4. Alyssa

No peace! Those six parked their butts in my house overnight while I shut myself off in the guest room with my computer and a shit ton of ideas. Now, let me explain last night and the way I reacted to everything.

When I was seven, going on eight, something very traumatic occurred in my perfect world that rocked my life off its axis, and things were never the same again. I was awakened in the early morning hours to screaming and crying from Mom and doors slamming and car tires screeching from Dad.

By the time I wiped the sleep from my eyes on my way down the stairs to see what was going on, Mom was in full panic attack mode, and my brothers, Cam and Trey, who were fifteen and thirteen at the time, were doing their best to calm her down while she wailed like someone had died.

I remember the sickening feeling in my stomach and biting into my lip hard enough to make it bleed from the fright. I'd never seen anything but sunshine and happiness between these walls, but even at that young age, I instinctively knew that something was very wrong.

"Where's Daddy?" The three of them stopped as soon as they heard my voice. Mom covered her mouth and looked up the stairs at me before rushing from the room. My brothers came up the stairs where I had stopped and took me back to my room.

"Everything is okay, Little Bit; go back to bed."

"Is it Brian? Did something happen to Brian?" We had just taken my brother off to university the week before, and I had been crying myself to sleep, missing him. I wanted him to come back home, but everyone said he needed to stay here for his future, whatever that meant.

I wish I'd known that whole summer that the reason he was spending so much extra time with me and doing all of my favorite things was because he would be leaving soon. Maybe I would've paid closer attention.

Now, something was very wrong, but as usual, no one was saying anything to me because I was the baby. Trey had stayed with me until I fell back asleep while Cam went back to Mom. In the morning, everyone was acting like nothing happened until I started to believe that it had all been a dream, except where was Dad?

Bri had returned home that first weekend and I remember how upset he was but trying hard to hide it. I always know when my brothers are upset, they all get these little tics in their jaws, and it always looks as if they're biting down on something I can't see.

He was the one who told me that Dad wasn't coming back. I can still remember the pain of my heart breaking. I didn't cry then, didn't say a word. I just walked into the backyard to the swing set Dad had installed for me a few months before to replace the kiddie one I'd had for years.

I sat on that swing for hours that day, and each time I looked up at the windows, at least one of them was looking out at me. I don't remember when or how, but I sure as shit know why, but I went into the tool shed and got the ax.

Little eight-year-old me took that ax to that swing set and started hacking away at it. I don't know about other people, but I always seem to find extra strength from somewhere when I'm good and mad. I didn't do as much damage as I would have liked by the time the boys ran out to the backyard to take the ax away from me.

I remember screaming until I passed out on the grass and being lifted by Brian, who took me into the house and laid me on the couch. I never saw Mom cry again after that, though I heard her cry at night while I was in my room biting into my pillow, trying to keep my own tears hidden.

And every day, I attacked that swing set piece by piece until one night, I finally lost my shit and added the gas that was kept to refill the lawnmower and ATVs to it and lit that shit on fire. That's when the first therapist came into the picture. I never said one word to that bitch because I might have been young, but I wasn't stupid.

Sherry had explained to me what was going on in my home. Everybody knew that my Daddy had left our family to go have one with someone else. I had never been so hurt before or after until last night.

There were court cases and hearings in judges' chambers because none of us wanted to see Dad on his so-called time, and he cried and begged and pleaded. I didn't speak to him for at least three months until Mom convinced me and the boys to go. I thought it was all bullshit then, and I still do today.

How was it that I, at eight, knew that the cheater shouldn't be rewarded when the old-ass judge didn't? If Daddy wanted his family with him, he should've stayed his ass home. As if his leaving Mom wasn't bad enough, the thing he left her for was a bitch with a little demon that she'd pushed out of her crotch that liked to rub it in my face that my Daddy liked her and her mother better than me and mine and that's why he'd left.

She showed her ass for months until Brian came home on break and rushed into Dad's new house and laid down the law. I don't remember all of what my six-foot-three football-playing brother had said that day, but I do remember the cold way he'd spoken before taking me and leaving.

She still used to make her little comments, but she never took my stuff again and steered clear of me. After that weekend, Cam and Trey, who had been disobeying the court order, started coming again. The three of us would hole up in one room and stay as far away from the rest of the people in that house as we could.

Dad cried he begged, and he made promises, which all fell on deaf ears. That was about the time I stopped calling him Daddy. For the next ten years, I spent weekends and some holidays with them, and one of my brothers was always there until they, too, went off to college

When it was just me, I used headphones to drown them out. I started talking to my Dad again at about age ten I think, but it was nothing like it was before. Each time I saw him doing things with Mitzie that he used to do with me, it was like a little piece of my heart broke.

I swallowed all the pain and hurt and never asked him for anything or pleaded with him to spend time with me. I had my brothers, and Mom was starting to get better and not look like the zombie she resembled that first year after he left.

When I finally went away to college, I realized that my Dad was the first man I loved and hated. I don't know how I got it into my head, but I was obsessed with being cheated on and took the necessary steps to prepare myself for that eventuality.

I did training exercises alone in my dorm room at night. I literally would sit there and meditate on putting myself first and learning how to calm myself in the face of chaos. I'd just spent the last ten years tuning out everyone and everything every weekend while at Dad's place, so I knew I could do it.

There were lots of whispers when I was younger, right after the divorce, about having me evaluated. I once overheard Helen say that I was just doing it for attention. I was always an IGC, intelligent, gifted child, so I started from an early age, reading anything I could get my hands on about relationships and adultery.

I would hide and sneak those books into my room and read them with the flashlight at night. Any magazine Mom had on her night table, I would sneak as well, and that was my therapy. I didn't need some adult telling me what I should think or how I should behave. I was a real human being with feelings that no amount of yakking was going to change.

That's enough of that memory fuck for now. Last night, after I escaped to my room, I opened old folders I had been collecting for a while and started getting to work. I opened a new social media account under the name Rhoda Penmark across all platforms but didn't post anything meaningful just yet. Too soon. I needed to be at my calmest when I started to dismantle the lives around me.

All I knew for sure was that the only ones safe from me were my siblings and Mom. After that phone call, even Sherry might not be safe…. "Who the hell is that?" There was someone at my door.