B E N E F A C T I O N

Father signed the contract.

My body reacts before my mind does making me leap from the chair that held my thin frame and bolt. Where I was running, I didn't know, but I had to run.

With sleek and fluid motions, my body was thrown into one of the many walls of my parent's house.

"Please Constance! Do not fight them!" My mother pleaded as I groan from the impact. I lay limp on the ground, every fiber of my being aching, hurting, screaming out in pain. As the slender man who arrived at the home I had grown up in strutted towards me, I pleaded with my eyes. Begging him with a look to just let me be. I'd been through enough. I'd seen enough, just let me live a simple life in a ransacked house, with my trader of a family. But he did not care for my look. Instead he reached down, picked me up like a rag doll, and threw me over my shoulder.

"Mama please!" I cried out as my voice finally found me.

"I love you." Was all she said back.

"I love you." My father added as the stranger who had me over his shoulder stepped over the threshold.

"I hate you." I spoke back and I watched as they both broke down, but I didn't care. They didn't care enough to keep me away from these monsters, so I will never care to forgive them.

*-*-*-*

Twelve Moons Later

"Human two-four-six, please step forward." I turn my head slightly to watch a woman who resembles a skeleton step forward onto a small platform. Her spine is clearly visible as she trembles inside of the hot, humid, and dim room. She's not the first to step up on the platform, she's number nineteen. Every woman that came before her was in the same condition. Frail, trembling, seconds away from death, and all were treated the same way. Harshly pulled from the stage and out of the door in the far-left corner.

My eyes snap towards that very door as a tall muscular woman comes in. She takes slow and steady steps toward human two-four-six before pulling the frail woman from the platform and out of the room.

That was me when I first got to the facility.

Fragile, broken, betrayed.

I couldn't wrap my head around why my parents would do something so disgusting to me, but I learned how to deal with it. When I was taken from my home, I was thin, frail, weighing no more than a hundred and fifteen pounds, which was slightly underweight for my 5'7 stature. Now, from what is written on my file, I'm a hundred and seventy-five pounds, with enough meat on my bones to share.

"Human seven-seven-seven, please step forward." With a heavy sigh, I step forward onto the platform and square my shoulders. My eyes lock on the double-sided glass in front of me that shows my reflection. Staring back at me is a woman I don't know.

I only know time by moons. Full moons to be exact. On those nights, when the white ball is big and round in the sky, my body heats to the point that I'm in agony for most of the night. No one comes and checks on me, no one comes to comfort me, and I hate it. After the first three, I learned to turn the pain into something else, something more.

Pleasure.

When my skin prickles like a hundred needles against my body, I tell myself that I want it. My deep groans sometimes earn me looks other that hate from the guards. Yet I don't react to them.

"Spin counter clock-wise, hundred and eighty degrees." I do as I am told, knowing there's no point in disobeying. Once my back is to the glass, I hold my breath. Being completely naked should cause me shame, but after twelve moons of it, I can't seem to bring myself to care.