Page 4 of Out to Find Freedom

Dead.

Like Donny.

I heaved, then vomited onto the carpet. A boot landed in my side, and I grunted and gasped. People yelled, argued, but I couldn’t hear any of it.

My ears rang as thought after thought screamed into my mind.

Gloria, my aunt, was a part of something so vile it churned my stomach again, and I let another load of spew loose.

A girl was drugged. Raped. Filmed.

Here. In the house. She was violated in a way no woman or man should be.

I had to do something.

For her.

For Donny.

The man stepped away from me to roll Donny’s body over. Gloria stood with Lenny and the rapist arguing. They were distracted.

I took the chance.

For the girl and Donny.

Knowing I could end up like either one of them.

Wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, I flashed up and ran for the door. The man tried to grab for me, yelled. I made it, touched the door handle… and then saw nothing but stars.

Somehow I ended up flat on my back on the floor. I blinked slowly, my vision dimming as I looked up at Gloria with a baseball bat in her hand.

“You really shouldn’t have done that. Take her to the basement,” she ordered, just before everything faded.

Chapter Two

Emerson

For over a month, I’d been in the basement. Tears always remained close to the edge, and I lost count of the times I would break. It was only the previous day when Gloria unchained me so I could move around the room more instead of being only near the bed and to reach the toilet. I learned my lesson to stop shouting and screaming. I needed to move more, and the way I got the privilege was to keep quiet. So I did.

The nightithappened, when I woke in the basement on the floor, Gloria had been crouched over me. She told me I had to be good, or I would end up dead. If that didn’t give me enough incentive, she then informed me that she used my fingerprint to get into my phone. Gloria read my messages, looked at everything, and in the end, my aunt threatened Harriet’s and her family’s lives if I didn’t do as I was told. She mentioned how she messaged Harriet pretending to be me and told her things to make sure she got the picture I wouldn’t be back at that school. Gloria didn’t tell me what Harriet replied with, so I didn’t know if she believed Gloria’s lies… or “my” lies.

Harriet knew Donny more than I did. She’d suspect something was wrong when he didn’t show for school too. Unless they had that covered. I didn’t have a clue.

Honestly, I couldn’t understand how or why no police showed. I didn’t know for certain what Gloria had said to the school or authorities about me, or if they came looking for clues to Donny’s disappearance.

God. Donny.

They killed Donny.

Right there in front of me.

They killed him… all because of me.

Because I came home.

Guilt ate at my insides each and every day.

Nothing like this seemed like it could happen in reality, but it had. I was a part of it. Gloria and Lenny were bad, toxic people. How and why they did what they did was a shock to my core. I could never understand the reason for sinking to an act only the Devil himself would love. How many girls had suffered? How many were taken, drugged, defiled, and dumped? Remembered nothing beyond knowing they’d been touched?

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