This is the first excerpt of a fictional story I am currently writing. Please give me your comments, and follow the tale as we go along.

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The Girl from the Lane

Sheila tucked her daughter Latoya in beside her little brother Newton and watched them both as they literally fell away into the comforting bosom of sleep. She wondered at the magic and the mystery of it and her mind tried to connect it with the finality of death. One moment you are here, physically participating with the rest of creation. The next minute you are gone. Sleep, that aspect of your existence that is as necessary as the breath you take and the miracle that it is, replenishing the wear of your physical self. The strange way it seemed to resemble death. That state where you are no more. Unknown to you in your defenseless physical state.
She stroked the foreheads of the two provings of her womanhood, pulled the thin sheet over their small torsos, turned out the light and strode from the little room both children shared. In a few years she would have to provide them with separate rooms. Boys should not sleep with their sisters she thought. For now it was ok, as they were little children. But at least it was a major improvement on the circumstances of her own childhood.
She had grown up with four brothers and two sisters. All seven crammed in a tiny room on two large beds that seemed to engulf the entire room. A cloth screen had separated the room shared by their mother and father doing nothing to shut out the protestations of her mother as she tried to ward off the unwelcome advances of her father at night. She wondered if she was the product of one such advances. The screaming of fabric as it was being ripped from her mother's frame would soon be replaced by the thumping of the bedpost against the wall of the wooden structure that they called home. Sometimes this would go on for what seemed an eternity. Then the silence that followed would be chased away by the guttural snoring of the "animal" as she called him.
These thoughts usually disturbed her, making sleep sometimes impossible. It was at these times that she would curse her own existence. Her being born in an island setting where with each passing year the route of opportunity seemed even more distant. It was not going to happen tonight though, she thought. She would summon all her strength and push these thoughts away. Tomorrow was Exams, final exams. The final point in four years of sacrifice and she was not going to drop her hands now.

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