Shiloh Evans ©BobbieDeLeon

A short story about not staying in abuse. The following flash fiction was based on a tragic news story I saw. It was my way of processing it. But I’ve lost people in my own life to abuse, people who kept going back to the abuser. After a while those people never had a choice to go anywhere because their life had been taken from them. So it was also a way of dealing with those loses.

I have also experienced being in an abusive relationship and I know the strength it takes to leave. Thank you for reading.

Please, Please, Please!!! If you are in an abusive situation and need help, please click the link below or call 1-800-799-7233 or text START to 88788

Shiloh Evans …..

Shiloh Evans was a nine-year-old girl from an abusive home. Every day she sat looking out her broken bedroom window praying for a father who would love her. Shiloh knew her mother loved her, for she made a point of telling her this. Her mother’s “I love you” was the first and last thing Shiloh heard every day. Though her mother felt guilty for all she had allowed them both to endure, it was never enough to make her leave their abuser. Maybe she was too afraid, or maybe she was just being a mother the only way she knew how to. Either way year after year she chose to stay with the man who was hurting them.

Shiloh prayed with all her heart every night that they could one day leave and find a man who would be a good and loving husband and father. But her mother insisted that things were going to be better now and they would be okay. So Shiloh’s prayers were never answered.

​ Shiloh was a smart and beautiful little girl with big brown eyes that sparkled with light, curly brown hair that bounced when she walked and a smile that was contagious. She loved to read and to draw; and adored playing with puppies. She loved music and her favorite place in the world was near the ocean. She felt inspired watching the waves roll out and crash back into the rocks near the shoreline. She always remembered that sound, the mighty roar that sparked both feelings of terror and awe.

​ She never possessed much in the way of material goods, but she didn’t seem to mind much. Shiloh was a very imaginative child and that made up for all the lack of toys in the world. She was so much wiser than her nine years would have implied. She was without dispute a gift to our world, a gift that tragically we would never have the opportunity to open.

Shiloh Evans you see, was never born. Instead she is the image in the mind of a brokenhearted Grandmother of a grandbaby she will never have, never hold, never see grow up. Every day she sits and imagines through tears the kind of child Shiloh might have been.

​ The reality is that when Shiloh’s mother was eight months pregnant, she was murdered by her abusive husband. Her body along with Shiloh’s, whom she carried in her womb, were dumped in a shallow area of ocean and washed up on a secluded beach. Shiloh’s mother had chosen not to leave the man who abused her. Maybe she wanted a father for her child even if it wasn’t a good one? Or maybe it was because his apology and his promise he would do better, were sincere this time… weren’t they?