The air is wet and cold in the cellar, I'm wet and it's raining. The water is seeping down through the cracks in the wooded roof, and the shackles on my limbs are heavy and almost all feeling is already lost. I am frightened and the worst thing is I'm alone. It was bad when Sipsy was here, terrible wouldn't be a horrid argument either, but I dare say the silence was worse. Worse than the memories and worse than the sadness, and worse still than the fact that I was bleeding out from every natural Orpheus of my body. My tears mix with the blood as it washes down my face in icy sobs long since loosing their heat.
My hands are shaking, their starved veins staining my palms an icy royal blue. "It won't be long now," I think clutching Sipsy's cold fingers harder in mine. "We will be together soon," I think watching her once beautiful Alabaster face frozen forever in time. Lost in the endless sea of dreams surrounding them, and slowly ever so slowly I begin to drown in the lovely feeling of unconsciousness as it feels me, as my body continues to exsanguinate on the freezing concrete of the cellar floor, and finally I die I feel my body slip away as if nothing ever thought to happen, and then I'm gone. I'm outside the yellow house, where my sullen nightmare began.
As I stand there gazing at the vast nothingness and freedom I feel in my heart. I hear the twinkling of a little girl's soft giggle, and I know that it hasn't been moments since My grueling experience but centuries.
The reality of the situation overwhelms me but still I know what I must do as I watch her laugh from her fathers arms, with her green eyes and platinum pigtails, and I know I must protect her.
I spot the small raggedy ann tucked under the child's arm and I take a deep breath remembering the first night I was made to turn tricks.
My hair is high in curls all over my head and my makeup is dark and dramatic. The outfit I'm wearing is barely a blanket and hardly qualifies as clothing. My breath is caught in my throat as I feel the chilling metal of a gun pressed against the swell of my breast as I'm shoved into the waiting car before me and Caleb's grandfather disappears into the darkness.
I swallow hard at the lump in my throat and plaster on the best salacious expression I can manage and face my attacker with the confidence of a real call girl. Knowing if I don't Sipsy will pay for it. While simultaneously trying not to think of my fourteen year old sister in a car like this, with a man the same as the one before me. The thought makes me all but vomit. She was a child she didn't deserve any of this.
"What's your name sugar?" The man whispers making my blood curdle in response.
"Whatever you want it to be." I purred as the older girls had instructed me.
"Very generic, Rookie. Come up with something better darling something unique."
I bit my cheek and pressed my lips into a faux grin.
"The name's uni baby. What can I do for you? Kissing is fifty, third is two hundred and all around the world is five hundred, prices are firm and my pimp is on scream if you try anything."
"What can I do for you?" The question rang in my head in disgust. What can I do for you? I don't know. I blocked it out I wasn't there, but I knew what I could do for her I could make sure that never happened. I closed my eyes and exhaled the breath I was holding materializing into the little raggedy ann in the girls hands. "I will always protect you dear Emily and one day Sipsy will too, In the form of the mommy I send you. Her name will be Ellie, her figure will be little and slight, with hair of ebony and eyes of care, she will keep you safe my dear , she will take you away from here and Sipsy will finally be at peace, but Eliie, Ellie, Emily is the mother you shall keep forever in your life and in your dreams."
