People who have been abused carry a lot of anger about what happened to them and abuse can be a way to express that anger. Even if they have pushed the anger out of their conscious awareness, it can come out in subtle or not-so-subtle ways in intimate relationships or parenting style.

-Elizabeth Hartney, PhD - from the article The Cycle of Sexual Abuse and Abusive Adult Relationships

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Chapter Ten

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{o}-{o}-{o}

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She thought that when she left the house, burning it along with the bodies of Suzie's Daddy and Uncle, that she would get herself back. She'd no longer be Little Suzie, she would be Alexa again. But she found she couldn't just slip into that skin again. She'd grown up since then, and grown up in all the wrong ways. Alexa Bliss had been a sweet little girl, cute and innocent with a Mommy and Daddy who loved her dearly.

She thought about going home. She knew they would take her in, all she had to do was walk into a police station and go, "My name is Alexa Bliss and I went missing years ago. I used to live in Columbus Ohio and my parent's names are..." They would have gotten her home. Her Mommy and Daddy would be delighted she was back.

At first.

They would think she was the same little girl, just older. But, sooner or later the truth would come out, she had not been taken for some innocent purpose. Some couple, desperate for a child didn't grab her and then raise her in a loving home, as they probably prayed had happened to her. They would find out what she had done and while they would understand why she had done it, why she had been such a good little girl for two such horrible men, they would realize she'd changed. She knew more about sex than they did, and she had planned and killed two men. That was bound to change a person.

She couldn't be her Daddy's "Little Miss Bliss," anymore. Or her Mother's "Pumpkin, Angel, Sweetie, lil' one," and the dozens of other nicknames she had for her. They would have gone on, maybe had more children to help fill that void she left when she was taken. She decided she wouldn't do that to her parents. Or herself for that matter. It would be hard living with them, trying to keep her past hidden as much as she could.

But, she sure didn't want to be Little Suzie anymore. So, she took back the name Alexa. She didn't think her parents were cruel enough to name another daughter Alexa, so she might as well use it.

She decided her name was Alexa Waters, a nice, normal sounding name. And that very night when she escaped, when she got to a road where several cars seemed to be traveling, she put out her thumb. She had seen this in an old movie. You put your thumb out and someone would give you a ride. Of course, the movie had been a horror movie, but it was the hitchhiker who was evil, so she thought she was safe.

Within two minutes a truck pulled over, one of those big ones, but it didn't have a trailer in the back. She climbed in. He asked her where she was going, she asked where he was going. When he said he was heading back home, which was just outside of Detroit, she casually said that just happened to be where she was headed. She made up a story about staying with her Uncle the last few days, but her Mom was sick and she had to get home. It was an awful story, with lots of holes. She hoped he'd buy it.

As it turned out, she could have said, "I killed the two guys who held me captive for the last few years and I'm trying to get as far away as I can from it." Because Bill the truck driver didn't give a damn why she was out so late at night. All Bill cared about was getting a blowjob. And she gave him one at a truck stop right outside of Detroit. Great, she thought, as she was satisfying him, I ran to get away from this shit. Fortunately, that was about the only thought she had time to think before Bill was finished and tucking it back into his pants. Lucky Bill, because she might have bitten it off.

But, she soon learned she didn't have many options. She was underage, obviously under age. She had no ID either. The only thing she did have was a body that certain types loved to use and abuse and the skills to get them off. So, that's what she did.

She learned that there was a price to being poor and alone. If she wanted to rent a hotel room so she could get some decent sleep, or even "ply her trade" as some of the other street girls called it, she had to pay big money. "You have no ID, no credit card, so, yeah, how do we know you won't trash the place?"

And usually it was such a dive that trashing the place might be an improvement. But she'd end up paying more for some horrible room with a mattress so filthy and stained, than other people would pay for a room in a five star place.

More than one guy tried to get her into his business, working for him, but Alexa had enough of men who wanted things from her. She usually managed to get rid of them by telling them that when she got busted, as eventually, everyone did, she would tell them who her pimp was. And they might not take kindly to someone as old as them, selling a girl her age.

Detroit had a lot of abandoned buildings and she found that she could camp in one of them fairly safely. There were plenty for everyone, but she still would try to get up to the attic so in case someone came in, they were likely not to find her. She might have been happy with that arrangement, bringing the old creeps that liked to fuck her to an abandoned house, but the streets with the empty houses were not the streets to get clients and they weren't streets clients would go to.

From listening to the rest of the girls, she learned that she was very lucky so far. Almost every one of them had been beaten by the men who hired them at least once. They spoke of ones that had just disappeared, too. "Serial killers think it's okay to pick us off," one girl named Janie told her. "And, a lot of them get away with it for a long time before they're caught. Because no one gives a fuck. Half the time, they gotta get bold enough to try to grab a pretty little white girl before the police notice." She looked at Alexa. "No offense."

"None taken," Alexa said. She knew every day she was out there, she was risking herself. Some of the girls carried weapons, but according to others, weapons were often just excuses to get beaten worse or killed. Plenty of girls had found themselves slashed up as the victim of their own knives. I wish I was stronger, she thought. I need to be stronger. I need to be the strongest or I'll end up the deadest.

She had a few close calls that scared her to the point where she stopped using hotel rooms. Doors locked her in with men. She could hang out near the strip joints and get someone to pay her and take her down some filthy alley to take care of business. Yeah, she got less than she would have if she'd been able to take them to some awful hotel room where the roaches walked around like they owned the place. But, she could satisfy them a lot faster. Most of them were happy to give her a few bucks for a blow job. And, if she was in an alley, she could run. She might not be strong, but she was fast. When she'd done what she could for the night, she'd run back to whatever abandoned house she was squatting at. Not running like something was wrong, which could attract the cops, but running like she was a normal young lady, trying to stay fit. She kept a pair of sweatpants and a matching shirt in a small duffle bag she hid in the alley every night and changed into it when it was time to run home.

Then, one night, she was in an alley behind one of the worst strip joints in Detroit, with some filthy, fat, slob who called himself Peter, who offered her fifty bucks if she'd blow him. She did, but he felt he didn't get his money's worth.

"That wasn't worth ten bucks," he growled and ripped at her pants. They were already practically threadbare and his fingers were able to make holes in the waist and he was able to rip them.

"It's not my fault you got off in seconds," She said, struggling against him, knowing she should just keep her mouth shut and concentrate on getting away, but she couldn't resist throwing insults. "Whoever you have at home must really be bad at giving head."

"Don't you talk about Martha like that!" He managed to rip her jeans so they were sliding down her legs. "She doesn't do things like that, unlike you, you filthy whore!"

"Is she your wife or your sister?" Alexa taunted back. "Maybe your daughter?" He's ripping my jeans! she thought. Something that could be seriously bad, because she didn't have her duffle bag that night, thinking it would be all right to run home in jeans.

He spun her around and pressed her against the wall, her jeans puddling around her feet. "I'll get my money's worth," he said, fumbling with the front of his pants. He didn't even have to unzip them, he'd never zipped them up from the blowjob. "I'll take a piece of your ass instead."

Alexa hated anal. Too many guys had no clue what lube was and unlike a vagina, her ass was not self lubricating. She struggled to get away. "Stop it! Don't do that!" she called out, knowing how feeble she sounded. He's going to rip me apart, she thought.

As if he could read her mind, Peter snaked his hand around and used two fingers to penetrate her. "Don't worry little bitch," he snarled into her ear. "I'll lube up here and then go around the back."

Those were the last words she ever heard Peter say. She heard a cracking noise and suddenly his hands were off of her and his stomach wasn't pressed into his back and then she heard a thud like a wet bag of cement hitting the ground.

She grabbed for her jeans, trying to pull them up enough to cover herself, and turned to see a large woman, built solid and strong, leaning over Peter with a piece of wood, it looked like part of a two by four in her hands and she was holding it like a baseball bat, ready to swing it down again if she had to. Alexa gasped.

"Did he pay you?" the woman asked.

"Not yet," Alexa said, feeling both confused and so grateful for this woman for rescuing her. She didn't care about the money, she was alive and she wasn't struggling with internal damage.

"Okay," The large woman said, She smacked Peter once again in the head, and then squatted down, putting her fingers on his neck. "He's still alive, but he'll be napping for a while. Good, because he's not worth going to jail over." She flipped the fat man onto his face as easily as Alexa might flip a pillow on a bed. She pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and opened it. "Whoo, we have a man who believes in cash!" she exclaimed, pulling a handful of bills out of the wallet. Peter's pants were still down past his waist. The woman took the wallet and put it between his butt cheeks, as if putting a rose into a crystal vase.

She stood up and Alexa realized she wasn't as tall as she thought she'd be. With all her muscle and strength, Alexa thought she'd be nine feet tall, but she only stood about a head taller than Alexa. The woman flipped through the bills and pulled one out. "My fee for saving your ass," she said, smiling. "You can have the rest." She handed the wad to Alexa who took it, holding it in her hands, her gaze alternating from the money to the woman's face. Her pants were slipping down, too ripped to stay up and she felt grateful, but completely lost.

"The woman sensed what was going on, and when she saw Alexa's pants sliding down, she shook her head. "You're a pretty little thing, you can't walk home with no pants on. Let's see what we can do." She was wearing a denim jacket, which she pulled off. Under that, she had a T-shirt and before Alexa could protest, she'd ripped a strip off the bottom of it. Then, just as efficiently, she ripped the strip so it was a straight, thin piece of cloth. She pulled up Alexa's pants, checked the belt loops and threaded the makeshift belt through them. "Good thing the belt loops last forever on most pants," She said as she tied them in front and then stepped back. "Okay, it isn't great, but it's dark and it's enough to get you home." She spoke as if Alexa was just fine, not staring at her, still holding the money, as if she was afraid to move. "I go by Jessica," she said. "And you?"

"Alexa," she said, amazed that she hadn't stammered or stuttered. "I go by" was a code term for, "I am not ready to tell you my last name, and the first name I gave you may or may not be real."

"You okay, honey?" the woman said. "I know, that piece of shit was after you, but he didn't actually get anywhere, did he?"

Alexa shook her head. "Not for lack of trying," she said, and this time, the trembling started and she wrapped her arms around herself to try to hold it all inside of her. All the fear that her body refused to feel when she was being attacked, but now that she was safe, felt just fine about coming out to play. Let's play a game, her mind taunted, Let's play what might have happened if Jessica hadn't come along. That will be a fun game, won't it? Would you be dead? Bleeding all over the place? C'mon, let's really think about this for a while.

Jessica could see and sense Alexa wasn't right. "You smoke?" she asked, pulling a pack of Marlboros from the pocket of her denim jacket and offering them.

Alexa shook her head. Neither of her captors had smoked and while she knew plenty of people in the streets who did, she was smart enough to realize it was a stupid, expensive habit. She was a little disappointed her savior didn't agree.

"Good for you," Jessica said. "It's a bad habit." she put the pack back in her pocket.

"I don't mind if you do," Alexa lied, still trembling, still with her arms around herself, the money still sticking out of one hand.

"I'm not going to indulge in that filthy habit," Jessica said, scornfully. "It'll take away your lung power. You take away your lung power and you might as well write 'Victim' on your forehead. You don't get strong by smoking."

"Then why-" Alex began.

"Because there are enough idiots around here who do," Jessica explained. "And you'd be amazed at what you can learn if you give someone a smoke, so I always keep a pack on me."

"Are you a cop?" Alexa knew the police were known to give out smokes, sandwiches, and various other things to get information out of street people.

Jessica laughed. "Hardly. Still, it never hurts to have an ear to the streets. My god, put that money somewhere before we leave this alley or someone's going to rip it from you."

Alexa nodded. It was a lot of money, she should tuck it into her sock, her usual carrying place. But she still felt as if she took her arms away from her body, she'd shake apart.

"Oh, honey, you're really rattled," Jessica said. She took the money from Alexa, who just let her. She probably deserved it more than Alexa did, but she smiled. "I'll give it back as soon as you're a little more together."

Alexa just nodded. What in the hell is going on with me? She thought. I killed two guys with a piece of wood. Killed them, not just knocked them cold. But I'm ashamed I needed help to get away from this guy. And grateful someone came to my rescue.

Jessica's brows furrowed, then her forehead smoothed as she seemed to come to some sort-of conclusion and shrugged. "I don't live far from here," she said. "Let's go to my place. I've got some eggs and other stuff I can cook up. It'll give you a little time to get yourself together before you head home. I might even have some sweat pants that shrunk in the wash I can let you use. They'll still be big, but that's why they have strings." She tucked the money she'd taken from Alexa into her bra, and put her denim jacket around Alexa's shoulders.

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She did live close, only a block away or so, in a tiny one bedroom apartment where the living room faced a neon sign advertising a cheap hotel. Alexa had stayed in that hotel before. But she didn't care about the view, what surprised her was that Jessica had a machine in her living room, taking up well over half of it. It looked like some type of torture device. Alexa had done some movies before where she had been dominated, which she hated, or had been the dominatrix, which she liked. This machine looked like it could have been in one of those. Lots of pulleys and levers, even a couple benches on either side. "What do you use this for?" Alexa asked.

"Bodybuilding," Jessica said. "I prefer to go to the gym, but I got this for next to free and there are times when the weather is just too awful to go out, so I work out here."

"You're strong," Alexa said, looking at the woman's large biceps and thighs.

Jessica looked at her. "You've got some muscle," she said. "Your legs look pretty strong, but your arms aren't the arms of someone who eats burgers and watches TV all day. You should do some strength building. It wouldn't hurt for someone in your line of work to be able to defend herself."

"It's not work," Alexa said. "It's survival. If I could find something else to do, anything else, I'd do it."

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Jessica made breakfast for both of them, which they ate while the sun came up. Then, since the sun was up, it was suggested that Alexa might want to get some sleep on her couch. Alexa didn't have to be asked twice. Belly fully, blanket over her, and feeling safe having a lock on the door into the place, and no man inside, she fell asleep almost instantly.

She ended up moving in. It was never some official thing, it's just Jessica asked her to stay the next night and the next, and eventually just stopped asking and gave Alexa a key. She fed her twice a day. When Alexa told her she should keep the money they'd gotten from Peter, all of it, Jessica just shook her head and took her to a thrift store, where they bought Alexa a bunch of clothing that while used, was new to her. Jeans, t-shirts, flannel shirts, casual clothing.

None of it was hooker clothes. Alexa knew she should be looking for that stuff, short skirts, halter tops, anything tight but it was so nice these few days, pretending she wasn't a streetwalker. That she was someone normal.

Then, Jessica introduced her to underground fighting.

And Alexa loved it.

She took to it instantly, even though she trained for almost a year before her first fight. Jessica helped her get some ID saying she was eighteen and that's all the places cared about. Underground fighting was very organized in Detroit, for something illegal. There were lots of these places, and Jessica worked all of them and taught Alexa to do the same. The purse was part of the money taken in for bets and given to the winner. But the really good places, that could be a lot of money, and often fifty to a hundred dollars was taken out for the loser, especially if the loser had a decent rep. It wasn't an easy life, but Alexa didn't care. She worked out, she fought. And it might be illegal, but there was something... cleansing about it. As if with every blow she landed on someone, a bit of her past peeled away. She wasn't being victimized. Neither was her partner for that matter. They beat on each other because it was a way to earn money. They pressed their bodies to the limit, and when that limit was hit, you rested a bit, then worked yourself until that limit increased.

She made her fighting name Toril and she wore that name like a suit of armor. She spent an average of eight to ten hours a day working out, cardio, strength, cardio, strength. Jessica insisted they eat a diet that was very high in protein, low in sugar and refined carbs. "Any carbs are energy," Jessica explained. "But good carbs do more than give you energy. They take care of your body. They give you fiber, they help you feel full. They take care of your heart, your kidneys, and a whole bunch of other things."

For almost two years, she and Jessica lived some idyllic life, or at least it was to Alexa. She didn't have to have sex with anyone. She would have happily had it with Jessica, if she'd asked, but she never did. She trained, she got stronger and faster, she ate well and she fought. Instead of feeling ashamed of her body, as if it were only good for one thing, fucking, she started taking pride in how she looked. Strong and bold. Jessica was much broader than her, which did help her, but Alexa didn't mind being an itty bitty thing. People had a tendency not to notice the thigh and arm muscles on a bitty one. They had a tendency to think they could take them out easy as pie. That often gave her a hell of an advantage. People expected Jessica to put up a fight. They expected Alexa to roll into a corner and start crying.

She might have stayed in that life forever, but Jessica's father got sick. Alexa didn't even know Jessica had a living father, but she did. He lived in some tiny farming town, which were plentiful in Michigan. He had early onset Alzheimer's and even though they hadn't spoken or seen each other for over five years, Jessica felt she needed to go back to her childhood home and take care of him. Her mother had died back when Jessica was just a child. She, like Alexa, was an only child, which Alexa was sure measured into her decision.

It all happened so quickly, it seemed like one day Jessica was here and all was normal, then the next day, she'd packed up her clothing and was gone. She told Alexa she could keep the place, and for a few weeks, she did. But it was so lonely without her friend.

So, when she found out some other fighters were heading to Florida, she asked if she could go along. She needed a change of scenery, and also, she followed the news. She knew where Timmy, who now he went by either Jon Moxley Reigns or Dean Ambrose, was. She knew his home base was in Florida. She knew he was trying to become a wrestler, actually was already a professional wrestler, just not at the top. She remembered those few days in the basement, if they weren't making movies, or she wasn't being "Broken in" she and Timmy would curl up on the bed together, watching his wrestling VCR tapes. She liked the idea of wrestling a lot more before Timmy told her it was scripted and wrestlers tried not to hurt each other. But, she had liked watching the tapes with Timmy, it was the closest thing they had to entertainment.

She had no plans to look him up, but if she happened to run into him in Florida? She wanted to talk to him. She wasn't quite sure what she wanted to say to him, but she did want to talk.

But when she got down to Florida, she suddenly didn't want to find him, in fact she wanted to avoid him. The underground fighting circuit was not nearly as good as it was in Detroit, which meant it was hard keeping body and soul together. She ended up barely living from hand to mouth. Timmy had become Jon Moxley Reigns. Adopted by a family considered to be Wrestling Royalty. When she saw him on TV, when he was coming forth with his story about what had happened to him, he looked clean. Like he really had shed his old life off. She felt dirty in comparison. When she was in Detroit she felt like she'd been shedding her life. But in Florida, when she couldn't even afford to keep a roof over her head, where any type of injury was something she had no time or funds to nurse, she thought if she walked into his life, he'd be unhappy. He didn't need some grubby whore hanging around. He had a good life. She would stay away and let him enjoy it.

He came to one of the clubs she was working at and recognized her. She remembered when the guard gave her the card and told her "Little Timmy" said to give it to you," how she almost threw it away.

Then she broke her wrist and she couldn't fight. The vet who set it had given her an Xray and said she'd fractured it before, and if she didn't take the full six weeks or more to let it heal, she would never get it to full strength again. She'd moved onto the streets, and finally, out of desperation she called him. And, if she had to be honest with herself, she had been hoping he'd buy her a meal, despite her protests. She was hungry and bones didn't mend without fuel. But she didn't expect him to invite her to stay with him. She didn't expect him to give her his bedroom, with a lock to keep her safe. That he would sleep on the futon sofa in the living room.

She had laid in the bed that first night, after the shower, after he had helped her brush her hair, and so many emotions were running through her. What he'd done to her. How he'd taken her virginity and even though he tried to be nice about it, or as nice as their captors would let him be, it had hurt. She had bled, and it had been horrible. She'd screamed and cried.

But after that, after the pain subsided, nobody really seemed to care much what was happening in the movies they made, as long as they were crawling all over each other. Then he'd shown her, sex wasn't just horrible or something only to be done to have babies. Sex was building something. Most men just hammered the nails, screwed in the screws, and called it good. Like she was some type of bookshelf. Who cared if she fell apart afterwards she was good enough for their purpose.

But there was Timmy/Mox who had shown her what it was like to be treated special. To do the same things he'd done for the first movie, the same things their four captors had done to her, but to do it slowly, gently, correctly.

She almost burst into tears in that bed, because Timmy was the only one who did that for her. Sure, some men tried, but under that facade of caring, gentle touches, there was still impatience, as if they thought she was one of those puzzles. Move this, twist that, instant orgasm, bragging rights. Timmy acted like they had all the time in the world. Timmy laying next to her as he moved his hands over her, whispering in her ear. "If it hurts, let me know and I'll stop. I'll do something else." And it didn't hurt, instead it felt so damned good and she thought she'd never feel that good again, and she felt so good when the rush happened, but so guilty, because were little girls supposed to feel like this? She was pretty sure they weren't.

She went out to that living room to give him a piece of her mind, yell at him, curse him to hell for making her like it, for letting her know it wasn't just disgusting and sticky, that it could be so much more. Wouldn't she have been better off never knowing?

Then as she was punching him, she saw in his eyes, dark as it was in that room, that he remembered too. Remembered how good he'd made her feel. And before they knew it, the two of them were fucking again and oh god, it did feel good, as good as she remembered.

For that, she loved him.

For that, she hated him.

Author's Notes: These are strange times we live in. At least for me, last week I was making plans to house sit for a friend, today I am thrilled to be able to go to the grocery store.

Forgive me for being a sap here, but I worry about all of you. I worry about everyone I know. I can't help it, all I have now is time to worry. So, please, take care of yourself. You already know all the stuff about washing your hands, sterilizing everything. Bleach, bleach, bleach. Just be careful about the bleach, my cat spent last night at the vet and we're pretty sure it was because of all the bleach based cleaners I've been using. So, keep children and pets in safe places and ventilate.

But, everyone knows about cleaning. You can't go anywhere without hearing "Wash your hands!" "Don't touch your face!" And if that isn't enough, if you've suddenly been told to work from home, the "We'll tell you how to live your life" police are writing articles telling you to act like this is work! Get up! Take your shower! Dress in business clothes!

Fsck that.

By all means, be ready for a teleconference, but if it makes you feel better to sit at your desk in your pj's, do it. By all means, do your work, but find the advantages and use them. I mean, if it makes you feel better to pretend working at home is the same as going to work, then do it. But, if you want to dance around in your underwear listening to your favorite music, as long as you aren't on a teleconference, do it.

We're not going to get through this by trying to control each other. We will get through this by uniting. I know it's hard with people out there who are determined to own every roll of toilet paper that exists (My motto? If you are what you hoard, there are way too many $$holes out there.) but you can't help that, some folks will always look at tragedy as an excuse to be dicks or make money.

The only suggestion I'm going to make is that if you have a large enough outdoor area, like a back yard, as long as the weather is good, make yourself time every day to sit out in the sun. Listen. there is still a world out there, and it's still turning. You are not alone.

The old saying about united we stand, divided we fall? That couldn't be more true than right now.

Stay safe, take care. To everyone who reads this, whether I know you or not, just take care of yourself. Be good to yourself.