‹ Prequel: Pregnancy: Life or Death?
Show Me a Life With Blood and With Beauty
Demons
Warning: This chapter contains mentions of abuse and rape.
After a couple days of staying together as a group, me and Daryl ventured out on our own to live the life as any couple should. I was sitting on the porch swing holding Miracle in my arms and watching Daryl mess with his crossbow. I kept glancing over at him and then down at our daughter. "What?" I heard him ask me. "Nothing. Can't I just look at my husband whenever I want?" I blushed as I smiled. I heard Daryl mumble something and just keep looking at his crossbow. I looked at him again, "I love you, do you know that?" I said as I looked down at our daughter. I saw Daryl look over to me again, "You mean her or me?" - "Both of you." We were sitting down talking to each other, but then Spencer came over to ask how we were settling in. He kept looking at me, and I smiled trying to be friendly and reply to his question. Daryl took notice and almost stepped in and puffed out his chest. "Well I better get going, my mom is making dinner and wanted me to be there. Catch ya later." All of a sudden I heard Miracle sort of coo and start to squirm in my arms. "And I'll catch you later to little lady." He said as he motioned towards Miracle. He turned around and walked down the street, and I knew I wouldn't hear the last of it from Daryl. "What the hell?!" I heard him say as he looked at me. "Daryl I'm tired of arguing with you on this. We're going to have to start liking these people or pretending because they gave us a roof over our heads. I'm not saying all of them are good but yeah that has yet to be determined." I heard him grunt, and he looked at me "These men are looking at you like you're a piece of meat. Excuse me for standing up to defend you." He started to walk off. I stood there and processed what happened. I hurried after him. "Daryl, I'm so sorry. I know you're trying to protect me." I was honestly sorry. We walked to our house and I started to make a small meal with what little rations we had. I looked at Daryl holding our daughter as I finished preparing what I made. "Tomorrow I'll go get you some actual meat." I heard him say to me. "Okay." I said as I pushed my food around with a fork. Daryl looked over at me with a worried look. "What's wrong?" He asked me concerned. "Ever since we got here I've been treating you so badly." - "Don't cha worry 'bout that." He said as he held our daughter who was tiny compared to him. We finished eating and I went to go wash the dishes and I heard cries and then I walked in and saw Daryl trying to calm Miracle down. "Shh. Daddy is here." I finally went back and put everything away.
I looked over at my husband holding our precious little girl in his arms. He kept looking at her like it was the first day he held her. "You okay?" I said as I sat down. "I.. I.. Just can't... believe I helped create some..something like this." I looked at my daughter who was wide awake kicking her little tiny legs while wrapping her tiny fist around her daddy's finger. "Well, you did. Still can't believe this happened." I said as I rubbed her tiny head. Nobody really knew the real reason behind the name I gave her, except for me. I felt it was finally time to reveal my story to my husband. "Daryl can I tell you something and you promise not to get angry?" He looked over from our daughter and straight into my eyes. I got up and went to grab my backpack and dug into the smaller pocket that nobody really noticed was there. I took out a small book, and breathed in. "You've told me about your past, I feel as your wife I should tell you about mine. Starting with our.. our daughter." I managed to choke out. I pulled out some photos and offered to hold our daughter in fear Daryl would ended up dropping her. He looked down at the photos and flipped them over, and I saw his eyes change. It hurt to even look at them. I saw him look at me, and started telling the story. "Before all this, I had this boyfriend he was really into drugs and I hated that he did them, but I loved him so I looked past all that. Well.. he started to abuse me, in all forms he would verbally abuse me when something wasn't done correctly, physically abuse me whenever he didn't have any drugs, and finally.. he used to sexually abuse me whenever he felt the need." I was crying at this point. Daryl just let stared at the police photos of me bruised and bloody. He placed them down after a point and just held me as I cried. "There's more." I said as I pulled away. Daryl sat there looking into my eyes. "During the sexual abuse he rarely used a condom... I thought I was pregnant and stole some of his money to go buy a pregnancy test and he found out. I took it and it came back negative. He beat me for wasting his drug money. Well a few months down the road I actually came up pregnant. I kept it from him until I really couldn't anymore." I slowly pulled out ultrasound photos and showed them to Daryl who kind of looked at them weird. "That's the baby." I pointed to the tiny spec on the photo. "Well I was about 4 or 5 months along, and he finally found out. Apparently since we lived in a small town umm some of his "co-workers" found out and that night he came home and beat me to bad I ended up losing the baby. I woke up in a hospital, and woke up about 5 hours after arriving there. The stupid pussy beat me and ended up making me pass out and drove to a hospital and left me there. I didn't even get to hold my... my own child." Daryl just looked down at our daughter and looked at me "How can someone be that cruel? I mean I was scared of being a father, but I love her." He pointed to our daughter in my arms. "Do you know what cha were havin'?" He asked me with eyes that looked almost like he was going to cry. "Boy. I already named him, Abel Maddox." I pulled out a tiny necklace with a little tiny Vial on it. "I used to wear this to um have him close to my heart. It has his ashes, or what I had.." I looked down at my daughter in my arms asleep. "Please tell me you left him." I heard my husband ask in an angry tone. "I did. He got arrested and I wrote a thing out and he went to prison, I honestly don't know how long because I left the state after I lost Abel... Strange a miscarriage is what it took to leave his sorry ass." I said with an annoyed tone. "I should probably tell you what this has to do with her." I motioned towards Miracle in my arms. "Well I named her Miracle because when I was in the hospital they told me there was no chance I would ever be able to get pregnant. She was truly a miracle baby." I leaned over and hugged Daryl so tight I felt him tense up. "You gave me something I dreamed of all my life, may have been during a zombie apocalypse but it happened." I saw Daryl just place his hands on either side of my head and just kiss me with such passion. "If I ever see this stupid ass mother fu-" I looked at him as to say "Not in front of the baby." - "If I ever see his sorry *ass* I will end up putting a damned arrow through his skull. Believe me." I pulled out a newspaper clipping of Mac's mugshot. "This is the man you were with?" I saw Daryl raise the clipping up at me. "Young and dumb." I admitted.
We finally decided to go to bed, it took me and Daryl a while to fall asleep because we were both on edge and nervous since we weren't used to sleeping indoors let alone not worrying about walkers. We had Miracle's crib right next to our bed, and I sort of drifted off and I kept looking up at Daryl who was wide awake. I was dosing off until I heard a cry. I jumped out of bed and picked my daughter up and Daryl acted worried. "Is she alright?" he asked me as he started chewing on the skin around his thumb. "Yeah probably just got scared. Plus she needs to be changed." Daryl offered to hold her and I went and grabbed her a diaper. "Can I?" I heard Daryl ask me. "Be my guest." I said as I smiled at him. He had her laying on a bed and she was just kicking her little legs and he started to talk to her. "Okay little lady be gentle with daddy because this is his first time doing this." He started to take her diaper off and I walked him through everything. All of a sudden he started crying. "Did I do something wrong?" I saw my husband look at me worried. "No. She's just getting used to this." I helped him and he finally secured her diaper and she was still crying. I saw Daryl pick her up and hand her to me and quickly walk out of the room. "Daryl!" I kind of yelled as I tried to calm her down. I figured she was hungry so I started to nurse her and she calmed down and I started to look for my husband. "Daryl you didn't do anything. Don't beat yourself up." I said with a concerned tone. "Why doesn't she cry that much when you do that?" He asked looking up at me with tears in his eyes. "She loves you, if she didn't um like you she wouldn't smile towards you. She loves you." He looked up at me again as I was fixing my shirt and I offered him our daughter. "Hi sweetheart." I heard him tell her and she looked at him and sort of smiled. "See she loves you. It's just going to take some time, like it's going to take the two of us time to figure out this whole parenting thing." He got up and walked over to me and hugged me. I saw my daughter yawn and took that as a cue to try to sleep. "Come on." I said to my husband and I watched as he laid our daughter in her crib and crawled into bed. I woke up off and on during the night and checked on Miracle but each time I did I noticed Daryl was already taking care of her. "I just-" I held my hand up. "You're her daddy, and I'm not going to turn down any me time. Thank you." I said as I kissed him. I noticed our daughter started to coo. I couldn't wipe the smile off my face. I went back to bed and soon felt Daryl crawl in next to me. I snuggled up next to him and drifted off again.
(Dream)
"I can't believe this is happening." I said as I walked slowly through the store to pick up a home pregnancy test. "Mac is going to kill me if this is positive." I managed to hide a little bit of money from my side job, of doing nails and hair. I counted it and it came to about $30 and I browsed the random tests on the shelves. I saw another woman doing the same thing and I picked up the same test she did. "Are these things pretty reliable?" I asked quietly as to not draw attention. "Yep." I heard her tell me. I thanked her and hurried to the front to pay for it. I hurried home and checked the time and released Mac was probably at the bar or "work" so I ripped the box open and read the directions for the test. I took it and waited in the floor until the timer went off. I lifted my arm up to read the result, knowing that I wanted to stay in the floor due to not knowing if it was positive. I closed my eyes and my heart beat out of my chest. I flipped the test over and opened my eyes to the world PREGNANT 4-6 weeks. I burst into tears. I looked at my stomach, I wasn't skinny at all but I also didn't have a bump just yet.
The next morning I woke up and checked on my daughter and fed and changed her. She quickly fell back to sleep after I placed her pacifier in her mouth. I laid her between me and Daryl and I felt him snuggled closer to both of us. "Morning." I heard him mumble into his pillow. "Morning" I said as I laid there and watched our daughter just sleep. I saw Daryl start to get up and get dressed. "Can't we stay in bed today?" I asked him. I saw him look at me and our daughter. "What the hell we earned it." He laid back down and I placed our daughter on his chest. We laid there until I heard a knock on the door. "I got it." I heard Daryl say as he handed me our daughter who started crying. I rocked her and walked downstairs. "Nah man. We're okay. Just wanted a family day ya know? If you want we can help-" I heard Daryl say to Rick. I quietly walked into the room and I saw Rick look at me. I was wearing an over sized shirt and some shorts, but you couldn't really tell. "Nah go ahead and enjoy the day brother." I heard him tell Daryl. "You want to hold her?" I offered. He reached his hands out and held her. "She's so small." He told us as she grabbed his finger while she slept. I watched him smile. "You two have the same spark that me and Lori had when Carl was born. I saw his face drop. "I'll be going." He said after a few more minutes. Me and Daryl went back up stairs and just watched our daughter sleep and talked about life up to this point.
(Dream)
I was about over 4 months pregnant I managed to stay kinda small, due to not eating that much. I was in the middle of a nap when I heard the front door slam. It wasn't anything new so I just laid there it was already dark outside so I figured Mac wouldn't get mad. I saw the bedroom door open and Mac jerked me off the bed and I landed in the floor. "You're a damned whore." He screamed as he grabbed me up by my hair. He went to go lift my shirt up to where my bump was already starting to show. "I give you a roof, food, I even fuck you every single night and you go out and get your self knocked up. "Who the fuck is the bastard's father? Huh?" He screamed in my face. "Yo...You." I managed to choke out. All of a sudden I felt Mac grab me by the throat and slam my head up against a wall. "Don't you dare say that. You're no better than those random whores I fuck." I heard him say. "Mac just-" I felt a stinging sensation on my cheek. "I'll leave. I'll raise this baby by myself. I swear you-" - "Nah. Because you're gonna come crying back or beg for child support. I ain't stupid." - "I swear I'm not going to do that. Please just-" All of a sudden he started hitting me and I tried to cover my stomach. "Mac! Please stop!" I managed to choke out as I was in the floor. He went straight for my stomach each blow. I felt the blood between my legs as I blacked out.
I woke up crying. I saw Daryl turn on the light and look at me. We didn't have to say anything he just grabbed me and held me and whispered "You're okay. I got cha." I cried into his shoulder. "I killed my son." I said into his shoulder. "No cha didn't. That monster did. This isn't on you. Really." I saw Daryl get up and walk over to a bag, and pull out a book. I flipped it over and read the title 'Survivors of Childhood Abuse.' - "I know this isn't about your childhood, but Carol gave me this and I figured it might help you out a little to." I looked over at my husband and managed to mouth "Thank you" - "No need to. You're helping me deal with my past and I want to help you deal with yours. Not only for you but for that little girl over there." I saw him motion towards Miracle in her crib. "Maybe you should go talk to Carol. She knows what you're going through." He said. "She lost her daughter shortly before I found you." I heard him say as I looked at my hands. I got dressed and dressed Miracle up and carried her outside. "I'll be at Rick's. If you need anything just come get me okay?" Daryl said as he kissed both of us. I started walking over to Carol's house and knocked. I was surprised to see Jessie's son Sam there eating cookies. "Hello Sam. Is Carol around?" I saw him point to the kitchen. I saw Carol pulling stuff out of the oven. She looked over at me and I sat down at the table. "Can we talk?" I asked her. "Sure. What about if you don't mind me asking." I sighed and tried to get the words out. "Daryl said maybe you might be able to help me." I started. "He told me about Sophia..." I saw her eyes get watery. "Why?" I heard her voice break. "I had a son. His name was Abel. I was 4 months going on 5 months pregnant when my boyfriend at the time beat me so bad I lost him. I'm having nightmares about him and they are getting worst as time goes on..." - "You want to know how to stop them?" I heard her ask me. "I know there's no way to do that, but what can I do?" I asked her crying. "I see Sophia when I sleep. Maybe if I was a better mom..." She started to say. "Carol you can't think that way, you didn't have anything to do with what happened. I mean I guess I should be grateful, because Abel doesn't have to live in this Hell every single day. Bad enough she does." I motioned to my daughter.
Me and Carol talked for hours until we heard a knock on the door. I got up and opened the door and saw Daryl. "Can I come in?" He asked as I moved out of the way. I saw Sam take a bag of cookies and walk out the door. "Bye Miss. Carol!" I heard him say. I smiled. "Oh Daryl so glad you could join us. Would you like to stay for dinner?" I heard Carol ask. "I guess I don't have much of a choice do I?" He motioned towards all the food. We sat down and Daryl kept his eyes on me. We sort of talked and then we finished our meal and we thanked Carol and said our goodbyes. Daryl and I walked home and I noticed it was getting dark. "Come on." I said as I motioned to the front yard of our little house. I laid down and just looked at the sky as night fall suddenly arrived. "I used to come outside all the time and just talk to Abel. I like to think he's looking down on me. He would have loved a father like you Daryl." I said as I grabbed his hand.
After a couple days of staying together as a group, me and Daryl ventured out on our own to live the life as any couple should. I was sitting on the porch swing holding Miracle in my arms and watching Daryl mess with his crossbow. I kept glancing over at him and then down at our daughter. "What?" I heard him ask me. "Nothing. Can't I just look at my husband whenever I want?" I blushed as I smiled. I heard Daryl mumble something and just keep looking at his crossbow. I looked at him again, "I love you, do you know that?" I said as I looked down at our daughter. I saw Daryl look over to me again, "You mean her or me?" - "Both of you." We were sitting down talking to each other, but then Spencer came over to ask how we were settling in. He kept looking at me, and I smiled trying to be friendly and reply to his question. Daryl took notice and almost stepped in and puffed out his chest. "Well I better get going, my mom is making dinner and wanted me to be there. Catch ya later." All of a sudden I heard Miracle sort of coo and start to squirm in my arms. "And I'll catch you later to little lady." He said as he motioned towards Miracle. He turned around and walked down the street, and I knew I wouldn't hear the last of it from Daryl. "What the hell?!" I heard him say as he looked at me. "Daryl I'm tired of arguing with you on this. We're going to have to start liking these people or pretending because they gave us a roof over our heads. I'm not saying all of them are good but yeah that has yet to be determined." I heard him grunt, and he looked at me "These men are looking at you like you're a piece of meat. Excuse me for standing up to defend you." He started to walk off. I stood there and processed what happened. I hurried after him. "Daryl, I'm so sorry. I know you're trying to protect me." I was honestly sorry. We walked to our house and I started to make a small meal with what little rations we had. I looked at Daryl holding our daughter as I finished preparing what I made. "Tomorrow I'll go get you some actual meat." I heard him say to me. "Okay." I said as I pushed my food around with a fork. Daryl looked over at me with a worried look. "What's wrong?" He asked me concerned. "Ever since we got here I've been treating you so badly." - "Don't cha worry 'bout that." He said as he held our daughter who was tiny compared to him. We finished eating and I went to go wash the dishes and I heard cries and then I walked in and saw Daryl trying to calm Miracle down. "Shh. Daddy is here." I finally went back and put everything away.
I looked over at my husband holding our precious little girl in his arms. He kept looking at her like it was the first day he held her. "You okay?" I said as I sat down. "I.. I.. Just can't... believe I helped create some..something like this." I looked at my daughter who was wide awake kicking her little tiny legs while wrapping her tiny fist around her daddy's finger. "Well, you did. Still can't believe this happened." I said as I rubbed her tiny head. Nobody really knew the real reason behind the name I gave her, except for me. I felt it was finally time to reveal my story to my husband. "Daryl can I tell you something and you promise not to get angry?" He looked over from our daughter and straight into my eyes. I got up and went to grab my backpack and dug into the smaller pocket that nobody really noticed was there. I took out a small book, and breathed in. "You've told me about your past, I feel as your wife I should tell you about mine. Starting with our.. our daughter." I managed to choke out. I pulled out some photos and offered to hold our daughter in fear Daryl would ended up dropping her. He looked down at the photos and flipped them over, and I saw his eyes change. It hurt to even look at them. I saw him look at me, and started telling the story. "Before all this, I had this boyfriend he was really into drugs and I hated that he did them, but I loved him so I looked past all that. Well.. he started to abuse me, in all forms he would verbally abuse me when something wasn't done correctly, physically abuse me whenever he didn't have any drugs, and finally.. he used to sexually abuse me whenever he felt the need." I was crying at this point. Daryl just let stared at the police photos of me bruised and bloody. He placed them down after a point and just held me as I cried. "There's more." I said as I pulled away. Daryl sat there looking into my eyes. "During the sexual abuse he rarely used a condom... I thought I was pregnant and stole some of his money to go buy a pregnancy test and he found out. I took it and it came back negative. He beat me for wasting his drug money. Well a few months down the road I actually came up pregnant. I kept it from him until I really couldn't anymore." I slowly pulled out ultrasound photos and showed them to Daryl who kind of looked at them weird. "That's the baby." I pointed to the tiny spec on the photo. "Well I was about 4 or 5 months along, and he finally found out. Apparently since we lived in a small town umm some of his "co-workers" found out and that night he came home and beat me to bad I ended up losing the baby. I woke up in a hospital, and woke up about 5 hours after arriving there. The stupid pussy beat me and ended up making me pass out and drove to a hospital and left me there. I didn't even get to hold my... my own child." Daryl just looked down at our daughter and looked at me "How can someone be that cruel? I mean I was scared of being a father, but I love her." He pointed to our daughter in my arms. "Do you know what cha were havin'?" He asked me with eyes that looked almost like he was going to cry. "Boy. I already named him, Abel Maddox." I pulled out a tiny necklace with a little tiny Vial on it. "I used to wear this to um have him close to my heart. It has his ashes, or what I had.." I looked down at my daughter in my arms asleep. "Please tell me you left him." I heard my husband ask in an angry tone. "I did. He got arrested and I wrote a thing out and he went to prison, I honestly don't know how long because I left the state after I lost Abel... Strange a miscarriage is what it took to leave his sorry ass." I said with an annoyed tone. "I should probably tell you what this has to do with her." I motioned towards Miracle in my arms. "Well I named her Miracle because when I was in the hospital they told me there was no chance I would ever be able to get pregnant. She was truly a miracle baby." I leaned over and hugged Daryl so tight I felt him tense up. "You gave me something I dreamed of all my life, may have been during a zombie apocalypse but it happened." I saw Daryl just place his hands on either side of my head and just kiss me with such passion. "If I ever see this stupid ass mother fu-" I looked at him as to say "Not in front of the baby." - "If I ever see his sorry *ass* I will end up putting a damned arrow through his skull. Believe me." I pulled out a newspaper clipping of Mac's mugshot. "This is the man you were with?" I saw Daryl raise the clipping up at me. "Young and dumb." I admitted.
We finally decided to go to bed, it took me and Daryl a while to fall asleep because we were both on edge and nervous since we weren't used to sleeping indoors let alone not worrying about walkers. We had Miracle's crib right next to our bed, and I sort of drifted off and I kept looking up at Daryl who was wide awake. I was dosing off until I heard a cry. I jumped out of bed and picked my daughter up and Daryl acted worried. "Is she alright?" he asked me as he started chewing on the skin around his thumb. "Yeah probably just got scared. Plus she needs to be changed." Daryl offered to hold her and I went and grabbed her a diaper. "Can I?" I heard Daryl ask me. "Be my guest." I said as I smiled at him. He had her laying on a bed and she was just kicking her little legs and he started to talk to her. "Okay little lady be gentle with daddy because this is his first time doing this." He started to take her diaper off and I walked him through everything. All of a sudden he started crying. "Did I do something wrong?" I saw my husband look at me worried. "No. She's just getting used to this." I helped him and he finally secured her diaper and she was still crying. I saw Daryl pick her up and hand her to me and quickly walk out of the room. "Daryl!" I kind of yelled as I tried to calm her down. I figured she was hungry so I started to nurse her and she calmed down and I started to look for my husband. "Daryl you didn't do anything. Don't beat yourself up." I said with a concerned tone. "Why doesn't she cry that much when you do that?" He asked looking up at me with tears in his eyes. "She loves you, if she didn't um like you she wouldn't smile towards you. She loves you." He looked up at me again as I was fixing my shirt and I offered him our daughter. "Hi sweetheart." I heard him tell her and she looked at him and sort of smiled. "See she loves you. It's just going to take some time, like it's going to take the two of us time to figure out this whole parenting thing." He got up and walked over to me and hugged me. I saw my daughter yawn and took that as a cue to try to sleep. "Come on." I said to my husband and I watched as he laid our daughter in her crib and crawled into bed. I woke up off and on during the night and checked on Miracle but each time I did I noticed Daryl was already taking care of her. "I just-" I held my hand up. "You're her daddy, and I'm not going to turn down any me time. Thank you." I said as I kissed him. I noticed our daughter started to coo. I couldn't wipe the smile off my face. I went back to bed and soon felt Daryl crawl in next to me. I snuggled up next to him and drifted off again.
(Dream)
"I can't believe this is happening." I said as I walked slowly through the store to pick up a home pregnancy test. "Mac is going to kill me if this is positive." I managed to hide a little bit of money from my side job, of doing nails and hair. I counted it and it came to about $30 and I browsed the random tests on the shelves. I saw another woman doing the same thing and I picked up the same test she did. "Are these things pretty reliable?" I asked quietly as to not draw attention. "Yep." I heard her tell me. I thanked her and hurried to the front to pay for it. I hurried home and checked the time and released Mac was probably at the bar or "work" so I ripped the box open and read the directions for the test. I took it and waited in the floor until the timer went off. I lifted my arm up to read the result, knowing that I wanted to stay in the floor due to not knowing if it was positive. I closed my eyes and my heart beat out of my chest. I flipped the test over and opened my eyes to the world PREGNANT 4-6 weeks. I burst into tears. I looked at my stomach, I wasn't skinny at all but I also didn't have a bump just yet.
The next morning I woke up and checked on my daughter and fed and changed her. She quickly fell back to sleep after I placed her pacifier in her mouth. I laid her between me and Daryl and I felt him snuggled closer to both of us. "Morning." I heard him mumble into his pillow. "Morning" I said as I laid there and watched our daughter just sleep. I saw Daryl start to get up and get dressed. "Can't we stay in bed today?" I asked him. I saw him look at me and our daughter. "What the hell we earned it." He laid back down and I placed our daughter on his chest. We laid there until I heard a knock on the door. "I got it." I heard Daryl say as he handed me our daughter who started crying. I rocked her and walked downstairs. "Nah man. We're okay. Just wanted a family day ya know? If you want we can help-" I heard Daryl say to Rick. I quietly walked into the room and I saw Rick look at me. I was wearing an over sized shirt and some shorts, but you couldn't really tell. "Nah go ahead and enjoy the day brother." I heard him tell Daryl. "You want to hold her?" I offered. He reached his hands out and held her. "She's so small." He told us as she grabbed his finger while she slept. I watched him smile. "You two have the same spark that me and Lori had when Carl was born. I saw his face drop. "I'll be going." He said after a few more minutes. Me and Daryl went back up stairs and just watched our daughter sleep and talked about life up to this point.
(Dream)
I was about over 4 months pregnant I managed to stay kinda small, due to not eating that much. I was in the middle of a nap when I heard the front door slam. It wasn't anything new so I just laid there it was already dark outside so I figured Mac wouldn't get mad. I saw the bedroom door open and Mac jerked me off the bed and I landed in the floor. "You're a damned whore." He screamed as he grabbed me up by my hair. He went to go lift my shirt up to where my bump was already starting to show. "I give you a roof, food, I even fuck you every single night and you go out and get your self knocked up. "Who the fuck is the bastard's father? Huh?" He screamed in my face. "Yo...You." I managed to choke out. All of a sudden I felt Mac grab me by the throat and slam my head up against a wall. "Don't you dare say that. You're no better than those random whores I fuck." I heard him say. "Mac just-" I felt a stinging sensation on my cheek. "I'll leave. I'll raise this baby by myself. I swear you-" - "Nah. Because you're gonna come crying back or beg for child support. I ain't stupid." - "I swear I'm not going to do that. Please just-" All of a sudden he started hitting me and I tried to cover my stomach. "Mac! Please stop!" I managed to choke out as I was in the floor. He went straight for my stomach each blow. I felt the blood between my legs as I blacked out.
I woke up crying. I saw Daryl turn on the light and look at me. We didn't have to say anything he just grabbed me and held me and whispered "You're okay. I got cha." I cried into his shoulder. "I killed my son." I said into his shoulder. "No cha didn't. That monster did. This isn't on you. Really." I saw Daryl get up and walk over to a bag, and pull out a book. I flipped it over and read the title 'Survivors of Childhood Abuse.' - "I know this isn't about your childhood, but Carol gave me this and I figured it might help you out a little to." I looked over at my husband and managed to mouth "Thank you" - "No need to. You're helping me deal with my past and I want to help you deal with yours. Not only for you but for that little girl over there." I saw him motion towards Miracle in her crib. "Maybe you should go talk to Carol. She knows what you're going through." He said. "She lost her daughter shortly before I found you." I heard him say as I looked at my hands. I got dressed and dressed Miracle up and carried her outside. "I'll be at Rick's. If you need anything just come get me okay?" Daryl said as he kissed both of us. I started walking over to Carol's house and knocked. I was surprised to see Jessie's son Sam there eating cookies. "Hello Sam. Is Carol around?" I saw him point to the kitchen. I saw Carol pulling stuff out of the oven. She looked over at me and I sat down at the table. "Can we talk?" I asked her. "Sure. What about if you don't mind me asking." I sighed and tried to get the words out. "Daryl said maybe you might be able to help me." I started. "He told me about Sophia..." I saw her eyes get watery. "Why?" I heard her voice break. "I had a son. His name was Abel. I was 4 months going on 5 months pregnant when my boyfriend at the time beat me so bad I lost him. I'm having nightmares about him and they are getting worst as time goes on..." - "You want to know how to stop them?" I heard her ask me. "I know there's no way to do that, but what can I do?" I asked her crying. "I see Sophia when I sleep. Maybe if I was a better mom..." She started to say. "Carol you can't think that way, you didn't have anything to do with what happened. I mean I guess I should be grateful, because Abel doesn't have to live in this Hell every single day. Bad enough she does." I motioned to my daughter.
Me and Carol talked for hours until we heard a knock on the door. I got up and opened the door and saw Daryl. "Can I come in?" He asked as I moved out of the way. I saw Sam take a bag of cookies and walk out the door. "Bye Miss. Carol!" I heard him say. I smiled. "Oh Daryl so glad you could join us. Would you like to stay for dinner?" I heard Carol ask. "I guess I don't have much of a choice do I?" He motioned towards all the food. We sat down and Daryl kept his eyes on me. We sort of talked and then we finished our meal and we thanked Carol and said our goodbyes. Daryl and I walked home and I noticed it was getting dark. "Come on." I said as I motioned to the front yard of our little house. I laid down and just looked at the sky as night fall suddenly arrived. "I used to come outside all the time and just talk to Abel. I like to think he's looking down on me. He would have loved a father like you Daryl." I said as I grabbed his hand.