Progress!

Well, I finished the short story that I will be including in the group Anthology that I am involved in!! So excited, that I can’t keep from smiling. The feeling is pure amazement! I included a small excerpt here!

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Cheri felt it coming. The pain started first as a fire in her stomach that burned like acid.

The little girl lay in her small, twin-sized bed; waiting for what she knew was coming. There was no stopping the inevitable.

Her eyes stung and burned but she refused to cry. She knew if she made a sound, her uncle would hear.

He always punished her severely.

Cheri choked back a sob; the dark, a cruel shield against the light.

She couldn’t remember her parents but could remember feeling loved, protected, and wanted.

The emotions were foreign now.

Her uncle was a cold and brutal man. He loved any sign of pain; and loved to inflict it.

Cheri knew what he was, what he was capable of, and what he did.  She had seen it.

She closed her eyes, her breathing harsh in the stark silence.

Cheri often wondered what her life would have been like had her parents survived and knew that life wouldn’t have been like this.

She was twelve years old and feared for her life.

All of a sudden, the dark fell away and she was no longer in her bedroom. It was brighter, and thick trees loomed all around her, the shadows flickered in the dusk of the day.

Cheri looked around, her blue eyes wide and cautious. She was too used to the different places that she visited within her visions so she stood still to get her bearings. This vision was no different.

Only……..

She was behind her house, deep in the woods.

She felt the light breeze caress her cheeks, the sound of the leaves rustled with the movement of the wind.

She began to walk, her bare feet floated above the ground. She didn’t know where she was going, only that the vision carried her where she needed to be.

The sounds of grunts and groans reached her ears and she flinched. She inched closer, her heart slammed against her thin ribs as her breathing grew ragged.

She pushed the rough thorns and branches and peeked through the opening. Even though she knew they couldn’t see her, the fear was still there, paralyzing and consuming. She saw the three men standing around in a circle, a fourth lying on the ground at their feet, his face bloody and eyes nearly swollen shut. Blood stained his dark clothes, the ground splattered with the red liquid.

Cheri wanted to run, to hide, but knew she couldn’t. Not if she had any hope of saving the man’s life in the next twenty-four hours.

She watched, her eyes moving, memorizing each feature, each branch, each blade of grass, and prayed that the vision held.

It had failed her before.

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