Silver Stars on a Starless Night by Cheyenne M (story reading txt) 📖

end of the yard, still crying. “No. Up the Hill” He pointed. It wasn’t a hill, we lived on a mountain and above us was his mother’s house, but in between the edge of our two yards was brush and weeds taller than us. I looked at him, pleading that he wouldn’t make us do that. I should have known it would be in vain. He was relentless when it came to punishments for us, it was his way of releasing all of his anger that he actually received from the rest of his daily life. Apparently his mother never told him to pick on people his own size.

 

My brother started half-heartedly running up the mountainous range, he would rather die from overwork then to face this cruel man. I followed him up, but dared not run in front of him. If he fell I needed to pick him up before Daniel got ahold of him, I couldn’t let him get hurt.

 

“Faster!” I glanced back and he was standing at the bottom where the lawn met the tall weeds we were being forced to run through. I knew I could go faster, but I also knew that I couldn’t leave Justin behind. Daniel would get him for sure, if he so much as slipped up. I ran up next to him and grabbed his hand to help him along. We were nearing the top by this point and I was breathing heavy. Finally we pushed through the last of the scratchy tall brambled mess. We both stopped and tried to catch our breath. I looked at my knees and saw the lines of blood dripping down them, it was all over the both of us.

 

“What do you think you are doing?” We looked down the incline to where the devil himself stood with his arms crossed. “Keep going.”

 

My body was ready to collapse and I felt weak and near tears. “Up?” It was the only word I could muster out at that point.

 

“Are you f**king stupid?!” I winced at the words “Back down you idiots” He turned away from us mumbling under his breath. I felt slightly relieved at the thought that we would be heading down the hill, but at the same time, we would still have to fight the brush.

 

“Try and stick to the same area so it’s easy because it’ll be pushed down.” Justin nodded to me and took a deep breath, we both started down the hill. After a few grueling minutes of fighting the branches, we reached the bottom. Only to be sent back up again, where the whole process repeated. This continued for half an hour at least, all the while our bodies were nearing the point of keeling over. Finally I saw my mom’s vehicle coming through the trees on the road above where we were running. Daniel must have seen it too because he finally told us to stop.

 

“Go into the playhouse and play for a little bit. I’ll make lunch and bring it out.” My brother and I looked at each other quizzically, the sudden change of attitude was astounding.

 

“Ok” we said in unison and ran off towards the playhouse. We sat down and caught our breath before pulling out some toys.

 

“Why does he do that to us?” Justin asked, momentarily putting his legos aside.

 

“I don’t know. He is mean to us, but when mommy comes back he is nice again.” I continued to dress my dolls, my barbies were my pride and joy at that age.

 

“Maybe he is scared of mommy. She would not do that to us, so he can’t have her find out.” It made sense honestly, but at that age, I didn’t have the logic to put everything together.

 

“I guess so, but was he like that before?” I put one doll down and picked up another, brushing her hair and changing the clothes. For me it was a daily routine just as I brushed my own hair and changed clothes.

 

“I think she would make him stop if we told her. It happens too much.” He simply looked at me. It made sense even then, mom wouldn’t let anything bad happen to her kids, so if we told her then she would make it stop.

 

“I think so too. We should go tell her now.” We got up and headed to the house. Unfortunately, what we hadn’t thought of, was that; if Daniel didn’t do it when she was around then he didn’t want her to know, therefore he would lie.

Chapter 3

We walked in the door prepared to tell her all that had been happening whenever she left. Instead we were faced with something worse than we could have imagined. Daniel had been coming to open the door at the same time we walked in and since I was in front, I ran straight into him. By this point I had learned to back away from him whenever something like this happened. I looked for my mom, but I could not find her anywhere in my eyesight, so I assumed she was in one of the bedrooms or the bathroom.

 

“Go to your room.” Daniel said to us before we got a word out. Justin scampered off immediately, but I hesitated. I regretted it immediately because he grabbed me hard and shoved me forward to the room I shared with my brother. I fell and began crying, and to follow I heard my mom’s voice from behind the closed door of her room.

 

“What happened?” she asked to no one in particular, she simply wanted to assure I was ok.

 

“Dad push…” that’s all I got out before his hand covered my mouth and he picked me up while I was still crying and kicking.

 

“Nothing, your daughter just tripped and fell.” He spit the words ‘your daughter’ out like they were poison. As if I was poison and he wanted nothing to do with me. He would not say ‘out daughter’ because he didn’t consider me his.

 

“You ok?” she asked me. I recieved a look from Daniel that warned me to keep my mouth shut, but I ignored it. She needed to know he was lying.

 

‘No. I didn’t…” again he cut me off with his hand over my mouth. I tried to bite, but he pushed harder until it felt as though my teeth would be pushed out of my jaw.

 

“Dear? Is she ok?” my mother was becoming concerned, I wondered why she didn’t leave the room or open the door, then she could have witnessed what he was doing. I assumed she was laying down. Being pregnant can really take it out of you I guess.

 

“She is fine.” He glared at me “I am going to have the kids lay down for a nap, too honey.” He put me down, “Keep your mouth shut.” Then pushed me into my room and shut the door.

 

At that moment I knew two things; One, that he  would never consider me or my brother his children because in his eyes we weren’t; and two, that it would be much harder than I expected to get my mom to believe me, if he was going to keep lying to her. I decided to wait until he wasn’t around, next time he went to work.

 

My brother was already asleep, so I crawled into my bunk above his, and pulled the blankets over me. I could hear my mom talking to Daniel in the next room. I hoped he wasn’t filling her head with lies like he had just finished doing. Then I fell asleep only to wake up a few hours later, it was getting dark and I could hear the television on, the living rooms was on the other side of my wall. The news was on, so it must be my mom, Daniel could not watch the news it was too boring for him.

 

I climbed out of bed, to find my brother still fast asleep. I hoped Daniel was too because I wanted to talk to my mom. I crept out of the room and peeked around the corner. My mom was sitting on the couch with her legs up along it. Trying to get comfortable with her ever-growing stomach. I walked up to her and tapped her shoulder to get her attention.

 

“What’s wrong?” she looked at me and then patted the couch next to her legs. I climbed up, always being careful, I had this idea that if I touched her stomach without her making sure it was ok first, that I would hurt the baby.

 

“Dad was being mean to us today” I whispered looking back to make sure that he wasn’t around. I called him dad simply because it seemed to make my mom happy.

 

“What do you mean?” I still didn’t have her full attention and that worried me. It felt as though she didn’t believe me.

 

“He was making us run up and down the hill in back while you were gone. We had to run and my legs really hurt. He pushed Junior down too. And me too.” I called him Junior because that was what we had called him for as long as I could remember. He was the fifth in line and thus named so as a Junior. However, Daniel didn’t like that so we were supposed to try and stop, but old habits die hard, and I called him by the name I had known him as for years. I figured that I knew him first and thus had the right to call him what I wished.

 

“Did you do something wrong?” I shook my head, already fearing the worst. “Are you sure? Because that isn’t what daddy says.” I began tearing up, I tried not to cry, but it was no use.

 

“He is lying.” I sobbed burying my face into my mom’s shoulder, I hoped she would believe me. I didn’t want to wake him up because then I would get into more trouble, but she didn’t understand how much that hurt.

 

“Ok calm down.” she pushed my hair out of my face. “It’ll be ok, I’ll talk to him.” I didn’t know if that made me  feel better. That just meant next time we were along with him, he would take that out on us too. But what could I do. So I nodded my head, and leaned against her only to fall asleep again.

Chapter 4

There were not a lot of issues over the next few weeks, but that mostly due to the fact that my mom was home