My name is Lula. Or, at least, that's the name I go by in recent years. A former prostitute and current filer at the local bail bonds office. Nobody knows me as anything else except an overweight black woman with a slapstick personality and tacky tastes. They think I'm too dim to realize what they really think of me. If only they knew.

I looked out the window of my small apartment. The sun was setting, and that time approached once again. The way it did every night. It was the time where I remembered everything that had happened to me on those dark and humid nights.

I shook a little and clenched my fists, berating myself for acting so weak.

The most recent and recurring nightmare was the one where I, over and over, lived through the torture I had endured at the hands of Benito Ramirez, an insane man who was trained in boxing.

Every blow had been deliberate. Every trace of the blade...everywhere...

I closed my eyes tightly to push away the images. The ghosts of sensations. Rape didn't faze me and neither did the pain. A girl with a past as tainted and filthy as mine knew to deal with that much. But I was too close to dead that time.

Way too close.

I turned away from the window and closed the curtains. The moon only seemed to mock me.

In this place, that was still unfamiliar it seemed most everyone was an enemy. I owed it to Stephanie for setting me right. And for the first time in her life it seemed as though I would be able to love a normal life and be a normal girl.

Something my stepfather had robbed me of when I was just eleven years old. Back then my name hadn't been Lula the 'hoe'.

Talullah.

That had been what they called me in Georgia. Talullah, after all the running water that surrounded my childhood home.

The days were long and hard, but it was beautiful. And dangerous.

Something I learned at a young age from my grandma. It was she who'd raised me. My mother was a crack whore, incapable of caring for me, let alone caring about me. And Charles, my stepfather had a strange fascination that unnerved grandma. So I stayed with her for about a year until I came home from school one day and found Charles over her bloody body.

His eyes as he turned to me... those eyes that have never left my mind...he'd made sure of that. And at night, when I was finally able to escape (and I would never tell anyone how I'd been able to) I ran as far and for as long as I could.

Eventually I gained a reputation in the streets.

Still, I kept moving. Farther away from what i'd once called home.

And finally I came upon Jersey.

I gained street cred and lived alright. And I'd had been prepared to pack up but after all this time, with Stephanie and Connie and all the rest of them...I felt like I'd found home.

I was their Lula. And they loved me for all I gave them. They didn't know how much it meant.

The stories I could tell them. And maybe I would one day. But for now, I'd just face the demon another night.

The moon shown through the thin curtains, taunting me. Or perhaps encouraging me to keep on living. I wasn't sure.

I turned off the lights and went to my bed, got under the covers. The room was pitch dark but for the sliver of silver light streaming throughout the window.

I closed my eyes.

And met those eyes head on once again.