My Nightmare in Georgia (Based on a True Story)

By A. L. Norton

A woman tells of the story of growing up in a home with a father that is just pure evil. He emotionally, physically, sexually and eventually rapes his daughter. She tells of how she survives his abuse, and how she gets through life. This is a story of strength and courage.

• Language: English
• Publisher: A. L. Norton
• Release date: Dec 3, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370086931

A. L. Norton

I am an Amazon best selling author of 9 books so far. "My Nightmare in Georgia"; books 1 and 2 were number 1 hot new releases. I write fiction, non fiction, romance, erotica, anything that comes to mind. I am a daydreamer. I always have my head in the clouds. I have a great sense of humor, and I am rarely serious, even in serious situations. I believe if you dream it, you can achieve it. I am a drama queen as well. I hope you enjoy my books as much as I love writing them. You can find my books here on Smashwords, and in print on Amazon. Please take the time and leave a review. Reviews are very important for authors. Also, you can click the favorite button if you would like and subscribe to me! Love to you all! Enjoy!

Book preview

Prologue

I have a story to tell. Knowing that you aren’t supposed to go through life dwelling on the past, I do it anyway. Why? Because I relive it in one way or another every single day of my life. Certain smells, certain things people say or do, many things on any given day, can become a flashback or a trigger.

Not going to sugarcoat anything while writing my story. Having received a lot of rude comments from family members about revealing my story, all I have to say is, I am not ashamed of myself for revealing my story. They should be ashamed of being embarrassed by me, revealing what happened to me in the world. People like them cause women and children not to get help when being sexually abused, abused, or raped. They keep it a secret because they feel as if they will humiliate their family, or even themselves. Or maybe it will get brushed under the rug, and the court system will fail you, like what happened to me. What happens if nobody believes you?

So many emotions flow through you when something terrible happens to you. Isolation and loneliness become the first emotions to step forward and show their ugly faces. Then come the bitterness and anger, and not just at your attacker. You’re angry at the world. Screw everyone. Then comes sadness, depression, anxiety, phobias—and your attacker is ambling around, living life to the fullest and looking for another life to damage and destroy. We have such an incredible justice system, don’t we? They failed me terribly as a child, and I will forever live bitter and angry about it. Even though my attacker had already committed the crime and I was not his first victim, he walked. It was a kick to the face. Guess what? He repeated the offense over and over, leaving a trail of destroyed lives in his path. The justice system could have prevented that. But it was his word against mine. What the hell happened to the polygraph tests? As I sat shivering from being a horrified teenager, sitting next to my younger siblings in the police station after CPS (Child Protective Services) rescued us, I wondered if they would polygraph us, so they knew I was telling the truth.

As they separated my brother from my sister and me, taking us to protective custody, I kept my fingers crossed and hoped they would bring out the polygraph. He was a liar. I was telling the truth. He was expecting me to live my life holding secrets that burned inside of me. The violence that he allocated was becoming more intense. Would I live to tell the secrets that were burning inside of me? I wasn’t sure how long I was going to remain around to find out. There may be some dull moments in my story, but make sure you read it from beginning to end. If I could go back in time, knowing what my future would hold for me, I would have never leaped into the U-Haul truck that one summer day with dad and traveled back to Georgia. Everyone has a story, some good ones, some bad ones. Some tell them, and some keep them locked away inside themselves forever. They expected me to do just that. My name is Lindsey; here is my story…

Chapter One

Going Home

It was the summer of 1990, and the cicadas were making themselves known. All the outdoors sounded like electricity, even though our home was in a small town. We had crummy television reception because mom was a single mom and couldn’t afford cable. Hence, the only way I could sit and stare like an idiot was to squat on the chipped paint off the front porch and pass my eyes over the cornfields across the street and listen to the cicadas. That’s what I did when I wanted to wonder and lose myself in a mental coma.

My mom gave a shout for me from somewhere inside the house, and I turned to face the screen-in front door. I couldn’t see inside because it was daylight out, and the place was dimly lit. But I rolled my eyes for her, just in case she could see me. Then I turned my eyes back to the fields and wondered it again. Would my dad keep his promise for a change? Would he show up from Georgia to pick my brother, sister, and me up?

They’re questions you might ask when your parents are two years divorced on account of dad beating you up all the time and then trying to end things by attempting to set the entire house on fire with the family in it while they are sleeping. So, what if he whooped us and was mean to us?

So, what if we went to school covered in bruises or had an untreated broken bone?

Or sometimes was too scared to go home? Mom had moved us to Indiana, where all of our families lived, and it just wasn’t ‘home’ to me. Georgia was my home. My friends were there. My school was there. It was where I wanted to be.

Since my parent’s divorce, my dad had become much more pleasant to us kids. In the back of my mind, I had concealed the fact that when I was eleven, and my mom left in a hurry in the middle of the night to escape his abuse and trying to burn us alive, he called and tricked me into telling him that mom was alone at my grandparent’s house. He snuck in through the unlocked front door, placed a gun to her head, and kidnapped her. The neighbors watched her being dragged, screaming, and pleading for her life down the driveway. One neighbor called the police in terror, as she continued to plea for her life. He drove her through the countryside and threatened to kill her, pistol-whipped her, beat her, then threw her out of the car at the local Dairy Queen. Seeing the black and blue swelling all over her face terrified me. I felt sorry for her. She slept with a knife and a baseball bat in fear that he would come back. He ran like a coward back to Georgia, so the police never got him. And here I was, bags packed, with a promise that he would never hit us again, heading back to Georgia to live with him. Every car that passed around the corner, I stretched my twelve-year-old neck to see if it was him. Nope.

I still sat there and wondered and listened because my dad was excellent at breaking his word. My fingers crept up by instinct to feel for the silver necklace that hung there, sometimes ignored, but never forgotten, and never taken off. A best friend necklace my dad bought me when I was eleven. After my parents divorced when I was eleven, and all the craziness settled down, mom had to move back to Georgia to move into the house, sell it, and complete some things before our permanent move back to Indiana. Dad took me shopping at the mall while we were down there and bought the necklace for me. I wore one half, and he wore the other, so I thought. Funny how you can love a parent after taking so many beatings from them, be mistreated by them, observe them mistreating your whole family, and forgive them. There were good times, but the troubled times outweighed the good. He had an innovative way of getting into your head and thinking he was the greatest man on earth. Master manipulator.

I’m thinking narcissist.

A bit of orange swept just above the grasses across my distance, then slowed as a U-Haul made its way carefully around a sharp curve in the road. I hopped to my feet and turned to the door, shouting, he’s here, mom! Grabbing a bag, I swung it over my shoulder, then picked up a box off the front porch and ran down the steps, grinning from ear to ear. Only a few weeks left before my freshman year started in high school, and I wasn’t wasting any time getting back to Georgia to spend the rest of summer with my friends. Mom met me back on the porch as I grabbed the last of my belongings, and she dabbed me on my shoulder. Stopping and staring, we locked eyes. Lindsey, are you sure you want to go? Her eyes turned to worry as she glanced over at the U-Haul truck and the man stepping out of it.

Yes, mom. I want to go. He made a promise; he’ll keep it; I am sure of it. Besides, I don’t like it here; it doesn’t feel like home, I replied in a firm tone. You could still see the worry and some panic in her eyes and facial expression. Mom, I will be okay. I will keep an eye on the other two, I reassured her.

A sharp, energized voice broke our moment. Hey, we need to get moving and get on the road, dad beamed a magnificent smile as if everything was right in the world, and for now, it was. The cicadas had reminded me all afternoon about that other world, the electric world, and with my dad carrying me off there, I was pretty sure things were going to be alright.

Where’s your brother and sister at, kiddo? You the only one going? Turning towards the old beige vinyl-sided house.

I’ll run inside and get them. Swinging the front door open, I hollered for my two younger siblings to hustle it up. They came sprinting out the front door, arms loaded full of their belongings. I didn’t want them to go back to Georgia with my dad and me. But they just had to go, too. Whatever big sister does, the younger girls must follow along. We gave mom one last kiss and hug goodbye, then raced to the U-Haul truck and jumped in. The two youngest, Jake, ten years old, and Jessica, seven-years-old, sat in the middle. I sat next to the door to make sure neither of them would fall out. I was protective of them even though they continuously worked my last nerve, but that’s what siblings do.

Dad slid in the driver’s side of the U-Haul, and the smell of gasoline lingered in the cab's front as he stuck the key in the ignition and fired up the engine. Glancing over at him, I reminisced when I lived with him approximately six months prior. It only lasted maybe a month and a half. Dad picked me up and drove me back to Georgia by myself to live with him. Unknowingly, he lived in a small two-bedroom apartment that was gross, and you could barely move or breathe in. The school I had to go to was within walking distance. You could see it out the back window of our apartment, and I was the only white student. Thank God the kids didn’t bother me. It was frightful. I was living with dad’s new girlfriend and her two young sons in the small apartment. God, I couldn’t stand it. Zach was two years old, and Jason was only six months.

Zach slept in a crib in dad’s girlfriend, Tina, and dad’s room, while Zach slept in a crib in my small space you could barely walk through. He cried in the middle of the night, keeping me awake, making it hard for me to get up and go to school. I was late or too tired to go. The living arrangements were so terrible I just had dad send me back home on a plane to Indiana. It bummed me it didn’t work out. One thing was for sure, dad wasn’t mean, and he didn’t hit me. So, I