It had been two years since Brittany had returned to her apartment with the good news of her employment, only to find that they entire apartment was empty- mother and all. So, instead of going to work from seven in the morning to seven at night like had been originally planned, Brittany worked permanently in Studebaker's home, serving has his personal attendant to all things he sent her to do.
Studebaker was a dirty man, balding at the age of forty-two. He was a round man with a sick cunning. His wife and sons were equally ugly and uncaring. Mrs. Studebaker used Brittany to the point beyond servant, and her children were no better. Max and Joseph were twin terrors who were a few years her elders. Max was strong and brutal, and just as piggish in attitude as his father was. Joseph was the studious one of the two, and never missed an opportunity to make Brittany feel inferior to him.
The girl had grown older as well. She was no longer young, naïve and obedient. Servant work and her mother's disappearance hardened her fragile heart. But there was one other thing that had caused the child to grow up so quickly.
Studebaker beat her. Late at night, after his wife and sons were asleep, he would creep up the stairs to the attic and whip her. It started slowly at first, his only beating her when he was drunk, but eventually, it became his hobby. Brittany would convince herself that he did it because she wasn't doing her job right, that a dish hadn't been washed precisely. But even after she shaped up her service, the beatings continued. So she would perfect every little assignment she had been given to do. But nothing made a difference, and soon, the fat man began to touch her. Studebaker took away Brittany's innocence when she was only nine years old.
The boys started noticing that she would be up all night long, and started to tease her about the dark bags under her eyes. They poked her with sticks, sneering that she shouldn't have stayed up so late; otherwise she wouldn't be so stupid or ugly. It was a game to see how long she could take it before crying. Eventually, all it took was a one-word jest to get her to brake down. As the reader may have guessed by now, that word was 'midnight.'
For the next year, every night Mr. Studebaker would come into her room and molest her. For the next year, her mistress remained aware of her husband's assaults on the servant girl, and Brittany doubted she even cared. For the next year, Max and Joseph called her nothing but Midnight, and all the seven to seven servants assumed that it was her nickname, and so her nickname it became.
But then, on December the 11th, 1891, on her tenth birthday as a matter of fact, Brittany had had enough. And she did the most unthinkable thing…
