"Little Lady, this is just the worst way to spend your birthday
its 30 degrees, Thursday you work late,
You were with a perv making dirty fake love in his Mercedes lady,
the word rape sums up the events that take place every night"
His hand is down the front of her pants, dry fingers rubbing over warm skin. She shivers, biting back a cry and forcing out a moan as he slips further in. She strikes out a hand grabbing the car handle behind her bracing herself while inside she is crumbling. She closes her eyes and bids the tears to stay back. His knee pries open the vice of her legs and his weight drops on her to hold them in place. His hands gather her wrists and she feels his grip in her bones. The fear that seized her mind is replaced with the familiar pain and she becomes numb. She sees him loosen his tie and hears him unzip his pants but in her mind she retreats to a different time and a safe place, leaving her body behind in a strangers car.
She scrapes her fingers along her skin, holding her hand in front of her face. Flakes of skin, blood, and white dried evidence of last night's activities blend under her nail. Without even moving she feels the ache in her core. Her legs are squeezed together, knees crossed and ankles locked, the only way she can sleep these days. Releasing the tension in her muscles gives her no ounce of relief. The movement causes her hips and thighs to widen to a position they'd been stuck in too long. She gasps in a breath and runs a tongue over her lip feeling the split left there from the night before. She rolls out of bed, collapsing on the floor. Her mind woke up and she can't stay on her back any more. Memories blaze by of the man from last night. He had a wife and a family. He told her she looked like his step daughter as he slid his hand down her back pocket, leaving money behind.
She struggles to stand on shaking legs and stumbles her way towards the bathroom. She careens into the sink, her head hitting the mirror where she breathes in deep trying not to cry. When she finally looks up she's filled with sadness. She's looking at the body she left in the car last night. The girl whose light brown hair looks stringy and messy. The girl whose brown eyes look empty and pale cheeks look sharp. The girl who has a cut lip and bruises on her neck and a deep pain in her jaw. She slips on her glasses and pretends she doesn't know the girl she saw in the mirror. That girl was abused by a man she didn't know. That girl was given compensation she wouldn't see for more than a day. That girl had no other choice she could make.
"Well if it isn't little Pidge! That is what you're calling yourself these days isn't it?"
She nods her head quickly keeping her eyes on the floor. She reaches in her bag and pulls out some bills placing them on the table. She turns her back on the man and heads for the door. But just as she opens it another hand slams it shut. She's caged by his arms his chest to her back and his breath on her neck.
"What happened to your face little Pidge?"
She'd frown but her jaw really aches now. The pain has grown throughout the morning. A black bruise now takes up the bottom left side of her face. His hand grips there now, thumb pressing in. He slams his hand back on the door in anger, making her jump.
"Damn son of a bitch did this to you?" He roars behind her, as he angles her head to catch the light better. She only nods her head again, body stiff in his arms. He growls low and deep, "Mother fucker damaging my hore. You better get that covered up before you go back out tonight you hear?"
She only nods again and it makes him more angry. His hand flashes up before she ever sees it coming. Her head hits the door so hard she sees white and her jaw aches even more where he hit her. She raises her arm clutching at the bruise as he backs away. "Speak up little bitch."
She keeps her eyes on the ground, tears welling up. He crosses to the money pulling out some bills. He takes them out individually, slipping the first few down the front of her pants into her underwear, "For your trouble." The second he reaches down her shirt and places in her bra, "For the make up." He pries open her jaw placing the rest on her tongue. "And to buy yourself something sexy."
She closes her mouth knowing better than to pull it out now. She turns for the door again when his hand clamps around her wrist again. His other hand unclenches her fist, slipping a plastic bag into her fingers. "For the pain." he says.
She clutches the drugs to her chest as she leaves her uncles home.
She stands outside the clinic, just around the corner. Her jaw aches so bad now she can't move it at all. The bruise is still visible even under the layers of makeup she's painstakingly applied. She takes in a deep breath and takes a step towards the door only for fear to clench her heart as she tries to remember the lies and excuses she's rehearsed. Last time she entered a clinic she was bombarded with questions she wasn't prepared for and came up with an unconvincing story about an intimate encounter with a door. When she had delivered her payment with a bandage on her wrist, her uncle had threatened her within an inch of her life and the damage she carried out was twice as bad as that she had carried in.
She frowns at the memory, causing pain to shoot through her small frame. This can't wait anymore. She doesn't know what's wrong with her jaw and why the pain won't fade into the rest and become something she can ignore. She stalls to head in and turns back around the corner. She enters a cafe and finds a free computer. There she sits as she wires a bit too much money to her mom back home alone and writes her an email. She tells her mom of the classes she's attending and the job where she spends her evenings and the life she loves in the city. She tells her mom she misses her and thanks her for the sacrifices she made to give her a better life. She signs the email from, "your dearest daughter, Katie."
She clicks on an unopened email from her mother with a file attached. The email was from that morning and the title spelled out, "Happy Birthday!" The picture attached is an old one, from before her father and brother disappeared. A little girl with shining hair, flushed cheeks and golden eyes stands surrounded by people who shared her features. This is Katie Holt. This girl who has a family who loves her and a reason to live.
Katie leaves the cafe and crosses the street. Pidge enters the clinic.
"Katie, please."
The detectives eyes are honest, openly pleading with her.
Her jaw clenches shut further, a small pain ringing through the medication the clinic gave her. Internally she curses the staff there.
She had finally convinced herself to enter the clinic only for a nurse to call the cops, the bruises on her wrist and neck a little too identifiable even through the make up. They didn't even stop to ask her story, not that she could have told them through her stiff jaw. They treat her face as she curses her luck that the same nurse as the last time who turned a blind eye wasn't there. This time the nurse, a young man with tanned skin, brown hair and a warm smile sat with her as he attended to her injuries. His coworker, a pale man with dark hair called the police as she sat and trembled imagining her uncle.
Now the cop placed a blanket around her shoulders, mistaking the trembling for cold. He continued to talk begging her to help them understand. He asks lots of questions and gives her reassurances. He says they can help her. He says they can protect her. He says that she'll be safe.
All she can do is sit quietly and listen. There's an empty pad of paper before her if she should decide to contribute. The cop stares her down, his deep eyes friendly and a little desperate. She stares at his hair, black and fading to grey in the front. His jaw is wide and strong and his eyelashes dark and heavy. She can't meet his eyes though and she can't part her lips. He's begging her again to not be stupid.
He just wants to help.
He leaves her a number and asks her to call him and she slips it in her bag as she begins the trek home to get ready for another night.
She enters her home as she realizes her mistake. Her uncle enters behind her and traps her against the door again. He reeks of alcohol and hold a knife against her neck. He pushes her forward and her body hits the door. Her hand drops open reflexively and her bag spills across the floor. His fingers trace over the bandage on her neck and his thumbs dig in and his breathing becomes heavy.
"Where you been, bitch?" He asks, unusually quiet. Her body stiffens even more as the knife bites into her neck. She's terrified now because he is calm. Rage she can handle, abusive she can ignore, but quiet is unpredictable. She shakes in his arms knowing the trouble she's in if he knows where she was. The nurses and the cop, both trying to help her, put her in more danger than she could ever have achieved on her own. His eyes glance down at the contents of her spilled bag, coming to rest on a business card, with a number scrawled out on the back.
She feels the knife bite into her throat and the blood run down her neck. Liquid bubbles up in her throat and she finds the pain numbing. Katie retreats in her mind and leaves Pidge's body with her uncle for the last time. He places her lifeless body in the back of his car and drives off. Her apartment door stays open, the sun glaring on the only card she got for her thirteenth birthday.
"And in a moment of rage he brutally murders his niece
and dumps her body in the boot of his Mercs in the street.
Little lady left this earth in the worst way
all because she got a card on her 13th birthday."
AN:
Song is Little Lady by Mikill Pane and Ed Sheeran
Also if your curious, the nurses were Lance and Keith and the cop was Shiro.