When I turned twelve, things changed. My body hadn’t developed that much; I was still small like the little doll he was fond of calling me, but my period started, and I think he saw me as dirty. I’m not up on the pedo psyche, so I’m not sure if that’s what turned him off, but once he lost interest, there were days I wished he’d come back because what followed was ten times worst.
For the first time, I got to see firsthand what the other caged ones like me had to endure. I’ve since heard news stories about pedophile rings and abuse, all of them tame and whitewashed. None of those reports ever came close to depicting the real horror that us victims faced. They all sound so clinical and understated, at least to someone who’d lived through it.
Even though there were days I wished to go back to being just one sicko’s toy, as time went on, it was the change in my circumstances that set me on the course I am now on. And I owe it all to Cierra Stone. Like I said, by the time I first heard her name, I’d already learned to roll with the punches.
I knew that fighting would get me nowhere, and since I seemed to be a favorite among the depraved animals who called themselves humans, I used that to my advantage. I no longer believed there was any hope of escape, so I went into survival mode. It would’ve been much easier had it had been only me I had to look out for, but somewhere along the way, I became the champion for all the others that were there, even the ones who’d been there long before me.
I’d always been smart, but I realized that in the years since I’d been there, I hadn’t really used my mind. That could’ve stemmed from fear or the drugs they fed me to keep me in line. So, once I decided that fighting was gaining me nothing, I stopped, just stopped. My body had already been torn beyond repair as far as I was concerned, and once being thrown in with the others, I knew what my future was going to be from listening to their stories.
I had no hope of escaping or being saved, but I could make my situation better. Somehow I got it into my head that I should just pretend to give in, that I should hide my hate and anger deep down inside and play along. But all the while, I knew that some day I would kill them all if given a chance.
So I set my plan in motion, gradually, of course, so as not to alert them to what was going on in my mind. I was only trying to bide my time to get through the days with as little hassle as possible until that day. I remember the room and who was in it.
It was one of the days when I was the only fare on the menu for the twenty or so adult men and women in attendance. They loved to have those kinds of parties, and I was their usual flavor of choice. Something about my exotic mix breed looks I’d overheard one of them joke.
By then, I’d learned how to hide my revulsion, and since they were all high as shit on any one of the myriad drugs they had on the table in the middle of the room, no one noticed that I’d emptied two of the three drinks they’d tried forcing on me and was still nursing the third.
By then, I was an expert at throwing up the pills they fed me and keeping myself sober by any means necessary. I knew if I were caught, there would be hell to pay, but there’s no way that I was going to help them destroy who I was.
By then, I was thirteen years old, and it had been five long years since I’d been taken. I was the only kid in the room lying back against one of the overstuffed cushions they had strewn around on the floor as they got high. Maybe they forgot that I was there, or maybe they just didn’t care since I was nothing to them anyway. I’d been so beaten down by then, at least in their eyes, that they saw me as nothing more than a mindless object, something that was there for their pleasure and enjoyment.
They started reminiscing, and that conversation led to Cierra Stone and how they’d missed that one. I have no idea why my mind decided to latch onto that, but it did. Someone had escaped them, not the same, but it was enough to spark a flame inside me. I listened to everything that day, sucking it all up as I imagined this person like me, who’d been lucky enough to escape their clutches. She became my obsession and my hope.