Sortie / Day One / Sara's Desperation
Impatient and embarrassed, she is easy to push over the edge. When you play up her desperation, she immediately lashes out.
She kicks at him, probably aiming to his leg, but he is in a wide crouch and her bare foot deflects off of his thigh and straight into his crotch. The 13-year-old boy yelps and drops to the ground in a fetal ball, moaning.
Sara is overwhelmed with an instant wave of guilt and regret upon seeing the pain she had caused her brother, but as she kneels down to apologize the boy lashes out, grabbing at her. She twists free but loses her towel in the process. The boy’s face is distorted into snarl as he lunges for her again and grabs her ankle as she tries to retreat.
She goes down hard on the hall carpet. She shouts as her brother crawls on top of her, pinning her to the ground. He wails on her with series of artless blows--all anger and no strength.
This comes an abrupt end when a masculine, adult voice booms out: "Karl! Cut that out right now!"
A blond man in his forties, who can only be the children's father, takes a few strides up the hall and pries the fighting siblings apart.
| Mr. Penrose is a respectable-seeming man in his forties, rarely without a suit. His blond hair and moderate complexion lack the fragile quality that tends to show up in his children’s features. Those must have come from his wife.
He has the beginnings of mid-life paunch across his middle, and his hairline has lost a few battles, though not the war. Yet there is strength in his arms, and a sureness in his movements that makes him hard to call anything other than handsome. |
"Karl, go take a shower and get ready for school!"
Karl whines, "But da-ad, she…"
"I don't want to hear it, Karl. Go."
As her father's attention was on her brother, the naked Sara attempted to wriggle from her father's grasp, but found his grip on her arm to be iron.
"As, for you, little miss. We have a guest in the house, Derek’s dorm mate, so there can be no running around the house naked."
"Dad, I wasn't. Karl…"
"Shush, Sara. Go get dressed. Pancakes for breakfast if you are quick enough. You are taking the bus today."
"The bus, but I hate…"
Her father ignores her plea, manhandling her around to point her toward her bedroom door before slapping her playfully but soundly on her bare buttocks. “Scoot!”
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