“I love you, Dad.”
“I love you, baby. I love our adventures.”
I nodded. I loved them, too. But seeing the view through the airport window and the big white plane that would take us home, had my insides jumping for joy.
A jerk came from nowhere and had me hitting my head.
And just like that, reality called, pulling me back to the real world where my dad no longer existed.
I wasn't at the airport. I was in a box, our last adventure cut short, forcing me to journey into a new one, alone.
The space where I sat was dark. The air that was lacking in my confinement was cooling in temperature, just like my rapidly beating heart.
I was trapped in the dark.
Isolated from civilization.
They told me I was going home.
But. . . I could never go home.
Home didn’t exist anymore. It was snatched away from me, along with the life of the only parent I had left.
This was supposed to be a happy time.
Not many eighteen-year-olds wanted to spend their vacation time with their folks. But I wasn’t like most teenagers. This was what I looked forward to each year.
I was a loner. . . by choice.
I didn’t have a big group of friends; I didn’t have a boyfriend–not anymore; he had decided that he preferred blondes. . . but he was no gentleman, and he was no loss.
I had no one to look for me, now that I was missing.
I’d expected a light, happy trip. I’d expected warmth. Sunshine. . . love.
I didn’t expect darkness. I didn’t expect coldness and cruelty.
I didn’t expect this.
I didn’t have time to mourn, and I’d never experienced such sadness. Such pain. I didn’t have time to acknowledge the passing because of such uncontrollable fear. It had me paralyzed, my body and emotions.
I’d spent the last two weeks in a room with close to forty other women, all under forty. I had witnessed the death of three of them. Three of them who looked just like me–not in features but in facial expressions. They had tried to fight back. Fight back against the fists that were constantly aiming at their faces and already bruised bodies to force their submission. Fight against the intrusions of fingers and genitalia in their bodies.
That hadn’t happened to me.
Thank, fuck! Or I’d have done the same; I’d have fought back, and I’d have died. . . just like they did.
I’d be lying in a shallow, unmarked grave with a hole in my head. Instead, because I was“a well-behaved little skank”,as they’d been calling me, I didn’t suffer that fate. I was, instead, squashed into a sitting position, in a crate too small for adamn spaniel.
I was a shipment.
An expected gift.
I was told that my new family would love me.
I was told that they’d make me feel good.
I was told lies.
