CHAPTER 1

Dara was a vibrant, beautiful young woman. She stood about 5 feet 7 inches and weighed about a hundred and forty pounds. She had naturally brownish red shoulder-length hair, a gorgeous face, and a heartwarming smile. Dara worked really hard to provide and take care of her family because she had a bum ass boyfriend who refuses to work. His name was Lawrence, and he decided that he should be the stay-home parent and let Dara do all the work and support of the household.

Lawrence, her deadbeat ass boyfriend, was a pretty big dude. He wasn’t a bad-looking man, but he had an attitude that made him ugly. He stood about 6 feet 1 inch and looked to weigh close to three hundred pounds. He was mean and abusive toward Dara for no obvious reason at all. Living with Lawrence was nothing short of hell for her. Dara was only allowed to go to work, come home, and take care of Lawrence and their three beautiful daughters.

The whole time she’s at work, Lawrence spends his fat ass sitting in a chair in front of the television playing video games, drinking beer, smoking weed, and yelling at the girls. When Dara comes home, the house is always a complete disaster all for her to clean, plus she has to cook dinner and bath the girls.

Dara jumped in Lawrence’s Eighty-Five Cadillac Eldorado, that he seemed to treasure more than life itself. She drove fast and recklessly through the streets. Dara was unconscious, yet conscious, aware, but not aware of what she was doing. With tears streaming down her face, she drove in a blind stupor, not going anywhere in particular; all she knew was that she had to get away from Lawrence abusive ass.

She pulled and beat on the steering wheel as she yelled and cried out, talking only to herself. She kept saying. “I’m tired of him beating on me!”

“I can’t take it anymore!”

“I won’t take it anymore!”

“But I don’t know what to do or who I can turn too!”

“This shit is too embarrassing to discuss with anyone!”

“Lord, what can I do?”

“If Lawrence isn’t beating the crap out of me, he’s belittling me!”

“He takes and never gives me anything!”

“I have no friends because he made me alienate myself from all of my friends and family!”

She kept thinking about how Lawrence would make her feel guilty by calling her a whore when she wanted to hang out and socialize with other people. How he would constantly nag and complained like a hormonal bitch. All of Dara and Lawrence’s friends were really just his friends, and whenever he was mad at them, she would not be allowed to speak to them until he said so. Dara felt that she had to be looking pretty stupid in the eyes of others, but her fear of Lawrence was way more overpowering than anyone’s opinion of her.

Only time Lawrence ever treats her like a grown woman is in the bedroom, and his sex wasn’t all that. Dara was just too afraid of him to leave. She thought back to the last time she tried to speak up for herself, only to have Lawrence slap blood from her mouth. He savagely tore her clothes off and raped her, and when he was done, he beat the shit out of her. In fact, he beat and rapped Dara so badly that she could barely get out of bed for a whole week.

There was this one time Dara and the girls were going to meet her mom at church, and Lawrence felt like Dara’s dress was too short for her to wear to church.

He grabbed Dara by the neck with the strength of a gorilla tossing her about the room, ran over, and picked her up before she could get up. Then he viciously pulled her hair as he savagely ripped the dress off her with the other hand. He left Dara exposed in her bra and panties right in front of the girls. Dara did not want to go to church after that, but he chose something else for her to wear and made her go anyway.

Out of all the shit Lawrence has done to Dara, today would be the straw that broke the camel’s back. When Dara came home after working sixteen hours ending a sixty-hour work week, she was so excited, because it was payday. She’d gotten a thousand dollar bonus check also. All Dara wanted to do was spend some of her money on a nice spa day for herself, which included a massage.

When she told Lawrence about the bonus checks and her plans, all hell broke loose. Lawrence yelled at her as loud as he could. In fact, he yelled at Dara so loud and hard that she peed on herself. He said, “Bitch, you don’t deserve a motha fuckin spa day!” “Who in the fuck do you think you are?” He then approached Dara and punched her in her face so hard that she lost all of her senses for a minute.

Dara continues to drive frantically through the streets as she is hunted with all these horrific memories of abuse and torture. She began talking to herself again, asking herself, “Why she can’t just leave Lawrence? Then she answered herself with the following, “Well, because I don’t know how.” “What I mean by I don’t know how is, like this, when you’re afraid of someone you just know that if you leave, they will find and kill you on the spot.” She started convincing herself that she was bound to Lawrence for life because of the girls. She told herself that she couldn’t just get up and move, she would have to sneak and leave everything she and the girls own behind while Lawrence is gone.

Dara thought about leaving the girls behind to live with Lawrence; she questions how she and the girls would survive. Then she came to the conclusion that she was just afraid to leave Lawrence as she was of staying with him.

She thought about her daughters, but right before Dara could get the word babies out of her mouth, the car spun out of control and brutally struck a tree, instantly going up into flames. The blaze could be seen for miles. Traffic quickly started to back up as people stopped their cars, some to look and others to actually try and be helpful.

As the crowd grew, you could hear several conversations going on about what happened. Some of the on-lookers were saying that there was no way that anyone survived the crash. You could also hear others saying they had witnessed the entire accident and that the driver intentionally ran into the tree. There were even people there that had started a prayer group from a distance. Then there were the loud piercing mechanical screams of fire trucks, police, and ambulance sirens along with the howls of neighboring dogs.

The emergency responders carefully maneuver their way through Friday’s rush hour traffic. As the sirens grew closer, some of the spectators started to move their cars out of the way. A few ambulance chasers stuck around, because they didn’t mind getting their cars caught up in a scene. Not being able to move their cars gives them an excuse to stick around. Still, there was a high volume of traffic because the accident occurred in a public park.

The firemen were the first to arrive, trying swiftly to put the fire out. The police weren’t far behind; they quickly began to execute crowd control, putting up borders and yelling at people to move further away from the scene. Some of the officers scouted the crowd for witnesses. The crowd was being so noisy they were hesitant to move even with the police yelling and physically pushing them back. However, the thick clouds of smoke gave them another point of view. As the smoke from the flames dominated the atmosphere, people hurriedly moved, coughing and gagging.

Finally, the ambulance arrives with the local news van at their wheels. The fire was so overwhelming no one could get close enough to see if there was anyone still inside of the car. Not only was the tree on fire, but other landscaping surrounding the area had caught on fire as well. From the way things looked, there was no possible chance of anyone surviving. By the time the fire was out, there was nothing left but the metal part of the car frame.

People continued to stand around long after the fire was put out, discussing their versions of the accident. Every now and then, a small argument would occur. They were saying things like. “What a shame.”

“Well, at least whoever it was, they didn’t suffer.”

Then someone asks them how they know whether the person in the car suffered or not. Someone yelled back,” “Cause the car blew up, you fool!” The argument was on from there.

“Fool, who are you calling a fool?”

“You fool!”

Good thing the police were there because these fools were really about to get into a fistfight, over a stupid ass disagreement at the scene of a tragic accident. People are so selfish, disrespectful, and ignorant. You would think they are there out of concern for the driver of the car, but they didn’t care.

The accident was just another something to do or to see. Most of them could care less about what really happened to the poor girl that was driving the car.

Investigators worked effortlessly around the fire, trying to find a body or evidence of a body. They had extinguished all of the small surrounding fires except for the tree. The tree was humongous, and it stood as tall as an apartment building. Falling burning tree branches made it impossible for anyone to conduct a...