Will he ever go away??

I will get straight to the point. I am dead. I have been dead now for 23 days. I am going to take you on a journey that will help you understand how I feel.
My name is Sarah Grazioso, and I am 15 years old. I grew up in Liver Stone, Iowa. I just entered my sophomore year in high school. I lived with my parents and my little brother, Zach in a two-bedroom house on Concord Street. That is all you really need to know for know, you will learn the rest as we go on. As I said, I am dead. I am not in heaven or hell or anything like that, I am just dead. My soul is dead. I will explain:

Dear Diary,
I told you that it would happen again! I just don’t understand what one earth I could have done. It is my birthday and my dad is mean to me. That is not the present that I wanted! I just wish mom would make him leave. I don’t understand why she puts up with it. Uh. Enough of that. Anyways today at school Jimmy made me a birthday card that said Happy Birthday and it had a heart on it. I showed it to all of my girl friends. Got to go, dad is coming up

Sarah stuffed her diary under her mattress before her dad even reached the top of the stairs. “Sarah, I am sorry. You know I didn’t mean it. Now come on down and help me and your brother eat your cake” her dad said. She sat there for a while trying to decide if he was being sincere or if he was teasing her and just trying to get her to open up her door. Sometimes he did that. He would pretend that he was not mad anymore and Sarah would open up the door and that is when he would really get her. “Maybe if I stay quite he will just go away” Sarah thought. He did.
Thud. “SARAH” her dad screamed. She jumped up and looked at her clock, it was only 2 a.m. He said “I had a little too much to drink will you help me up the stairs please?”. She sighed, pulled on her pants and stepped out into the hallway. Just then a arm reached around a grabbed her around her neck and the other arm twisted her arms around her back. It was her dad. “You thought I would you were off the hook, huh?” he said while dragging her into her bedroom. “Maybe next time you will listen to me when I tell you to come downstairs” he said right before he pushed her backwards onto the bed and slammed his right fist into her jaw. She whimpered, turned over and tried to pull away. All the while he was hitting her in the stomach and in the back so that no one would be able to see the bruises. After about 4 minutes of punching he finally pulled up. “Go get cleaned up, and make sure you get your mom to put make-up over the bruise on your face for school tomorrow”. Then he just walked away like nothing ever happened.
Sarah walked into the bathroom to check out the damage. It wasn’t too bad that time. It was over pretty quick. Her olive toned face was beat red and was already starting to bruise on the lower jawline. She brushed her hair and looked at herself in the mirror wondering if she was pretty. Her hair was chocolate brown and flowed around her face so she should be able to hide the bruise well. She took off her clothes and examined the rest of her body.
At the beginning of the school year she was always having boys asking her out and telling her how pretty she was. Since she always comes to school with bruises and scrapes everyones always thought that there was something wrong with her. Her mom always said, “I just can’t understand why Sarah can’t get a date. She has curves that a woman would kill for and a face that shines like that stars.”
Teachers asked Sarah about the bruises but she told them that her dad was away on business a lot so she was the one that had to help her brother practice all of the sports that he was always participating in. They always smiled and commented on what a good sister she was. Her mom just pretended like nothing ever happened. And if Sarah ever confronted her then she accused Sarah of egging him on. So, since no one seemed to be able to help she just put up with it.
“Mom, can I go with Janie tonight to her house to hang out?” Sarah asked. Her mother didn’t answer right away; she just sat there washing dishes like a robot. Ever since family starting falling apart she had been this way. She was always depressed, once in awhile she would be in a really good mood and she take Sarah and Zach out of school for a day and go do all kinds of fun stuff with them. That was usually only when their dad was away though. “Yeah, I guess. What time will you be home?” “How about 10 since it isn’t a school night?” Sarah replied. Her mom didn’t answer so she took that as a yes and left. She had a good time at Janie’s. They watched “The Breakfast Club” and ate pizza and talked about kids from school. Before she knew, it was time to go home.
As Sarah walked in the door everything was quite. She yelled for her mom but there wasn’t any answer. She walked into the kitchen and found her at the table reading a book. “Where is Zach?” “I sent him over to a friends for the night, I needed a break.” She always needed a break. As Sarah made her way out of the kitchen she saw her dad. “Hey look who it is, Sarah. Where were you? Did I tell you that you could go to that friend of yours? I guess no one figures that I am the man of the house here.” He said. He just stood there like he was waiting for some kind of reply. He was holding a can of Budweiser in his right hand so at least he wouldn’t be able to hit her with his good hand. Finally after no one spoke for a moment, Sarah grabbed her book bag that was partly unzipped and headed to the stairs. Whack. Sarah went down. Her dad hit her with the closet thing he could grab which was the top of the blender. She felt her head and looked at her fingers to see the blood covering them. He had never hurt her this bad before. She started feeling woozy, like she was going to throw up. Then she did. “Damnit, you are worse than a pig. Look what you did to the carpet!” her dad screamed. He calmly walked over to her and when she turned her head to the side to look at him he kicked her in the face. When she opened her eyes, she saw one of her teeth on the ground beside her. Her dad stomped one last time on her back and headed back for the kitchen. Fuming inside, Sarah crawled to her book bag and opened it up. She grabbed the gun she had bought last week at the pawnshop down in the city with her babysitting money and headed for the kitchen. She wasn’t going to shoot him; she was just going to show him that she was not going to be beat anymore. As she walked in with the gun in front of her, her dad turned around and stood in shock. “You little bitch, you really think you can shoot me? Even if you had the guts to do it, I would come back to haunt you in your dreams.” He said. Sarah just laughed because she knew that he was scared. “Don’t worry sweetie, I will just call Zach and tell him he needs to come back home that daddy misses him.” Her dad said. “What, you think you are going to touch him now?” Sarah replied. He just cocked his head and said “You know he definitely would be easier since he is a lot smaller and we…” That is all he got out. Sarah pulled that trigger.

So, as you can see, my father is really the one who is dead not I. But in a sense I am. After the shooting, my mother became very ill and was admitted to the hospital. It has something to do with her lungs from smoking all of these years. My brother and I went to stay with our aunt in N. Carolina. My stay didn’t last very long because my aunt and uncle said that I acted funny and that when I was sleeping I would keep talking about my father in my dreams and it scares her. She took me to a special hospital where I spend my days now. It is not a bad place. I get to talk about my story a lot and people never judge me. The only bad thing is my mom and my brother won’t come and see me because they are mad at me for shooting my dad. I hate myself for doing because I took a life but it was either that or my brother and I would have had to live in hell the rest of our lives. Maybe someday someone will understand what I went through. I hope they don’t do the same thing I did but I just hope that they don’t hate me like my family does. Oh and by the way, I keep having this weird dream about someone trying to chase me down and kill me. The weird thing is he looks like my dad.