Nightmares

[Morgan King]

Morgan was small, willowy and battered, her hair long and straight as she put the dishes away. At nine she had learned much more about the world than most had by the time they were thirty. The world was cold and cruel, no one cared about anyone else and when bad things happened you kept them to yourself or else something even more terrible things would grab hold of you. Tears stung the girl's eyes as she picked up a knife, oh how she wished to use it. With her chances though her father wouldn't die, then another thought occurred to her as she glanced to her bruised wrist. She bit her lip as she fantasized about it.

Her father would come home and find her lying in a pool of her own blood the blessed knife that released her still at hand, or embedded deeply in her chest if the wrists didn't make her go fast enough. He would yell and scream she knew it, but that would be fine because she'd be far, far away where he couldn't touch her ever again. Morgan smiled, it sounded all too wonderful. That however, was another truth the demented world had taught her. Never hope for anything better then what you have or things will only become worse than ever.

Sighing Morgan slid the knife into the knife rack. She was the child the world had forgotten, left to slide between the cracks and suffer at the hand of her father's depravity. Her teachers had seen the cuts and bruises, noticed the way she avoided eye contact and coward before men. How could they not? It was however, for fear of losing their jobs that they remained silent as she was slowly being killed, her spirit having been extinguished long ago. The fiery rush of floo powder at work caused her to jump dropping a plate which shattered noisily upon the ground. "No!" the girl gasped falling to her hands and knees trying to scoop up the fragments.

Tears were raining down her face in great torrents when she heard her father angrily drop his briefcase by the fireplace and heavy footed come stomping towards her. 'Oh please let me just die this time!' she prayed silently. "What the hell is this?" he bellowed as he towered over her. Morgan folded in on herself as she wailed uncontrollably in fear. "Why are you crying?" he shouted. "Why are you crying?" he repeated thrusting his foot out, it caught her sharply on the side with a painfully hollow thud. "No one's hit you!" he yelled lying. Morgan tried, but in vain to stop crying as she continued to gather the glass together. A dress shoed foot smashed down on her hands causing the glass to cut and serenade them, Morgan let out a scream.

"I'm sorry!" she sobbed looking up at him hoping to, for once, find some semblance of mercy or compassion, his face held none.

"Oh, not yet you're not!" he said through his teeth kicking her hard in the ribs and undid his belt buckle.

"Please, stop!" the girl cried in the fetal position where she had landed, hands over her head and heart pounding as his foot collided with her again and again causing her vision to blur and body to flare with pain.

Without saying so much as a word his belt was off and held loftily above his head. It didn't stay there long however before it came raining down upon her, the leather biting sharply into her skin leaving large welts and red marks immediately. A few strikes even broke the skin.


Sitting up sharply in bed Morgan let out a terrible scream. In an instant her bedroom light was flicked on and gentle arms that would never hurt her wrapped about her quaking form, a soothing voice whispering soft comforting words into her hair as a chin rested on her head. "Shh, it's alright Morgan you're safe now!" cooed the voice as the woman rocked Morgan slowly back and forth. The young girl's mind was buzzing as she tried to process just where she was. Then finally everything clicked. She was with Ms. King in her new home, in her new bed far, far away from her father. Holding onto her former dueling instructor and now legal guardian frantically she cried into the front of her nightgown. Her mind was still whirring with memory and her body ached with pain inflicted not too long ago. As she sat wrapped in the warming embrace of the only person she had ever loved or trusted she felt grateful that her nightmare had only been one of violence in the form of a beating and not the far more horrendous and vile acts her father had perpetrated upon her.