i will tell the complete story of this girl later on. i remember when we lived on that old farm. i was very cold in the winter. it had an old wood furnace which sent smoke up into the house and i remember it would make my eyes burn so bad that i would run the the dirty clothes pile that mom had in her bedroom and rub them until the burning sensation went away. we were dirt poor and could nor afford the luxury of butter or margarine in those days. so we would put mayonnaise or some other condiment on our mash potatoes. as i said the beatings began about at that time. because the pastor of the church where we went would get up and brag about beating his kids with a rubber hose. and if you know how rubber sticks to the skin you probably could imaging just how that terrible form of corporal punishment felt to a small kid. DAD would use his belt and MOM would use a switch or the belt also as she didn't care what it was. it was cold in that drafty old house and i would wake up shivering because i didn't have sufficient blankets to keep me warm. so i would shake in the bed and the friction would warm me up. this was a problem because it would wake up my mother and she would come in the dark into the living room where i slept on the couch with a belt and commence to beating me. i would just lay there silent and take the pain and pretend to be asleep. i guess i reasoned that perhaps if she knew i was sleeping that she would take a little pity on me because being asleep i certainly couldn't help it. this didn't help it at all because the next night i would be cold again and out of habit and the necessity to get warm i would shake in the bed and get beaten again. sometime before this as i have said i had a dream that mom was chasing me and i was in the terror of my life. in the dream as i would try to open this door behind it was another door which was smaller. each time i would open the next door they were getting progressively smaller until the door was so small that i could only lay on my belly and peek through. not too long after is when she began to beat me and for any little infraction no matter what it was. from minor ones to major ones such as wetting to bed............