my life.
