If you're looking for an adventure in the morally grey, and a crash course of the human condition, this is the story for you! What is good and evil? Where is that line drawn, and who decides that? Packed with humor, danger, feels, and awkward relati...
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*****These two Emily chapters contain material that may be upsetting to readers, including child trafficking and violence*****
Emily woke, turned on whatever she was lying on, and then threw up on the floor. She coughed and tears fell from her eyes as she lay, too afraid to move and see her foot shackled again. Why had she been unable to stay awake when she'd needed to the most? All that Maggie had done for her had been wasted, and she was now in another monster's clutches.
"Shit," the monster swore, and she shook, pulling away from the sound and burying herself in something.
Whatever it was, she was warm, but she was afraid. Whenever she had thrown up with Josef, he had thrown her naked into the wash room and hosed her down with water so powerful it bruised her. Waiting to be dragged off into another room by her hair, she flinched when something touched her face, and she bit down on it hard.
There was a yelp, and the touch was ripped away from her. She could taste the blood on her lips as she opened her eyes, ready to be hit. The man cowered against the wall a few feet from her on the floor, holding his hand with a cloth wrapped around it. It was red, and she started to cry again.
She didn't want him to hit her.
She didn't know what words to use with him so that he wouldn't though.
The man stood, and she flinched back, but he went to another room that adjoined this one. She heard water and then a shallow curse as he likely inspected his cut. She had bit him hard enough to deter any future actions of that kind.
When he came back, she was still searching the blankets for anything to kill him with, but she came up empty. Wrapped in gauze, two of his fingers were bandaged, and he frowned at her as he brought a towel to the side of the bed and some sort of bottle.
He poured the pungent liquid on the carpet at the base of the bed and sighed as he cleaned up what must have been her vomit, but she couldn't see that far, huddled on the opposite side of the bed against the wall.
"At least you bit mostly into the towel," he groaned on the ground. "If I hadn't had it, you might have taken my fingers off." The man looked up to her as he sprayed the area with a different bottle and then dumped the towels into the laundry basket on the side of the room.
Silence filled the room, and she was prepared for whatever punishment was coming for her.
"I'm sorry."
They were not the words she had expected from him.
"I should have known better than to touch your face. You were just lying in your own throw up. I felt horrible, so I cleaned you off. I should have asked first, or handed you the towel. You had every right to bite me."
