Final Scream by Lisa Jackson Read Free Book Online Page A

eventually either drag his wife into the bedroom or pass out on the couch.
    The little farmhouse was tense whenever he was home, but he made the mistake of striking his daughter only once, when she was five and had inadvertently spilled a bucket of milk that was to have been separated from the cream later. The pail had been sitting on the table when Sunny, chasing her cat, had tripped and fallen against the scarred old table. Sunny tried vainly to grab the pail, but it was too late. The bucket fell to the floor and milk, like the surf of the ocean, rolled in a huge wave that splashed over the cracked linoleum and ran in every direction.
    Her father was smoking a cigarette in the living room and reading some hunting magazine. He heard the crash and her gasp. Already in a mean mood as one of his cattle had died, he took one look at the spillage and swore at the mess on the floor. “You little moron! What the hell did you think you were doing?”
    “I’m sorry, Papa.”
    “Sorry doesn’t count! That was the butter money and the cream and oh, for Christ’s sake, clean it up,” he raged, reaching for a bottle of whiskey he kept in the cupboard over the sink. His face was a mottled red as he tossed his cigarette into the drain and poured some of the liquor into a jelly glass.
    Sunny had grabbed a rag, but she was small and all she succeeded in doing was spreading the milk in wider circles.
    “Damn it, girl, you’re just as bad as your ma.” He walked to the porch and found a rag mop. “Now start over,” he said, throwing the mop at her. She barely caught the long wooden handle in her small fingers. “And do it right. You cost me a bundle today, let me tell you.”
    Sunny’s stomach trembled. She pushed the mop, but the strings were dry and the milk seeped everywhere, running under the table and along the old scratched baseboards.
    “Don’t you know nothin’?” Isaac yelled, cursing idiot daughters.
    “Papa, I’m trying.” Tears streamed down her cheeks.
    “Well, try harder!” He drank from his glass, draining the amber liquid, and the look on his face was pure hatred. “I should never have married her, you know. But she was knocked up and I thought you were a boy.” His lips curled into a sneer. “Instead you were a girl, and a useless one at that. Can’t even mop a floor. Well, you’d better get used to it, Sunny, ’cause it’s all you’re ever gonna be good for. Women’s work. Squaw labor. Jesus, I was a fool to marry her!” He tossed back his drink, and Sunny bit her lip to keep tears from raining from her eyes. Never had her father spoken so roughly to her. Many times he’d cursed his wife for being so beautiful, for tricking him into marriage, for being barren when it came to having more children. Sunny had heard their arguments, how he claimed that she’d wanted it before they were married, and how she’d screamed that he’d raped her and only married her to keep her father from cutting out his heart.
    The arguments were ugly and vicious. Sunny had quivered in her small bed, holding her hands over her ears, feeling as if she were the cause of all the pain in the house. Her father hadn’t wanted her, and her mother, though she loved her daughter, had been forced to live with a man she loathed.
    Swallowing against the horrid lump in her throat, Sunny pushed the mop again, and her father laughed at her futile efforts, that wicked, ugly laugh he used whenever Mama tried to defy him. “You are useless,” he said, shaking his head as the cat hopped down from the windowsill and began lapping the edges of the river of milk. Isaac muttered a curse and kicked hard.
    “Don’t!” Sunny yelled.
    With a shrieking meow the tabby went flying, sailing over the table to thud against the wall. Hissing and growling, it slid to safety behind the wheezing refrigerator.
    Isaac turned back to his daughter, who had dropped the mop to run after her pet. “Where do you think you’re