Each of the novels in The Devil's Rules series is a standalone book that may be read in any order you wish.  

They're bound together by the Devil's game, where the rules to win are to endure each of the seven deadly sins.  

Face your fears. Release the trigger and find the freedom to conquer the Devil's Rules.   

Let's Play...

Monsters aren't under the bed. They live in the car parked outside your house.

The terror was the theft of childhood innocence. It tore the center out of Woody and Vette, and changed their destiny. The terror was also the taking of seven-year-old Alice’s life in the cruelest way possible, leaving eight-year-old Betty alive to remember the nightmare of her friend’s kidnapping and death by a serial killer.

In The Urge, the families move on but their lives are forever entwined. They know monsters aren't  under the bed. Monsters live in the car parked outside their house. They hide behind the bedroom door. They wear white masks. 

The serial pedophile continues undetected. One by one. Year after year. He’s right in front of them but somehow invisible. The serial killer now lives in prison, sending letters to Betty, the one that got away. Somebody has to confront them. 

Someone does.

He calls himself the Good Samaritan, but he’s a killer, too. He kills the worst of the worst, the convicted sex offenders whose targets are children. The Good Samaritan thinks he’s doing the world a favor by removing them forever. But it’s a conundrum. The damage has already been done.

Take a trip through the minds of the killers, the victims, and the pedophiles. All those twisted from childhood will twist together in the end. Read The Urge to find out how.

The soul of the psychological thriller, The Urge, is LUST.

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Read Chapter 1  - below.

 “…, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.” Matthew 18:6 

2008

Date of Birth: 03/17/1988   Sex: F   Race: W   Weight: 167   Height: 508

Night pressed its black shadow into the alley, opened its mouth, and exhaled. Walls became sticky and wet with air too thick to breathe. Air that needed to be sucked through a straw and swallowed. Bloated gnats infested a nearby dumpster overflowing with rotting garbage, but it was the woman’s stench that threatened to close his throat. 

She reeked of cat urine - virtually jumped into a pool of it, touched bottom, and swam until her fingers got pruney. Holding his breath, he knelt down to get a closer look and smiled. Chalk-colored hair clung to her face like greasy clumps of pasta, and a worn-out rug of a coat hung from her bones. Her bedroom was a cardboard box, her bureau a shopping cart. Life was the thief that had picked her pockets bare, stole her youth, and left her invisible, unwanted, and never to be missed. She was no one’s mother, no one’s daughter. She was no one. That’s why he chose her. Decaying society had made her no better than a lab rat, but to him she was better. Shrouded in abject poverty and filth, she went unnoticed, and her anonymity made her priceless. 

 Mice, squirrels, and rabbits had been his test subjects. Most were trapped in parks, some from his back yard. Every so often an opossum, raccoon, or coyote ventured into his neighborhood. Consequently, he capitalized on his good fortune and the animal population decreased. But those studies had gone as far as they could. His research required that he prey upon big game now. 

Duplicating zoologists’ methods of monitoring large animals by attaching an electronic tag collar was implausible. Humans aren’t easily tagged. He’d found her at the soup kitchen, where he’d purchased her medical history, age, and weight for the price of food, and tracked her to this place. 

A week ago, she’d wolfed down the muffin he’d handed her in four gluttonous bites and was looking for more. Not today. Huddled into a corner of her box, all she wanted was water and a blanket. 

He tucked the blanket around her, set two bottles of water near her, and began charting her symptoms: retinal hemorrhaging of the eyes, impaired vision, burning of the mouth and throat, nausea, vomiting, severe stomach pains, diarrhea, dizziness. 

She wasn’t much older than him, and she wasn’t going to get any older. Judging from her rapid heartbeat, the convulsions would begin soon. Compiling her symptoms, he had deduced her internal organs were hemorrhaging, there was fluid buildup in her digestive tract and lungs, and her liver and kidneys were shutting down. She would die of kidney failure in approximately forty-eight hours.

All this from an innocuous, jelly-glazed oatmeal muffin. His last test subject’s symptoms progressed too rapidly. The thirty-eight-year-old man dropped like a rock. He’d adjusted the recipe -- fewer powdered seeds, a tad less toxic jelly -- and voila`. Perfection. 

The muffin’s concealed ingredients attacked the body as a viral flu, but it was a poisonous glycoside that brought about death. The best part? It was undetectable. 

This study was going well. Looking at his watch, he realized it was time to go. He hated to. The end was so gratifying. He’d be back to follow her demise, close out her chart, and conclude this experiment.

 To stop the cycle of future victims, precise procedures had to be followed. There were more subjects on his growing list, so these results had to be exact. 

He wasn’t the priest that saw one of these people and passed by on the other side of the road. He wasn’t a Levite, who did the same. He was the Good Samaritan who went to the infected person and made them right.

As he turned to leave, a fragile whisper slipped from the box.

“Thank you, sir. Thank you.” 

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What's NEXT in The Devil's Rules series? Scroll down.

Coming Soon
​​

There’s a secret buried deep in prairie soil where four women suffer the cycle of domestic abuse. 

It’s 1978. In a mansion sixty miles west of Chicago, a man and his wife are found dead. Ruled a murder-suicide, the house is sealed tight as a coffin, locking the remains of their domestic violence inside. Nothing is removed, except the bodies.

Eighteen years have passed, and Clarissa Trenton, the daughter, and only heir to over 9,000 acres of emerald-green fields, returns to the stately home where her father and stepmother died.

A tightly woven backstory reveals what led up to the deaths of the Trentons, and coincides with Clarissa’s return. Clarissa opens the mansion and her third eye to realize that her parents’ deaths weren’t the result of murder-suicide. It was a cruel, well-planned homicide. The murderer is close. Watching. Clarissa’s prepared to find the murderer before the predator returns to kill her. She hesitates, is ensnared, and grossly underestimated. Then the prey became the predator. 

Some Girls Kill is a standalone novel. Its soul is envy. 

Currently seeking agency representation for this thriller perched on the fence post of terror. Some Girls Kill, an 92,000-word novel, showcases the power of women living in the midst of abuse. 

Some Girls Kill exposes ENVY.  

 Read Chapter 1  - below. 

1978 – Birthing Murder 

There's no need to go barefoot with those two upstairs distracted, not listening for an intruder. How careless of them. 

The sound of bed springs grinding echo through the halls.

A barefoot shadow glides past the broad-shouldered fireplace, past the mahogany-paneled dining room, and comes to a stop in the center of the rotunda. The round room’s three-story spiral staircase curls and clings to the outer walls.

If they knew it was their last time, would they be doing it any differently, trying new positions? 

The stairwell amplifies every disgusting sound they make. Hard-pounding staccato gasps grow louder, fiercer. 

They’re coming to the crescendo, luring me in. 

Clothes slip from the curves and edges of Nova’s body. The intruder takes possession of the name Nova, empowered by the heady, delusional strength of its meaning. 

New, I will be new. Free of them. I am Nova. 

Humidity penetrates the mansion, soaking it. Moist, warm heat slides onto Nova’s skin with the removal of each piece of clothing. July is beating down on the main house, roasting it like a well‐done piece of meat. 

My nipples are erect.

Chandeliers sparkle, gilt mirrors shine, and the wood-work gleams. 

Being naked in this mansion that screams ‘we’re rich and you’re not’ is stirring. Knowing they’re going to die today excites me.

The intruder knew poverty intimately. Growing up poor meant fast-food was a luxury, and paper plates were reusable. Nova was born licking love off a plastic knife. There were no silver spoons. When a person hasn’t got much, they fight for more. Nova learned to appreciate people rather than things. It was apparent to Nova that Ross Trenton didn’t see it that way. 

Ross was born into a snotty rich class of bigots that taught him to manipulate and exploit people, use them up. 

I’m sick of being used. 

Money was clearly Ross’s driver. Money, women, and power. 

That bitch upstairs is just like him. 

To Nova, she was a backstabbing, twofaced, whimpering gold-digger, and that together, they were a match made in hell.

They deserve to die, and no one will blame me when it’s over. No one. 

My breath is coming quicker. 

Skin slides against skin as the intruder raises both arms like the wings of an airplane. Swooping and gliding amid colors from the sun piercing the stained‐glass domed ceiling three flights above. Fly playing to the clock. 

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Nova touches the cuckoo clock pendulum, stopping the movement. 

Silence. Except for them. 

Drawn to the banister’s base where the finial, a bronze sculpture of a wood nymph holds the stems of glass, tear-drop flowers. Suspended from a single glass petal hung her panties. Nova lifts them from the glass petal as a person would a rotting mouse, with the panties dangling an arm’s length away. 

“In a hurry Ross?” It’s a whisper they don’t hear. “Filthy pigs.” Looking up the stairs, words become louder. “Too damn lazy to pick up after yourself?” 

I’m being brave.

Protected by rubber gloves Nova’s fingers, barely touching the underwear, separate. Pink, silk panties drop into the garbage sack that holds her things. The panties are torn apart. Her khaki shorts on the floor are split in two. As usual the phantom-like figure that no one takes notice of has some straightening up to do and tosses the shorts into the sack. 

Nova’s clothes are neatly folded and stacked inside a plastic bag across the room. Hers are strewn about, shredded, like he ripped them off. It all goes in the sack. 

Enticed up the stairs by their open-throated frenzy, something wet slides between Nova’s toes. Instinctively that foot jerked from the step. 

What is that blood? 

A quick inspection reveals Nova isn’t bleeding, but obviously someone else was. Balancing on one leg, her blouse is pulled from the sack and used to scrub between toes, feet, and up the ankle for good measure. 

My footprint’s on the step. 

“Oh Ross,” slips from their bedroom. 

I want to drive stakes in their eyes and use a dull razor to play tick‐tack‐toe on their bodies.

That’s not the plan. The bloody stair is wiped clean, and Nova heads back down.

Wearing only a shower cap and rubber gloves, Nova moves the clothes to be donned ‘after’ to the bathroom under the staircase and puts them next to the shower. The towel and washcloth are exactly where they’d been placed earlier.  

The naked intruder meticulously arranges the gold pocket watch and note on the mantel, then strolls to the den to lift the .44 Magnum from its perch on the wall. The cylinder is loaded with six hollow‐point bullets. 

It’s much easier to move without clothes. 

Nova is again in the round room, holding the thick wooden edge of the beveled glass back door open. There will be no stopping once it slams shut. 

“On your mark. Get set. Go.”  

Heavy wood smacks together. Like a thunder clap it crashes and ricochets up three flights. Every window in the rotunda rattles and shivers with the resounding thud. It propels the killer across the room to the pocket watch perched on the mantel. A touch to the gold latch impels the engraved cover to snap open, releasing the music. It’s as if a tiny harpsichord has been trapped inside the watch. Music echoes upward to the dome. “Shall We Gather at the River” is swirling notes around the room, swaying Nova’s lovely curves to the hiding place under the staircase. 

Did they think I’d walk away—forget it?

I hear them. They’re coming down to see me. 

All of me.  

With the gun held firmly in a two-fisted grip, Nova waits. 

“Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
 

4 Months before - First Memory 

Sixty miles west of Chicago, a farmer’s daughter sat on the covered balcony outside her bedroom. She didn’t know life in this house would end in four months. At fifteen, Clarissa Trenton was concerned with passing her driver’s license written test. Not the driving part. Her dad, Ross taught her how to drive at the age of ten when her feet could touch the pedals. That’s how it worked on the farm, but she still had to study for the written part. Though not today, she’d left the instruction manual inside her bedroom. She needed quiet time to do her daily exercises. 

Clarissa swayed on the cushioned glider with a warm comforter wrapped around her, fluffy slippers on her feet, and Queenie, her semi-feral black cat, asleep on her lap. 

Queenie should have been named King, but when Clarissa named him, she didn’t look there. He wasn’t fully black either. There was a white spot on his neck. And he wasn’t feral, only slightly aloof, which meant he was a house cat living on a farm that could hold his own with the untamed cats that lived in the outbuildings. Except, Queenie never went beyond Clarissa’s bedroom balcony. He’d never been in a boxing ring with a wild cat. Silly details. Clarissa loved him, and he loved her back. That’s all that mattered.

Clarissa pulled the comforter over her head like a hoodie, making Queenie nestle deeper under the warm blanket. Her thighs hummed with Queenie’s full-bodied purring. 

Inhaling, her nostrils stung cold. Air blew out white from her puckered lips as her thoughts took her back to her second memory. While others did calisthenics to keep in shape, she did brain exercises for clearer visions. Her grandma, Adelaide Trenton, Addi, trained her to strengthen her gift of second sight. Addi had it. So did Clarissa. It coursed through the veins of Addi’s German Gypsy family from generation upon generation.

Addi taught her to pay close attention to her visions, to write them down. Clarissa’s favorite exercise was to remember as far back as she could. Her first memory of the Christmas tree, when she was furniture walking, made her stomach clench. She skipped it, going instead to the next where she was riding in the car and feeling really pissed off. Not like her at all. 

“You are so bright,” Halla, the Trenton’s housekeeper would say, although it had nothing to do with intellect. She meant bright as a yard light shining over everyone with joy. Clarissa was so thrilled with life she would squeal; high-pitched squeals of a baby pig being squished under the weight of its mother. Squealing was Clarissa’s way of expressing her love of life. For those who weren’t prepared, it was disturbing. 

In that second memory, the other woman in the car was not prepared. Clarissa had completed the squealing portion of the ride, and was merely sitting in the front seat between her mother, who was driving, and the woman overflowing in the passenger seat who smelled old. 

Mama’s wrist is tinkling. 

The shiny gold charm bracelet jingled like Christmas reindeer. Clarissa tucked I-muck, her floppy doll with yarn dreadlocks, button eyes, and cross-stitched smile, between her legs. I-muck was her word for ice cream, and for her doll, her two favorite things. 

Halla, the Trenton’s housekeeper, knew what I-muck meant. Just depended on where Clarissa pointed. 

Clarissa covered I-muck with her white blankey that was bordered with the softest tassels. Once settled she began brushing one of the tassels back and forth across her right cheek while simultaneously sucking on two fingers from her left hand. Always the middle and ring fingers. She snuggled into the seat, and kept to herself.

"You need to take that blanket away from her," the smelly-old woman ordered.

Clarissa clutched her blankey tight and glared at the woman, as if daring her to try.

Not long after that, blankey went missing. 

Clarissa smiled as she recalled that time in her life so many years prior and made a mental note. 

Life is hard, don't take away anyone’s blanket.

Pulling the comforter close around her and Queenie, Clarissa felt the first touch of spring in the air. The brown front yard was succumbing to early blades of green pushing upward as dirt-filled mounds of snow melted and grew small. Filthy black patches of the icy mud lined both sides of the lane. 

From spring to summer, from summer to fall, and fall to winter the seasons merged beautifully. Winter to spring had melting snow slurping soil like brown syrup on shaved ice, turning northern Illinois uglier than shit. 

‘Major’ Samuel Trenton, Clarissa’s grandfather and Addi’s husband, repeatedly said in his slow, baritone voice, “You can’t shine shit, but you can roll it in glitter.” 

This time of year needed truckloads of glitter. Even so, it was nice waking early on the farm, especially to the promise of spring. With no corn or soybeans growing in the fields, she could see for miles. It reminded her of how life used to be when she was a little girl.

A person was born a worker if they grew up on an average farm of four-hundred-fifty acres. Her family farm was not average. It was over nine-thousand acres with lots and lots of hired hands, housemaids, cooks, and groundskeepers. Back when her mother was there and Clarissa was pedaling a tricycle, she had chores. Halla made sure of that.

A year after the blanket fiasco, Clarissa was deemed old enough to get a job, but only on the farm. Each morning before breakfast, Clarissa’s chores were to gather the eggs. Simple enough. Open fridge. Extract eggs. Done. 

That’s not how it worked on the farm. 

5:00 a.m., grab a basket, go outside, cross the farmyard, go to the chicken house, collect eggs. A clear-cut job description that anyone could understand. Rain, shine, snow, didn’t matter, that was her job. 

Clarissa’s mother, the figurehead of HR in their home, should have realized Clarissa did not meet all of the requirements for the position, but back then her mother was preoccupied. She stayed mostly to herself. In her third-floor studio, painting. Or taking cover in a corner.

Regardless, having been assigned the task, Clarissa was expected to complete it. No excuses.

The problem was, in order to open the door to the chicken house, Clarissa had to be able to reach the handle. She could not. She lacked the height requirement. On that particular day, the stool Halla had put there for her to step onto, was missing. Having lived through the blanket fiasco, Clarissa was a hardened walk-on-her-tiptoes and swing-from-a-limb kind of girl, who was not about to let the height barrier stop her from accomplishing her mission. She also wanted eggs for breakfast, which was a great motivator.

She spotted a broken window at eye level with a few shards of glass jutting from the frame. Viewing it as easy entry, Clarissa tossed the basket in, climbed through, and set about her task. 

She was aware that chickens don’t take kindly to losing their eggs and knew from experience their beaks were sharp as knives. It didn’t dissuade her. Stalking her prey, Clarissa silently scanned the multilevel-roosting area for sleeping chickens. Starting at the bottom, she eased her hand under each feathered creature to extract one egg per chicken, then carefully placed the warm egg in her basket. Sometimes if she was lucky, a chicken would lay two eggs, but she didn’t count on it. Consequently, to fill the basket, she had to dig under a bunch of chickens.

Two crazed chickens with wings extended charged at her. The only weapon she held was a basket full of perfectly placed eggs. It was fight or flight. 

She chose flight. Clarissa protected her breakfast eggs by throwing the basket out the window, and hurled herself after it. Mid-flight she felt the searing pain of her upper thigh being slit open by a shard of broken glass. Once on the safe side of the wall, she no longer felt the pain. She was the victor. She gathered the salvageable eggs, and had accomplished her task. She wore her life’s tattoo of a scar on her right thigh proudly. They ate scrambled eggs that morning.

Clarissa chose sunny memories that floated on summer nights where curtains lifted and swelled to the rhythm of buzzing crickets, the howl of coyotes, and owls calling. A cloud of ease to muffle the secret screams. She recalled nights lying in the front yard with stars as her ceiling. She’d drift to sleep, and wake to find herself tucked in her bed the next morning. She didn’t know if it was her father or mother who carried her to bed. 

She was at peace in her yard bed. Safer. 

Although an only child, Clarissa wasn’t alone. She had playmates. Garrett Santos, the housekeeper, Halla’s son, and Joseph Linhart, the boy from the farm across the road were like two older brothers. All three would hop on their bikes to spend the day riding the country roads for miles. If they were thirsty, they’d stop at a farmhouse and ask for water, most times not knowing the occupants. No stranger-danger there. They would be welcomed in, given something to drink, and at times treated with a cookie then sent on their way. All the farmettes, all the land around them belonged to Clarissa’s family. Fifteen square miles of land with the Trenton’s main house smack dab in the center. 

Her Grandpa Major compared their landholdings to an island. “Throw in some pink beaches, add five-square miles, and call us Bermuda,” he’d say.

They owned all but Joseph’s little family farm across the road. So yeah, they were given water and treated nice whenever they got thirsty. Clarissa never thought of herself as any different from the next person. She was just another farmer’s daughter growing up in the country.

There were days Clarissa, Garrett, and Joseph climbed to the top rafters of the barn and swung on a rope to drop twenty feet below onto soft scratchy mounds of hay. A poof of dry sweet earth filled the air with each drop. 

Sometimes, Joseph the oldest of the group, hung on the ladder that led to the hay loft, waiting for one of the hogs in the barnyard below. When positioned right, he’d let go and drop onto the back of an unsuspecting hog. He’d grab the hog’s ears like a horse’s reins, and ride around the pen. 

Clarissa and Garrett never tried that. It was a hoot to watch, but Clarissa worried she’d miss the pig and hit the ground. Even as a child Garrett was a realist who said it was an idiotic thing to do.

“No matter the outcome, it’s bad for the pig and bad for me,” he’d say. 

Truth be told, the pigs were not thrilled with this practice. Eventually her dad moved all the livestock, including the hog set-up, to their other farmsteads. Away went the mess, smell, and riding of pigs. 

Clarissa parted the comforter, softly set Queenie on the glider next to her, and stood to stretch. Looking across the road to Joseph’s family farm, she heard the distant clanking of metal feeder lids dropping, lifting, and dropping again as pigs raised the lids with their snouts, eating, squealing, and grunting. Joseph and his father raised hogs. 

She wondered if Joseph still rode pigs now that he was a grown man. Nah, probably not. Those days were long gone like her mother, Sarah, who disappeared years ago. 

It took her dad a few months to replace Sarah with look-a-like Lauree. 

Everything was different. Everything was the same. Lauree, Clarissa’s stepmother, was due to give birth to a baby boy. Clarissa, having passed the sex education class at school, knew there was no test to determine the sex of a baby while in utero. Still, Lauree insisted she knew for sure. 

Her stepmother swore she was having a boy. She hadn’t had any morning sickness during the first trimester. She craved sour and salty foods, not sweets. And she was carrying low. All the signs pointed to it being a boy. 

Clarissa was excited about the baby, whether a boy or a girl. Her dad Ross and Lauree had already picked the baby’s name. Nathaniel. Clarissa couldn’t wait to have a sibling so all eyes would not be on her. 

Getting used to a stepmother had not been easy. Lauree tried to draw close to Clarissa. She’d confided in Clarissa that since her birth, Lauree had grown up in fifteen different foster homes. For her eighteenth birthday, Lauree was given the opportunity to watch her few belongings being shoved into a black garbage sack just before she and the bag were thrown out of that last house.

Clarissa did care for Lauree as a person, and was astounded after growing up so unloved, Lauree wasn’t jaded. She was scattered and forgetful, though Lauree didn’t see it. Lauree talked nonstop, jumping from one subject to the next with no point on the horizon. She’d ramble on constantly as she drove Clarissa to drill team practices, taking her shopping for clothes, or picking her up from school. 

“You know I was stoned as a child,” Lauree would start.

“What?” Clarissa turned to her stepmother in the car. Lauree’s body close to the steering wheel, the seat pushed all the way forward. She looked like a racecar driver without a helmet.

“The houses I lived in had up to eight children, and most of them cruel, spiteful, malicious, and violent. Look there’s a hawk,” Lauree pointed.

“You were stoned?” Clarissa pulled her back to the subject.

“Yeah. Well one day, five of the older kids decided to play junkyard dog, and I was the dog. They started throwing stones, more like big rocks, at me. I got a concussion and was moved to another house.”

“Oh, okay.” Clarissa, learning her stepmother wasn’t a druggie, let the subject die. 

Clarissa couldn’t wait to get her driver’s license, if only for the peace and quiet it would bring to the car. 

Lauree was kind to Clarissa, but Clarissa kept a distance between them, just as she had with her mother. Maybe because Ross wasn’t nice to Lauree. He hadn’t been nice to her mother, Sarah either. Their common denominator.

Not nice. 

A strange term to describe her father’s actions.

Clarissa recognized the secret screams and the consequential bruises. Lauree wore them, just as Sarah had. Red spotted skin that morphed from purple, to green, to yellow. Marked skin camouflaged with heavy-stage makeup. Clarissa recalled the long sleeves her mother wore in summer. Sarah struggled to conceal Ross’s rageful leftovers. It didn’t fool Clarissa. Lauree was covering up with the same result. 

Clarissa knew and was continuously cloaked in anxiety.

Neither Lauree, nor Sarah could muffle their screams, or soften the thud of their bodies hitting the floor. Slamming against a wall. Pounding down the stairs.

Clarissa was torn between love and hate for her father, for her mother. Who was at fault? Was Clarissa the one to blame? She never got an answer. Her mother vanished, leaving Clarissa behind. 

Lauree appeared. The next target. She wore the familiar marks. Fully pregnant, her bruises gained in frequency. Cuts and bruises marred her throat and inflamed her face, arms, and legs. No region was spared, not even her swollen belly.

Clarissa’s nostrils stung cold as she inhaled deeply and concentrated on blowing away those thoughts. It took three tries. Warmth touched her face as she held the door open to her bedroom, waiting for Queenie to saunter in from the balcony. Clarissa followed. 

Closing the door opened the chill of her first memory.

Her eyelids fluttered as her focus shifted in reverse, carried by the waft of Halston perfume bursting thick in the room. 

“Mama?” Clarissa asked.  

The tinkling bracelet heralded Mama’s arrival, her musky, cedar scent bathed the room. Today it mixed with pine from the spindly Christmas tree Daddy brought home. 

Mama is laughing at Daddy. At his choice. 

Clarissa stood in her playpen, holding tight to the wooden rail for balance, and babbled with excitement. The tree was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. 

And Mama’s laughing. 

It was the biggest fun ever, until Daddy hit Mama in the face as hard as he could. 

Mama crashed to the floor, her head bounced one, two on the hardwood. 

Mama’s hurt bad.

Sarah’s face laid inches from Clarissa, but Clarissa couldn’t get out. Gripping the rail, she shook it really hard. 

I’m trapped. 

Her tiny toddler hand reached through the wooden slats to touch Mama’s cheek. To make her boo-boo go away. Her fingers came back sticky and red. 

Mama’s not waking up. 

Even as Daddy kicks and kicks her. She’s being brave. 

We have to be brave girls. 

Clarissa heard herself shrieking, clutching her blankey that’s wet with Mama’s blood.

Daddy stopped. The kicking stopped. 

Daddy’s coming for me. 

Black. Daddy’s eyes are black. 

Daddy lifts Clarissa and blankey into his arms, kissing her tears away. “There. There now,” his voice soothing. His large hand softly rubs her back. “Don’t cry my sweet,” he whispers in her ear as he carries Clarissa from the room. 

Mama’s not moving. 

“Daddy loves you.” 

Mama’s being brave.

As quick as it arrived, the vision left. 

Clarissa’s hands trembled. She was back in her room.

Ross hadn’t hurt Clarissa, yet. 

Clarissa was confined to this farm. Not safe.