Lolita

New Home. Yay?

Melanie's new home was hardly anything like she'd been promised. It was still much better than her old one, but it still wasn't something to be happy about.

This family, the Arnold's, weren't very kind. They ridiculed her often and spent the money that was supposed for taking care of her on cigarettes and beer.

At least they didn't beat her. But Melanie could handle that. What they did was far worse.

They abused her mentally. Everything she did was wrong. She was dumb, she was a showoff, she was too quiet, she was too loud. It didn't matter how hard she tried, she just couldn't win with them.

And what made her really snap was her "siblings". There were two of them, both were older than her but one was a girl and the other was a boy. Their names were Jennifer and Jackson.

Melanie wasn't sure what it was that she did to them, but whatever she did, it must've been really terrible. They spread rumors about her at school, got her into trouble at home, teased her, and so much more.

Nonetheless, Melanie didn't complain. She didn't like this house but it was a lot better than her previous situation. So she put up with it.

All until one day, it was just too much.

On the weekends, the Arnold's would usually go out to spend time together as a family. But they always left Melanie at home alone. They left before she woke up and didn't come back until late at night.

The girl had to learn how to take care of herself so she wouldn't starve. At only seven years old, she had to teach herself how to cook. And the next year when she turned eight (she did not have a birthday party), she had to learn how to take care of the house as well. Her foster parents decided she was old enough to take on some more responsibility. Now, whenever they left for the weekend, she was expected to clean the entire house until it was spotless. And if she didn't, she would get into severe trouble.

Melanie was forced to live this way for nearly three years. She'd been brought to this house at the age of five and a half and finally left when she was eight.

She got into trouble when her teacher called home. A boy had been making fun of her for spelling something wrong in class and Melanie had bitten him. The little boy immediately fell into the role of a victim and the teacher punished Melanie by calling home and putting her in timeout during recess.

Mr. and Mrs. Arnold's were furious. She'd been lectured for two hours on how she was tarnishing their family's reputation.

The little girl knew she would be in trouble with her foster family but she hadn't anticipated the punishment she received. She thought that she would get more chores and be yelled at for an unnecessary amount of time. While those two things did happen, there was a third sentence she had gotten.

Her foster father had announced that she was going to get spanked and she freaked out. She began bawling as painful memories she'd tried so hard to repress came back up. He yelled at her for running away. She hadn't even realized that she ran in the first place.

She kept slipping in and out of reality, she had no idea what was happening. Her heart was pounding and she didn't know what she was doing.

It was only when she heard the scream of pain and fear that she realized what she had just done.

She blinked away her tears and saw her foster father on the floor, Mrs. Arnold's crouched over him. In Melanie's tiny hands was a frying pan and Mr. Arnold's was unconscious.

With a sharp gasp, she dropped the pan and shuffled away into a corner.

The Arnold's family screaming was blocked out and she couldn't focus her brain.