The Tormented

Chloe had always had a great relationship with her mother. They would always play games and had a mother daughter night when she was off work, that is what Chloe remembers the most about her mother. That was until her mother got remarried when Chloe was nine. The man she married, Dave, seemed like the dream husband and stepfather. It wouldn't be another two years before he showed the "stepfather" that he really was. That was when Chloe's world came crashing down around her at the hand of her new "daddy".
It started when they moved away from Chloe's entire family and all of her friends that she had since she was in elementary school. She was heartbroken and couldn't understand why Dave wanted them to move that far away, to be so isolated. She was eleven at this time and it was odd to her but she didn't say anything. All she knew was that something was really off.
"Dave, why do we have to move so far away?" Chloe pouted as she was crammed into the backseat with her two younger brothers.
"Well, its closer to my work and the house is so big that it is big enough for you and your brothers," he answered as they were slowly approaching the new house.
The house was an olive green, that reminded Chloe of baby vomit and was two stories tall, from what Chloe could see just from the outside. When she walked into the house her mouth dropped. It was huge! It had a fireplace and a big kitchen. Everything was at least twice as big from any house they had lived in before. She went upstairs to look at the bedrooms. Her mother had told her that the first room on the left was hers. Chloe opened the door and giggled with excitement. She did, in fact, have the smallest bedroom, but it was like a room fit for a princess. The walls were a light purple with real hardwood floors and a big window that almost took up one wall.
"Is it nice?" asked a voice behind her. Chloe could tell that it was her stepfather's voice.
"It's perfect," replied Chloe as she started spinning in her new bedroom.
It was like a dream come trie. She had her own space and soon her new friends started coming over. She wa sone of the popular girls at school, Chloe had never been popular before. Yet, no one knew that her life was full of misery. She didn't tell anyone, but the light in her eyes slowly began vanishing. The smile she had held back her tears, on the outside she was a fun loving girl but on the inside she was screaming. The act was almost too hard to handle. She was a cannon ready to explode.
No one knew when she got home she had to clean the house from top to bottom everyday, she was the modern day Cinderella, or if she misbehaved (or something wasn't clean enough) she got spanked with a two by four and occassionally they broke over her. It was something she got used to, sometimes Dave was nice enough to let her eat soap, but his weapon of choice was the two by four.
"No, please," cried Chloe when her stepfather went to spank her again for him having a bad day.
"Turn around," he ordered.
She did as she was told, but kept moving right before he swung. This was the first and only time she disobeyed. Dave grabbed her with all of his force trying to make her bend down so that he could spank young Cloe. Dave was over six foot tall and had big muscles. He worked out almost everyday when he got home from work, so he could easily man handle a twelve year old who only weighed about eighty pounds.Chloe had begun to control her food intake (more than her parents already did, they didn't want a "fat girl"). That was the only thing she could control in her hectic fear riden world. When Dave grabbed her Cloe began to scream as loud as she could hoping that someone would hear her.
"Stop screaming or I'll hit your kneecaps instead," he hissed in her ear.
Chloe heard his threats but at that moment she did not care what he did. She was going to make someone hear her. She just wanted someone to save her. Her mother was in the other room on the computer, she was the one person that was supposed to save her and protect Chloe. Instead, she was just listening to her daughter scream and not do a thing. That was what typically happened in the household. 'What kind of mother are you?' Chloe yelled inside her head. She wanted to say it outloud but knew the punishment would be ten times worse if she did.
"Dave, let her go. She is giving me a headache," said her mother walking into the room.
Dave stopped for that night, but it was not the end of her torment. It seemed to get worse when she struggled or if her mother said anything. She knew what was going on but turned a blind eye. When he figured out she started to harm herself by cutting he held a blade to her neck and told her that he would slit her throat if she did it again and then at Christmas she was so scared that she wet herself and he just laughed in her face.
"I have never scared someone so much that they pissed themselves," he laughed.
Chloe was fourteen when this happened and the torment had been going on for three years.
After that day she made it her mission to get out of that house, it did not matter how. Chloe knew if she stayed much longer either Dave would kill her or she would take her own life. She moved into her biological fathers house not long after the Christmas incident. Her father did not know what was going on until she flinched when he raised his voice at her.
"I'm not going to hurt you," he said trying to soothe her.
No matter what he said it wasn't going to fix it. The damage was already done. She was scared of any man when they got mad.
When Chloe was getting ready to turn nineteen she decided she wanted a relationship with her mother. When Chloe got ahold of her the mother was still with her tormentor.
"Why are you still with him?" Chloe asked bluntly.
"Because I love him. And don't you start speaking badly of him. You were the one who left," her mother said.
'It was always my fault' thought Chloe rolling her eyes.
"Don't you understand how messed up I am now from what he did to me? You let him do that. I am now scared that my boyfriend is going to hurt me like Dave did"
"Don't be a drama queen," was her only retort.
Chloe, at that point, had enough. How dare her mother say that? She knew everything that happened. She made up excuses for why Chloe couldn't go over to a friends house because she couldn't walk or why she had a bruise on her face. For years she believed it was her fault everything happened to her, that she deserved it, but Chloe was not that scared fourteen year old anymore. She was strong.
"You let this man hurt your only daughter. You know what happened to me and you stayed, but remember you could have stopped it when you think of why I don't have a relationship with you. All you ever did was break me and laughed when I cried. That is not right and that is not being a parent. I don't entirely blame him, I blame you the most because he was not my parent, that was supposed to be you. I am going to be more that you will ever be," Chloe said and hung up the phone.
Chloe sat there and cried. Her mother could only blame her for what had happened. Chloe had to make herseld believe she was better off without having a relationship with her mother. She had to understand that nothing would ever change.
Later that night she wrote a letter to her mother of everything that she was too scared to say outloud and set it on fire. Chloe watched the letter until it was nothing more than a pile of soot. Chloe felt a lot better and since that day she hasn't talked to her mother and has never looked back.