I'm not quite satisfied with this, but I'm posting it anyway. So. Enjoy.

Based after the events of "The Poor Kid".


So it's eleven at night and Karen's walking through the bad part of town, but she's not afraid because her guardian angel's out there somewhere. Her backpack is heavy, full of textbooks from her first days of sixth grade. Her fingernails are polished to perfection from hanging out with her friends after school. And then she hears the footsteps.

She whirls, feet pivoting, and behind her are two men, and one is holding a rag.

Her mind processes fast, very fast, because she lives in fucking South Park and she's kind of used to situations like this.

"Don't kidnap me!" she screams. "My family's poor!"

"Hey," one of the men says, his voice a low growl, "chillax."

But the other is already moving towards her. She turns and runs, dropping her backpack. She was so proud of her first pair of high heels this morning. Now she trips and stumbles and falls against the pavement. She scrambles up and runs again, her hands scraped and bleeding, but they're already upon her, shoving her back against the wall to slam the reeking rag against her mouth. She holds her breath but the smell drowns her senses anyways, and she feels herself falling and falling until she's nothing any more-


She wakes up in a room full of other little girls. She tries to stand and fails. The other girls are sitting around the room, glassy-eyed, staring at nothing. It reeks of sweat and fear in here. Dark enough to blur her vision. She tries not to panic.

"What's going on?" she whispers.

"No one knows," the girl next to her whispers back. "The door's locked and we can't think of a way out other than to knock it down. But whenever we try to bang on it the people outside yell at us."

She rubs her head. "Oh."

Minutes pass. Nothing changes. Some of the little girls are sobbing. Others and rocking back and forth.

"Why are we here?" one screams. "What's going on? I want my mommy!"

"Shut up, you idiot!" another yells back. "Don't you know? They're going to eat us!"

Immediately, pretty much all the other girls in the room start to sob. Karen is the only one who can swallow back her tears. In a few minutes, the girl next to her manages to ask:

"Aren't you scared?"

Karen shakes her head. "My guardian angel's going to come save me."


Now they're being manhandled and someone jams a needle into her arm. It hurts like a bitch, so bad she starts to gasp and whimper, but then a cool calm spreads over her. She thinks she knows what it is and she's scared but god everything feels so fuzzy and good and she just sighs and lets them force her into the back of a truck and she's still smiling even as they drive off.


When she regains her senses some time later she doesn't know how many hours have past. She can only remember colors and bright lights and she doesn't know what's happened to her. She's leaning over a toilet, barfing up her guts, and she's wearing a shiny strapless dress only grown-ups wear. Her head hurts.

She wants to yell for Mysterion, but she has to keep throwing up.


She still doesn't know what time it is, but at least now things make a little more sense. She's figured out the rules to this new world now. Like, if she jams the needles into her arm she feels fuzzy and happy for hours. Like, if she takes the money when the men come around in their cars she has to give it to the shouting man. And if the police come she and DeeDee and Elisa, the other girls she's with, have to say they're just waiting for their parents to pick them up, no matter how late it is.

And she might be young, but she lived in freaking South Park for the first eleven years of her life. She knows what's happening to her.

So she knows exactly what she's doing when they pay her.

One night DeeDee doesn't come back after getting into a car and she and Elisa are waiting around and it's four in the morning and the dope is wearing off and she can feel afraid again.

"Let's go back before Lenny gets mad," Elisa says, hugging her skinny leather jacket. Lenny is the shouting man. Karen likes her nickname better.

"We can't go back without her!"

"She's gone. Probably lying in a ditch somewhere. I bet someone killed her!"

"Don't say that!" Karen says, and she has to swallow hard to keep from crying.

Elisa glowers at her with disdain. "It's okay to cry, you know. I don't care."

Sure you don't, Karen thinks, but she speaks up anyway.

"I'm not sad or afraid or anything. I don't need to cry."

"Sure you aren't."

"It's all going to be okay. Mysterion's gonna save me. He – he's my guardian angel."

"God, you're so naïve." Elisa starts to stalk away, her high heels clicking.


She dreams she's back at home, eating strawberry poptarts while her brother teases her. Then he picks her up and hugs her like she's little again.

Then she wakes up and she's with a bunch of other drugged-up little girls in a ghetto apartment that serves a pedophile's sex trade base. Her head still hurts and she can't process the world around her right because of all the drugs they've been giving her.

She cries.


She's being kicked into the pavement, boots slamming into her ribs. She's screaming at them to stop but the man keeps kicking her. She doesn't even know why he's angry. She's a slut, useless, just something to use. It doesn't matter. And he leaves without even paying her. Jerk.

She sits up curls her knees to her chest, back against the grimy alley wall. Her mascara smears. She rubs her eyes.

She doesn't even know how old she is.

She hasn't thought about him in a long time because thinking about the past makes her heart hurt and she's already got enough pain in her life.

But every once in a while, she wishes for him. Times like this.

"Hey," she whispers. "Mysterion. You said you'd always be there to look after me."

No one responds, because she is still all alone.