Ava left Uncle Jack's apartment with a few new tricks up her sleeve and the knowledge that she was going to be late for dinner for the third time this week. Her mother didn't mind that she sometimes went to see Uncle Jack after school, but she had this obsession with eating dinner together as a family and there would be hell to pay if she was late again.

"She's going to kill me," Ava muttered.

As she stood on the corner of East and Chapel waiting to cross, she looked down the street into the alley and then looked back at her watch. It was 5:49 – she needed to be home by six. The alley was not well lit, but it was a shortcut. Despite her better judgment, Ava stepped onto that darkened path, running as fast as she could in a skirt and flip flops.

"Wear pants next time, Angel; I can't have you throwing kicks in a skirt," Uncle Jack had said before she left his apartment not ten minutes ago.

Her intuition told her this was not a good idea and intuition proved right when a man almost twice her size stepped into her path, no more than twenty feet away from her.

Oh shit…

Ava turned and ran in the opposite direction, stopping abruptly when a second man blocked that egress, leaving her trapped.

"What are you doing down here, little girl? Are you lost?" he asked.

"Ignore them," she thought. "Just ignore them, don't make eye contact and walk right on by."

Ava pushed by the second man and kept her vision focused on East Street and the people- the help -that awaited her. To her relief, he didn't stop her, not until she walked past and he stuck his foot out, tripping her. She fell to the ground face first, skinning her elbows and her knees. When she rolled over and looked up, the two men were standing over her. The larger of the two reached for her and she lashed out at him, grabbing his outstretched hand and sinking her teeth into the tender pad of flesh between his thumb and index finger.

He released her and doubled over, screaming obscenities and gripping his hand. Ava scrambled to her feet and took off down the alley with the second man hot on her heels. Standing almost six inches taller than her, his long legs caught up to her before she had gone ten paces. He pushed her against the wall; one hand covered her mouth and stifled her cries for help while the other pulled at her skirt.

"Bring her back here," the other man called from behind a dumpster. "No one will see a thing."

Ava felt her feet leave the ground as she was lifted up and carried out of sight. Even if someone who actually gave a damn happened to look this way, they would not have seen the goings on. The situation was desperate to say the least.

She was forced onto the pavement face down again, and straddled by a man who ripped her backpack from her shoulders. The contents spilled onto the ground and she found herself face to face with her cell phone. Ava reached out and hit the send button, hoping that neither of the men had noticed. The phone redialed the number of the last person she had spoken to and Ava could only hope that Uncle Jack was still home to take the call.

After three rings, he picked up, "Hello?" she heard him ask faintly.

"I'm in the alley by East and Chapel, East and Chapel!" she screamed before a size ten, steel toed boot crushed her phone.

The hand that had left her mouth for just a moment, resumed its place and she closed her eyes when he settled his full body weight on top of her, pushing her further into the pavement.

"You have a big mouth for such a little girl. What are you, about 13-14 years old?" a hateful voice whispered into her ear.

"Do you think she's a virgin?" the other man asked.

"Not for much longer."

I just want to go home…

It seemed silly, but all she could think about at this moment was her mother and how this would affect her. She would be devastated that her and her daughter had shared the same fate. Uncle Jack was coming, she was certain of that but as she felt this man fumble with his belt while he whispered some of the most perverse words she had ever heard, Ava knew that he would arrive too late.

She kept her eyes shut tight and prayed for a miracle and to her amazement, her prayers were answered.

It came in the form of a peculiar popping sound, like nothing she had ever heard before, and the man who had smashed her phone, fell to the ground beside her. The second man who had been all too eager to assault her, jumped to his feet and backed toward the wall; still, Ava did not dare look up.

"How dare you touch her?" Ava heard an unfamiliar male voice ask.

"Just calm down, I barely laid a hand on her. No harm, no foul, okay?" her attacker said before she heard another popping sound. A second body hit the ground and then there was nothing but silence.

The mystery man, her savior, grasped her shoulders and pulled her to her feet.

"It's okay, you're safe now, Ava. I'd never let anything happen to you."

Ava attempted to turn around. She didn't know this voice or the man it belonged to, but he seemed to know her. He wouldn't allow her to see him however, and pushed her against the dumpster. It was not a threatening gesture by any means but somehow she knew it was in her best interests not to force the issue.

"It's better that you not see me, Ava. Now is not the right time," he explained.

"Who are you?" she asked.

"Someone who wants to protect you," he answered while he brushed the dirt off her shoulders. "Someone who had better not discover that you've been walking down dark alleys such as this one ever again; do you understand me?"

"Yes….sir," Ava answered, not knowing how else to address him.

"Good girl. Now hurry home. You're mother is probably worried sick about you."

Without looking at him, she stepped out from behind the dumpster, bumps, bruises and all and started walking towards East Street. Her mother would think she'd gotten into another fight and that was fine. The truth would be too difficult to explain.

When she stepped into the sunlight and its welcoming heat, she turned to her left and saw Uncle Jack running towards her at break neck speed. She decided to chance one look over her shoulder into the alley…it was deserted.

The man who had saved her from a fate worse than death had disappeared.

Ava awoke to the sound of screams. She couldn't remember if her abductors had drugged her or if she had passed out while in transit; all she knew was that it had been a dark and bumpy ride and lying on the tile floor made her realize how much her entire body ached.

She was still having difficulty relating to her surroundings but she could tell she was alone in this room. The screams were coming from the room next to hers and she approached the wall, pressing her ear against it and trying to listen.

It didn't take her long to recognize the terrified voice as her mother's. She was begging, pleading with someone briefly and then she began to scream again. Ava was paralyzed. She sunk to the floor and wrapped her arms around herself, unable to do anything else.

As gut wrenching as it was to listen to those screams, it was worse when they stopped. Ava rocked back and forth, telling herself repeatedly that the cries had been a figment of her imagination.

Where am I?

It appeared as though she were in someone's office, complete with a desk, roll out chair and computer monitor; the computer's hard drive was nowhere to be found – the phone was absent as well.

There were no windows in this room. The only light came from a single fluorescent bulb, the only one in the room that hadn't burned out. Making her way to the door, she was surprised when she turned the knob and found it wasn't locked.

Ava stepped into the hallway and saw it was much the same as the room she'd just left. A single light illuminated the corridor, she could see twenty feet in either direction before everything was enveloped in darkness, but she knew the hall extended much further than that.

From the room next to her, she heard a group of men talking and suddenly the door opened and two people emerged. They noticed her right away but made no effort to apprehend of subdue her. Instead, they pointed at the room they'd just left and one of them said, "He's been waiting for you to wake up. Go on, your mom is in there too."

Ava felt her heart sink into the pit of her stomach. The time for denial was over. Whatever was happening to her and her mother was real.

Those were the only words they said. After that, they didn't acknowledge her any further and continued down the hall, uncaring of the darkness it contained. In fact, they were jovial, joking with one another and trading compliments on a job well done.

Ava stood in the hallway until the men's footsteps faded away and she was sure she was alone again. Only then, did she step into the room. But it wasn't a room per se. Once she closed the door behind her, she found herself in a small entry way. She could see a door directly in front of her and one at either side.

Opening the door to her left, she found an unoccupied room similar to the one she had woken up in. The door in front of her yielded many more curiosities; the room she entered was reminiscent of the chemistry lab at her high school with its black topped desks and glass front cabinets, some of which were stocked with various chemicals, some whose names she recognized, other's she did not There were a dozen black vests lying on a chair beside the table and Ava looked at them in bewilderment. They seemed out of place and she could only guess at their significance, but in spite of her findings, this room was also unoccupied and she still had not found her mother. She backed out of that room and opened the door to her right.

The decorations were sparse; a table and chair at one side of the room and at the other, hidden behind a partition with its wheels peaking out from beneath, was what appeared to be a hospital bed.

"Mom?" she called out and spun around in terror when she thought she heard shuffling behind her. Something begged her closer to those curtains and she approached them with trepidation.

"Mom?" she said again as she pushed the curtain to the side. To her horror, lying there on the hospital bed, hooked up to every piece of life support equipment Ava could imagine, was her mother; bones set, wounds bandaged. She reached out to her mother, shaking her gently and trying to rouse her, Ava willed her to come around, but she remained in bed, unmoving…comatose.

"Please mom, please wake up. Don't leave me here alone," she said and after all that had happened today, after all she had been through, she finally began to cry.

"You're not alone, Ava."

Ava turned around; she knew this voice, had heard it once before. Now she found herself face-to-face with a man that shouldn't be there. He was looking her up and down, studying her with unconcealed interest and she felt as though she were looking in a mirror. His eyes, his lips, she shared those traits with him, but why wouldn't she? She was looking at her father.

"Daddy?" she asked.

"Yes, Ava, we're together now, the three of us. One big, happy family."

Author's Note: As always, thank you for taking the time to read and/or review and thanks to emptyvoices for being my sounding board.