Part 1

I lurch forward, breathing rapidly and hands shaking at my sides. I shiver. It’s not cold, but I shiver none the less. My clammy hands grip tightly around the bed sheets. Goosebumps run down my neck and arms, making my skin feel like sandpaper. I cough and cough, hacking up whatever gunk has been lodged in my throat. Eyes watering, I lean back and stifle my coughs, swallowing the loud hacking sound coming from my mouth. My nose runs and I reach my hand up only to realize there is now a streak of blood running along the back of it. I swing my legs over the side of the bed and stumble toward the door. Fingers gripping the cool steel door knob, I turn my hand and fall through the doorway. Nose bleeding, hacking miserably, I oh-so-gracefully fall down the 32 stairs it takes to get to the attic. And at the bottom of those 32 shiney oak stairs is my mother, looking down on my bumps and bloody bruises with a look of disgust on her wrinkly old face.
She looks at me with that ferocious glare of hers and strictly points up the 32 hard stairs. That simple action gives me all the cause I need to hobble up the stairs and towards my room in the attic, away from all other forms of life. I sit alone in my prison-of-a-room in silence. Hoping for nothing more but some cough medicine. How can she leave me so sick? I’m her daughter. She can’t want me dead, right? How could she want me dead? I slide my hand under the bed, searching for the first aid kit I snuck up here years before. Gingerly, I wrap my hand in gaws to cease the bleeding and put some antiseptic on my many bruises. I close the lid of the old first aid kit and tuck it away under my bed.
Ring! Ring! Ring! The feeding bell screams. I hear my mother climb the 32 oak stairs to my room of hell, sweeping away what dust I can with my uninjured hand. Clip. Clop. Clip. Clop. Her hundred dollar heels make their way upstairs. The key rattles in the lock and the door swings open, leaving me staring at my witch of a mother. Old, wrinkly lines of distress cover her face. I can see where my father hit her, the sadness deep beneath the monster. She covers it all up, unwilling to accept the truth. She hands me a plate of goop. Radishes and oatmeal, my least favorite foods of all time. I know she does this on purpose. I must have done something wrong, if only I knew what. She turns and leaves without a word, leaving me alone, with only the rats for company.
I choke down my prison food, coughing all the way, and reluctantly make my bed. I hear a squeal from downstairs and wonder what must be the matter. “Oh Mother! You shouldn't have!” my sister yells from down stairs. Knowing my sister, she should have. Sissy gets everything she wants. Mother get me a pony! Poof, pony. Mother I want that dress! Poof, there’s the dress. Mother I don’t like Mildred, can’t we put her in the attic? Poof, I’m stuck up here in the attic. Thanks Gretchen, or should I say, Sissy.
Gretchen continues to squeal while I dust the floors of my lonley attic room. Going on and on about some fancy ball. Oh how I do wish to go to a ball. Or even just to leave the attic and not be sick.. I wish I was free and wasn’t trapped here like some caged animal. I wish my mother and sister didn’t despise me. I wish they couldn’t hurt me. I wish to hurt them, to make them feel my pain. I want them to know what it’s like to be stuck in an attic all your life, with only the rats, clawing at the walls, for company.

Part 2

Later that night, Mildred quietly rose from her bed and snuck to her bedroom door. She cautiously turned the doorknob and pushed the door open just enough to fit her small scraggly body through the doorway. She stood at the top of those 32 oak stairs, and for the first time in her life she wasn’t scared of what lay below. She moved down them like a snake, searching for her prey. She carefully avoided stair 13, for it creaked beneath the smallest rat’s weight, and tried her very best not to step too close to the edges for she shall not make a sound. When Mildred reached the bottom of the stairs she turned left into the kitchen and opened the farthest drawer from the attic stairs. Inside was her mother’s kitchen knives. She grabbed the longest, sharpest-looking knife, and she slithered her way towards her mother's room. Mildred opened the door to the old witch's room and slid herself inside. She loomed over the witch’s old form, asleep beneath the blankets. And Mildred struck her knife against the bed, hitting flesh along the way. She killed her own mother with her own kitchen knife and fell to the ground beside her...