Page 1

For our weekly writing class, we’ve been asked to bring a first page of a story or book. This is what I’m planning to share. My intended audience is young adult.
“Between shadows, darting through the debris of a verbal explosion, sheltered beneath transparent terror, running from a crimson, vein bulged neck, child glides across polished hardwood, receiving an expected chain of raining flat hand blows earned by daggers meant to slice him neatly in half, meant to wake him from a deadly enchantment. His fiery outburst is extinguished by shame when she reaches other side of her quickly locked haven. He lapses into silent pacing.
Amid white tiles and porcelain fixtures, she smiles in triumph, hazel eyes twisted in fear, listens for his foot steps to pass through their front entrance, the ignition to catch and turn, tires rolling away. Frozen, breath coming in rhythmless heaves, hand pressed on a brass knob, she stares through glass eyes at peeling paint beside a splotch of gray mold along the door frame.
She’s aware that strange woman will be waiting beyond her blessed barrier. Slowly, she steps out anyway, finds her impotent companion crumpled, convulsing, tears falling off a no longer vacant expression. The woman speaks with maddening predictability. “Why? Why does he do this? I’m sorry honey.”
“What good are apologies when we never leave?!” shouts the girl inside her thoughts. Mechanically, child’s arms reach out, cradle the one who is her only hope, the one who stays too near a foreseeable dangerous anger, the one snared in a trance of broken promises.”