Hollow Woods ✔

Closer Past

"Rammy! I'm glad that it's you that is making this deal!" Sophia squealed while giving me a tight hug.

Sophia is a friend I made while in this gang life. She was also kidnapped and forced into this lifestyle. This life of harsh beatings, drugs, bad burns, illegal fighting, and much, much more. Sophia and I planned our escape, today was the day that we would execute it.

She was one of her gang's best fighters, but she could never beat me, she was only the fifth strongest out of all the fighters. Ever since we were told about this deal a month ago, Sophia and I have been planning our escape and with both of our earnings combined, we could buy a house for us to live in once we were old enough. Of course out of the town. It really worked out for us, each of our gang leaders chose weak men to accompany Sophia and I on this deal. Everyone knew that we were best buds, so they chose us to make this super important deal that would determine if an alliance would happen or not

Bad idea.

We were each accompanied by two male members. Sophia had two bearded members and I had two hormonal teens, trust was given too easily to me. I did everything they asked for nine years without complaint, especially after they told me what happened to my parents.

They were killed in a drive by shooting before the men showed up at my house.

The men began to exchange envelopes stuffed with money. I gave Sophia a wink, signaling that it's time to take action. She smirked wide in response and quickly jabbed the necks of her escorts. For me, it was a quick, two hard kicks to the balls, they both fell to the ground, holding their prized jewels. I went over to knock them out and then helped Sophia do the same.

"Run!" I yelled back, booking it towards the forest in the back. Sophia ran behind me, determination in her eyes and a slowly growing smile on her lips. We made it far into the forest but we could still barely see the dim lights of the town.

"What now? We're not old enough to get a hotel room." I turned to face Sophia, her eyes were filled with sorrow, "If only I was a bit older. Maybe we could bargain for a room?" Her eyes began to water, filling with tears.

Sophia is 16 while I'm only 13. Despite her age, she was less prepared, I on the other hand was raised to be strong mentally and physically, my mind stayed calm in any situation. That's why I survived for so long.

"Calm down Soph, today we must go as far as we can go. They can't wander freely around town during the day, so that's when we'll rest. As for food, we have enough money to last us a while." She looked up and pulled me into a hug as she let her tears fall down her cheeks. "I think we should go at least four towns away. I read about this one town, they do have dangerous druggies but it's nothing we can't handle. Oh! and there's a great high school." She pulled away and gave me a wide smile.

"Let's get a move on then, we have a long way to go." I returned her smile and then turned to continue walking.

Three months have passed and we finally made it to the fourth town. Sophia's birthday passed and she's now 17. I'm still 13 but my birthday is coming up soon so I'm really happy that we escaped here before then.

Along the way, we would run errands and do simple chores for some money.

"Hi, I would like to get a one-bedroom for this summer if possible." I sat on the curb while Sophia got us a room. "For two people. one child and one adult."

I felt a hand on my shoulder and I looked up to see Sophia's smiling face. She hung the keys above my face and I couldn't help but smile. "Ok, I got two keys. This month I will work non-stop and I hope you will do the same. It's summer so I hope we can make enough money to get a house, just the two of us." I got up and we walked over to our room to rest before our long day tomorrow.

The next morning I woke up and Sophia was already gone, but she left a note,

I left early for work, I hope you don't mind. I left a bit of extra cash so that you could get breakfast, lunch, and dinner if I'm not 'home' yet.

I laughed at her mention of 'home.' I took a shower and got ready for work. I got a small job at an animal shelter, I was tasked with feeding and walking the dogs. $10 an hour, not bad in my opinion.

As I walked into work I was greeted by a middle-aged, grumpy woman. She leads me to the back crates where all the dogs were being held.

For the rest of the summer, I worked my ass off to make as much money as I could. I even got promoted once, but it wasn't that great. The promotion was just more money and taking care of the cats as well.

One Summer Later

"Finally! we have someplace to call home!" I walked around the house in amazement. It was a two-story house with five bedrooms and all of them had bathrooms, and two guest bathrooms, the backyard was huge and it had a pool. Sure it's not considered small, but we planned on living here forever unless of course the gangs found and killed us or took us again. The thought of them made me shiver.

We explored the empty house and we claimed our rooms. We decided that two other of the rooms would be spare bedrooms and the last and biggest room would be an indoor bar. Even out of gang life we still enjoyed a few drinks here and then. Yes, I'm only 14 and yes I do drink.

It was hard to get the house considering Sophia was only 17 at the time, but they gave us a chance and sold it to us anyway seeing as we had the money to pay it off.

Summer was over and we finally had a real house, but unfortunately, I also had to go to High School. Sophia decided to fully drop out and work all day just to make sure that we could keep up with the bills.

The gangs sent us to school in hopes that we would become a lawyer so that we could help them out of a situation.

Oh, how I don't miss school.