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Prologue
Angel
The sunlight streaming in feels out of place.
Days like today are meant to be shrouded in darkness.
Bad things only happen in the black of night.
That’s how things are supposed to be.
The limited amount of cartoons I’ve watched tells me so.
My experience has been different.
Time of day doesn’t factor into the traumas I’ve endured.
The cartoons lie.
Unlike the bird that gets up and runs away after being hit in the head with an anvil, Momma doesn’t move.
My eyes dart from the pool of red spreading across the floor to the hammer.
Maybe that’s the difference.
Daddy didn’t have an anvil like the coyote had.
Wetness drips down my cheeks, and I swipe at it repeatedly. If Daddy sees, he’ll be angry.
Making Daddy angry is never a good thing.
He’s always angry, though.
At me.
At the world.
But mostly Momma.
Women will never learn.
She had it coming.
If she’d just done what she was told…
Correcting her is the only way she’ll learn.
But Momma never learns.
As her skin turns ashen before my eyes, I know her lessons end today.
“What a fucking waste,” Daddy says with a chuckle, his foot lashing out and hitting Momma’s side.
She doesn’t move like she normally does. She doesn’t cry out in pain. She doesn’t beg him to stop.
The silence is as strange as the sunlight coming in through the curtains.
It doesn’t belong.