Her Dark Savior

Evelyn Brooks graduated from her high school with honors. Excelled in her college works, making the honor roll with straight A’s, and yet always finds time to help her family. At least, that’s what others say about me. In truth.. my family treats me as a servant, someone to clean up after them, cook their meals, and do my younger step siblings school work that way they can have better opportunities. After my mother’s death, my father remarried a woman he and my mother were friends with for years. She was always kind to me.. until she became my step mother. Ever since she’s forced me to do everything around the house, even though we have maids to cook and clean, I’m the one expected to do it. She says it’s because she wants to teach me valuable life lessons, like how to take care of myself.. but I know better, she just wants to prove that she has power over me, and my father won’t lift a finger to help. He chose her.. he always chooses her.. when I don’t do my chores fast enough she takes my fathers leather belt, and lashes me across the back with it until she thinks I learned my lesson. I’ve been forced to do her children’s school work, including college essays that got both of them into good schools. While taking care of the house, and the family. When I got this job six months ago, she threw a tantrum like never before. Demanding I quit to be able to support the family, I told her I needed this job for college credits, and if I didn’t keep it, I wouldn’t help her children anymore. That shut her up about it for a while, but she’s been problematic for the past few weeks. Saying I didn’t cook her dinner to her liking.. that the floors weren’t waxed properly, so now they’re streaky, and that her sheets weren’t put on her bed the way she instructed. She threw them onto the floor and I was made to wash, dry, and place them back on her bed the “right” way. The only thing I have to look forward to, are the eight hours I’m away from home, five days a week. I needed to find a way out of this house, it’s what I’ve been saving my money for.. but my escape plan will take months to execute perfectly, and I don’t know how much longer I can keep up this exhausting facade.