Excerpt Below (NSFW Language Warning!!! TW: Verbal Abuse, Physical Violence):
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Lainie slipped her headphones on and lost herself in her music. She didn't need to hear the yelling, and certainly didn't need to see it or think about it. As long as she ignored it, it wouldn't bother her. It wouldn't be as real. However, the down side to getting lost in music is quite simply that you're then ripe to be caught entirely off guard by someone slamming your bedroom door open.
She felt like she jumped a mile, clean off the bean bag. Her book went flying, her iPod went the other way, unceremoniously yanking her headphones out of her ears and opening them to the verbal assault her father was hurling at her.
“-dare you hide your pathetic, skanky ass in here while your mother and I try to figure out what to do! You're an adult,” he screamed, pounding his fist against her bedroom wall to illustrate each and every word. “You don't get to back off while we figure out where we're gonna get another two hundred bucks next week! You KNOW her contract doesn't get paid for another two months, we can't afford me to lose this night! You aren't even fucking LISTENING to me, you little whore!”
Lainie was listening, but perhaps the way she was staring at him, dumbfounded, mouth hanging open, gave the wrong impression. She sputtered. Her father had sworn to her, in one of his non-anger-driven, lucid moments, minus the drugs and alcohol, that if she was ever in her room he wouldn't follow her in there. That he believed a person's private space to be a sacred thing, and that there was no way he'd violate that. It wasn't the shouting, or even the words he used that had her frozen in shock – it was quite simply the fact that he was betraying her trust in a way she'd somehow trusted he never would. “I...”
“Don't you talk to me like that, you little bitch!” And suddenly he was moving toward her – her eyes found his and she pushed herself back into her beanbag chair. His eyes were bloodshot – it was probably a miracle he hadn't been pulled over on the way home. He probably lost the gig for bribing the bartender to serve him tequila in his water glass again. She rolled to one side and scrambled to her knees, pressing herself against the wall.
“Daddy...” She felt like she was four years old again, cowering under a table as her father stomped around the house because he couldn't find his sunglasses. Only this time, it wasn't her perception that was aiming his anger at her – he actually had chosen her as his target. It was as if there was a bulls-eye on her head and he had some sort of a homing scope on his fury. “Daddy, please...”
Now is the perfect time to catch up on the story so far! With the first six chapters up, there's never been a better time to become a Patron! Read an excerpt of this chapter, below!
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Lainie's father has gone off the deep end. Will he hurt her? Will she find some way to defend herself and her mother from his fury? Become a patron to read the whole chapter and find out!
![[PE] To The Third Power - Chapter 5 Excerpt](https://va.ib.metapix.net/images80/overlays/writing.png "[PE] To The Third Power - Chapter 5 Excerpt"){kind=small}
