Carol Swift*

Todd slowly walked into Marty's hospital room and sighed. It was hard seeing her restrained to the bed. He knew that the restraints was there to keep her from hurting herself as the depression worsened.

"How did you know?" She asked as he sat by her side.

"Know what?" He asked.

"That my happiness wasn't real."

"I didn't want to see it at first, but you were showing all the same symptoms that she did."

"Who?" Marty asked.

"Carol Swift," Todd whispered.

"The other girl that you raped. You said that you would tell me about her when the time was right. Will you tell me now?"

"I don't know," Todd said as he fidgeted.

"Please, it will give me something else to focus on other than my pain," she pleaded with him.

"Carol was my best friend growing up. She lived in a foster home close to my house and although her new foster parents were great, she knew what it was like to be abused from her birth parents and a few of the other foster parents that she had. She was the only one that seemed to get me. When I was fifteen she brought me a cake and we shared our first kiss, but Peter walked in on that kiss and ruined everything. He was drunk and he had a gun in his hand, he wanted to see if I knew how to treat a girl like Carol. A slut like her, that's what he said. She tried to leave, but he grabbed her by the hair and threw her on the ground. He told me to rape her or he would shoot her and me, so I did."

"That's awful, but that sin is on Peter not you," Marty whispered.

"Perhaps, but it ruined her life just the same. After I was finished raping her, Peter gave me my birthday present. He hit me in the face and pushed me on the ground and then he shoved the barrel of his gun into my ass and pulled the trigger, but the gun was empty. It had been empty the whole time. Just another one of his cruel lies."

"He raped you," Marty gasped as she cried out.

"After it was over, Carol wanted to report his crimes, she wanted to tell somebody what he had done to us, but I pleaded with her to keep silent. I was afraid of having no home, afraid to end up in the foster care system. Carol agreed to keep the secret.

"After that Carol wasn't my friend anymore. She didn't blame me, but seeing me was a reminder of the trauma that she needed to forget. She did a lot of drugs to escape and eventually her foster parents sent her to rehab. When she got out of rehab she came over to my house and she was happy. She was really happy and filled with hope. She and I made all these plans to run away together. She was speaking fast with excitement, talking about how she was all recovered. She was pink clouding. The next day when I got home from school I found her hanging from my ceiling fan by one of Peter's ties."

"She killed herself," Marty whispered.

"Yes, but her death is on me. I pleaded with her to keep Peter's dirty little secret and in the end her silence was too heavy a burden for her to carry. I wanted to believe that she was healed just like I wanted to believe that you were healed, but she wasn't. I left her alone in her pain and because of that she's dead."

"It's not your fault, it's Peter's."

"When he got home and saw the paramedics taking her away, he smiled and he said something about the bitch getting what she deserved. I lost it on him, I slammed him up against the barn doors and began chocking him. All I could see was red and I wanted him to suffer the way that Carol had suffered, the way that I had suffered. I would have killed him if my neighbor Sam hadn't of come over and stopped me. That was the first time that I had seen the monster, but not the last. It was the same beast inside of me that hurt you and I'm really sorry."

"I know," Marty whispered.