(re-worked)

Prologue

            The house was dark and dingy.  It was kept tidy but the walls were dark, no longer bright and vibrant like they were when she was little. They didn't have much stuff, anyway, to keep clean. The carpets were worn down from foot traffic, with stains here and there.  The windows had layers of filth on them, blocking out the sun some.  She slowly stepped down the stairs, being sure not to step on any of the sweet spots that would alert her father or brother she was coming down the stairs.  She knew they were up to something.  Something bad.  Not that they ever did something good.  They claimed she was the bad one.  The dirty whore.  The unwanted bitch.  Anything that they could throw from their tongue that they thought would hurt her.  It never did, though.  She was used to it. 

            As careful as she was being, she hit a squeaky board.  Stopping, she frozen in the position she was in, and held her breath, waited, and listened to see if she had alerted them.

When she was little, she dreaded leaving her school.  Most kids couldn't wait for that three o’clock bell to ring.  She hated it.  Life at home, it wasn't easy.  Her father was a drunk and her mother was weak, all she did was do whatever her father told her to do.   At the age of six, she learned what a blow job was because her father told her mother to do it in front of her.  He hadn't cared, nor had the woman who was supposed to be a mother to her. 

            She spent years locked up in her room, with the lock on the hallway side of the door.  Trapped.  She had a mattress on the floor, some toys her grandparents had given her.  A few books, which she had read over and over again.  She liked getting lost in the worlds of Little Women and The Secret Garden.  Her grandmother on her mom’s side had sent her the Anne of Green Gables series, and those were her favorite books.  Especially since she could identify with Anne. 

            In grade school she was expected home immediately.  When she got home, she would get shoved into her room and pushed down.  The door would slam shut behind her and the echo of the metallic click of the lock would echo through the room. They would bring her a plate to eat at some point, usually it was cold. 

In middle school, she was allowed to join after school programs or sports, her parents didn’t want to draw attention to their family, they felt if she was active after school she would appear more normal.  So she joined the Track team and Photography Club.   That allowed her to be home a lot less, so she took every opportunity not to be home.  It was then that the beatings started.  He’d hit her … places people were less likely to see, and he enjoyed it.  He loved it. 

            Her brother was treated completely different.  He was only a year older than she was, but he was treated like the prodigal prince.  He did anything their father said, and was twisted like he was.

            In high school she continued with both clubs.  They no longer locked her in her room because she didn’t leave her room, she preferred to be as far away from her family as she could.  At school she noticed her brother was constantly watching her.  Then one night her door opened, and he came in.  He had just taken a shower and was only in a towel.  Her gut twisted inside her, as if to warn her she’d never be the same.  He let the towel drop.  When she screamed, she thought she could hear her father laughing from the hallway.  He had come to her all through her freshman year.  Then it stopped when he got a girlfriend.  She knew that he abused the girlfriend, and she knew it was bad that she was thankful his attention was off her. 

            During her sophomore year, her mother disappeared.  One weekend there was an out of town track meet and she had been allowed to stay with a friend, she had come home and been told her mother ran away.  Several months later, her brother’s girlfriend disappeared.  The police kept showing up, dragging her father and brother down to the police station to question them.

            Then she noticed there was more and more woman going missing around town, her Dad and brother were spending less time at home and when they were home they were usually in the basement.   In her gut, she knew.  But she had to be sure. 

            It didn't seem like the squeak had gotten their attention.  She wasn't sure where they were.  So she knew she had to be sneaky. 

            She allowed herself to breathe again and continued down the stairs.  She tip toed through the living room and into the kitchen.  That’s when she heard them coming up the stairs from the basement, talking.  She hit in the little nitch the pantry in the kitchen made.  A tiny box the walls made.

            “What are you going to do about her?”  It was her brother’s husky voice.  You could hear the anger dripping from every word.  Anything coming out of his mouth had rage dripping from it. 

            “Well, we do what we do with them all.”  Her dad growled.  Neither of them knew how to talk.  They both sounded completely uneducated. 

            “What about the parasite upstairs?  When are we going to take care of her?”

            “Soon,” her father said as they opened the back door.  “Can’t do it too soon, they’ll look at us cuz of your mother and Vicky.”  Her heart dropped.  This confirmed it for her.  They had been involved with the disappearance of her mom and her brother’s girlfriend. 

            “I want to do her,” her brother said, she could almost see the disgusting smile spread across his face with the thought, like the Joker in Batman.  “I want to watch her bleed while I am inside her.”

            Her dad laughed and the back door shut.  She soon heard the roar of the run down, beat up car they had.  They were leaving. 

            She sighed, in relief.  She moved quickly through the small kitchen, through the mess they had created, making her way to the basement steps which were by the back door. She expected they would soon go to her room, drag her down by her hair, as they had done before, and demanded she clean up after them.  She wasn't allowed to eat with them, she got scraps when they were done, if she was lucky.  There were days she didn't eat at all.

            She went down the stairs and saw they had added a lock to the door.  She panicked for a moment.  Then looked around.  On the window sill was a key.  She grabbed it and prayed it opened it.  When the lock clicked, she took a deep breath and opened the door. 

            The smell is what she was met with first.  It was horrible, and she had grabbed the top of her shirt, and covered her mouth and nose with it.  Then she flipped on the light, and saw blood.  So much blood.  There was a woman in a cage, tied up and gagged, she didn’t respond to the light.  Her eyes stayed shut and she was slumped over in the corner of the cage. 

            She almost vomited.  So many thoughts rushed through her head.  She knew … she knew what she had to do.  She shut off the light, shut the door and put the lock back on.  She ran up the stairs and practically jumped on the kitchen counters, causing dishes to clang to the floor, to find the coffee can her mom use to hide money in, hoping and praying it was still there.  She reached up and patted the top of the cupboards around, because she couldn't see, praying she’d find the metal can.  When her finger tips touched it, she struggled to get a grasp on it.  When she did, she grabbed the can, pulling it out as quickly as she could.  She paused long enough to pull the plastic cover up to see if there was money in there, and when she saw there was, she closed it and ran through the house and up the stairs.  She grabbed her backpack, throwing a few things in there, threw the can in there.  She turned the radio on that they allowed her to have, and stuffed anything she could find under her blanket on the mattress making it look like she was laying under the covers.  She looked around her room.  One last time.  When her eyes rested on the blue teddy bear her grandmother had sent her, the last thing she had ever gotten from her, she grabbed it and opened the bag one last time and closed it again. 

            Her heart was racing so hard she thought it was going to jump out of her chest.  She turned off the light, slammed her bedroom door and ran out of the house.  She didn't know what she was going to do, but she knew she had to do something.  She had to … she could hear the car coming down the street.  She ducked into a bush and watched them pull into the driveway and to the back of the house.  She stayed there until she knew they had gone in.

            She had to save herself.  She had to try to save that woman if she wasn't already dead.  

            It was only then that she ran.  She ran like her life depended on it, because it did.  She ran to her friend’s house where she broke down crying, sobbing, and telling her frightened parents everything.  Every dirty rotten secret she held in her heart.  Everything she saw.  Everything she knew in her bones.  Her father and brother were murderers.  They killed her mother, and all the women on the news.  She knew it.