A Place to Call Home

Prologue

As the voices got louder in her mother’s room, Carrie checked the padlock on the inside of her bedroom door. She knew even at the tender age of 13 that she needed the protection from her mother’s various boyfriends -protection that her mother refused to give.

She could hear distinct sounds of a fist hitting flesh now, there was not much sound proofing in the paper thin wall that separated her room from her mother’s. It wasn’t long before the bed began to make squeaking noises and knock up against the wall.

Carrie swore that her mother loved the violence more than the sex sometimes. She pulled the pillow over her ears and tried to sleep.

Her mother’s angry shriek woke her up from her the slight sleep she had fallen into.

“Carrie Ann, OPEN THIS DOOR IMMEDIATELY!” screamed her mother. Carrie dared not open the door but did hustle out of bed and dressed faster than she had ever dressed before. She knew that tonight was the night that her mother was going to allow her boyfriend to have her and she wanted NOTHING to do with that!

Thankful that she had been preparing for something like this for the past 9 months when her mother first began to talk about Carrie “earning” her keep and then saying things like “13 was too old to still be a virgin” she was quick about packing the few things from her room she wanted to keep into her BOB. She had come across this cool website that had stories that taught people how to prepare. And while this wasn’t exactly the types of ‘natural’ or technically a ‘manmade’ disaster they wrote about; it was a disaster made by her mom and in her life.

She was out the window, down the fire escape, and around the corner as her bedroom door was busted in. She never looked back.