Anonymous

The nightmare began when I was ..

The nightmare began when I was young around 6 years old when my mom got with her boyfriend. Originally he was nice and very generous. When he moved in that all changed. He demanded respect and would tell my mom if she didn't let him discipline us that we would never respect him or see him as a parent. My mom agreed. One night I was coloring a picture for school. It was of an Easter bunny with a little basket and some eggs around it. I was coloring it decently I'd say for a 6 year old. Not the best of course. I had colored outside the lines in several areas and he was watching me. As I continued to color he stopped me and said I was doing it wrong and began cussing me. He took my crayons and started coloring my picture. He would outline it really dark and then shade it lightly. He colored part of it and demanded me to color it the way he had. Any time I had homework he would make me sit at the end of the coffee table on the floor and do it while he watched. If I did anything wrong he would start yelling and cussing me and calling me names. Some time later I stopped bringing home my homework. I lied and said I didn't have any and the next day at school right before class started I would try to do it as fast as I could before it was requested by the teacher. Eventually I couldn't keep up and I started having missing homework assignments. The school called my mom and told her it was part of my grade and that she needed to ensure it was being done and told her all the days homework was going to be sent home. When I got home that day I didn't know the school had called and I walked in and my mom asked me if I had homework and I told her no. Before she could say anything else he started yelling and said he would rather me spit in his face than lie to him. So I did just that. I spit right in his face. He grabbed my arm and forced me over the couch arm and began hitting me with his belt. I had never been hit with a belt before. It was the worst pain I ever had. Afterwards my mom told me to go to my room. A few minutes later he called me out of my room and told me my punishment was that I had to bring home every book and notebook from school for each subject. When I went to school the next day I packed up everything I had. We didn't have books we took home at the time. It was more like workbooks and notebooks. Nothing crazy like the older kids had. I struggled under the weight of my bookbag. I had to drag the bag up the stairs of the bus and I sat up front to avoid any further struggling. When the bus got to the stop I pushed it to the stairs and let it roll down and at the time we didn't get dropped off at our apartment we got dropped off down the street. Unfortunate for me it was uphill. Our neighbors had a little girl my age. She helped me carry the bookbag home. It felt like it took forever. When I got home I was sat down at the kitchen table and forced to do the work in the books even though we hadn't done part of it in class yet. I sat there for hours and wasn't allowed to eat supper. I felt even more hungry as I watched them eat hot dogs. My mom and her boyfriend loved Pepsi and me and my brother usually drank juicy juice. I wasn't allowed to take a bath either. I was sent to bed way up into the night without anything. My brother and I shared a room and a bed at the time. Our mattress was on the floor. We were short and had small body frames. Smaller than other kids. We would talk at night and laugh. My mom's boyfriend came into our room and said we were defying him by not going to sleep. He told us to put on our shoes and that we were going for a ride. We put our shoes on and got into the car. It was cold that night. The wind was blowing. We rode in the car for a long time. We looked out the window and watched it get darker and darker outside. We hadn't passed a house or a street lamp in a while. He stopped in the road and told us to get out. We didn't move. He got out of the car and opened our door he told us to get out and we hesitated but my brother got out first and I followed. He said let's see how you do out here and you can think about this the next time you want to defy me and not go to sleep. He got back in the car and rolled down the window. We stood in the road watching him as he drove away. We watched the car until we couldn't see the tail lights. The sound of the car faded and I said let's run and call the police to come and get us. I was roughly around 6 years old and my brother is a year and a half younger than me. We ran as fast and as far as we could. Our shoes were light up shoes so that helped us follow the road as we ran. It was cold and we held hands as we ran so we wouldn't lose each other in the dark. We were wearing our favorite pajamas. Onesies with the feet on them. We were too tired to run any further and we sat down next to each other in the road. It was so cold and we were trying to get warm. We sat there for what felt like forever. We were both crying quietly and shivering. We could hear the wind blowing the leaves around on the ground and animals in the woods. We looked around and didn't see anything. It was pitch black. I started to wonder if our mom would come and get us or be able to find us. We began to hear a car and soon after we seen headlights. We didn't know who it was so we didn't move. The car stopped in front of us and we saw a figure get out of the car. He said get in the car dumbasses. We knew it was him. We got up and got into the car. The heat was going and it was such a relief to feel the heat and be able to get warm. He said you thought you were going to call the police? I can tell you right now they would take both of you from your mom because you both don't know how to listen to your parents. I said you are not my dad. He said no I'm not but your dad didn't want you because you are such a bitch so you are lucky I'm here. As we went home he turned the heat off and cracked the window. He lit a cigarette and used his knee to control the car. I hated it when he would do that. I hated the smell of the cigarettes. We finally made it home and we got out of the car and went inside. We were upset but he told my mom we should go to bed now and we went to our room. My brother and I were whispering to each other as quiet as we could. Shortly after the door slams open and he says apparently you didn't learn from the trip we just took. If I hear another word we are going for another ride and this time I won't come back. We started to cry and he got down next to the bed and put his index finger in our faces and yelled shut it a few times and said if we didn't stop crying we were getting our asses busted. He started to pull off his belt and we were trying hard to stop crying. My mom stood in the doorway and didn't say anything. After that night we wished he would leave and never come back.