Prince Charming is my Teacher

Chapter 1

"Well, what the hell do you expect me to say?" I asked him as he took another sip of his beer. "I can't know where she is all the time."

"Well, you should learn!" He screamed, his voice slurring as he threw the bottle at my face, making it break instantly as shards stuck to my face. "Another beer!"

"Yes Dad…" I cried as I headed off to the kitchen. He wasn't always this way, really.

It all happened when Mom died, when I watched him kill her. He started drinking all those years ago and took it out on Mom, and one day the fighting got too rough and she was dead. Nobody believed me. Everyone thought I was lying when I said I walked in on them, the broken bottle in his hand and the body of my mother on the black, carpeted floor, her head bashed open and bleeding. The fact was that nobody even bothered to hear my side of the story, he just lied and said that someone broke in and killed her. But I was there. I watched her die right in front of me. The memory stayed in my mind, scarring me after all those years ago.

Now, twelve years later, I'm the one getting the abuse. Out of the four kids that he has, he chose me. He said he could kill me and I believed him. But the problem was that I wasn't anything to him. I wasn't his only son Mark, nor the only daughter with a job Trisha, or Daddy's little girl Abby. It was just me. The unloved and most vulnerable of the kids. Cindy.

I know, the name's kinda old. The story was that I was born on the day that Disneyland had opened, July seventeenth, so I was named after a Disney Princess. But the names were a little odd out of Disney so Mom just shortened and modernized Cinderella. So now, I'm Cindy.

But I have to do everything. I cook and clean and have to make sure Dad eats so I don't get beat too hard. But he gets mad over the stupidest things. If something isn't cooked right, or something isn't cleaned enough, or I don't bring him another beer quick enough, I get beat. Yes I had the scars, yes I had proof and I could call CPS at any moment, but I had to stay with my family because if I wasn't getting beat, Abby would. And I didn't want to get separated either. It was only us girls who lived here, because Mark moved out and got married, but I didn't even know her. I was too busy getting beat to come.

But Trisha and Abby were still here. Trisha was twenty-one and Abby was sixteen, leaving me at eighteen. So I guess I could move out, but I didn't want Abby hurt, and I had no money for a house or anything, not even an apartment. I've asked Mark, but Dad would never allow it. And Trisha had a new hobby for drinking, so I'd have to drive her and her drunk friends home from a bar that's an hour away from here. But I was going to be  a senior, and hopefully after high school I would have enough money to move into something away from here, and take my sisters with me.

"Damn it, Cindy!" He screamed viciously, causing me to make haste and grab him his beer. I came out quickly and gave it to him, and he opened it spastically and drank it down. I left before he could say anything else, or beat me. So I ran to the bathroom and plucked the glass shards out of my face, wiping away most of the blood that spotted it.

And that was only the beginning of summer.

~~~~~~~~~~

Two months passed, and now there was only a month left. It was a Friday, and I was emailing my friend Bethany back and forth to see if I could crash at her place. She just recently moved to a new apartment with her family, but Bethany was the one always there for me. She's been my best friend since kindergarten, since before Mom died. She's been there for everything.