Realism Fan Fiction / Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ Perfect No More ❯ Perfect No More ( One-Shot )

It was supposed to be a normal day. It started out like another, got up, went to school, came home. That was when normalcy stopped and life got turned upside down at a new revelation. Living in the perfect bubble that was grade six was soon blown up into a thousand pieces and life as I knew it was going to totally change.

 

I forget what day of the week it was. It could have been a Wednesday for all I know. I had come home from school as usual, but something seemed strange as I think back on it. Most of the details are fuzzy, I was 11 at the time, over 10 years ago. My mom, putting on a front of `everything is okay' sent my sister and me down to the basement for supper. I remember that it was pizza, because it was quite the treat for us to be getting pizza. And with Dad being overseas with the military we didn't have to eat at the table every night as a family.

 

So we were alone in the basement, what was basically our domain, watching T.V. and eating our pizza, when we heard our mother shouting at our Grandfather, who we called Pop. I didn't understand what was going on, we never saw anthing like that before. For all we knew, Mom loved her dad. Then the door was shut and locked; the yelling had ceased.

 

My sister and continued with our supper, cofused as to what was happening, when Pop appeared in the basement window. He knocked on the glass and waved to us. We waved back, in a stupor, as we are just children oblivious to adult things. Mom then came down and shut the blinds on him. She tried to explain that he had done something unforgivable, My grandmother, Mama, was hurt by him, almost killed as I would later find out.

 

After dinner, it was time for my sister to have a bath. I sat out in our living room, watching a T.V programme, what I cannot remember. Mom came into the room and told me that she wanted me in the bathroom with her and my sister. She didn't want me by myself, didn't want me to get hurt as it turned out.

 

So we sat in the bathroom, little sister was getting bathed. As she was finishing up we heard a banging on the door of the house. “He's in,” was all my mother said. She locked the door to the bathroom. We all hugged while in the tiny room. Little sister and I cried, out of fear and confusion. It was the first time I had ever felt <i>real</i> fear, and I wish that I never have to feel like that ever again.

 

He was trying to find Mama, who wasn't even in our house, she was somewhere safe.

 

The whole ordeal is a blur of activity, crying and yelling.

 

That night, after he had gone, I couldn't sleep in my bedroom. My room was in the basement. I slept in Little sister's room with her.

 

That was the day that I discovered that was I thought was the perfect family wasn't true. My grandfather was a woman abuser and a controller. It was also the day that my grandmother got free of his hold. She got to live without him for 6 months before she passed away at the age of 55.

 

We had never thought that so soon after escaping his clutches she would leave us. But I know that now she is truly free of him and can be happy.

 

The loss of Mama was a hard one. The day that it happened was such a good day for me, only to be brought down by such horrible news. I loved her so much. Though she wasn't there for key milestones in my life, graduation, my wedding and the birth of my daughter, I knew that she was looking down on my family and I on those days, for I could feel her love.

 

The day everything changed was one of the hardest in my life. I want to forget, but it's etched into my memory. But I have grown from that time and am now a grown woman with a husband and daughter. It hasn't ruined me, but it is a part of my past.