When Willow thought she could never return to the hell she managed to get out of, she thought she was telling herself the truth.
What she never would've guessed was that she would've been brought to a place that was worse.
That Monday, when she was taken, was the start of the week they were letting her get settled in. It wasn't bad at first, just creepy glances from older men who seemed to thirst over her blonde hair and the way her body was shaped. Then, she was thrown in with other girls her age, some younger.
She was learning that some of them had been locked in there for more than a year. They were never allowed out, and they'd feed them food that barely kept them alive. Willow turned back, noticing that the door was locked. This was her chamber of hell: a large, dingy room filled with girls her age and younger.
It only got worse.
The food seemed stale and rotten, often leaving the girls around her to vomit, which stunk up the entire room. They rarely saw them as human, treating them as so. Willow would thrash each time they tried to grab her. When she'd fight back, the girls in the room wailed, begging her to just comply or they'd all get punished. Willow never complied, leaving most of the girls around her to hate her.
It was a game of survival. If she had allies in hell then she had a better chance of surviving through to the end, where she'd escape- if that was even an option. Many said they lost hope, knowing that there were ways out that didn't involve escaping physically. In the first two months, Willow witnessed what girls would pay the others to do to them.
The price was extra food and a smile with tears. They'd talk each other into committing their murder.
Willow was curled up, feeling cold as it rained outside. From what she could tell, they were in the middle of nowhere. A place where the thickness of the trees in the distance cut out any service, and cars only passed by once every two weeks. It was then she heard whispers and peaked out from underneath her arm, seeing shadows. They were whispering, one was crying and the other was begging for the event to be pushed.
I'm not ready... One said.
I don't care. I can't take it anymore.
Willow slowly craned her neck up, squinting into the darkness. She saw one of the shadows open her hands, signaling vulnerability. The other one had a long stick-like object, though Willow quickly realized it was a metal pipe. Her breath hitched as she saw her swing. The echoing sound of a skull cracking then hitting the ground bounced off the walls. Willow's eyes widened, mouth falling open as the one girl stood over the other who dropped to the ground. They seemed devoid of regret. They swung down again. Putting a full might into the next swing, the young girl hit the one on the ground again. The skull cracked. Another hit. There was no crack, only the sound of the cold metal hitting against something squishy.
What was beginning to become a deadly possibility was that Willow would be targeted for her fighting spirit. There was still a world out there that she wanted to see- one of the only reasons she kept resisting being that she wanted to see her father again along with her mother and brother again. What she was beginning to learn was that maybe fighting was not the best option for her survival.
Willow would shut her eyes, sobbing silently as she tried to retreat to a happy place in her mind. It was when she started to realize the low chance of her escape did she begin to feel hope slipping away.
Nobody ever gets close to finding us. An older girl said, her breaths labored from death. She was starving, and had no energy to move. She was on her way out.
Nobody? Willow asked.
Nobody.
They found her body the next week, still slumped up against the beam.
Willow would roam, rationing her food to try and give to people around her. It was the fact that they couldn't get out of here- or raise their stakes- if they were divided, so she fed the people around her in attempt to fuse them together as one coalition. But no matter how hard she tried, no hope arose.
Absolutely nothing but small hums of pain.
It was a cage where the men that abused them would watch as some of the girls would try to scavenge for seconds, hunger making them irrational. Willow tore her clothing in half, using it as a blanket to hide the food she kept in her lap. When a girl approached her and ripped off her make-shift blanket, claiming she was selfish for keeping food for herself, Willow went white in the face.
Everybody needs to eat.
This is my food. It was an anger that Willow never felt before.
The girl seemed unwilling to take that as an answer. She lunged, trying to grab at the paper plates uncovered in her lap. Willow was quick to stop her greedy hands, growling gently as the girl swung. The familiar ringing of pain brought back muscle memory. Despite the slap not being that hard, Willow's body was in motion, the plates flipping onto the floor, saving some food and spoiling the other half.
Willow's attack was sudden, the girl's body falling to the floor quickly. The girl had her face pressed into the rough cement flooring, Willow's palm squishing against her cheek. Maybe being stuck here unhinged her mind, but it felt good to be able to fight back. The girl's head was already bleeding from the back, now starting to be bruised and leak from the front as Willow used her fists to beat into flesh.
Willow felt the bones in the girl's face shifting from her hits, the blood coming from the girl's nose. Nobody came to save the victim. Pushing herself off the body, Willow crawled on the floor, slowly backing up, keeping her eyes on the other girls who looked at her in horror. Willow's original attacker didn't move, almost glued to the floor as blood from her head wound started to pool underneath her. The frantic girl went back to her food, salvaging what she could, tossing whatever she couldn't out near her opponent's body.
After that incident, the girl's around the room never came near Willow's corner. They gave her a name they'd refer to her as for the rest of her stay there.
Feral.
YOU ARE READING
The Grean Household
Romance"It was a mistake..." She told her mother, folding her hands into each other. "Marrying him..." Her mother said nothing, she simply sat there as her only daughter stood across from her, on the verge of collapsing from bruised ribs and cracked shins...
