A.N- Just a warning here, this story deals with child abuse, so if you're not comfortable with that subject, I wouldn't suggest reading this. Oh yeah, and this is a one-shot, story, a very short one too! I swear I had written more than this! I guess my writing is too big, huh?

Well, I'm gonna shut up now, enjoy.

The Silence

All is silent, no crickets chirping, the roar of the cars dead. A young girl stifling her sobs, cowering under her rough woollen blanket.

Silence is good; there are no screaming mothers, no shouting fathers and no crying sisters. The silence is her only protection, she knows this well, she has long learnt that hiding under her covers won’t save her. It’s not the bogie man she’s afraid of.

It’s her Father.

She dreads the footsteps, the creak of the stairs and that heart-stopping moment when the door slides open and he arrives. But it always comes, he always comes.

She’s scared, there is no doubt about that, staring at the grey moon-painted clock she realizes he is late. That’s bad. If he’s late that means he has been delayed.

And her father hates waiting.

She grips her blanket tighter, fear coursing though her body, eyes dancing paranoidly from the clock to the door. The minutes pass, the shadows grow longer- isn’t he coming?

Perhaps he won’t come tonight, perhaps it’s over. Her knuckles slacken on her cover as her eyelids droop and she falls into the welcome embrace of sleep.

Not for long however, the shadows seem longer than ever when the footsteps call her into consciousness, waking her from a dream, into a never-ending nightmare.

One that she can never wake from.

The door creeks and a man enters, but it is not her father, only a shadow of the man she once loved. Her father died years ago, this is just a semblance of him. Her daddy would never do this to her.

It all seems like a blur- though the pain is still there. The same thing every night, perhaps a little different here and there, but the pain she feels will never ever dull.

Never.

Blankets. Sheets. Clothes. Everything gone in a blink of an eye, to be replaced by the pain. She feels like a doll, a plaything, something with no mind of its own, twisted to all her father’s sick desires.

His body, his moans, his pleasure, her agony.

He moves to leave, a wicked smile on a once handsome face, the door slides and the footsteps retreat.

Used and empty, she replaces the covers and holds them tight, tears trailing down her cheeks, all is silent once more. Sleep dulls her senses and she retreats into the darkness, calmed by the quietness.

Because she knows, silence is good.