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To…

Tapping the broken pencil against my temple, I did my best to focus For weeks, I’d been confined like a zoo anie I’d been fed, washed, and given h arrival I had a bed with sheets, a flushing toilet, and shampoo in the shower I had the basics that all human and nonhuman life required

But I wasn’t living

I was dying

They just couldn’t see it

Wait…I know

Inspiration struck as I came up with the perfect naht in this wrong, wrong neorld

To No One

The moment I pressed those three words ontoMy left hand shook as I kept the toilet tissue flat whilemy past

I WAS EIGHTEEN when I died

I remember that day better than any other init only happened three weeks ago, but believe et it I know some people say certain events imprint on their psyche forever, and up until now, I haven’t had anything stick in such a way You see, No One, I guess you could’ve called ht even say I deserve this No, that’s a lie No one would wish this on their worst enemy But the fact remains, only you know I’m not dead I’m alive and in this cell about to be sold I’ve been hurt, touched, violated in every sense but rape, and stripped of everything I used to be

But to my mother? I’m dead I died Who knows if she’ll ever truly find out what happened to me

The scribbling ofhard as I relived what I’d been through

My will to stay breathing had vanished It’d taken them a while to break oal, I was nothingfor the transaction to line their pockets

For days, all I’d had for entertainhts, awfulpanic of what lay ahead But that was before I found the chewed up, snapped in half pencil beneath the bed

The find had been better than food or freedom; better because s I had no power to sway the regimented arrival of breakfast and dinner nor the ability to halt the fact I was being sold like hest bidder

I had no control over being alone in a tiny room that had once been a hotel suite before its preht for il of soolds and bronze, hinting the décor hadn’t been updated since the seventies

Was that how long the pencil had lurked beneath iven by a rowdy toddler waiting for its parents to stop fussing so they could explore a new city? Or had astarched white sheets with military precision?

I’d never know

But I liked toelse to do I spentover every nook and cranny of ht, but they couldn’t stop the detere inside ht everyone had

I’d been alone for so long now I didn’t knohat the other girls processed with me would do Did they lie star-spread on the bed and wait for their future? Did they huddle in the corner and beg for their fathers to stop this nightmare? Or did they accept, because it was easier to accept than to fight?

Me? I ran ertips over every wall, every crack, every painted and lockedfra to helpht an

It’d taken o over every square inch But all I’d found was this half-ift A treasure The nub was al before I had to find a way to sharpen my precious possession, but I’d worry about that another day Just like I’d beco else