I walk home from yet another long, boring, and miserable day at school. As I walk down the gray sidewalk I hope it never ends, so I never have to arrive at the home, the home of the dead, of the hurt. I watch and count as one, two, three cracks I have passed already, I’m getting closer with each passing step. I wish I could just stop time and continue in the same direction forever, to never have to set foot in that horrid place, with all the heartache. I sneak a look, through my eyelashes into the world and there it is, my driveway, paved with fear, regret, and the main ingredient, pain.

I stare at the ghost house hoping that I won’t have to walk in there, to all the nightmares. I watch as a ghost cracks the door and a gruff voice shrieks “Get in HERE!!!” I try to move forward but all my senses keep my feet planted on the sidewalk; I’m glued by everything that causes grief for it has pushed upon me and I’ve sunken into the pavement. I remain frozen as I hear the screams of the souls lost to grief, and then the ghost man stands at the door replacing the women. He yells at me but I can’t hear anything but the countless screams and echo’s of misery sealed inside my head like an animal in a cage. It mumbles a lot as the figure briskly walks to my side and drags me indoors.
I’m lost, so many memories swarm around me, choking the air from my lungs. I gasp and breathe in fear for it is only 3 o’clock. I walk up the stairs as a child condemned step after breathtaking step. I trudge down a hall covered in masks of smiles. They stare at me watching my every move waiting for a mistake.
I open a door to another world, one whose dictionary only consists of: ugly; retard; failure; unwanted. Those words haunt my every step, direct my every move, they are the words that control me. I fall onto the bed, which feels more like a rock than a mattress. This is my room. The gray walls surrounding me, the table used as a desk, and the hammy down computer that takes almost a year to load to the main screen.
I rest my eyelids as the darkness engulfs me and if even for a moment I feel slight happiness, if that’s what you call it, I sort of forgot what true happiness or even the feeling is like. As I escape to a new world even my dreams are haunted by the ghosts infiltrating my life.
They may seem like great parents in public but when in an enclosed space with just us it becomes a boxing match with me in the middle. Every punch thrown catches my lip, every kick, delivered into my gut. I absorb pain like a sponge; I am what they use to clean up the mess afterwards.
As I escape just for a moment into dream land, I dream of a boxing rink and my parents inside while I sit in the middle. They approach my chair and that’s when the punches begin. One after another they are delivered directly onto my face. I’m watching from the stands as my face drips of the red liquid I have come to know so well. Punch after bloody punch until there is nothing to hit anymore, my face is all bloodied and broken.
I wake up with a start as the screaming begins. I sprint across my room to the handle where I turn the little lock, hoping it will act like a shield from them. I wait as I hear them storming up the stairs like starved bulls waiting for meal time. I am the meal. As they approach I watch their shadows through the crack at the bottom of my shield. Then suddenly there are no more shadows, did they really leave, for the first time there not going to fight with me there watching? Oh no, I feel my stomach lurch as the shadows return with a vengeance.