Stain

And then he hurts me in another way. He shoves up my skirt, rips my underwear, wrenches my thighs wide open, and rends me in two as he impales himself with one brutal thrust. He rips my shirt, yanking like a madman, rips my bra, and then attacks my chest. Squeezing my breasts painfully, sucking so hard at my nipples, and clamping his teeth down on my flesh with such cruelty that he draws blood.

Tears trickle down the sides of my beaten face from eyes that are now swollen shut as I scream until my vocal cords tear. He rots on top of me like a dying animal. His hot breath wafts across my wet face.

“That’s right, you fucking little whore, scream for me. This is me inside you now, bitch. I should’ve popped your fucking cherry years ago. I had to settle for Mallory instead. But she was hungry for it. Do you know how old she was when she gave it to me, baby girl? Hmm?” He slithers his tongue up my neck. “Ripe little thirteen. Just when you met her.” And he breathes hard in my ear. Mallory’s beating fists continue to echo in my ears, but soon her knocks disappear, and his grunts are the only sounds I hear. I turn my head away as sickness jumps to my throat. Three hard swallows sends the acid wash of bile back down. My head hangs limply as I start to die inside.

Every part of me is grateful that Maddox took my virginity. That he showed me how sweet and tender and beautiful it could be. Because what Tim is doing is beyond savage. My head jerks up and crashes back down as he flips me on my stomach, spreads my butt cheeks, and viciously tears through the tight ring of my anus. A sob escapes my lips. It’s too much. Too damn much. The excruciating torture is unbearable and yet my body won’t shut down. Make it end, God, please make it stop. My thoughts become hazy before my mind snaps. He shoves the side of my face into my pastel pink, peony blanket, and I breathe in shallow, hot air as I stare through narrowing, heavy eyes at the glinting sterling bracelet double wrapped around my wrist.

Maddox. My mind wraps his name around me like a blanket, sheltering me from my cryptic thoughts. Maddox. Max. It mewls at first. I’m not here in this bedroom. I’m on that cargo container, high in the air, in the massive parking lot, and Max is there. He’s lying next to me. Side by side, arms touching, hands interlacing between out warm bodies, and we stare up at the black sky that’s twinkling with stars. It’s a perfect, perfect moment.

“Aylee.” He comes into view, my own beautiful falling star, and sends my heart fluttering when he grins with that roguish charm. “I love you.” In my mind, he says the words he can’t say in reality, and they’re so sweet. So tender that when he kisses me, I come undone by the sheer force of his love for me. My body experiences the brutality of my present, but in my mind I’m soaking in love, and it’s where I will stay.

***

Mallory

Listening to the awful sounds of Aylee’s screams and the personal knowledge of just how violent Tim can be, I don’t realize what I’ve  just done until Tim slams the door in my face. Currently shaking with absolute terror, I stand in front of my best friend’s bedroom door listening while her foster father rapes her. I’ve pushed too far. I didn’t mean to—

The shakes get worse. They intensify with each second that passes. And I don’t know if it’s the drugs or my nerves, but I need to do something. Anything. Jumping into action, I run down the stairs and nearly trip over Aylee’s backpack. Bending down and rummaging through it, I find what I’m looking for. There’s a text on the screen of her phone.

Checking to see if you’re okay.

Let me know.

The text is from a contact marked only as M. But I know who it is. I ponder simply texting him, but change my mind at the last minute.

He picks up on the first ring.

“Hey, beautiful,” he greets, like that’s her name, and sudden envy at the affection in his voice causes me to grow silent. Too silent.

“Aylee?” he questions. And I snap out of it.

“Maddox.”

“Who the fuck is this?”

Well, at least he knows Aylee’s voice. “It’s Mallory—”

“Where is she?” There’s no mistaking the frost in his voice through the phone line, and instantly I shudder. Maddox Moore is not someone you fuck with—not even a little.

“You need to come…her dad…just hurry and get here.”

With trembling hands, I hang up on Maddox and dial 9-1-1. Everything after that passes by in a flash. I stick around long enough to give the operator the address of the emergency before hurrying upstairs to put my clothes on, grab my bag and keys, and run as fast as I can out of the house. My high is wearing off. I can’t be here. And the need to go score something strong enough to make me forget my part in all of this takes over. Once I’m in my Mercedes, I send up a brief prayer that Aylee survives this. But I know better. God forsook me a very long time ago. So my prayer is really to no one at all.

Chapter 24

Maddox

I don’t know why the bitch has Aylee’s phone, and for a second there I’m ready to tell her off, but then her words bring my world to a screeching stop. I’m outside the precinct grabbing a smoke with Willkie. Just as we expected, they wouldn’t tell us shit about Dro. So we’ve been here for the last hour waiting. But then the call changes everything. I can’t move fast enough. Flicking my cigarette away, I make a run for my truck.

“Where the fuck are you going?” Willkie yells after me.

“Something’s come up. I gotta handle this,” I reply back from the middle of the parking lot.

“What about Dro?”

“It’s my girl,” I say, without hesitation. It’s always going to be Aylee first now. “I gotta go. Keep me posted.”

I drive like I’m on something. My truck is shit when it comes to speed, but I break every traffic law to get to the other side of town in half the time it would normally take me. I turn on her street and my blood runs cold at the sight of the ambulance, fire truck, and police cruisers stationed in front of her house. I park about a block away, almost exactly where I dropped her off earlier, and gun down the street like an Olympic sprinter.

There’s a crowd of her neighbors gathered, and I shove and shoulder through them to make it to the other side just in time to see them hoist her in the back of the ambulance and slam the doors shut.

“She’s always been such a sweet girl, I can’t believe what happened to her.”

“Anyone know what happened?”

“Someone said she got beat up pretty badly.”

“Yeah, I just overheard her dad give a statement to the police. Apparently she has a boyfriend who’s been abusing her. He said he walked in on the guy raping her.”

“God, that’s terrible! Can you imagine seeing that happening to your daughter?”

“I know…it’s awful. Poor girl.”

Beat up. Rape. Beat up. Rape. Rape. Rape. I only pick out those words and they play on a loop inside my head, feeding the flames of white-hot rage thrashing inside of me. I know without a doubt I’m going to castrate her old man. That’s a promise I intend to keep to myself. But first I need to see her. I have to know she’ll be okay. I have to touch her. I follow behind the ambulance and it’s not until I get to the ER’s front desk that I realize they’re not going to let me see her. I have no familial co

I come and go, but I never leave the hospital parking lot.

Let her be okay. Let her be okay. Goddamn it, let her be okay.

“If you’re listening up there, I don’t believe in this shit. But she’s too damn important to leave it all up to fate. So I’m asking. If you’re up there, don’t let her die. You gave her to me. You put her in my life, you can’t just take her away now. Don’t fucking take her away from me. I need her too damn much.” I rear my fist back and slam it into the steering wheel. Nobody is listening, and I feel like a fucking idiot for thinking so.