"I dreamed a dream that life would be,
So different from this hell I'm living..."
"I Dreamed a Dream" from Les Miserables
Pain. Pain is all I ever feel. Ever since the day I arrived home after school on my twelfth birthday, my parents on the floor, stabbed to death, facedown in the cake that we would have eaten that night. There was nowhere for me to turn. I had no relatives, and I was not going to the orphanage. I wasn't going to live with people I didn't know. Instead of alerting the police, I hid the bodies, and tried to find work. Nobody would hire me. Every night was another night going to sleep with my stomach growling. Every day was another day in hell, avoiding school and trying to find anybody, anybody who would help me. My effort was futile. I remember one night, when I was fourteen, I was looking at myself in the mirror, thinking about when I was young and life couldn't have been better. I had gone through things no child deserved to go through. The next day, I was wandering the streets, as usual, digging through garbage cans for food and begging. A tall, intimidating man walked over to me. He looked rich, far too rich to be living in District 8.
"Hello, young girl. What is your name?" he asked me.
I was taken aback. Nobody bothered to ask me my name or even acknowledge me completely.
"Marissa," I replied, barely audible. I never talked much.
"You look very poor. Is that so?" he asked me. His voice had a fatherly tone to it. I hadn't heard a tone of voice like that in so long. I nodded in response to his question. "I have a job offer for you," he continued. He leaned in to whisper in my ear. "Do you know what a prostitute is?"
That sentence changed my life.
Now every night I sell my body to another drunk, abusive man who forces himself upon me, having no remorse for the child he is scarring even more. I make enough to survive, but that cannot pay for what has happened to me. Every night, instead of going to sleep with a growling stomach I go to sleep with tears and trembles, with fears and nightmares.
With my dreams shattered.
