I wake up on the floor.

Despite my current situation, a bubble of laughter fall from my lips as I think of how I have woken up in this position more and more frequently within the last few years than I believe my former self would have liked. I glance around the hard uneven wooden floor, and gently massage the crook in my neck, being careful to avoid the small cuts from where his fingernails had digged in when Charlie grabbed my throat.

Whatever kills you makes you stronger.

I repeated the words to myself in my head like a mantra as I try to awaken my stiff muscles, still sore from last night's reunion. The jagged line made across my collarbone from Charlie's steak knife starts to protest as I shake back my hands and stand up. Well, I try to.

I find that my leg is rather sore when I put any weight on it. There is some swelling around my ankle and I place my cool hands on it. The pain of something touching the skin is extreme, but I force myself to do it, thanking for once how cold I was during the night.

It is now eight fifteen, and if I don't get to school soon, I might as well sign the death warrant. Charlie would not permit a day to be exempt from school, not for minor injuries – well, what he classified as minor injuries. I had asked once, at the start. It had not been well received.

I knew, anyway, Charlie would know in such a small town, if I skipped a day of school. Even though his mind was currently preoccupied with his new acquaintance in the next room, most likely picked up from the local bar, the school would phone the house to ask why I was absent.

I was no fool – I did not go walking directly into trouble.

It was the other way round really, I thought, as I tried to place a sock on my foot without disturbing my rapidly swelling ankle. Trouble found me. It had when I was born, and then again when I was thirteen. And now, seventeen years old and it was just begging me to take a day off school to see what would happen. I was not exactly excited about the outcomes.

No – I would go in, I decided as I rummaged in the small drawer of my possessions, looking for the concealer Charlie routinely bought me every month. It was a nice gesture for a person people who knew what he did would dismiss as evil, but really it was nothing but special to me. Charlie was, and is understanding of me. He knows things about me, and he knows I like to blend in with the crowd. This is probably why I am the most special … acquaintance in his group.

I rub the make-up around my face, concentrating particularly on my neck. The marks are not exactly faded, and it stings slightly putting liquid on a cut not yet healed, or fully scabbed, but it must be done. At least, I think as I look in the mirror, I look presentable. Charlie made sure I always looked presentable with threats of reprimands later.

No – I looked fine for someone who had just been beaten up and abused sexually by the man who was supposed to care for her most. I looked like a perfectly normal teenager, not at all like I had just had It again. Not at all like I had just had The Dream.

I quickly wipe a tear away from my cheek as he enters. He is not dressed, I noticed, and I avert my eyes from the area I have become too familiar with in the last few years. He glances at me too, and nods his head. From over here, I can already smell the sickening sweet sweaty scent of drugs and sex.

I make no effort to point out to Charlie that it is not even half eight in the morning.

He grabs a small plastic lunch bag. It is see-through, and I know what is in it. As I stand there, he knowingly meets my eyes – he knows how it affects me. He is sniffing it in, and I feel my eyes tearing up, but I will not let them fall. He's not worth it, I tell myself.

But he is, I know he is. He took me in when no one else did. He looked after me when no one else could. He fed me when no one else would. It had all come at a higher price, but in the sick twisted way that it was, he was still my father. Not through blood, but from adoption and I owed him to look after him like he had me.

I was not an idiot. I had read books about others who had been mistreated. Many of them in the library after a long day at school and not quite ready to go home. Indeed, I'm sure the librarian assumed I was plotting something with the strange fascination I had been having with child abuse.

I read first-hand accounts, diary entries, letters and an account by a friend about a friend who had been abused. And in all of them that had happened in situations like mine, it was deemed as perfectly normal to have emotional attachment to your 'prisoner'. But that was not how I viewed Charlie. He was my Father, and I tried as hard as I could to separate the events that would happen in the darkness of the night.

If a tree falls in the middle of a forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

No is around to me or us in the middle of the night. I take comfort in the darkness, and the assurance that it is our secret. Our dirty little secret, but one none the less that no live man knows of but us.

He's still sniffing it when I tune back in to my surroundings. His small black eyes are meeting mine, and I remind myself for what must be the hundredth time that this isn't him. He doesn't mean it. It's the drugs that are taking control over his body. He doesn't mean it.

He is walking towards me, having gotten his full of his favourite drug. I smell it in the air, and wish he could have done it elsewhere, anywhere but here in the light. Our secrets were slowly coming out of the dark pit I had dug around them.

He reaches up to stroke my face – a hard, possessive caress. I refuse to think of him as Charlie, or my father. It is moments like these that I must separate from the better memories. He is kissing me now, and I can taste the alcohol on his warm fuzzy tongue. His hands are wondering from where they should be, and my mind reminds itself that I need to go to school. But to pull away now would be suicide. I know he won't stop until he has what he wants. I also know that if I am late for school it will be blamed on me.

But it is happening. It is happening all over again, just like last night. I'm trying to shut out, I'm trying to lose all thoughts all feelings but I know what is happening. So how come I'm completely aware of what he is doing, and of who he is. Why do I know exactly who this man is and why is it that its getting harder and harder to separate Charlie, my beloved father, from the man who is taking over his body right now. From the man who is intentionally causing me pain.

If a tree is falling through the air, and no one is seeing it falling in the night, will anyone catch it? Or will they even care?