I, Paige, grew up in southern Louisiana with my older brother Roland and younger sister Justine. Both of my parents were truly awful excuses of human beings; in fact, they drank a lot and were always high on some kind of drug. As you can see, my father was a big man, probably four times our size, and used to work at a construction company until one day when he eventually got fired for drinking so much. My mother, on the other hand, did not work at all and would usually leave town for weeks and weeks and weeks at a time; then one day, she permanently disappeared from our lives and we never saw her again since.

My father was extremely abusive. We would get a beating almost every night, yet I was always the one who got targeted the most because I was "bad luck" and he just openly despised me. Roland tried so hard to protect me, but he wasn't strong enough, so he just ended up getting us in deeper hell. Justine was very young, so she was, at last in some sense, forgotten about.

I remember going to school and the teachers would see the bruises and gashes all over me, but they never asked; instead, I just went to school crying. One time, a secretary asked me something.

"Why are you crying?" she asked. "Are you okay? Do you need to go home now?"

"NO!!!" I blurted out. "I-I-I'm fine, ma'am! Please don't call my parents!"

Well, she just walked off after that and that was when I grew up telling lies about the night before.

My siblings and I would hide in our room for hours, and then we would hear footsteps out the door. We would always hold each other close and pray for him not to come in, but he did, every time. My sadistic father would grab one of us and then repeatedly hit us as hard as he could. He would beat us with whatever he could reach: belts, sticks, cords, certain rods, broken pieces of wood, anything.

He loved to hear us cry and he would beat us until we just gave out while he then just sat back and laughed at us each time we cried. I remember when he beat me with an ice cane (an ice cane is a thin leather strap with knots in it that is wet) until I passed out. I then woke up with gashes in my back and three of my ribs had been shattered. I was in the hospital for two weeks. Then they made me go back home!

One night, my dad came home and he picked me first. He slammed me against the wall with that horrible grin on his face. All I remember is that the pain was so bad that I just wanted him to kill me. Three hours later, after my dad had left, my brother found me lying in the kitchen half dead, so he called the cops. The ambulance then rushed to the house and picked me up.

When I eventually woke up in the hospital from a coma, the police officer walked in and informed me that they found my little sister Justine dead, beaten to death by my father. Roland suffered from a skull fracture and was in another room when he overheard it all. I could almost see his reaction when he got the news.

I was eleven-years-old that one fateful day and Roland was thirteen. Little baby Justine, on the other hand was only four-years-old.

I am now eighteen-years-old and I still scars from my past, both emotional and visible. My father was sent to prison for the rest of his miserable life. To this day, I still cannot fathom how a grown man could take three innocent souls and crush them into dust and still live with himself.

We still love you, Justine! You are my guardian angel!