--Prologue--
On the floor lay multiple pills. Next to them is a dead girl. Maggie’s eyes are staring at nothing and she lays limp on the floor. The orange bottle is open in her hand and the pills must have fallen out of it. If you saw the scene from above you would say Maggie looked peaceful because of the smile on her face. You would be wrong. Maggie’s not happy with her life, or was. She’s smiling because her end is finally here and she no longer has to deal with it. Deal with the agony of her mother dying and her father beating her.
--
Maggie looked around as she treaded carefully on the worn, wooden stairs. She would be careful this time, not like yesterday. Her father had been drunk again. You could tell from the purple bruises on her arms and legs he was very dunk and not just buzzed. No one had believed her when she said her dad was abusive, but who would? From the way she acted and held herself with her head held high you would never tell. During the winter it was easy to hide her bruises and cuts. That’s why she always left for summer camp during the summer.
“What are you doing street rat?” Her father called from down below looking at her with hatred in his eyes. He was not a pleasant person in the least. He had thinning gray hair and had a large gut. Often, you would find a beer bottle gripped in his hand.
“I was just going upstairs, dad.” She was scared and it shone on her face. In reality she was very fragile compared to others. After her mother had died of childbirth her father blamed her for it. She looked down at him from the top of the stairs. “I’ll be quiet, I swear.” She whimpered as he bounded up the stairs with a deep frown on his face. He grabbed her by the hand and threw her down the stairs. She screamed as she fell to the ground with a large thud. She tried scampering away from him, like a wounded puppy, it didn’t work. She had doubted it would but had tried anyways. He kicked her while she was down and he left. After he left she slowly stood up and wiped the blood off of her arms. New bruises were forming already.
--
That last round of beating had left her with a slight limp in her right leg. When she arrived at school the next day and she limped around it no one had questioned her. Her friends talked and laughed and she pretended to do the same. This was typical. In class she got an A on her math test and she thought maybe if I show daddy this he won’t beat me tonight. Maybe not so hard at least. She had always been the optimist. She smiled slightly and rubbed her arms flinching when she rubbed a dark purple bruise.
“Do you want to come over tonight?” Asked Melissa who was walking with Maggie to the house. She had seen the bruises one day but hadn’t questioned Maggie, thinking she had fallen.
“I would, but I have homework.” She said apologetically. Maggie rolled her eyes and shifted her backpack off of her throbbing shoulder. Her red hair hung past her shoulders and whipped around in the frigid wind.
“Oh, okay.” Melissa sighed and walked away toward her yellow house on the end of the block. Maggie stepped carefully up to the house. It wasn’t her home, just a house that she lived in. The wooden door creaked softly as it swung open. In the doorway stood her father. He grabbed her by the arm and flung her into the house slamming the door in the process.
“Where have you been?” He demanded at her. “If you can’t come home on time than I’ll teach you a lesson!” He slapped her across the face. She fell to the floor in pain and curled into a ball to keep her from being beaten so badly. He kicked her and she let it happen. “Maybe that will keep you from being such a bad kid!” He yelled and stomped away from her. Her blue eyes looked up to make sure he had really gone. When she decided he had, she stood up carefully and held her arm. It was broken. She went up the stairs and stood in front of her mirror. It was as tall as her. She closed the door and changed into a tank top and shorts to sleep in. She looked at herself again. It was time to call somebody, to make this stop hurting. She picked up the phone and dialed a 9 and a 1. She chewed on her split lip and pressed the last 1.
“This is 911, what is your emergency?” Said the voice on the other end of the line.
“H-hello. M-my name is Maggie C-Cole. I’m b-being b-beaten by m-my father. I-I think he b-broke m-my arm.” She stuttered terribly.
“Don’t worry, help is on the way,” the voice soothed. She hung up the phone and curled up on the bed covering her face with her hands and she sobbed. Sirens whined in the distance and then the police cars barreled down the street along with a white ambulance. The paramedics found her on the bed and put her on the long stretcher. When she was secured safely they went down the stairs carefully. Maggie looked at the police car and saw her father being cuffed with glistening, silver cuffs. As they reached the hospital they pushed her through the sterile halls. After a good while they reached a room with the numbers 122 printed on a small plaque by the door. She passed out as they worked on her arm.
--
When she woke up her arm was in a cast and only the sterile walls of her room stared back at her. She sighed in relief and tried to sit up when a pretty nurse swept into the room. She had red locks that fell well past her shoulders and startling green eyes. She exposed some little, white teeth as she smiled. Further expecting and Maggie didn’t think this lady was a nurse. She was dreaming, she had to be, this was her mother looking at her. Her name use to be Morgan before she died.
“Mom?” Maggie croaked. She sounded like a 50 year old who had smoked a pack a day all their life, and not a 13 year old girl.
“Hello sweetie,” the image smiled at her and sat in the chair beside the bed. Her slender fingers brushed over Maggie’s red curls. “I knew you were going to be beautiful when you grew up.” She complimented and put her finger under Maggie’s chin. “I’m sorry your father did this to you. I honestly thought he was a good man until well, this.” Her mother shook her head slowly and a slight frown flashed across her pretty face. The image slowly began to fade as she was beginning to wake NO! She cried in her mind. As she actually woke up she looked at her nurse and two police officers.
--
She sat in the chair at the police station and looked up at the police. She had been questioned about her father. They had left a minute ago to talk it over. She looked up as the female officer came in and sat across from her. She put her hand over Maggie’s good hand and gave her a sympathetic look. Maggie’s mouth gaped; they were going to let him go and her with him!
“We don’t have any hard evidence of his abuse; we have to let him go. I’m very sorry.” The lady stood up and left Maggie in the room. She stared at the gray wall in total disbelief. The evidence was her broken arm and the bruises scattered across her body. Instead of breakdown in the tiny little questioning room she stood up and left. She was released in her father’s care. She cringed away from him as they walked and cradled her broken arm. She got in the backseat of his car and pressed against the cold, metal door. They drove home silently. It was worse than when he screamed, you knew what was going to happen. As the large house came into view he opened the garage door and got out of the car as it rolled into the garage. He was going to crash her and the car. She didn’t want to die so she threw herself out of the car two seconds before it slammed into the garage and crunched the front half of the car and the glass shot into the backseat. She didn’t look behind her as she ran into the house and up the stairs to her room. Gasping for air, she looked at the pills the doctor had told her to take. She took one and cowered into the far wall as his booming feet came right up to the door. The handle shook on the door, for she had locks on this door keeping it from opening.
“LET ME IN!” He howled behind the door and then she saw the actual door shake. He was kicking her door. In fear she ran into the bathroom and locked that door, going into the cupboard under the sink. He would ever look there for her. The door to her bedroom broke down and he screamed murderous things as he ransacked her room. Then the bathroom door was broken down and he ripped the shower curtain from the pole above it. He didn’t see her so he went to the window and when he saw it was open he thought she had snuck out. His stomping became fainter and she relaxed barely. She climbed out of the cramped cupboard and peeked her head around the open doorway. Her room was trashed; the comforter was on the floor, her clothes were ripped and were laying on top of that, her pictures were crashed on her toppled over dresser, the guitar she kept under the bed was ruined and broken, and the only thing she really cared about was broken. The picture of her mother before the day she died. She picked the glass out of the frame and carefully took the picture out. She swallowed the lump in her throat and grabbed her pocket knife from the tiny drawer in her jewelry box. She looked down at herself and opened it slowly. Her eyes took in the sharp razor blade and a sad smile spread across her face. She ran her thumb over the jagged blade and a scarlet trail fell down the side. She shook her head. I don’t want to die this way. She thought and closed the blade again. She sucked on her thumb to get the blood off of it. She carefully set the knife back down and backed away from it, disgusted from she had almost just done. She backed into the wall and she slid down onto the floor. She tangled her fingers in her hair and put her head on her knees. Maggie thought about screaming, just to get this edge off, but that would alert her father where she was. No need to get hit, again. This wasn’t going to get any better any time soon, she realized. The suicidal thoughts drifted through her mind. Do it, you know you want to! End your suffering already! It just takes one tiny motion! Do it! The thoughts screeched the words in her mind. She turned her face to the knife again and shook her head hard. She clutched the still bleeding hand to her chest. Her pale cheeks were wet and glistening under the lights. The window was open and it was the dead of night. She packed her stuff in a duffel bag and visibly chewed on her lip. She grabbed a pair of black sweats and a black hoodie. She tucked her red hair into the hoodie and put it up. She yanked on the sweats with her good hand. She slung the duffel over her shoulder and winced as it hit one of her many bruises. She ground her teeth together and she pushed the window up more. Her room was easy to sneak out of. She walked across her roof till the end and slid down from the ledge. She dangled there a few seconds to calculate her fall. She would live she decided and she let go of the roof falling into a soft drift of snow. She snuck over to Melissa’s house and slept there.
-Next Day-
Maggie stood on the driveway looking up at her large house. Her father was in the kitchen and to get to the stairs you had to pass the kitchen. She treaded around the house and found a window she could sneak through to get to the stairs. She skillfully jumped through the window making almost no noise as she hit the floor. She ran up the stairs swiftly and silently until the last one squeaked. She turned around abruptly to see it the tiny noise had affected her father. Nothing that was a good sign. She climbed over her toppled over door. She stepped into her room and set the duffel bag on her bed. She looked at the window and the small pile of snow. She shut the window and grabbed her small blanket and wrapped herself up in it. She went into her ruined bathroom and grabbed the pills off of her sink. She read the label ‘2 a day’. She pursed her lips and grabbed two out of the container. She swallowed one, and then the other. She put the cap back on and on the side of her sink. She studied her face in the cracked mirror. Her green eyes were shifty and looked close to tears. Her red curls were messy and wild. All of her skin was decorated with black and blue bruises ranging from the size of a ping pong ball all the way up to a soup can. She didn’t look healthy with the deep bags under her eyes. Maggie wondered what her father had been like before her mother had died. She lay down on the cold, white, tile floor. She fell into a peaceful dream, and like she had wanted her mother had shown up. They talked and did what a mother and daughter would do if she weren’t dead. Too soon, she woke up from her perfect dream. She compared this dream to her reality and pounded on the wall with her fists. The comparison was so bad, she felt like crying again. The suicidal thoughts raised their ugly heads at her sadness. You saw it already Maggie. If you just take too many of those pills you will be free! Away from this ugly world and into the next! Don’t you want your mother back? You’ll have her if you just take them. Take them… She looked at the bottle on the counter and didn’t suppress her thoughts. She was too depressed to care about her own death. She grabbed 7 pills and sat back down onto the floor. She took one after another not pausing for a brake. She smiled and then began to shake. Her entire body shook but the entire time, as her body endured agony she smiled. It didn’t bother her at all. As soon as she stopped shaking the smile was still plastered on her face and died. She fell over so that her head was back on the floor. The orange bottle poured her pills onto the floor.
--
Maggie died that night of a suicide. She wasn’t bullied like some, or just depressed like others. She was beaten and was killed by an overdose.
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