"If I've told you once I've told you a thousand times! Pick up your damned toys when I fucking tell you!"

SLAP!

Long baby fine blonde hair flies wild as the pudgy cheeks of the little girl's face shakes and jiggles, her face snapping hard to the right with the hardest slap the child had yet to experience. The man doing the abusing was much larger than the four year old, overbearing and oppressive. "Daddy…daddy please!"

"What's going on in here? Oh my God! What have you done!? My baby! Cassie, honey!"

Mama outstretched her arms to the little blonde and the little thing with a red hand mark on her face, beginning to welt, ran into those waiting arms, those safe arms. "Mama, mama, mama…" The blonde buried her stinging face into her mother's neck and chest, not even bothering to make sense after the mother's title. Mama knew what she needed. Mama knew everything.

Mama ushered the daughter into her back bedroom and closed the door. Before the door clicked into place mama got on her level and grabbed hold of the girl, making her look at her mother in the eye. "Cassie, baby, daddy's not himself. He doesn't mean it… But I need you to do something for me okay?" When Cassie nodded mama smiled and continued. "I need you to stay in here no matter what you hear, baby, you hear me? Mama needs you to stay put no matter what."

Lamps were thrown off end tables, vases and glass items, decorations and framed pictures were all slid off tables and the top of the mantelpiece. Through all of that Cassie remained behind her parents' bed, tucked between the bed and the wall in the far corner of the room. She didn't start to cry until she heard her mama scream and a couple heavy thuds in quick succession. At that point she wasn't just crying…

She was screaming.

Blonde hair cascades forward as the little one's head drops to her knees, knees pulled up to her chest, all the air left her chest and she has nothing more to give. Little Cassie is numb and that's nothing a four year old should be. Her eyes close and for a while she fades away…

And free floats…

When her eyes open again, her head raises and she's twenty-one years old staring at a reflection in the mirror of a bathroom. The bathroom was old, outdated, colored in browns and muted yellows like some sort of homage to the Partridge Family. If someone could have taken a sledgehammer to it, it would have been too soon. The face in the mirror was not her own; instead, the face belonged to a woman who appeared much older, if only for the look of absolute self disdain and loathing she found there. It seemed ever since she'd met Aaron Marker she hated herself and everything she stood for.

Did she really stand for anything at all?

The black tears falling down her face weren't like her at all. Cassie ordinarily didn't like to wear makeup. Why she felt the need to change herself to fit what was expected of her was somehow beyond her ability to understand or the want to. She loved him didn't she? He loved her; that was for sure. Perhaps he loved her too much because to some he was obsessive, possessive and controlling and wanted for Cassie to be at his every whim, at his every beck and call but when she needed something he was never there.

He was never there.

She needed him and he was never there…

/

Blue green orbs of pure light opened, startled. The morning light filtering through the blinds at the far side of the room was enough to tell Cassie Railly that the day had started without her. But then, she had nothing at all to do that wasn't oriented around taking care of the house and home or private affairs. Aaron wouldn't let her work; he was against it because he wanted a wife that could travel with him once he ran for public office. She couldn't very well do that while working for the CDC as an accomplished virologist, could she?

Her long lithe frame curled up on itself and had her sitting on the edge of the bed. Aaron had long since left for the congressional offices; it seemed if he wasn't there he wasn't anywhere else lately. Dainty feet hit the hardwood at bedside as she got ready for the day, gearing herself up for another long torture of nothing much to do.

Once the morning ritual was behind her Cassie set off for the kitchen. Eyes lit across the locked liquor cabinet when she entered, a familiar voice at the back of her brain speaking up, telling her it needed, it wanted, was thirsty and had to have a sip, just one sip. A shake of her head brought some of her long blonde locks from behind her ears. It wasn't that she couldn't control herself… But why Aaron needed to keep them in the house anyway, knowing what she was and her propensity for use; the reality he most likely wanted her to fall, to fail, was beyond comprehension. She looked away and made coffee, made eggs and toast and ate at the table with her head down. No more notice given to the cabinet at all.

Cassie was strong. She could do this.

She'd done it for two years now with no backing out, no giving in, and no exceptions…no sway.

Long nimble fingers, doctor's fingers on healing hands played with the pendant she'd been given upon her first ninety days clean and sober:

God grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

- the Courage to change the things I can

and the Wisdom to know the difference.

Being a drunk was in her blood, running in her veins, inherent. Her daddy and his daddy before him and his daddy before him, all had been drunks and mean ones at that; Hell, her daddy wasn't that nice when he was sober so it only got worse from there. Worse to unbearable every day… Today would be the first day she'd be leaving the house in quite some time, alone at least. In conjunction with Aaron's expectations about her work life and social connections, Cassie was always worried she'd fall into alcoholism again if she allowed herself out of the house for too long. Whatever the fear, irrational or not, the good doctor had to leave the house. Her best friend and fellow doctor, Henri Toussaint, just died. There were questionable circumstances surrounding the death of her friend; apparently he'd been shot in the head at close range after having helped a bunch of people in Haiti after the events of 2014. She was headed to the funeral now, a little black dress on her curvy but skinny frame, the hem meeting her mid-thigh, the top of it tank top style with no sleeves but not thin straps either.

She arrived to the funeral home before most of the people; there were only family members there and that was all Cassie cared about anyway. She paid her respects without much ado and left early, not wanting to stay for a reception after the rosary was said. While driving home Cassie only got as far as the gas station before she stopped, needing to fill the tank. She paid in advance, thirty dollars, and was standing at the pump, the siphon in the tank when…

"Hey sweetheart, you look familiar; I seen you before?"

"No, n-no I don't believe so…" Cassie eyed the man curiously. She was confident she'd never seen him before in her life but he was looking at her as though he knew her.

"Naw, I think I know you. You look real sweet…" His body language dripped of power and restraint as though he was barely holding back a need to advance on her.

"N-no, you must be mistaken."

Before she knew what she was about the back door of her car was open and she was thrown down on the seats. She tried to resist but the strange man was much bigger and much stronger than she was. He was a brunette with a large sweat stain down the chest of his shirt. He smelled like sweat and some kind of must as he practically laid on her on the backseat before he got her in all the way and closed the door, her wrists somehow bound and restrained behind her back.

"Stop…p-please stop…y-you don't have to do this…"

The man wasn't listening to her; instead, the brown haired blue eyed man stuffed himself behind her steering wheel and peeled out of the lot. He went no more than twelve miles before pulled off road and down some dirt road in the middle of an industrial complex. He left the driver's seat only to slip into the backseat with her, his body on her in every way. Cassie heard the buckle on his pants being undone and the grunting as the man readied himself to penetrate her, raising her skirt and ripping her thong panties aside to get to her hot wet core, which wasn't aroused or quite as hot and wet as it should have been.

"No!" She screamed, repeatedly, as he raped her. She cried and screamed and she wailed so loudly until he was done with her. He left the car and left her like that, undone. Cassie couldn't drive home; she was too emotionally unstable. What she hated more than anything was that she hadn't enjoyed any of it but she'd cum anyway. Why would God make a body like this? Why would a body react like that to rape?

She was barefoot and dirty, having walked all the way back to her home, old blood congealed and crusted on the insides of her thighs and on what remained of her panties when she got there. It was denial that drove her there as much as it was the need to forget. She wouldn't go to the police; what could they do? What could anyone do, here? The blonde stripped down naked after triple checking to make sure her door was locked, leaving her black dress on the floor and trashing her thong panties immediately in the waste basket; she hopped in the shower where the aim was to scorch herself until she couldn't feel his hands on her anymore or his… She cringed, a shiver ripping down her spine.

The shower was all it could be in comfort. She wanted Aaron but when he came home it was nothing at all what she'd wanted, what she needed. He came home oblivious and he stayed that way. Cassie couldn't bring herself to tell him. How could she? And why would she, anyway; she'd only be scolded for going outside when she didn't have to and be reprimanded in some way for caring about a man that wasn't Aaron 'almighty' Marker. He kissed her on the head, changed and fell asleep beside her. That was it. That was all he was capable of.

At three minutes to midnight the moon was mocking her with its light and Cassie was feeling more trapped by this life than she had in a long time. Why was she still awake? Why was she still sober? Her friend had died and she'd been raped and kidnapped all in one afternoon. If this wasn't the appropriate time to drink, Cassie didn't know what was. Leaving the bed she got up and padded barefoot, now a clean pale – if a bit pink due to the scorching heat of the water in the shower – into the kitchen. Her blue greens fell on the locked liquor cabinet. The bottles called to her, their silhouettes behind the frosted glass; they fell to her necklace and her right hand ripped it off without ceremony, breaking the clasp. "Two years I gave you and what did you do for me…huh? Nothing…" A butter knife in her hand she slipped it under the lock and jerked it hard forcing the wood of the cabinet to crack. The bottle of bourbon was in her hand, a good solid bourbon, 90 proof. Her hand shook as she poured out a tall glass half full.

"At the bottom now…this is only lateral movement…" She murmured before tipping her head back and nearly chugging the first glass of the amber liquid.