Suzy was appalled. Her mother had just died and she was sent to live with her father in the middle of nowhere. The place was a dump. It was a rustic farm; there were horses in the pasture, pigs, chickens, cows and sheep. And of course there were dogs. Huge dogs. Suzy hated dogs.
“Quit gawking around and get your shit inside the house!” Her father called out angrily as he climbed out of his truck and slammed the door. She took her three suitcases out of the truck bed and walked into the weatherworn old house, mindful of the half-attached screen door. When she got inside she wasn’t much surprised. It looked no worse than the outside. There was junk everywhere, beer cans and week-old plates of half eaten food lying around. Flies crawled on the crusty old plates, and buzzed in the air annoyingly.
“Get your ass upstairs. That’s where you’ll stay, in the attic. You’ll have to move some shit around, but I put a bed up there, so get moving! After you get yourself situated I want you to get downstairs and cook some dinner. I’ve got to go out and tend to the horses. And girl, if that dinner isn’t on that table by the time I get back there’ll be hell to pay.” Her father pointed an accusatory finger at her before turning and stalking out of the house. That was it. No sympathy whatsoever. No traces of any kind of father/Daughter feelings.
Well, that was fine with Suzy! The man she knew of as her father was just white trash, and she didn’t know why her mother had ever let him between her legs.
Her father wasn’t exactly an unattractive man…he was just un-kept. He worked hard and he was a big man. Not fat, just big. He had sandy blonde hair and blue eyes, a square chin that constantly had stubble on it.
With a resigned sigh Suzy carried her things upstairs into the attic. It was worse than she thought. Crap was pilled everywhere and dust coated *everything*. The bed was set up in a far off corner that had about five feet of clear space around it. Great.
Suzy made her way over through the maze of old household relics and threw her suitcases on the bed…sending a large plume of dust in the air from the mattress. Suzy moaned in complaint.
She “unpacked” which consisted of setting a framed picture of her mother on the cardboard box that was serving as a nightstand next to the bed. She found a length-wise mirror behind a pile of junk and dug it out, and propped it up next to the window so that she would get good light when looking into it. She stared at her reflection, the glare from the overcast sky making her face look gaunt. Her hair was blonde, straight, and reached just below her shoulder blades. Her eyes were blue, but they looked washed out in the indirect sunlight. She was cursed with an extremely plain body, not too fat, but not too thin waist, average body weight and C cup breasts. With the added effect of overcast sun glare, she looked even worse than she felt. She sighed and turned away from the mirror, searching for a broom and a duster so that she could clean out her little corner of the Attic. After a half hour search she found both items, the broom was buried in the kitchen closet, and she had to pick through a dirty pile of towels and rags (most of them covered in substances she didn’t want to guess at) to find one relatively usable.
She cleaned up her corner of the Attic as best she could, and it wasn’t long before she found it was getting difficult to see what she was cleaning. She looked outside and saw it was almost dark out, so she went back downstairs into the kitchen to see what there was to make.
Suzy was a city girl, raised on instant meals and take-out, so when she opened the freezer and saw packages of butcher-paper wrapped meat, opened the pantry of jar sealed vegetables and fruit, potatoes in a bin and a box of bread, she didn’t know what to make of it.
Where’s the ‘easy bake food’?
She looked all over, but to her horror she didn’t see any traces of an instant meal.
Okay, plan B. Cook book.
Suzy thought as she searched the kitchen for a cookbook…and found none.
Okay…bad. I don’t have a clue how to cook this stuff.
The front door creaked open and she heard her father’s heavy footsteps on the wooden floor.
“Girl, I don’t smell nothin’ cookin’.” Her father grunted angrily as he stalked into the kitchen.
“I couldn’t find a cookbook.” Suzy explained.
“Don’t own one.” Her father said dryly.
“But I don’t know how to cook.”
This seemed to enrage her father. “Well I suggest you learn real fast! GET TO IT!!” Her father bellowed.
“But—“ Suzy was cut off by her father smacking her hard enough to send her sprawling to the ground.
“I SAID GET TO IT!!!” He bit out angrily and stalked out of the room.
Suzy sat there on the floor in shock for several minutes, feeling her bruised jaw. Tears were streaming down her face. How dare he hit her! How dare he treat her this way!
Suzy stalked out of the kitchen and found her father sitting in an easy chair in the living room. She stood angrily in front of him.
