Dinner with the ...Beast?

As Devin is leaving the room, she hears Melanie walk in the front door. She quickly locks the door, and hurries down the hall to meet her, caddy in hand. "Good afternoon Melanie, hi Cameron!" Devin greets mother and daughter as they settle into the living room. She notices Cameron's shoes thrown to the side of the front door, so Devin makes her way over and puts them in their place.

Cameron is busy reading a book, and Melanie is looking at Devin queerly, "Devin, what's for dinner?"

Devin realizes that she was in that "study" a lot longer than she thought. "Oh, I am sorry, I lost track of the time," she apologizes. "I was thinking we could do turkey wraps and salads for dinner, so everyone can have what they like. I was going to make 'a serve yourself' bar."

Melanie's demeanor softens, "Oh, that sounds wonderful. Sarah will be pleased, also."

Devin takes Melanie's lack of further conversation as her signal to leave, and heads into the kitchen. She gathers the dinner's ingredients together, and sets the table for the family, plus a place for herself. Shortly after Devin lets Mike and Melanie know that dinner is ready, everyone joins her in the kitchen at the dining table, including Sarah. She is a completely different person from the bouncy, happy girl that greeted Devin illegally earlier in the day. What sits down with Devin is a disheveled, glassy-eyed, distant child.

She looks at you, looking through you as if you weren't there, and mumbles "Hi."

Melanie chimes in, "Devin, this is Sarah. I am glad you are here to meet her. Sarah, please thank Devin for the creative dinner. She wanted everyone to be able to have their favorites for dinner in their wraps."

She nudges Sarah, whose eyes flash momentarily with disgust, "Thank you Devin. I love vegetable wraps." Sarah proceeds to make herself a wrap of lettuce and carrots, and nibbles at it the entire dinner. Everyone else had turkey, lettuce, carrots, different dressings, tomatoes, and other choices in their dinners. Sarah doesn't speak another word.

Trying to make conversation, you ask Melanie, "So, I was talking with Mike, asking about which rooms I can clean. He stated that there is a locked study down the hall of yours, and I must ask you when I am able to clean it for you, so that you may be present. When and how often would you like for me to clean it?"

Melanie wipes her mouth, and you catch a fleeting moment of anger on her face. After knowing what you have found in the study, this doesn't surprise you.

She places her napkin down and replies without a hint of the anger you saw on her face, "Thank you for asking me. Yes, I must be present in the house for you to clean my study as I have some extremely important keepsakes, I keep in there. That is always why I keep the door locked." She smiles and continues, "I would like it very much if you clean the study for me once a week while here. I can even let you in tomorrow evening, if you would like."

Devin smiles in return, "That will work. I will put it on my schedule that once a week I will be cleaning your study during time that you set."

The conversation at the table ends up being Cameron talking about her day at school, Melanie discussing her pedicure at lunch not being up to par, and Sarah sitting in a cloud of disdain, as if she thought she was going to be thrown out of the room for moving. Devin decides that it best to leave the subject alone, but tomorrow she will ask Mike when Melanie is not around why Sarah is so different. After all, Devin was not supposed to have met her yet.

~Sarah~

'I have to eat nasty carrots and lettuce alone on a tortilla wrap. I hate Melanie. If I even thought of getting more, she would slap it out of my hand.' Sarah sat thinking to herself, nibbling the bland wrap, watching as her baby sister gossiped away about another boy that liked her, while enjoying a turkey, lettuce, tomato, and mayonnaise wrap. As soon as she could get the last bite swallowed, Sarah promptly rose, all while keeping the glazed and lackluster demeanor act up, and hurried back to her end of the house.

Passing through the back-hall door and locking it, she turns to face what she has to live in. The smell of rancid flesh is so strong back here that she always wants to vomit.

The carpet seems to almost crunch at the amount of filth layered on it, it's cream color long gone to a myriad of blacks and browns, with the occasional green. The once pale green, now sickeningly yellowish-brown, walls are covered in such a layer of dust and filth that even a cockroach would be appalled.

The bathroom to her right…. the one she must use…. has layers of fat and oils that are built up on the mirror that distort the gazer into a grotesque blob.

The tile work on the floor is almost nonexistent, the filth having distorted the lines on the floor into smudges of browns.

'Melanie won't let me clean this place, and I hate it!' Sarah slams her fists into her thighs as she remembers the last time she cleaned up just the bathroom…Melanie beat her for it, causing her to not eat for two days, due to the pain.

'Daddy can never know.. She will kill him.'

Sarah walked past the rancor of the bathroom and went into her own bedroom.

'At least it is clean and nice in here!' she sighed, thinking to herself, as she lay down on her pink furry pillows. Another night alone…

Sarah drifted off to sleep, waiting for the night to come for her to turn. She just wants to get it over with, as she always does.