Disclaimer: See previous chapter

Alice felt like she was going to die even though she knew that she wasn't. Her stomach was hurting slightly less than before but it was still enough to keep her confined to her bed. She didn't much like being confined to her bed but was grateful that it made her feel at least a little better. Her mother had left her with her sister, she was in too much pain to leave her house, and Debbie had given her some pain killers and went bout her business. Alice was glad; she didn't want to be around anyone right then. Not even Roach and he could usually make her feel better but right then the thought of him just made her feel worse. She felt horrible about the way that she treated him but she didn't understand why she had treated him like that. Her mother had told her that she'd either yell and yell or cry and cry. It felt like she was doing both at the same time and she was confused about it too, she wasn't told that she'd yell at her best friend. She moved her hand down to see if putting it one her stomach would make it feel better and gasped. Her stomach was a big bigger and it wasn't soft like fat. Her sister said that this would happen if she was pregnant. That scared her, she didn't want to be pregnant, she didn't want to have a baby even if it was Roach's. She was startled as another though occurred to her, it might not be Roach's. She had kissed Fool too. That thought scared her more than anything because having Roach's baby was one thing but what would Roach do if the baby wasn't his? He'd know that she kissed Fool and it wasn't even a practice kiss and she had even enjoyed it. What would Fool do? What would Roach do? What would she do? What would the baby look like? Would it be a boy or a girl? All these questions made her level of panic grow as she bit her nails. She almost wished that she was back imprisoned in the house, at least then she didn't have to worry about these things. She rolled over and faced her wall or pictures. She had used up almost twenty rolls of film in the small amount of time since she got the camera and was surprised that no one got mad at her or punished her. It was the main reason she liked her real parents, they never yelled at her or punished her and they even let her speak even though unless something new happened she didn't have that much to say. She looked at the pictures she had taken of the rooms in her house and Roach's, of the outside, of the TV, of her family and Roach's, of Roach and Fool. She had taped them to her walls when she ran out of space in her photo albums. She reached over and laughed as she pulled a funny picture from the wall. It was her and Roach and Fool and they were all sticking their tongues out for the camera and Fool didn't well as he saw Roach's tongue stump which looked a lot better now a days in her opinion. She put it back on the wall and picked another one off the wall. She had taken it of Roach when he was sleeping. He looked so peaceful and good to her. She laughed as she remembered how he stumbled around half blind from the flash. It wasn't all that funny at the time though, she had been very scared for him and he looked at bit mad but he didn't do anything about it. She put it back on her wall and picked up on of Roach just smiling his big, toothy smiled for the camera.

'Kiss me Roach, kiss me like you cinnamon kissed me before.' Thought Alice as she kissed his picture and put it back on her wall with the others in its perfect one inch space from the other pictures on the wall. She liked order. Order was good. Order was safe and safety was all that mattered. She sometimes felt completely safe around her family and other times she felt like hiding from them or what they might do to her. It was a fear that never quite left her like her fear of cellars or dogs. She knew that she had nothing to fear from the cellar because she had checked and saw no people with their eyes or ears or tongues cut out, just a lot of old stuff that had gone unused for what looked like years.

'Oh dear Lord!' Thought Alice as she hugged her knees to her chest as she felt a particularly sharp pain. This was hell on her. Sometimes she wished she was a boy because nothing like that ever happened to boys as far as she knew which she suspected wasn't very far at all. She wondered how long it would take for the pain medicine to take effect or if the pain was too much for even the medicine to get rid of. It seemed to her like it was. Life had become so much more difficult since her escape. Before she used to just have to be a good girl and look pretty but now all the rules were blurred and she wasn't even a child anymore. She wouldn't trade her new freedom for anything though, that she knew. It may have been easier to play that good little girl but it was a terrible life she had and she liked her new life. She felt a bit bad for Roach though, he was even more confused and scared and hurt than she was, she could see it in his eyes and the way he carried himself. She felt bad for him also because he had been with his real family for less time after their escape than her. He had to spend two weeks in the hospital for several things. She only had to spend two days in the hospital because she was in better health than him and she thought that he might have been jealous of her. In the two weeks he was in the hospital she feared for him more than she had ever feared for him before. She feared that he might die which wasn't a new fear for her but it was new because now if he died he wouldn't ever get to live free like he used to. He always talked about his life before the house to Alice and she always listened fascinated. They talked of their big, grand dreams of being free and escaping but never around Mommy and Daddy because that was speaking evil. They spoke of their dreams in secret but they both knew that they could never escape, they were just too scared. Their dreams remained foolish fairytales never to be acted upon and they feared that their lives would stay that way until they committed some huge infraction or either they or Mommy and Daddy died. When they did act on their plan of escape it had disastrous consequences. Roach had taken all the blame, he knew that the punishment for him would be only having his tongue cut out but for Alice it would be death because such evil, wicked, sinful things as escape could be expected from boy children, that was why there were so many in the cellar. Alice blinked back tears as she remembered the three days of Roach's cries of pain as he was tortured but she gave no indication that she heard them, which would have been hearing evil and she would have been up there tied to the bolt too. She remembered her silent tears as Daddy proclaimed that the people under the stairs had killed him because when he looked between the bars of the corral Roach was no where to be found. She remembered that fear she had felt at first when she didn't know what the off pitch wails were and she remembered how for the first time in her life she was happy, really truly happy, when he crawled out of her vent and hugged her. She also felt the extreme concern as she saw the weight he had lost and the cuts, scrapes, bruises, and little red marks that lined his body. She remembered how for the first time he shied away from her touch and looked at her like she was going to do something horrible to him. That scared her. She didn't ever want Roach to be afraid of her. She could see it in his bright blue eyes when her hand went for his arm in an act of comfort. He was her only friend. She remembered how for the first time she could put a label on that strangely amazing but also scary feeling that she felt for for quite a bit of time before that for Roach. Love. She knew what it was but she didn't know how she knew it. She just did. She had never felt that way about anyone before. She wanted to tell him but something was always stopping her. It was like there was this nagging at the back of her mind that he may not love her back so she kept it to herself. Who would she tell anyway? She knew better than to tell Mommy and Daddy because good little girls didn't fall in love with bad little boys who spoke evil and tried to escape into the horrible, sinful outside world. She wouldn't ever tell Roach either for obvious reasons so she stayed contented to continue their best friend relationship as it was. She still snuck little glances at him when she thought he wasn't looking. She didn't know why she liked to look at the man he had become, even know she didn't completely know but there was something about him. There was just something about his tall, thin, lanky, slightly muscled frame that she just loved. Around the time that she had started noticing these things in the thoughts and dreams that had started around the time her chest got bouncier and her hips wider much to Mommy's anger and they hadn't stopped since then. If anything they were getting worse but Alice both liked and hated them. She liked what happened in the dreams but the thoughts were what threw her off and confounded her. At the most random times she'd think about Roach. She think about kissing him, seeing his muscles without the tattered shirt she had made for him when he outgrew the shirt he had been sent down there in, feeling his warmth next to her on her bed as they both slept so peacefully. She had other thoughts to which alarmed her more than anything else her mind had ever conjured up. She'd imagine him kissing her so deeply his tongue stump was in her mouth and tracing her tongue and licking her teeth clean or anything that may have accumulated. She'd imagine his hands tracing every part of her, parts which she herself didn't even touch even though it felt good, until they got to the zipper of her dress and slowly began to unzip it until she stood there completely exposed for him and the strange thing was she liked having him look at her while she was like that. She'd imagine other things too which she was sure that she shouldn't because she was a very good girl child and good girl children didn't think about those kinds of things. She knew that Roach did though but it was alright for him, he was a very bad boy child but that was one of the things she liked about him. She loved the way he didn't listen to Daddy when he ordered him to go back to the cellar. He never listened to either Mommy or Daddy after escaping from the cellar. He was the man without fear, he was Roach. He feared neither death nor life, neither the dark nor the light, neither Mommy nor Daddy and Alice wished that she had no fear too. Well, he feared some things that he had confided in her about while making her promise to keep it in the utmost secrecy. He feared the day Mommy would cut out her doe like brown eyes, small cute ears, and tongue from which the kindest words he had ever heard out and lock her in the cellar. That was his biggest fear, the day she became like the people under the stairs. The day she became like him. He had told her that if that ever happened to her he was going to kill Daddy. There would be blood on his hands, blood for her. He would have done it a long time ago but he was just too scared. He was scared of having blood on his hands. He was even more scared that he might like it. He never wanted to be like Daddy, to like it. He was afraid of someone named Boss too. He had confided in Alice that Boss had taken him as a slave and made him do horrible things, things he wouldn't talk about no matter how much she begged and pleaded with him to tell her. She didn't know what he meant but she suspected that it had to do with the little red marks on his neck that looked an awful lot like bite marks when she got up close to him. She felt like a slave too, or maybe a puppet. A good girl puppet hanging from the strings of fear bound to her by the demons know as Mommy and Daddy. She wished that she knew their real names, they weren't her mommy and daddy and they never were. They were nothing but thieves. Child thieves. Child snatchers snatching her when she was a baby. Baby snatchers. That was what they were; a couple of baby snatchers destined to burn in hell. She hoped that they burnt in hell. Eternally in hell. And when they did she'd dance on their graves. Yes, that would be wonderful.

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"What you gonna say Fool? How you gonna explain this? You could go to juvie ya know!" said Fool's mother as she lectured her son. She never wanted any of her children or grandchild to fall into that life. A life run by crime where morals were forever forgotten and life expectancies were low. She had thought that he was smarter than that, smarter than to get swept up in that life because once you were in that life you never got out.

"I'm gonna say that Roach gave 'em to me, mama. It's the truth." Said Fool as he pleaded with his mother. She was up and about and feeling much better. She felt well enough to worry apparently. She was worried for her son because technically he was stealing the coins that paid for their new home. Technically because the coins weren't given to him by the real owner. Fool didn't understand why his mother was freaking out so much, they had all that they had ever wanted since the times became hard. They had a nice house, no crack addicts or cockroaches or mice or rats or any other type of vermin. They were near a decent school system and compared to where they used to live their new neighborhood was Beverly Hills. To say that he wasn't a bit worried would have been lying. He knew that the coins weren't really Roach's to give and he knew that he was breaking and entering but he tried not to dwell on it like he tried not to dwell on anything that he had seen in that house even though what he had seen lived on in his dreams, his nightmares.

"They weren't his to give!"

"I don't care! Look at what we got now, don't ruin it, please mama." Said Fool softly. He never in his dreams could have imagined something like this. Ever. He always assumed he'd live in the ghetto for the rest of his life so it turned out that helping Leroy and Spencer case the Robeson house had been a blessing in disguise. A pretty big disguise, to tell the stone cold truth.

"He's got a point you know." Said Grandfather Booker who had come to stay in their already cramped apartment. He worried about his grandson but he was grateful that they could all live in this new place, this better place. He was at first happy that his daughter had gotten out of the ghetto but then was so disappointed when she shacked up with that man and they lost everything. By that time crack and other drugs had made their way into the ghetto making everything ten times worse. Booker had seen that ghetto go from a descent neighborhood with a few poor people, to a poor neighborhood, to a ghetto in his sixty-five years of life.

"Daddy, I'm grateful; but it wasn't the boys place to be doin' that and now he could get in real trouble

"Mama, I dun the cards, he gonna be OK." Said Ruby as she tried to get her mother to sit down

"Don't you start with them damn cards! I told you to look out fer ya brother and you let him rob our landlords! Why didn't you just put him in the cell yourself?!"

"Mama, you gotta sit down. Yer still weak." Said Fool. She sat down and calmed down a bit but worry was still evident on her face. Fool went to his room and decided to lay down for a bit. He wasn't sleeping well as of late because of the nightmares. Boys and what looked like a couple girls with cut out eyes, ears, and tongue filled his dreams as he was chased around by a man in a black leather gimp suit through the small, claustrophobic walls. Gun shots ran out and he couldn't get Leroy's last words to stop playing in his head over and over like stuck record. Sometimes he dreamed of just Leroy' death and that was the worst. Fool had never seen death before that day, he had just heard the gun shots that came with it and sometimes the screams. He'd always have nightmares after that, especially bad ones if the screams of the agony of death could be heard. He sometimes had nightmares about Roach and those confused him. He wasn't that afraid of Roach but there was still a bit or weariness to be found when he was around his new friend. Roach made him nervous and he tried his best not to show it. Fool could tell that he had a few screws loose but he still visited Roach from time to time or when they'd run into each other as they sometimes did in the almost four weeks Fool had been living in his new apartment. He just couldn't get Roach's off pitch wails out of his head, he couldn't get the image of his half rotten tongue stump from behind his eye lids. He wanted to get the sound of Roach's agonized screams from his mind but he couldn't. He supposed that it might have had something to do with the fact that he spent so much time around Roach. He sometimes caught the odd glimpse of Roach's exposed tongue stump when he ate or a glimpse of the now stitched hole that was torn in his side. The very worst nightmares Fool had were of the people under the stairs. He remembered the empty eyes of those who had eyes and the scars and cuts that lined them all. He remembered how their long unkempt nails felt as they dragged him towards someone with their eyes cut out and a pot on his head. He remembered their cellar with crystal celerity and he hated it. He had tried not sleeping for a bit of time but fell asleep after three days. He needed a shrink and he knew it but they didn't have a lot of money for those kinds of things. He wished that Roach would have given him more of his coin collection. He knew that it was selfish but a little more would have gone a long way. He briefly wondered what kinds of nightmares Roach had, Alice had, and the people under the stairs had. He supposed that it would have been worse for them because they lived everyday of their lives for God knows how many years. Fool wondered about them. Who were they? How long were they down there for? Were they all stolen or were some of them the Robeson's blood children? He'd have to ask Roach later because he was falling into a deep sleep and he couldn't stop himself. During his nap he dreamt once again about the house and the people.

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Roach wrapped his hands in gauze. They had stopped bleeding but they weren't exactly pleasant to look at. He sighed as he straightened one pf the fakes that covered where the skin had grown back over a popped nail that had popped off long ago. This day wasn't going all to well. He had made his mother cry and Alice hadn't come over, hadn't even called. He feared that something might have happened to her. A million different visions of what could have happened to her ran through his mind. Most of them involving her being locked in her basement or killed. Those made his heart stop beating for a moment and his breath get hitched in his throat. He didn't want anything bad to happen to her. Ever. He was going to protect her with every last ounce of life he had until the day he died. He wondered if she was in the hospital. She had been acting strange so she could have been sick. He was thrown from his worries as he heard the kitchen door open. He wondered if it was his mother who had gotten up and he left the bathroom to investigate. He crept slowly down the stairs as not to alert anyone of his presence. That was the bets thing he had ever learned in his opinion; how to be so silent no one ever knew he was there in the rafters and behind the walls until he got bored and made his presence know. He opened the kitchen door and risked a peak. It wasn't his mother, it was Donna. She stood at the counter mixing something up teary eyed and her nose stuffed. She had makeup smeared on her face and he didn't know if she noticed. He decided to make his presence know as he walked up to her. She looked like she could use a hug and so could he. The day so far had been one of the most emotionally draining of his life. He would have tapped her on the shoulder but he wasn't all to sure what her policy on being touched was so he cleared his throat. Donna turned around and almost dropped the glass of chocolate milk she had been mixing. There he stood, her brother. She had read the last part of his journal and that made the dam of her emotions break apart. In the last part he wrote a few poems, some about himself, some about his love for Alice, some about the people under the stairs, and some about revenge. He also wrote about how he was made an example of in front of everyone. She read about him being beaten mercilessly for insubordination and then he had the closest thing ever to having his virginity taken. He had been forced on his back and someone who he wasn't sure who, he had his eyes closed, laid on top of him and mimicked the missionary position. That had lead to a torrent of silent sobs into her pillow for almost half an hour as he recounted in horrifying detail about every thought he had, every feeling he felt, all the hatred and self loathing as well as hatred for the person who was on top of him, everything. She actually threw up as she read about what he had to do for the person next. It was just to horrible for words and yet there they were in black ink all over a college ruled page. He was still a virgin though and she was grateful for that but she still felt bad for him. She almost wished that she had never read his journal, never pried into his personal thoughts and memories. She stifled tears as she looked at him and he noticed. He handed her a paper towel and she took it gratefully and wiped her tears.

'What's with her? What's she got to be sad about? Is she crying? Why the hell is she crying?! What the hell has she got to cry about?!' thought Roach angrily but he instantly corrected himself, those were not thoughts that a good brother would have about his sister. He loved his sister and he didn't understand why he was having these thoughts but then again he didn't really know why he did half the stuff he did, only that he did it. She dried her tears and poured him a glass of chocolate milk and she lead him to the table. He sat down across from her and handed her the dish rag that was on the table as more tears collected behind her eyelids. She wiped it not caring that it was used to dry the dishes and blew her nose.

'Look at him. Just look. He's been through so much, much more than anyone else on the entire planet. How does he live with himself? He thinks so lowly about himself when he shouldn't. Why the fucking hell would anyone out anther human being through that kind of torture?! What did he do to deserve this?! When I get my hands on the Robeson's there will be blood! Oh you bet there will! They'll have to re paint the room! You're not a cockroach, David! You're not a whore! You're my little brother and I love you! Does he love me too? Oh God I'm loosing it. I'm talking to myself and that's the first sign.' Thought Donna as she sipped her milk idly and looked over at him. He was taking little sips and looked depressed. Donna decided to ask what was wrong, talking might help him and she knew that he wasn't going to see a shrink. There father had a bad opinion of all kinds of therapists ever since the neighbors said that he was a bad influence on their family because their family shrink said he was.

"David, what's wrong?" asked Donna as he swished his glass around for a bit. He looked up at her startled and for a moment he debated whether or not he should tell her and decided not to. There was absolutely no reason anyone needed to know. If he didn't tell anyone it would be like it never happened and he wanted that more than anything else in the whole, entire world. He looked down in an 'I don't want to talk about it' fashion and Donna decided to press on. She knew that he was drowning in personal torment and she wanted to save him, pull him to the surface before he did damage to himself. That was what Donna feared most of all. She feared the day when his cross would become to much for him to bear and he'd cast if off and plunge himself into the abyss. She knew that he contemplated it, he had for quite a bit of time but his love for Alice was what tethered him to the world of the living and kept him from freeing himself from the house the only way he could, by freeing his soul. Alice was safe and alright now, she didn't need a protector so his purpose, his tether was gone. It was the reason Donna had hid all the knives in the cellar, even the butter knives. She didn't want him to die, she just got him back. When they were young they were as close as a brother and sister could get without going into illegal territory. When he was stolen she actually looked for him for a bit before going into a depression at the age of six. She began to fear new people and it took her awhile to get used to people after that.

"Tell me, you'll feel better."

'I don't want to talk about it, alright you busy body!?'

"Just tell me, it'll make you feel better. You're feelings are like a can of soda and right now you're all shook up but if you talk about it it'll be like opening up the can."

'I'll explode like an open shook up can of soda?'

"No, it'll be like relieving the pressure."

'Maybe I should. I won't tell her everything but it would feel good to get rid of some of this but then again what if it makes it worse like scratching a sore? Maybe she shouldn't know, it'll just make her ashamed or it might depress her. Lord knows it depresses me. I probably shouldn't.' thought Roach as he shook his head 'no' a bit more forcefully

"Fine, you win." Said Donna still sitting across from him as she crossed her arms. He looked a bit contented with her answer and sipped his milk idly while looking at her with his old, bright blue eyes. Eyes identical to her own. Eyes older than the fifteen year old boy they belonged to. They were the eyes of a man, a man that had lived a hundred years. She knew when to stop pressing him for answers even though she didn't really want to but then again curiosity did kill the cat after all.

'If Morgan was here he probably could think up a really dirty analogy for this. He seems good at it.' Wrote Roach as he tried to have a conversation with his sister to take his mind off of things that were better left unsaid.

"Yeah, it's his best talent next to videogames and being annoying."

'His analogy about the twinkie and the ding-dong and the crème filling was funny.'

"And dirty, really dirty. And it stopped being funny after the third time he told it, it just started getting annoying like everything else he does."

'He's not that annoying but I don't understand why he doesn't like me.'

"He's just a jealous guy, always has been."

'He's jealous of me?" asked Roach. He couldn't believe that his brother was jealous of him. If anything he was jealous of Morgan. He would gladly switch places with Morgan even if that meant being ten years old and four and a half feet tall. He couldn't imagine anyone in the entire world being even the least bit jealous of him. It confounded him.

"Yeah. Well, you see when you were…uhh…taken he was born shortly after and mom an dad paid a lot of attention to him because he was the last boy left. They even messed up sometimes and called him David which is kinda funny in a morbid sorta way looking back on it. Anyway, it got to his head and now that you're back you've been getting a lot of attention and he thinks that he's entitled to that attention so he's trying to get it back with the innuendos and the doing these horrible things to other people and the house and stuff."

'I had no idea. I thought that he just didn't like me.'

"He doesn't. Well, if he got to know you he might. Trysta got to know you and she liked you. In retrospect maybe she liked you a bit too much. Huh David?" Laughed Donna a bit as she saw him blush and look down. Suddenly the yellow linoleum was the most interesting thing in the world to him as he stared at it and bit his nails from embarrassment.

'Please don't bring that up Donna, it's not funny. It wasn't funny by a long shot. Actually it wasn't right plain and simple.' Wrote Roach who didn't like remembering how he both kissed his sister and broke her fragile heart in the same day. He didn't like doing that but it was necessary. He knew that she wouldn't stay a child for long and she'd grow very suddenly like he did and Alice did and he knew what she'd think about then and he wasn't going to do that with his own sister. He had done many horrible things in his short life but incest wasn't going to be one of them

"OK, OK, whatever David. But still I can't believe she told you. I mean I never saw her as the type to have a crush especially on her brother. You know it seems like something Dottie would do when I think about it."

'Dottie wouldn't, she's not as strange as people think and she's actually a pleasant person to be around. She's smart too, people just don't give her much of a chance.' Wrote Roach who felt compelled to defend his youngest sister who he had befriended and thought was actually a very interesting person. He knew that she would do the same for him

"OK, OK you win again. Hey, can I ask you something? Don't worry, it's not about your time with the Robeson's." said Donna. Roach made an 'OK ' sign with his fingers and nodded

"Did you really kiss her?" asked Donna as Roach's eyes widened and he bit his lower lip.

'How the hell does she know about that?! Damn it Trysta!' thought Roach as he debated whether or not he should tell her. On the one hand if he lied it would save him from an embarrassing conversation turn but on the other he didn't want to lye to his sister and lying was speaking evil. He had done enough of that to last him a lifetime

"Well?" asked Donna genuinely curious to see if it was the truth or if Dot was just lying to her as she sometimes did.

"Yeah." Said Roach quietly as he looked down again. Donna gave him a shocked look but then started laughing. Quietly at first but then louder and louder until Morgan banged on the floor and told her to keep it down. It was just beyond belief and just a bit hilarious to her.

"I can't believe you actually-does Alice even-are you insane!" laughed Donna so hard she almost fell out of her chair. She felt bad about laughing at her brother but she couldn't stop herself. He gave her a look that clearly said that he wanted her to stop but she didn't notice. She only stopped when their mother came in awake from her peaceful sleep. Amanda yawned and looked at her children and wondered what had just transpired while she slept. Her daughter was cracking up and her son looked embarrassed beyond belief. Donna eventually stopped laughing and Roach gave her a glare before going up to his room. Amanda looked at the clock and saw how late it was and quickly got dinner out of the freezer not caring what it was. She made and froze the family's meals so she'd have less work and they'd last longer. It didn't do wonders for the taste and freezer burn made it almost inedible at times but she didn't care all that much to tell the truth. She looked over at her daughter as she took the empty milk glasses and washed them and felt a small pang of jealousy. She was jealous that her son was closer to his sister than his own mother but quickly shoved those thoughts to the nether regions of her mind because they were not thought that she should have been having about her child. Imagine that, jealous of her own children. Trysta came in and helped herself to some ice-cream before it was taken away from her by Amanda who was hoping that Trysta had gotten over her brother and moved on but apparently that was just a pipe dream.

"But mom, I need the comfort food to get over this the right way according to Rachel." said Trysta who really wanted to get over the pain and confusion she was feeling which was the only reason she had stayed at her friend Rachel's house for that amount of time because she needed advice on how to get through her ordeal.

"You can eat all the comfort food you want after dinner but right now go comfort yourself some other way. Why don't you get yourself some hot cocoa or somethin'?" said Amanda not in the mood to deal with her middle child. She was still depressed over what had transpired between her and her son just half an hour ago and wondered why she had to bring it up instead of letting it lie.

"Get her a straight jacket and a padded room, she's gone completely nuts!" said Donna as Trysta glared at her

"Am not!"

"Are too!"

"Am not!"

"Are too!"

"Quiet! Belladonna Marie Cullen how old are you?" said Amanda in no mood for one of her children's petty arguments

"Sixteen." Said Donna quietly. She didn't want to make her mother any madder

"Then why are you fighting with your ten year old sister?"

"I'm sorry but mom she really is nuts." Said Donna

"Am not!" said Trysta wondering for a moment why she was acting so much like a child before remembering that she was in fact a child

"Are too!"

"Am-"

"The next words out of your mouths better be 'I'll be quiet' or I'm separating you too. And Belladonna your sister is not nuts."

"Sorry mom but she is crazy, she kissed him. Either crazy or someone dared her." Said Donna as Trysta sputtered with a shocked look on her face

"Someone better have dared you Trystal River Cullen!" Said a chalk faced Amanda as Trysta sputtered and stuttered before making her way upstairs. As she left she gave Donna the finger when their mother's back was turned and Donna stuck out her tongue

"Is that true, Donna?" asked a slightly calmer Amanda. She couldn't believe that Trysta would do that. She couldn't believe that David would do that. Did the whole world go insane?!

"Well according to Dottie she was threatening to kiss Morgan and Fool and a bunch of other guys if he didn't kiss her so he gave her a peck on the lips and made her leave. Yeah mom, I know it's more than a little wrong but if it makes you feel better that's what he was feeling queasy about and he even threw up." Said Donna as she helped her mother break the ice off of dinner. It looked like something stew but she wasn't all to sure.

"I-I just can't believe that he would-"

"He broke up with her…sorta."

"Well that makes me feel a bit better I suppose."

"Makes me feel better too but you gotta believe that a ten year old with a crush is the least of his problems."

"He told you?" said Amanda amazed that he finally opened up even if it was to his sister. She felt a pang of jealousy. He should have confided in her, she was his mother after all.

"No I-uh" stuttered Donna. She wondered why she had opened her big mouth, she did that sometimes and was working rather unsuccessfully on stopping.

"I know that look, what did you do?" asked Amanda in an exasperated voice. She was getting tired of this.

"I might have... you promise not to get mad right?" asked Donna in a pleading voice

"Whenever you say that I do get mad, you should know that by now."

"Then maybe you shouldn't know." said Donna who feared punishment. Her mother really didn't look too much like she was in the mood and their father had been down lately.

"Donna!"

"Alright, alright. Sheesh! I may have been trying to find a tape to tape over one day and well the thing is, and you're gonna laugh at this, one rolled under the table and I went after it. you'll be happy to know that the tape is OK so you won't have to replace it which would have been a real shame."

"Stay on the subject."

"Right well you see...uh...I may have found his journal under the table when I went to grab it. I didn't even know he kept a journal."

"You read his journal?" said Amanda so quietly from the shock it was almost a whisper. She couldn't believe that Donna would invade his privacy like that. She couldn't blame her though, she would have done the same thing if given the chance to learn about the enigma that was her son but that wasn't that point

"I'm sorry but you won't believe the things I read. Mom, he's got problems, scary problems. He's got problems you wouldn't believe like-"

"You had no right!"

"Like you wouldn't have done the same thing!"

"Do as I say Belladonna, not as I do and I say give it back this instant!" said Amanda who wanted to have some alone time

"B-But-"

"Sometime before winter would be nice." said Amanda as she put the food in a pot to melt

"But then he might figure out that I read it!"

"Well that's not my problem now is it?"

"B-b-but-"

"Now!"

"OK, OK. Man, you don't gotta bite my head off." said Donna as she debated what to do. She wondered if he'd find it if she just left it under his bed. She decided to do that and slowly opened his door. She gasped as she saw him sprawled out on his ed but was relieved as she saw that he was asleep. she got close enough to slide it under his bed and stifled a gasp as he muttered something in his sleep. She looked at him, it was another nightmare. She impulsively walked up to him and kissed him on the forehead and watched his previously terrified expression soften. She left his room and blinked back a tear.

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That night's dinner didn't go well. Amanda was still feeling depressed and Donna was still sad for her brother. Morgan was both mad at Roach and just a bit afraid of him. He had been feeling scared since his outburst and looked wearily at his bandaged hands. He was afraid of what his brother was capable of. Trysta was having her own mixed emotions and David Sr. was just depressed. Roach didn't how to feel at the moment. He had had another nightmare, this time it was Alice in his place and all he could do was watch. He tried to call out to her, to pull them of of her but it was like he was a ghost. When he tried scream he made no noise. When he went to pull them off of her his hands just went through them. Just as all hope was lost something happened, he didn't know what but a good feeling spread through him and the dream changed to the one where he hunted Daddy and not the other way around. He looked at his food with shock as his mother put it in front of him.

"What is it?" asked Morgan with disgust

"It's alive!" said Dottie as she poked it with then end of her spoon. She could have sworn that she saw the brown and green mush on her moved on it's own and gasped

"It's, well it used to be somethin' stew but now I guess it's hot mush. Don't worry, it's not like we haven't eaten like this before so that's how we know that this is OK to eat." said Amanda as most of her family grudgingly ate it. Roach on the other hand just looked at it. Hands reaching through wooden bars to Mommy who had a huge pot of something like that only worse spooned only a handful into the hands of the starving people they belonged to. He remembered his hand full of the warm lumpy mush. He remembered stuffing it into his mouth quickly from not having eaten in a week. He remembered his horror as he pulled from his mouth a human finger not much bigger than his. He remembered it all coming back up. His breathing quickened and tears collected at the backs of his eyes. He stood up suddenly and to everyones surprise. He knew that he should have asked to be excused but at the moment he didn't care. He barely made it to the bathroom before throwing up. Thankfully he threw up in the toilet. He cried as he threw up but thankfully his parents knew that it was best to leave him alone while he was doing that. He got up and rinsed his mouth out with water while crying. He hated himself more than ever at that moment as the memory of the first and only time he had ever consumed human flesh ran through his mind. At that moment he was no better than the people under the stairs, no better than Mommy and Daddy, no better than an animal. He felt worse than ever at that moment, worse than when he was beaten, even worse than when he was used. At that moment he wanted to die, he welcomed death for the first time instead of fearing it and for that he scared himself. For that he hated himself. For that he was sure that he was going to burn in hell.

'You're no better than Mommy and Daddy Cockroach! You ate that finger! You ate it! And you know what? You know what you Cockroach?! You whore! You liked it!' thought Roach as he stared at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. He wanted to hurt himself, kill himself. That thought scared him more than anything had ever scared him before. It scared him but it also made sense. Alice was the only thing keeping him going before but now she was safe, happy, and healthy. She didn't need him anymore. She probably didn't even love him, not in the way he loved her. She had said that she liked the way he kissed her but it might have just been lust. Love and lust walked down two different roads, he should know having walked them both many times. Besides, she probably loved Fool in that way. She had seen the looks that she had given him and it hurt him. It hurt him so much but he didn't show it, he told himself that she didn't know what she was doing, didn't know that she was looking at Fool like he looked at her and Headbanger but he was starting to have his doubts. He glared into the mirror so hard he thought he might glare holes in it. He glared and glared until he couldn't take it anymore and punched the mirror as hard as he could. His fist went through and shards of glass filled his hand. He stifled a scream as he had done so many before and just let himself bleed on the bathroom floor.

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