Caged

Tessa is a lonely, unpopular girl. Her father abandoned her when she was so small she doesn't even remember him. Her mother hates her and never misses a chance to verbally or physically abuse her. Tessa longs for a normal life, but when she gets it, she pays the price.

Excerpt from Caged:
As I said, our mother was a bitter woman. Her dreams had been snatched from her like a hawk swooping to the ground and taking a squirrel for a meal. Gone, never to be seen again. She spanked us sometimes in the years after my grandparents left. And then came the night when she came home and the milk was spilled on the counter and dripped to the floor in a puddle that mixed with the dirt and grime. Jimmy and I had fallen asleep and I forgot to clean up the milk.

My mother yanked me up as soon as she got home and saw it. I was eight at the time and Jimmy was six. Mama pulled my panties down and began to spank me with her bare hand, over and over again. I cried and yelled and begged her to stop. But she kept going, her flat hand slapping me, stinging me. Jimmy woke up and came into the kitchen wanting to know what was going on. Mama told him to get to his bedroom—which was my bedroom too—and not show his face again unless he wanted some of it too.

Mama shoved me to the floor and told me to lick the milk up.

“It’s nasty, Mama,” I pleaded.

“You did it!” she shouted. “You clean it up.”

And so I licked the gray milk and all of the dirt with it and felt the dirt scratch my throat as I swallowed. Mama sat at the table and watched me while she smoked a cigarette.

“Don’t leave one drop!” she shouted at me. “If you do, I’ll spank you again.”

I could smell the smoke from her cigarette, which was normally a comforting smell to me. It meant Mama was home. But it wasn’t comforting as I licked the sour milk.

I started hating her that night.