She pretends she’s beautiful.

Closing her eyes and watching the pictures behind it, she tries to be somewhere else. She pretends that she’s anyone else, a girl with pretty dresses and a mommy who cuddles her before bed and reads her a story, one with princesses and dragons and fairies.

As she’s struck time and time again, she blocks out the pain with pictures of what she’d like; of what she wishes could be. Her mind floats in these pictures, but deep down, she knows that that girl can never be her.

Because I’m a bad girl. I’m a very bad, ugly, pathetic, worthless girl. And Mommy will make me good. Yes. Mommy will make me good. She knows this is true. She is a bad girl, one who deserves to be punished, because this is what her mother has hammered into her head.

Her eyes squeezed shut, she feels the heat of the stove press down on her as she is thrown against it, then falls to the floor.

One tear falls from her eye, but she wipes it away. She has to be strong.