Sheltered

WARNING: Rated adult. Contains a rape scene. DX If you're easily disturbed, PLEASE DO NOT READ.

Also: Please edit the crap out of this. It needs it.

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A road worker found me when he wandered off the highway and into the woods to take a piss. He was shorter than me, fat, balding. And his face was pitted with scars and glowing red acne that was so disgustingly rampant that he looked like he had poison ivy, except instead it was white-tipped and looked about to burst. He stared at me with his small, dumb little pair of eyes, hairy and cement-crusted hands lingering near his crotch. I could smell body odor and hot urine coming from him, and so, apparently, could a pair of flies that he twitched a hand at to shoo away.

I was kneeling on the forest floor above a shallow grave--he didn’t know of what, though--blubbering in grief, my face melting like wax in tears for the idiotic. I looked at him and started screaming. When I picked up a bent shovel and launched it at him, he leapt away, seemed to linger, and then with one more look in which his germy little eyes caressed my body, lingering at the breasts, he fled.

He was the first man I ever met.

He called the police, who found me hiding behind a sagging, musty old brown couch in the house that they kept insisting was supposed to be abandoned. I’d lived in that house for sixteen years with my mom and sister.

I was taken to a shelter, stared at, talked at, and talked about, and when they found that I would say nothing to them, I finally ended up here, in Oceanside Psychiatric Community. After a week of being here, they had managed to get out of me only:

“They killed Kitty!”

“Kitty? Is that your cat or your sister?”

I’d heard them whispering and wondering about it earlier, about how they’d found a body in the woods, the skeleton of a long-dead cat right next to it.

“They killed her!” I was sobbing then.

After that I didn’t speak.

That was two months ago. I got over the shock and grief of it all, as well as any last reflexive beliefs in society’s morals. Here, they’re trying to get me and the others to become “functional members of society.” It’s a society that I want no part in to begin with.

#

Where I lived with my mother and younger sister was an old house located deep in the woods, removed from the other houses that were right on the edge of a dirt road. I only saw that dirt road up until I was seven--and not often even then, and only because I snuck down there against rules--and then no more after that. After that, only mom ever went down that way, driving down the two-track that was our driveway in her noisy white car on her way to work. Kitty and I stayed near the house.

Kitty and I never went to school; mom home schooled us.

We had no dad. Men were idiotic, arrogant, and malicious, mom said. They’d use you. She talked about the men at work a lot, and all of them were like this. They were riddled with the Seven Deadly Sins, she always said with disgust, the whole world was. People would kill you, slit your throat for ten dollars in your purse, they’d rape you and burn your house and take your kids. They’d steal things behind your back and torture you and turn other people against you with lies. People were monsters. If they ever saw Kitty or me, they’d probably kill us, she said with assurance.

But she hated men in particular, and she hated women who loved men because they doted on them, and she even hated women who loved women because they were “just simulating the roles of a woman fawning over a man anyway. One of them’s always pretending to be a man.”

The only reason she left the house to deal with these people was because of her overwhelming love for us. She had to keep the water and the electricity on, she said.

As a young child, I was mischievous and rebellious. Mom whipped me with belts and hit me a lot because I deserved it. With how horrible and annoying and vain and belligerent I was, I’m surprised that she didn’t drown me in a bathtub like some of the moms on TV do to their kids. Of course, that would have made her no better than them, then. My mother was merciful.

Anyway, my outrageous behavior finally ended one day when I was seven. Kitty was three or four then, and locked in her crib in our room, and mom was at work. I had taken to wandering down the driveway to where the road was where the other houses were. I stayed in the woods and just watched those times, though I was planning to cross the dirt road sometime, just to prove that I had the nerve.

So, that day, I once again made my way through the dense woods--which wasn’t too hard because I followed some deer trails and I had started my own hidden path--toward the road and house. My black-and-white kitty followed me, though at the time I took little notice of her.

When I came to edge of the woods, I hid in a small and comfortable thicket, watching the houses. There was a boy outside of a big new house. He had a baseball cap on and was shooting a basketball in a hoop in his driveway. He was definitely older than me, I wasn’t sure by how much, then--now I’d say he was around twelve or thirteen--and was thus even more intimidating to me than any old person would have been. I was filled with curiosity and what I’m disgusting to admit was love--one of the Seven Deadly Sins--for him, love of someone who was not my family. It was a perverse fascination.

After minutes of watching him, I noticed my cat wandering across the open grass before meandering across the road. I was alarmed that my kitty could do that, and wondered if she’d been as bold as this before, or if the boy would know that this cat came from MY house, that it belonged to a lonely little girl such as I. Maybe the boy would come visit me!

I heard voices, and a group of three boys came marching across the lawn toward the basketball boy from a couple houses down. These boys were quite a bit taller and older than even the basketball boy.

“Hey, Jack!” one of them called.

“Hi, Tim,” the basketball boy replied, clutching the ball. Apparently his name was Jack.

“You wanna shoot some hoop? Us versus you and--”

“Hey, who’s cat is that?” a boy with dark brown hair asked, pointing at my cat. My heart leapt.

“I dunno, it’s not mine,” Jack said.

“I don’t recognize it,” continued the dark-haired one.

“Hey, Jack, where’s your bee bee gun? Let’s shoot at it,” Tim said. Horror gripped at my lungs and something slipped horribly down my throat and into my stomach.

“But--” Jack started.

“Come on, where is it? Before it runs off,” Tim badgered.

Jack went into the garage and returned with a gun. Tim took it.

I was standing then, bent over, holding onto a tree for support. I was frozen with indecision. Should I run out and stop them?

“Is this thing even loaded?” Tim asked, shaking it.

“Yeah,” said Jack.

Tim cocked it, pointed it, and shot. My kitty jumped and ran halfway across the yard before flipping around as if to inspect her tail for a bug that had nipped her. Without pause, Tim shot again; once, twice, thrice, four times the gun popped. My kitty was then lying on the ground, screaming and writhing. She rolled and half stood up before tripping and falling back down again. Tim and the others ran up to her, Tim shot once, and it lay there twitching.

“Put it out of it’s misery,” Tim explained, satisfied.

Before I knew it, I had shoved my way through the last line of bushes and was walking toward the boys. They immediately saw me and looked up. I walked across the road.

“Who are you?” the dark-haired one asked.

“I-I’m Rose.”

“Where are you from?” Tim asked, staring at me with an intense gaze and a small frown.

“She came outta the woods,” said the guy who hadn’t talked yet. His hair was cut so short that he was almost bald. “She prob’ly came from that freaky lady’s house.”

Tim elbowed him sharply, scowling. I didn’t say anything.

“W…was that your cat?” Jack, who had been frowning and looking very concerned, finally asked me.

“Yeah.” I nodded.

“Oh no! I’m so sorry,” Tim said. “I feel terrible now…I thought it was just a stray, a wildcat. Sometimes there’s a wildcat that comes around here and beats up our other cats, and sometimes our cats disappear. I’m so sorry, I had no idea it was yours…Can I make it up to you?”

My heart was beating fast. Before I could answer, he continued, “Come on, let’s go inside and we’ll figure out what we can do for you, it’s hot out here. I’m so incredibly sorry, Rose. Jack, your parents are gone on vacation, right?”

“Yeah, and my sister’s out,” he answered.

“Good. Come on, Rose.” Tim headed into Jack’s garage. His friends and I followed. Tim opened the door into the house and headed in.

I was amazed at the size of the house. It looked big from the outside, but even bigger on the inside. There was a hall with a bathroom, a room with a bunch of coats hanging on the wall, and a laundry room. The hall led into a spacious, bright, and clean kitchen. There was a dining room with dark wood chairs and a table with a vase of flowers on it. Tim led us through a doorway between the kitchen and dining room. This room has a huge vaulted ceiling, several large black leather couches, a giant TV, and a perfect fireplace. I was awed by everything. I’d only seen such a house on TV, but I had never actually believed they could exist…

And the carpet was soft and clean, very unlike the dark, matted, and worn shag carpet of our house. There were paintings on the walls and pictures of people--including a few of Jack--and there was a glass table in the center of the room that sparkled like diamond in the light pouring from a huge window that showed a view of the backyard and the woods beyond.

“You’ve never been in a house like this before, have you?” the bald boy asked.

“N-no,” I said. “It’s so pretty…” I was glancing around nervously, though. I felt out of place and confused. Why did Tim want me to come in Jack’s house? How was he going to make it up to me for killing my cat?

“Rose, would you like a drink?” Tim asked.

“I want one,” said the bald boy.

“So do I,” said the dark-haired one.

“Y-yes, I want one too,” I said. I didn’t really, but the others were having some, so I figured I should too. Then I added, “Please.” I’d never said that word in my life, but they said it a lot on TV in a situation like this.

“Jack, can you go get us drinks?” Tim asked.

“I want Coke.”

“Mountain Dew.”

“We don’t have--” Jack started.

“NO,” Tim interrupted firmly. “That’s okay. Get us DRINKS, Jack. Five of them.”

“I don’t want one,” Jack said.

“Then get four,” Tim snapped. “DRINKS,” he repeated.

“Like..?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” Jack left the room and went into the kitchen.

“So, Rose, do you like cats?”

“Yes,” I said. I bit my lip.

“Would you like another one?”

Before I could answer, Jack returned. He set the can on the glass table, and when everyone reached for one, I did so as well. There was a series of clicks as the others opened their cans. After several seconds of trying, I managed to wedge my finger under the tab and pop it up as I’d watched mom do, too.

“Jack’s cat just had a bunch of kittens. They’re really cute,” Tim said. He and the others took gulps of their drinks. When I bent y face toward the can, I froze. This was BEER. I’d never had it before--I’d never dared to, because mom would’ve noticed--but I recognized the smell. When mom drank a lot of this stuff, she got mad very easily.

Tim was looking at me. I quickly took a sip of the beer. It tasted horrible.

“Wait, Tim what are you doing? You’re gonna give her one of my kittens? You can’t--”

“Shawn, Bill, grab her, Tim said calmly. I blinked, confused. The others didn’t move. “I said grab her!”

The dark-haired and the bald guy jumped off the couch. I dropped my beer and flipped over the arm of the slippery chair and scrambled backward. I stood up, tripped, and ran back through the house toward the door. Someone grabbed my shirt and I fell and grabbed onto a leg of the table, trying to pull myself away, a defensive thing I’d learned to go when mom was trying to get at me. Hands clamped down on my arms and legs.

“Stop! Let me go! What are you doing?” I screamed.

“Let go of her! What the hell, Tim, what do you want with her!? Let her go!” Jack was yelling.

I kicked hard and wriggled around on my back, freeing my hands momentarily and clawing at the hands firmly encircling my ankles, before my hands were grabbed again and held above my head.

“Shut up, Jack! Shawn, SHUT HER UP,” Tim ordered. A hand was placed on my mouth and I opened wide. The hand slipped down in and I bit down on it.

“Ow!! Fuck, she bit me!”

“Use the tablecloth or something!”

Shawn, who was kneeling on me, grabbed the end of the tablecloth and yanked it down, balling it up and shoving it into my mouth. I tried to kick away but someone was on my legs, so I tried to roll sideways, but my legs remained pinned. I slipped a hand free and swung it at someone’s arm, but my arm was quickly grabbed. I was finally subdued and unable to move.

“Tim, what the hell, why’d you want us to tackle her?” Bill, the dark-haired one, asked.

“Jack, take her pants off,” Tim said. I stared up at Jack and Tim, unable to breathe. My face heated up and my heart beat as if it were about the explode.

“What?”

“I SAID, take her pants off.”

“But--”

“Do it.” Tim tipped his head back and took a swing of beer.

Jack hesitated.

“NOW.”

Jack walked around Tim and carefully over my legs. He knelt and hooked two fingers around my pants as if not wanting to touch me, and I could feel his fingertips scrape gently against my waist. He pulled at them and they tightened on me. He let go and awkwardly tried to get the button out of the hole. After what felt like an eternity, he succeeded. He unzipped my pants, then grabbed the material by my knees and pulled. The others watched.

“Her underwear too,” Tim said.

“What? Tim--”

“DO IT!”

He did, and the other two guys lifted their hand or knees momentarily so that Jack could get them all the way off. I felt terribly exposed, a cold breeze from a fan making it worse. I tried to move my hands so I could cover myself, but as soon as they felt my move within their grip, Bill ad Shawn held me tighter.

“Now take off your own pants. And boxers too, or whitey tighties or whatever you wear,” Tim said coldly, drinking some more of his beer.

“No Tim, I don’t want to!” Jack shrieked.

Tim threw his empty can aside and promptly yanked Jack’s pants down to his butt. White underwear gleamed before Hack yanked his jeans back up.

“No, I don’t want to get her pregnant!” Jack cried. So that’s what they were doing? I didn’t even know how that worked…

The other three laughed. “She’s too young to get pregnant!” Tim told him. “That’s what makes it better.”

“What if I get an STD? Shouldn’t I wear--”

“She’s a VIRGIN, you won’t get an STD! SHE might, by the end of this, but--”

“TIM!” Jack shrieked. “I’m not gonna fucking have--”

“Do you want to hang out with us? Do you want us to kill you?” Tim asked in a deadly tone. I was terrified for both Jack and myself. Don’t do it!

Slowly Jack pulled his clothes off. I was shocked to see how boys looked different than I did. I’d never seen anything like it.

Tim was grinning. Jack looked at the ground and a point well away from my face and my legs. The other two boys stared at Jack, snickering.

“Do it. Get down on top of her,” Tim said quietly. Jack paused, Tim kicked him in the butt, and then Jack did so. I grunted and gasped as Jack put his weight on my stomach and shifted about uncomfortably. His skin was soft.

Then it was warm between my legs, and Jack put himself inside me. He moved rhythmically, squishing my stomach in and making me gasp for air. I was once again terrified and ashamed, but I didn’t know why. And he was hurting me.

Crescendos were reached, and I closed my eyes, only listening. I was slowly falling down mountains, climbing them up again, standing at the top, and falling again. I hurt. The boys traded and took their turns. Then they let me get up and put my clothes back on and they walked me out--well, more like carried me, because I could barely walk because of the pain--to the woods across their road.

“Tell anyone, and we’ll kill you like we did you cat,” Tim said. They walked me a ways in and then threw me down into some bushes and left.

I laid there for a few minutes before I was sure that they’d left. Then I moved deeper into the woods, back towards home, and hid myself behind a tree and some bushes so they wouldn’t find me. I laid there for quite some time, staring up at the trees swaying slightly, unable to feel anything but my physical pain, or sleep.

Hours later, when it was getting dark, I returned home.

“Where the hell have you been, Rose?!!” my mother screamed as soon as I entered the living room. I tried to tell her, but she wouldn’t listen. I started to cry--the first time id cried all throughout the ordeal--and this infuriated her even more.

“YOU WENT ACROSS THE ROAD?! HOW MANY TIMES HAVE I TOLD YOU NOT TO DO DOWN THERE OR TALK TO ANYBODY?? DO YOU EVER LISTEN TO ME? LISTEN TO ME NOW, ROSE, YOU BETTER BE LISTENING--” She struck me once, twice, paused, then dealt her final third blow that sent me to the ground, dazed.

Finally I was able to scream and sob t her what had happened, and she listened as I told her everything.

“So they RAPED you? They actually put it in you” she asked. I just stared. I’d heard of rape on the news a lot, but all I knew was that people got in a lot of trouble for it and some were murdered afterwards. I had had no idea what it was.

“I don’t know…”

Then my mother opened her mouth, threw back her head, and laughed. “Good job, Rose. You WHORE, you probably enjoyed it. You’re so stupid. There’s a REASON for you staying here and LISTENING to what I tell you. I TOLD you society is evil. Learned it now?” She stuck a cigarette between her teeth and left the room to go get something to eat.

It was then that I realized the importance of listening to her and how much she really loved me. She wasn’t as cruel or crazy or absurd as I had once started to believe. She just wanted to protect us.

I vowed then to uphold her wishes.

#

Years passed. I never went very deep in the woods or down the driveway, and I kept Kitty away from there too. Mom started a project around the house to clear out some more trees and plant a huge garden. She said that the food at the store was full of poisons and chemicals and that organic food was too expensive. She even bought a dozen or so baby chicks, and the ones that weren’t killed my hawks or mink or anything (which happened often, and even to the adults) provided us with an overabundance of eggs.

Mom also cancelled our cable TV and our electricity. We used solar lights for light at night, and we hung our laundry around the house or across clotheslines. If the weather was bad for days at a time, mom would sometimes get mad and just screw it and take the laundry to the Laundromat. In addition to those changes, mom had an “old-time” well dug (Kitty and I spent a terrified day hidden inside as we watched the men dig it with a tractor), so we got our water from that or from the jugs of water she bought at the store. The winters were only “mild”, mom said, which was good because the single fireplace in the house just barely kept the living room (where it was located) warm. Mom even went so far as to encourage us to go out looking for blackberries or mushrooms (all of which were poisonous, according to her mushroom books she had) in the woods.

It was good that mom had started her “self-sufficiency project” because she died two years after it started. I was fourteen.

My eleven-year-old sister and I buried her by the side of the house. I made Kitty do the whole thing because I couldn’t stand it. When I watched her roll and kick mother’s body into the huge hole from a window, I felt sickened to the core. She was way too young to die. If she hadn’t have had to go out into “the world” to work to buy us things, she wouldn’t have died so soon, I was sure of it. The world’s evil had poisoned and killed her. And now we were alone and unprotected.

The first thing Kitty did when she was gone was open the fridge. I watched her from the leaning sofa in the living room. In mom’s presence, we always had to ask to get food.

Kitty pulled out a warm beer, turned the can over in her hands, then shut the fridge door. I had her pinned at the throat in a heartbeat.

“What do you think you’re doing?” I hissed.

Kitty gurgled, her eyes wide and mouth gaping open.

“Put it away.” I let go of her and stalked back to the sofa. “We’re not allowed to have mom’s beers.”

Kitty put the beer back and pulled out an old Sprite.

It was spring then. We planted a garden from the stockpile of seed packets ad seeds from the last year. One day, I came in from watering the garden to find Kitty fiddling with an old radio that I hadn’t seen in years that I knew must have come from mom’s room.

“WHAT IS THAT?” I yelled.

Kitty screamed, having not heard me come in. “N-nothing, I was just--”

“Have you forgotten that you’re not allowed in mom’s room?”

“She’s dead! It doesn’t matter! Aren’t you--”

I shoved her down and her side slammed into the couch arm. She let out a sharp cry of pain.

It doesn’t matter that she’s dead!” I hissed.

Kitty was gasping and clutching her side. “Aren’t you CURIOUS? Aren’t you curious about ANYTHING? Think about it, Rose. We’re FREE. We’re finally FR--OW!” I dealt her the heaviest blow I could to her head.

Kitty continued to act out like that, and she clashed with me often. I couldn’t understand it--she’d never been like that while mom was around. She was quiet back then. Now she was loud and constantly challenging even the littlest things I said. She started to sneak around a lot too, but she wasn’t very good at it. I caught her most of the time and punished her. I could barely control her. I locked her in her room for over a day at a time, I took away some of her favorite things, I hid some of the food from the garden, I took away all of her clothes but the ones on her back, I lectured to her, I screamed at her, I beat into her the importance of doing things mom’s way and avoiding the outside world and surviving. Didn’t she understand that we could get tortured or killed out there? Especially us--they’d realize we were outsides, not one of them, and they’d never leave us alone, they’d trick us and trap us and pin us down while we were screaming and then--

So I did all I could think of to protect her. I loved my sister dearly.

I tried to keep her in a constant state of fear. I didn’t follow a routine and I changed some of the rules on her depending on my mood. I’d bang on her windows and awake her at night with strange snarls. She liked animals a lot, and in particular this one stray cat that only took a liking to her--so I caught it in the woods, wrung its neck, and beat it in the head until it was dead. I tried to skin it too, but only managed to gouge patches out of its skin and fur, so I gave up and staked its paws into the ground so it wouldn’t be dragged off by some other animal, and I left it there for Kitty to find. It shook her up for several days, but she still remained defiant and continued her secrecy and attempts to further undermine mom’s and my authority.

Desperate, I tried other tactics. I cuddled with her at night and held her against me and kissed her lips; I played with her hair, I ran my fingers over her skin…At first, she was surprised and did nothing, and when she finally did protest, I sat on her and continued.

Eventually, Kitty figured out that it was I who threw rocks in her window at night and it was I who killed her cat, and that I did it to scare her into submission.

We were alone together for a year and a half until I came in from an hour of weeding the garden on day to find the house empty. I looked outside for her around the front and sides of the house, but she wasn’t in sight. I even wandered into the woods a little and walked as far as the first bend in the driveway, which was quite overgrown. I returned to the house and tentatively checked mom’s room for her. I couldn’t find her, and she was thirteen and too big to be able to hide in the house so well. I knew that she was gone.

She returned a couple of hours later, though, trudging through the weeds of the driveway. I was livid.

“Where were you?”

“Where do you think?” Kitty snarled.

“What were you doing on the driveway?” I grabbed her shoulders and shook her.

“Oh, I didn’t JUST go down the driveway,” she said, smiling in a way that threw me off and made me feel helpless to control or save her from her ignorance and recklessness. “I went to the END. I went across the street that’s down there where there are some HOUSES--yes, we have neighbors!--and played tag with a few boys that live there. The oldest is my age, thirteen, and another was twelve, and there were two nine-year-olds and the youngest was--”

The malevolent sneer was lost now, and had given way to reveal her excitement.

“--and then we took a break and the nine-year-olds who were twins went in and brought us out some drinks. We haven’t had a soda in SO long, not since--” she jabbered before I smacked her across the face.

“DON’T--YOU--EVER--GO--DOWN--THERE!” My eyes were wide, my nose wrinkled, and my teeth were clenched like an animal’s. I had to demonstrate once and for all--

“YOU FUCKING LITTLE BRAT! YOU FUCKER! DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU’VE DONE?!!” I was punching every single little insolent inch of her that I could reach. She hit back, but feebly.

“Don’t YOU understand!??” she screeched, sobbing. “Why do we have to live like this? Why can’t we go out in the world? Why do we have to still do what mom had us do? Why?? They--”

I punched her in the stomach and the next thing I knew, she was on the ground and I was pinning her down.

“Th…th…th…” She gasped for air. Finally after what seemed like minutes, she hiccupped and started sobbing and breathing again. “They’re not even mean! Why won’t you let us be free--me AND you? What are you afraid of?”

“I’m afraid of being fucking KILLED!” I snarled. “You fucking--”

“Why won’t you go? Why won’t you go with me?”

“I’d NEVER go with you!” Kitty let out a choked sob of dismay. “And YOU’RE not going anywhere either!” I yelled.

She started kicking me as hard as she could until I managed to pin down her legs. When I finally had them pinned securely, she sat up and launched herself at me, no longer in piteous self-defense but in ignorant hatred. She ripped out a chunk of my hair and I screamed and clawed at my hair and at her. She kneed me in the ribs, just barely missing my stomach. I punched her in an adolescent breast and she cried out. I shoved her down and she dug her long nails into the flesh of my arms so that they burned. Finally she caught hold of me hair and yanked down at a huge section of it. I dipped my head nearer to her, at her mercy. She pulled harder and with a snagging sound succeeded in ripping most of that chunk out.

I screamed and slapped her. She lifted her neck up a little and sank her teeth into my arm. I could feel her teeth slide in between the veins or tendon things and I felt it when her teeth broke through the skin. I screamed louder yet and tried to pull away, but she had a hand around my wrist and held me fast as she bit down harder yet. Failing to stand, I fell to the ground and put my hands around her throat and squeezed and pressed down. She stopped biting me, blinking and staring at me and suddenly becoming harmless. She scrabbled desperately at my hands. She was at my mercy this time.

“Stop! Stop!” she rasped. I pressed harder, kneeling up higher so I could push even harder.

“Rose, you’re choking me…” Her legs were limp, but her arms grasped mine. “Stooooooo…p…” She was wheezing, still managing long, drawn-out, tiny breaths.

She was still awake, still had strength enough to grip my arm, I still couldn’t get her all the way, I was helpless…

“You whore!” I grabbed a stick and with one quick, solid thrust, jammed it through the center of the soft square just below her neck. Blood spurted out and welled up out of the hole. Her grip on me was still there, but slackened. She stared at me with huge white eyes and her open mouth gasped for air. The blood in the hole gurgled, and when she inhaled, she started coughing and choking.

I felt my arms tickle and I looked down to see that blood was running down them. On my right arm there was only a little and it wasn’t dripping much--that was her blood. On my right arm, blood slid down in trails from a gentle curve of vivid little teeth punctures. Looking at those, I realized what I’d done. I looked back at Kitty. She was dead.

#

So I’m here now.

“Catherine,” I say in a low voice. She’s the only one I will talk to in here.

“What?”

“Do you remember how I told you that my alcoholic dad and my whore mother and my bratty little sister was shot right in front of me?”

“Yeah. I’m so sorry Rose…” She bends her neck towards me and hugs me, her eyes low.

“And you know how I hate this life, this world. How people can get away with such horrible things as my parents did to me, how people can get away with shooting people in-in-in….”

She squeezes me tight. “In front of you. I know. It’s okay.”

I gulp down a sob. “I know I hated them, and I still do. But seeing their heads exploding…and it was all dark red, but it was pinkish over their brains, and you could see broken edges of bone--”

“Please don’t describe it again,” she whimpers.

“I’m sorry, I won’t,” I say. “But anyway, you want to get away from everything too, right?”

“Yes.” She looks at me with anger in her eyes. “I hate it here, and I don’t want to go back home. I want to run away and live my own life. I don’t want to be told what to do anymore.”

“Well then, you understand that if we want to escape, some sacrifices must be made, right?”

She’s staring out a window at the cabins for the more privileged people, the cabins that neither of us stay in.

“Do you understand me, Kitty?” I ask, using the nickname I have for her.

“Yes,” Catherine says.