No idea.... Not sure what it's gonna be about yet.

Okay, I have no idea where this story belongs, so I'm putting it here, until I figure it out. I only have a little bit... I just want to hear what you guys have to say. So... Without further ado, the story!

My mouth fell open, ready to scream, but I stopped myself. I fought the urge to run, but that would have been pointless. Not even in my wildest dreams would I be able to outrun it. I clamped my eyes and mouth shut, but the image of every bug that could fly imaginable was forever stained upon my retinas. I put my hand protectively over my nose and sank down in a crouch on the flat, cracked earth I stood on. I braced myself and waited for the worst to come. A second later, I was bombarded by the noise of thousands of clicking wings, the prick of the creatures being stopped short as the collided with me. And then, disregarding my protective hand, the bugs started to make their way up my nose, and down my throat, and that’s when I screamed. Louder than I’d ever screamed before. And a voice seemed to be calling my name, “Nessi! Nessi!” But faded, is though from far away. And then I jolted back to reality to see my younger sister shaking me and calling my name. I realized I was drenched in sweat, and that I really was screaming. As soon as I was aware of this, the screaming stopped.
“What happened, Rae?” I gasped.
“You were screaming Nessi, it was really scary, I didn’t know what to do. So I tried to wake you, but you seemed unable to wake up. I was really scared, Nessi. It crossed my mind if this time, you wouldn’t wake up.” Rae began to whimper, and I clutched her close to me. Then, my father Doug, burst into my room. I glanced at the clock, almost four a.m. Dad wouldn’t be happy. He started yelling at me, something about “waking up the whole family for goodness sake!” My mother, Clarisse, came in and started begging my father just to put this off ‘til morning and just come back to bed. My father drew back his hand and smacked her across the face. Rae started sobbing into my shoulder; I hugged her close.
“Don’t you go hitting Mom!”
“I will do whatever I ruddy well feel like, young lady!” He yelled back at me. “Or do you want me to hit Rachel too?” He raised his hand, and I remained silent. He could hit me, but I would never let him lay a hand on my little sister.
So, there you have it, my dysfunctional family: Dad, drunk and abusive; Mom, suffering in silence; my oldest brother Drake, off at college; my older brother Derek, a senior in high school; my older sister Danielle, a freshman in high school; me, Vanessa, starting 7th grade; and my younger sister Rachel, going into 6th grade. Rae and I are really close, but Danielle buckled and took after our dear old dad and started drinking. She still lives here, but was out partying last night, and didn’t show up. Derek seems to want nothing to do with our family, so barley shows up. And Drake, good old Drake; he got away before things started getting really bad.
I call him if something goes really bad. His voice is soothing, and he has good advice. I can’t wait to get away. I let Rae crawl in beside me as we hear shouting from the bedroom at the end of the hall. I whisper softly into Rae’s ear that everything’s gonna be fine, and not to worry. We slip back into the world between dreams and reality. My alarm clock beeps at 6:30. I gently rouse Rae, and start getting dressed. When we go downstairs I see Mom, busy in the kitchen, trying to hider her face, witch is developing an impressive bruise underneath her eye. She acts as if nothing has happened.
“Morning Vanessa. Have a nice sleep?” I nod and remain silent. I feel responsible. I’ve been having dreams like I had last night for about a month, and Dad would yell, and Rae would cry and Mom would beg Dad to stop. Only recently did Dad start hitting her. I used to call Drake every night. Then he asked me to stop calling, ‘case his girlfriend thought he was cheating on her. Why is my life so messed up?!





Rae and I got off the bus and Turnwall Middle School. I had been here last year, but Rae was new to this school, being in sixth grade and all. Throughout the day, she stayed near me, not daring to take on the school by herself. I would walk her to her classrooms, so she wouldn’t get lost. I had no friends anyway, no reason I couldn’t spend the whole day with Rae. The first couple of weeks went like this, nothing interesting, me waking up every night, Dad coming in and yelling, Rae crying. One, day, as I got on the bus, I realized that Rae wasn’t there. I got off the bus and made my way against the tide of students to Rae’s locker. She wasn’t there. Had I missed her in the crowd?
I hear a whimper coming from around the corner. I ran up and rounded the corner. Rae was sitting on the ground against the wall, curled in a ball, sobbing into her knees. I sank down beside her and put my arm around her.
“Go away.” She choked, looking up at me. “I just wanna be alone right now.” But I didn’t leave. I sat there, silently, with my arm wrapped around her, gently rocking back and forth. Finally, after about fifteen minutes, she looked up at me and half shouted angrily, and half whispered, “Why is our life so messed up?” This was the same question that had been running across the back of my mind for the past month. “I don’t know, Rae.” I whispered, hugging her to me, rocking back and forth again. “But, I do know that if we don’t get home soon, Mom’s gonna worry. And Dad’s gonna have a fit.” I stood up, holding my hand out to help Rae up. “Are you ready to go home?” Slowly, Rae nodded. She took my hand and stood up. We walked back to the entrance of the school, where a very bewildered janitor stood. I nodded at her as we exited the building. Our house was only about a mile away. We’d been walking in silence for about five minutes, when Rae asked, “Does it ever bother you that you have no friends?”
My first thought was to reassure Rae that it didn’t, but it really did. I mean, to have no one to talk to accept for Rae. Don’t get me wrong, I love Rae more than my own life, which, admittedly, I’m not to crazy about, but sometimes, I guess it would be nice to have someone outside the family that actually cared. But I didn’t want to offend Rae, but I couldn’t lie to her.
“You aren’t half bad, remember that. But, yes, sometimes, just to be cared about. It would be nice.” We walked the rest of the way in silence, stopping a couple of blocks away from our house to dry up Rae’s face.

As we walked in the door, Dad accosted us, yelling things about how “Mom was so worried”, and “where the hell have we been?” and “apologize right now!” We could smell the liquor on his breath, saw the bottle on the kitchen counter, knew he must be more than just drunk, past the point of controlling his own actions. I mumbled a feeble “We missed the bus,” to Mom, who sat there, face creased with worry. I saw dad move, and felt my cheek erupt in pain, and knew what had happened by his yell. “You talk to me! Tell me! You can’t be late! Don’t you dare miss the bus again!” This time, it was the back of his hand that struck my face, sending me careening into Rae. “Go upstairs to your room! Now! Both of you!” he screamed. Rae and I scampered up the stairs, into our room, and locked the door. Rae burst into tears, saying something about how it was her fault, ‘cause she made me look for her, and miss the bus, and how she was gonna tell Dad that it was her. At this, I screamed in defiance. “In no way shape or form, are you to blame for this, and you are not going to tell Dad differently! This was going to happen someday anyway, it’s not your fault!” Rae turned her face. “Look at me, Rae.” I said much more gently, she remained looking at the wall. I took her cheek and turned her to face me. “Look at me, Rae. This isn’t your fault, it’s Dad’s. Even he isn’t responsible for his actions right now. It’s not your fault, don’t blame yourself. I’ll be fine, okay. Now, we need to do our homework.” Rae nodded and took out her backpack.

The next morning, at 6:30 I woke up, and decided I would let Rae sleep a little, because of what had happened yesterday. I slipped out of bed and out into the hall, and the bathroom. I took a shower, spending a little extra time, not wanting to face the reality. Finally, I stepped out of the shower, grabbed a towel, and looked at myself in the mirror. My face, was it really my face, was worse than I could imagine.
The right side of my face was purple, and my eye was swelling up. The left side, slightly less purple, but still, horrible. A blinked a couple of times, then wrapped the towel around me, and walked back to my bedroom. I shook Rae awake, turning around before she could see my face. I started to get dressed. I heard Rae leave the room, probably to shower. I opened the door and crept down the hallway to my parent’s bedroom, slowly opening the door, so that it wouldn’t make a sound. I crept in and into my parents bathroom, and set about searching for my mother’s make up.
I found it in a cabinet, and took everything I would need and ran from the room, doing my best to keep silent. I ran to the mirror in my bedroom, and lay it all out on the table. I started applying whatever I felt would cover up the worst of it, and when I was done, it looked almost normal. I brushed my hair, hid the makeup in a drawer, and headed downstairs.

Aw! That's so sad. I'm interested to see where this goes, it's really good so far.

Ooh... That's really sad, but very well written. I'm surprised. I haven't seen this sort of thing show up in your writing before... One thing that may be completely irrevelant (sp?), but... I think you might mean Danielle. Daniel is the boys' version of the name. If not, my bad.

Oh, yes, thank you Lauren. Shall change that. Yeah, I've never written something like this before. I shall update when I've written more, and somehow decided where it's going...

My stories are typically depressing things like this. xD But Lauren's right, we haven't seen much like this from you, so it's especially interesting.

Mine isn't often quite this depressing. This is pretty good, though.

I'm generally a pretty depressing person, so I can't help it. Today on the bus I needed to write so I wrote two pages in my English notebook and labeled it freewriting. I plan on doing that a lot this year, I'd like to be close with my English teachers. English teachers are the best.

They are. This year's English teacher is so awesome.

I know! He has epic taste in music.... And his head is shiny....

And apparently perfectly shaped. xD

Oh yes... And apparently Muhammed Ali has rubbed it....

We have such a weird school...

I know... I love it!
And yesterday, my dad said he'd lick my forehead....

I added more! But, I need to start making it happier... But I have a vague clue of where this is going now!

Cool! That was better. Isn't that what Dre does in the Karate Kid when he gets a black eye? (I like your location, by the way. xD)

Yeah, it is. (Thanks. xDD)