Chapter One: In the Eye of the Storm

"What is this?" Her father growled, a deep scowl on his face, as he weighed the envelope she had given him in his hand. "There weren't many sales this month. That's why..." She was trying to explain, but a backhanded slap to the side of her face had her yelping. Her legs wobbled beneath her from the impact, and she fell hard against the hard tiled floor in the room. Her knees were numb now from the pain; she was accustomed to it.  Tears burned down her eyes from the sharp sting across her cheek, and a few drops trickled down her face, knowing what was to come next following the slap. Her body tensed in anticipation, her mind echoing his order while he spoke, "Get undressed now!" Her hands shook as she struggled with her button. She fumbled as she took her shirt off, turning her face immediately to the wall while she undressed and got on her knees, her face to the wall. She heard the clink of the steel on her father's belt as he unbuckled it. She bit down hard on her lips, tasting blood as she sensed him raise it high behind her in the air, and she closed her eyes for the impact of its hard leather sting on her already bruised back. She had no idea how he could still stand the sight of beating her on there, given how marred it looked with several scars by now. She avoided looking at herself in the mirror, most especially her back, as she would puke when she saw how ruined it was with scars. She hated looking at her face too, as all that would stare back at her if she did was not the once-beautiful and cheerful girl that had grown up loved by her parents.  All that remained now was a shell of herself—a broken, helpless, and miserable young girl of nineteen years enduring the brutality of her once-loving father. The sting failed to come, and she thought perhaps her father had suddenly gotten a change of mind. Perhaps a memory of her late mother had flashed through his mind, and he had realized what he was doing now was wrong. She knew he had loved her mother when she was alive. But those were just wistful thoughts. The man she had known as a father was gone. The belt scalded her back at a time when it had relaxed, and she cried loudly in pain. Had it been she had anticipated it, she wouldn't have screamed as much as she had done, but he had purposely withheld himself from beating her at the time she would have braced herself for it. He loved watching her cry, but he hated hearing her scream when he beat her. There was that manic pleasure he gained from beating her to a pulp with his belt, but the fear of being called out by the neighbors about maltreating his daughter made him gag her most times before beating her. After a while, he had resorted to warning her to hold in her screams while she was beaten, or else he would strangle her himself and feed her corpse to the crows. It was then that Layla knew she had lost her father. She flinched in pain as the force with which he used the belt on her back increased—a punishment for her screaming when he had hit her initially. Her body danced away from the next hit, the pain too excruciating for her to bite down, and she slipped while she tried to scramble away. She made the mistake of rolling to her bottom while she tried to avoid her father's harsh beatings, but he didn't stop. Instead, in his frenzy of beating her, the belt swiped across her stomach and hit the side of her eyes.  She gave out an anguished wail, clutching the side of her face that had been struck. Her moans of agony resounded across the walls of their house, and she fell back hard against the floor, writhing in pain over it. That didn't make her father stop his beating. All his brain processed was that she had ignored his warnings not to scream and attract the attention of the neighbors when beaten again, and that she deserved to be mercilessly punished for it. "Donkor," her stepmother, Vicky, rushed into the room, alarmed by her wails from the hallway she had been eavesdropping from while she was being beaten. She took one glance at her brutalized form on the ground and quickly grabbed her father's—Donkor's—hand before he dished out another beating on her burning skin. "Stop now, or you will kill her," she seethed in his face. Donkor calmed down at her chastisement and lowered the belt in his hand. He ran his hand furiously through his hair, squeezed the envelope containing all her earnings for the month in his hand, hissed, and stormed out of the room. "Layla, again," Vicky bit out as she was distressed by the sight of her. Her bitterness and irritation for her were heavily laced in her words as she spoke them. "You are one exasperating girl. Do you wish to kill my husband?" Layla resisted the urge to laugh at her question. Who wished to kill whom between her father and her? But she knew better than to voice out her thoughts. She was busy whimpering through her breath from the pain coursing through all the parts of her body. When she had screamed, her father had beaten her with brute force, not caring where the hard leather belt touched on her body as he struck her hard over and over again with it. "I will rather have you die than see to the end of my husband, you useless girl," Vicky spat in her face and moved quickly out of the room, as if the sight of her was enough to make her swoon. Of course, she would rather have her dead before Donkor ever did. Layla thought. That man wasn't her father again. He was a different man from the one she had known growing up as a kid. He had transformed into a complete devil. Ever since her mother died when she was six years old, he had gone over the hills. At first, she thought his cold and harsh reaction to her following her mother's death was a result of the pain he felt from her mother's death. Donkor had always been an aggressive man from the time she had known him, but he had never raised a hand against her while her mother was alive. Instead, he cared for her as much as her mother doted on her. But she had soon realized all that he did then was just a facade to impress her mother while she lived and when he had brought in Vicky as his new wife immediately two months after her mother's death. Vicky had as well brought in a son three years older than she was when he had married her. His name was Sam, and from Sam's resemblance to Donkor, Layla was stunned to realize her father had never been faithful to her mother. He was a devilish man inside and out. She knew she wasn't wanted and was hated. She didn't seek his affection any longer, as she had been foolish to do when she was younger.  Nothing she did ever seemed right to him. Even though she had been at the top of her class in her school, he had stopped her schooling, sponsoring Sam's education instead. She had hated Sam for it, but the boy was nothing like his father or his cruel mother, Vicky. He was nice and gentle with her, and had it been he was around when Donkor was beating her, he would have come to her rescue. He was her only comfort in the family, but there wasn't much he could do with her situation. He wasn't always around. He couldn't always be there to save her. She ached for her freedom, but all chances of that were being robbed by Donkor. She had gotten a job as a waitress in a restaurant and bar nearby, and from the time she had begun to make some money, Donkor had suddenly given her a quota to meet as payment for enduring her living with him. He wouldn't let her leave, either, when she told him to. Instead, he had beaten the breath almost out of her until Sam had come.  They had argued intensely that day while she lay on the ground, wallowing in pain. But by the time Sam left again for work, she had borne the brunt of his defending her. She had been beaten into unconsciousness. She shrugged as she remembered that day, shaking her head subtly—a wince escaped her throat as she moved—to push the memory of that day back to the back of her mind, along with several others. The quota she had to meet was too high and ensured she couldn't keep a dime of her hard-earned money to herself, or else she would have escaped this miserable life she had here. Her plight constantly gnawed at her, but no matter how she thought about it, she had no other choice but to continue to endure living with them. But until when?  She silently asked herself. Tears clouded her eyes as she reflected on her situation, and she gave into them. She sobbed into her palms.