Little Girl

Ok, this is about Taylor keeping a secret from her parents. Then she runs away from home. Inspired by Viva La Gloria (Little Girl) - Green Day (it even contains some direct quotes from that song). Set shortly after Whispers in the Dark. There's some Sailor Moon R references in this as well. Rated because I'm paranoid. Sparrowsong 06:07, January 25, 2010 (UTC)

TAYLOR POV
I felt that awful sensation of falling from really high up. I think you called that having the wind knocked out of you. At least, my dad did once. After I felt myself land on the ground (which was really hard), I opened my eyes and looked around.

First I looked down; I still had my Winnie the Pooh pajamas on. Then I looked around at my surroundings.

I closed my eyes again, covered my ears, and screamed at the top of my lungs. I started crying, too. Hey, I was only four! Well, four going on five. But I was still just a kid.

"Little girl," the familiar voice said. It somehow made itself so that I could hear it even if I covered my ears. "Why are you crying?"

"LEAVE ME ALONE!" I yelled.

"No," it insisted. The voice was bad and mean, and it did scare me, but it was trying to get me to calm down. It managed to succeed, somehow.

It somehow coaxed me into opening my eyes, too. What an idiot I was.

"I see you have your father's eyes," the bad voice snickered. As freaky as the bad voice was, it managed to sound smug. "He wasn't a good boy, you know. He didn't do what he was told."

I gasped and shut my eyes again. Still, though, something about the bad voice was irresistible in a way. I wanted to listen to it and believe what it was saying, but I knew better than to listen to strangers.

Daddy always said I took after Mommy, even though I didn't look very much like her. He was right.

"He hurt people," the bad voice continued. It seemed to enjoy taunting me. "Lied to them, killed them, kidnapped them. He was bad to his parents, too. He even tried to kill your mother once. He poisoned her. I'm not the bad guy here, little girl. Your father is the one that's not nice."

"Liar!" I cried.

I could feel the bad voice getting in my head, trying to see what I was thinking and look at my memories. I did absolutely everything to try and stop it, but it still managed to do it.

"Your mother lied to you, didn't she? She told you that your father drowned. But all this time, he's been alive. He just didn't care about you. Lying is bad, right?"

"My parents are not bad people! They're good and you're bad! Go away!"

"Calm down, little girl. I'm trying to help you, but if you just keep resisting I won't be able to. Will you just let me into your head?"

I collapsed on the ground and screamed as loud as possible. I screamed until I literally couldn't breathe.

"HELP!" I wailed. "THAT PERSON IS HURTING ME!" That was what Mommy told me to do if someone bothered me.

"Do you really think your parents love you?" the bad voice sneered.

I kept on screaming.

"Remember that time they wouldn't buy you a new doll because it was too expensive? What about the time where you were out in the rain? Hmm?"

I saw a vision of something that happened a while ago. It was raining outside, and my parents and I were out for a walk. I suddenly spotted a cute little frog.

"Look!" I exclaimed, pointing at it. "Mommy, Daddy, it's a froggy!"

"No, Taylor," Mommy said. "That's a wild animal. They don't like to be picked up."

It hopped away, and I chased after it. I slipped in a puddle and fell.

"Ouch!" I whined, starting to cry. "Please help me up!"

"No, get up yourself," Mommy coldly answered. I saw her face in the vision. She looked angry and mean, and her eyes were full of hate. Hate for me.

"I hate you, Mommy!" I'd wailed. "Daddy, can you please help me up?"

He said the same thing. He also told me that "hate" wasn't a nice word.

The vision kept playing over and over. Each time, my parents got meaner and meaner until they tried to kill me just because I fell.

"The gods hate you, too," the bad voice told me.

I wiped my nose on my sleeve and looked up.

"E-even Grandpa?" I blubbered.

"Especially Grandpa."

The bad voice showed me a vision of two guys fighting. Both of them had blonde hair and blue eyes. The younger one looked like Daddy (I guessed that it was him as a kid), and the other one was clearly Grandpa. He always had two snakes on his shoulder (he insisted that they liked little girls and wouldn't bite me, but I was petrified of snakes after I watched this really scary movie about five girls stranded in the amazon and one of them was eaten alive by an anaconda; it was rated R, which probably stood for "really scary animals that might give you nightmares" or something like that) and a funny-looking hat. They both had my same blue eyes, too. Not very many people had blue eyes like me. My mommy said that I had "ice-blue" eyes, which was supposed to be really rare. My daddy's brothers and sisters all had ice-blue eyes, though. And he had lots of brothers and sisters, so I didn't think of my eyes as rare. I wished I could have a little brother or sister, but whenever I asked my parents for one they always said no.

"How could you abandon her?!" Daddy argued. "Look at her now! That's my mother, and she's so insane she barely knows me!"

"Luke, I'm sorry," Grandpa apologized. He looked upset. "I...I didn't mean to. I was going to--"

"Shut up, you mother f**king bastard!" Daddy interrupted. "You may be my father, but you are not my dad, and I don't want anything to do with you!"

Grandpa looked like he was going to cry. I didn't know what "mother f**king bastard" meant, but it sounded like a swearword. I knew lots of swearwords.

"I hate you," Daddy growled.

Then suddenly, Grandpa looked mad too.

"I hate you even more, Luke! And if you ever have a little girl, I'll kill her! I bet she'll be a brat, just like you! I will hate your whole family!"

Wait...Grandpa threatening to kill me? Long before I was even conceived? That didn't sound like Grandpa.

The brainwashing wore off. I remembered my real family and friends, and how much they loved me.

The bad voice started showing me even more horrible visions.

People covered in blood. Children being tortured to death. A little girl being eaten alive by one of the most terrifying Great White Sharks I could have imagined.

"Stop, stop, stop!" I begged.

They got worse.

I saw someone whose face had been peeled off. I saw a girl being mauled by monsters, then turned into a tree. I saw a dragon mauling a boy, then the boy falling to the ground and fainting.

I saw a girl falling off a cliff. I saw a boy holding up some kind of ceiling with nothing but his bare hands, looking like he wanted to die. I saw a monster killing a lady and the lady exploding into dust.

I saw a boy screaming in pain while being stung by a big, black bug (which was called a scorpion or something). I saw innocent people burning to death. I saw a girl crying over her friend's dead body.

I saw dead bodies everywhere, and I recognized each and every one of them. Grandpa. My parents. Auntie Annabeth and Uncle Percy, my adoptive aunt and uncle. Lisa, my best friend. Grover and Juniper. Nico. Travis and Connor, who were supposed to be some of my dad's many brothers, but we didn't know them very well and I didn't really think of them as my uncles.

The rest of the visions were much too horrible to describe.

Soon enough, I was begging the bad voice to kill me. The visions were that disturbing.

LUKE POV
"Taylor, Taylor!" I yelled.

Thalia and I had been woken up by Taylor's piercing screams. It reminded me of my mother and her possessed fits, only this was even worse. This time, it was my precious child. Only four years old.

We couldn't get her to wake up. We'd been trying to wake her up for at least half an hour, but she just kept kicking and screaming.

"Please, I'm begging you!" she hollered in her sleep. "Stop torturing me!"

I tried to hold her, but she acted like I was a Fury who was trying to kill her.

I started to cry.

"If we don't do something, she's going to go insane!" I screeched. "She'll end up like my mum!"

Finally, we managed to wake Taylor up. For more than an hour, the three of us just cried.

"Taylor," I began, hugging her. "What's the matter? Are you okay?"

She shook her head.

Tay wouldn't tell us what happened. She just cried.

She didn't fall asleep again for days, or even talk very much. She said that if she fell asleep, the "bad voice" would get her.

I exchanged a glance with Thalia. She gulped.