her daughter to safety before the impact. It had been enough. In as much as she had fallen forwards, Emily had been spared the sight of her mother’s body being tossed airborne, driven into and butchered by the glass…but she heard it! She tried to scream…but no sound came out.

Medical opinions varied – don’t they always?

Jonathan Clarke sat upright in the ergonomically designed piece of extruded plastic, masquerading as a chair. The equally sterile sign on the desk read "Dr Peter Browning – Speech Pathologist." The man lowered his glasses.

"You must understand Mr Clarke, your daughter has been severely traumatised."

Jonathan had understood that much twenty minutes after the accident – when he arrived on the scene and his daughter had been unable to speak to him!

"Well yes doctor, I realise that," he replied, wanting desperately to snap that fucking sign in pieces and shove it down the specialist’s coat pocket. How many years had this guy trained? How many exams? for him to sit there and tell him his daughter was traumatised? Jesus Christ!

"But can you give me something a little more concrete to go on? How long might it be before she can talk again?" he added.

Dr Browning returned his gaze, seemingly figuring if he could still make that golfing appointment.

"Well Mr Clarke, all tests show there is no physiological damage – it’s just a case of Emily herself coming to terms with this er, incident. Quite frankly, time is really the best healer."

Jonathan got up. This conversation, like the dozen or so which preceded it, was going nowhere. "Thank you doctor," he said unemotively, turning on his heel and leaving the consulting room to collect Emily from reception.

People react differently to stress and loss. Some handle it, some seek to blame others. More than a few suffer emotional and personality melt-down. Unfortunately for Emily, Jonathan Clarke fell into the latter category.

Whilst her schoolwork did not appear to suffer initially – after all, she could still hear quite normally and besides long periods of being withdrawn, she was able to fulfil working tasks set for her. Few of her circle of friends were prepared to put themselves out to extend any emotional support and one by one withdrew into their own little cliques. Emily became a figure of solitude – that "poor girl who doesn’t want to talk."

Her father began to drink and in his irrational and alcohol-fuelled state, he eventually arrived at the warped conclusion that if Emily had just gotten the school bus that day, instead of having her mother drive her – he would still have a wife and female companion.

Emily sensed a change but at twelve could hardly understand why her father didn’t seem to love her as much. She felt it was something she must have done but had no idea what it could be. Whereas once he would help her with homework – she used to point-out the items she needed help on, now he stayed away and left her to her own devices. He rarely even kissed her goodnight any more. She missed her mother so much she would cry herself to sleep most nights!

Heading up towards thirteen now, Emily was a most beautiful child. Although still not yet menstruating, her body was developing in all the right places. Her hips had slimmed down and become quite pronounced. Very finely rounded young breasts that were already well past the services of a training bra. Only five-two, she could have passed for sixteen easily with a little make-up. Shoulder-length light bown hair complimented an angelic face, home-base to a cute slightly upturned nose and smooth, flawless high cheeks. She looked out at her sad and lonely little world through pretty hazel eyes that if you looked hard enough, betrayed the pain and anguish of her loss.

What her father was increasingly looking at however was something quite different. Many months now since the accident, the enforced role of being a single parent was not much to his liking. Emily’s rather sudden transition however, in his eyes at least, from gawky kid to curvy in-house tease, began to stir a lot more than simply his memories. All may not be lost, he reflected. The situation most definitely had possibilities.

It wasn’t that Emily hadn’t been trying to regain her speech. Most nights she would sit in her bedroom in front of the mirror and will her throat to deliver some sound…any sound. She could sense the presence of a system inhibitor – the kill-switch was spliced-in somewhere between her mind and vocal chords. She knew also that she herself had brought this intolerable existence into being and that she was the only one that could deactivate it.

It was the first day of spring. Walking home quickly from the nearby bus-top, she closed the front door behind her and headed into the kitchen, to find her father seated at the table reading the paper. Not only was he home from work two hours early, he had been drinking again. She could sense a distinct shift in their interpersonal wavelengths. The person who turned to look at her was a complete stranger.

"Have a good day at school Emily?" he slurred, "Oh tha’s right, I forgot, you can’t fucking talk can you?"

He was staring at her, his eyes slowly taking in her whole uniform and quite obviously, most everything underneath it. Emily cringed and instinctively brought her arms up protectively. The schoolbag afforded a comforting amount of protection. He poured the remaining contents of the bottle into the small glass. The only sound in the room momentarily was the ice clinking briefly against the glass.

"Curious as to why daddy’s home early Emily?….Sure y’are sweetie." He slammed the glass back down on the table.

"Well you’ll be proud of ya dad, see he got his-self a raise at last." He looked at her almost beseechingly….."Yeah… a raise alright…….right out the fucking company." He paused for an instant, his eyes filling with tears. "So, what d’ya think of that sweet Emily? – your old man got his ass kicked well and good. He just sat hunched up at the table, an inconsolable pillar of misery.

"Lost my wife, my job….but hey, I still got a daughter that can’t talk…shouldn’t complain." His voice trailed off as he studied her.

"Ya know Emily, you’re one beautiful little girl – so like your mother, come and sit on my lap – give yer old dad a cuddle."

She was torn between allegiance to her father and wariness at his obvious insobriety. She had never seen him slipping this far down into the ooze and yet the alarm bells were pealing like the veritable old clangers at St Martins.

Her love and instinctive trust of her father over-rode her common sense and putting her school bag on the table beside the empty bottle, she allowed herself to be pulled on to his lap. For a while he just sat there holding her round the waist. Inevitably though, the immediacy of so arousing a young female body, daughter or not, tested his resolve to the limit. He allowed a hand to stray to Emily’s knee, just below the hem of her schooldress. She made as if to dislodge it.

"What the? " he looked up at her. "Can’t even put my hand on my own daughter’s leg?" She started to get up, but he pulled her back down.

"You stay put girl," he mumbled. "Day comes I can’t touch my twelve-year-old daughter’s knee is a frosty day in Hell." He made a point now of encircling her leg just below her hemline. "See here kid, I used to have a wife – remember? You decide you want a lift to school one morning and suddenly I don’t have no wife….don’t have no fucking life either!"

He was unmoved by her sudden flood of silent tears and probably unaware of the cruelty inflicted by such a devastating statement. All he could see was a red mist. At its heart was a growing lust – no so much for his daughter particularly as simply a female body. It had been so long.

Through the thin schooldress, he could feel every curve of her bottom as she wriggled uncomfortably on his lap and it had always been just a matter of time before the blood commenced marshalling its resources at that critical point between his legs. Emily herself was only too aware now of her father’s arousal and struggled to free herself from his grip. The hand on her leg began to cross the line suddenly from familiarity to indecency.

She stared in shock and disbelief as his hand rose up her thigh, dragging the hemline with it. At the point her little white panties were revealed, she began to tug violently at his hands. Shaking her head in denial and with the tears in free-fall she clawed at him as her mind worked overtime to locate that elusive kill-switch.

Maybe it was the arousing sight of her knickers combined with the natural heat from her thighs. Perhaps simply the fact of having a young girl in so vulnerable a position on his lap. Whatever the catalyst, her struggling served only to inflame his desire and nuzzling her neck as he now was, the sight of her small but developing breasts heaving just out of sight down the front of her dress, tipped him over into fully fledged bad-ass territory.

"What have you got down here then sweetheart?" he mumbled incoherently, shoving his right hand roughly down her schooldress. She writhed in an agony of despair, tears blinding her pretty face.

As his fingers pushed roughly beneath the thin bra, tearing her dress and leaving it gaping, they encountered a softness that he had never imagined. Almost with the power to sober him up, he held her breast within his hand, fondling and rubbing it lewdly. Blinded with disbelief that this could be happening to her, she had no recourse left but to continue shaking her head while trying to break free of his grasp. She may as well have been trying to escape the embrace of a polar bear….let alone, one on heat!

"C’mon Emily…quit struggling girl," he railed at her, "Yer dad just wants to have a little play with your tits is all. Le’s see if we can get those hot little nips to stand up for daddy?" As he slurred the words, his hand cupped both breasts together as with his middle and index fingers, he began pulling and manipulating her nipples one after the other.

To her horror, she felt them becoming engorged and beginning to protrude slightly.

"Now then , that’s a good girl," he muttered, "Jus like your mum….she loved a good feel-up too." He began to kiss her neck as she tried to evade his lips. Tiring of her non-compliance, he slapped her hard across the back of the head. Emily was stunned momentarily.

"What’s yer fuckin’ problem girl? Yer dad not good enough for you?" Enraged suddenly he pushed her hard off his lap on to the floor. He stood over her as she got to her knees. Her dress having risen up as she fell, it was now hitched high one side. The sight of her three-quarters exposed panties only fuelled his lust.

"Never too late for a spanking kid," he mumbled as he delivered a hard smack across her rear end. She fell forward again trying to cover her bottom with her hands. Dragging Emily to her knees, he pulled her dress right up and spanked her hard again. He was beginning to like the sensation. Unable to make a sound or plead for help, Emily had no option but to take it. A further four or five spanks left her bottom stinging and her pride in tatters.

A lull in proceedings gave her false hope that the worst was over. That is until her father now standing astride her, bent down, simply encircled her waist and began fondling and rubbing both breasts with lustful impatience. Her schooldress was ripped open and glancing downwards she watched with horror as he just tore the flimsy little bra apart and left her breasts hanging loose. She could not believe how erect her little nipples were.

Jonathan got down on his knees behind his daughter, although all he was seeing right about now was something that shortly would be the panacea for the raging fire needing to be quenched within the turbulence that once passed for a loving parent.

His right hand moved ever backwards, seeking the holy grail of incestual perversion. The front of her panties called ‘time-out’. As he cupped her entire vaginal area, for a moment or two he was was unable or unwilling, to grasp the full implications of his degenerate actions. So shocked was Emily, she knelt there rigid with fear, unable to believe her father was wreaking this psychological devastation upon her.

As the heat from between the girl’s legs blew his last few coherent thoughts away, he tore the soft material aside and began rubbing her slit furiously, it felt so good, he could almost forget the ruination that was his life.

In desperation to extricate herself from this untenable situation, Emily kicked out blindly. Her unexpected retaliation caught him unawares and as the heel of her school shoe opened up a three-inch gash in his cheek he clutched at his face in pain. Freed momentarily, Emily took the opportunity to scramble to her feet but seeing his quarry take flight, Jonathan‘s self-defense mechanisms kicked-in and he caught her before she could make the safety of the hallway, maybe even the front-door. With her dress ripped, her breasts and knickers exposed, she put her hands up to defend herself. He slapped her hard across the face and followed this up with a savage and uncontrolled backhand that staggered her.

"You little cunt Emily," he screamed, hitting her again. She fell backwards across the edge of the table, which not being built for encounters such as this, tipped over, discharging its contents as well as the tablecloth across the girl’s prostrate body. She lay there stunned, her back was hurt she knew and she could feel blood running down her face from where he had struck her.

Having but the one impulse-rending need now, he knelt down in front of his distraught daughter and simply ripped her knickers down. As her pussy was exposed, framed as it was rather attractively by the dawning of light brown hair, he unzipped himself with feverish haste.

"Think you’re too fucking good for your old man huh Emily?" He splayed her legs roughly as he pulled his erection out. "Well girl, let me tell ya, you ain’t nothin’ but a whore – a two cent whore at that. Now spread those fucking legs and lets have no more of your crap."

Through a veil of tears she saw him inclined towards her, erection in hand. She looked around, desperate for anything to stave off the inevitable. Amongst the folds of the tablecloth something glittered.

As he gruntingly worked the head between the folds of her soft labia, Emily’s mind re-played a collage of those memories so dear to her. Her mother dressing her for her first day of school. Dad kneeling by her bed telling her a story. The Christmas she received her three-wheeler bike. Sitting on the verandah watching the first snow of the season……just then, she found the kill-switch!

Even as he pushed hard into her, she screamed out "No daddy,no." her small hand raised high above his back.

The first thrust didn’t kill him, the second one did!