Monster Slayers MC-Book 1

MSMC Bk 1-Chapter 1

Chapter 1- "The Rescue Farm"- a safe haven

Marley's POV

I picked up after the kids who had finally all fallen asleep after drinks of water, trips to the bathroom and stories. Please let me be very clear here. These are not my kids or rather, I did not birth any of them but I care about and for them all as if I had, even if many times I only have them for a short period of time. I'm just a big softie when it comes to kids. All of these children are intended to be here only temporarily. You see they are what we call "rescue's". That is how I started out too but now I'm a caregiver because I have been unable to get past the trauma that landed me here in the first place.

I work and live at "The Rescue Farm" which we just call "The Farm". Everyone in the small town that we live closest to assumes that we rescue animals and while we do occasionally take them in as well, our primary rescues involve mostly children who have been neglected, abused and all too often sometimes molested.

We also sometimes take in young women who have been abused and need a safe place to hide from their abusers until their lawyers can get them the help they need. For the kids, we give them as much help as we can to recover before they either can be adopted to a private home or are of age to be on their own. For adult women, this often means getting them new identities and relocating them to a safer location.

"The Farm is run by "Papa Joe" Crankston, his wife "Mama Mae" and his older sister "Aunt Chris". My name is Marley Connely and I was one of their rescues who has just never left, but more about me later.

After being up before the sun to help out around the farm, usually just to collect eggs from the chickens, helping Mama Mae make breakfast for everyone and then keeping up with our three youngest children, I was more than tired, I was worn out but I still had to check in on the older little kids. We have 6 kids under the age of 10. Sara (age 10, going on 30), Max (our only boy at the moment is age 8), Christie (age 6), Tina (age 4), Bailey (age 3) and "Baby Jane"the youngest being just, we think, a year to a year and a half old. We just got her about two weeks ago. The others have been here anywhere from a couple of weeks to several months.

Dr. Murphy, the doctor who volunteers his time to come out to check on the new arrivals or when the kids get sick or hurt and need attention, had given his best guess on how old she was to be between 12 to 18 months old.

He had also taken footprints to hopefully find out not only who she was but how old she was and possibly a name but so far had not called with any new information and she's been here almost two weeks. We didn't really know her name as she had been rescued from the side of the road. Someone had just set her beat-up car seat/baby carrier on the side of the road and drove off. No bottle, her diaper was wet and full, she was dirty and badly dehydrated. Papa Joe had found her on his way home from the store almost two weeks ago. To say he had been shocked when he spotted it would definitely be an understatement. He said that at first he had thought it was just an empty car seat that had fallen off the back of someone's truck but then, as he passed, he heard her crying so he stopped, Thank God!

In addition to the "little ones" there were also 4 older girls between the ages of 14 to 17. The oldest one, Josey, will be 18 soon and couldn't wait to get out on her own. She has already been here for almost 9 months. In addition to her, there was Barbara (16), Karen (15) and Lisa (14), who had all been rescued within days of each other from bad family situations in towns all over the county a couple of months ago.

All of these kids were rescued from bad situations, none of these kids had been subjected to anything even similar to what I had gone through, but we sometimes got kids who had been through even worse than they had. We all lived at "the farm" along with our guardian angels, Mama Mae, Papa Joe and Aunt Chris. They had been helping kids out of bad situations for over 20 years and we all loved them like they were the parents we should have had, not the ones we had been born to.