What I Want, Chapter Five.

"About a month after I ran away I met a girl named Jillian. We met at a mall, and we got to be friends fast. After I told her that I had ran away, she helped me out. She gave me food, let me stay over on cold nights. She was the only reason that I didn't become a prostitute."

Kitty paused, bringing back a picture of the girl into her mind. "She was younger than me, but so much older, like she had gone through more than anyone ever should. And she probably only helped me out because she knew that one day she'd be in the same situation as I was, and she'd want some karmic payback or something."

She sighed, remembering. "About two years after I met her, I got a job, I didn't need her help so much anymore. I was still living on the streets most of the time-no one would rent a room to a seventeen year old-but even though we mainly lost contact, on those long winter nights, I would show up on her back porch, shivering and blue. And she'd let me in." She wiped the tears away from her eyes before continuing.

"There had been something wrong, somehow, from the beginning. But she acted like her life was getting better, as if whatever problems she had had were going away." She shrugged and closed her eyes briefly and then laughed bitterly. "That's why it was such a complete surprise to me when she came to see me one warm, still night in the summer. She was bloody, raw, her eyes were bloodshot and bruised, and she could hardly stand up straight.

"I got a room, which was always easier to do in the summer, and I took her there, tried to help her clean herself up, tried to get her to tell me what had happened. But she wouldn't." Her eyes were glazed over by now, and Scott could tell that she didn't remember that he was there, she was just letting it go. He wanted desperately to reach out and touch her, to tell her that it was ok, that she didn't have to tell him if it hurt. And he knew it hurt, because she was beginning to claw the insides of her arms.

"She managed to shower without hurting herself, then I lent her a nightgown, and she fell dead asleep. But I couldn't." She closed her eyes again, envisioning the night, the bright lights of the city outside the closed drapes, the hotel room. "I just couldn't let myself fall asleep when I knew that she would need me sometime in the night. She had always been there for me, and I knew I couldn't be any less for her, so I stayed awake.

"Around midnight, she woke up, screaming. The bruises on her cheeks were coated with pus and tearstains, and I went over to hold her. Just to calm her, to make sure that she would be all right. But she wasn't, and I knew that the moment I heard her." She paused. It was all coming in a flow now. The noises, the night, everything.

"She was whispering, whimpering, she kept saying it, over and over: 'My fault.' After a while, I shook her, trying to get her out of the dream. She began to talk more: 'It's all your fault, you little slut. Your fault. Women are supposed to be strong, men aren't supposed to control themselves, God made it that way. He's a good christian man, damnit.if you hadn't tempted him. Beat satan out of you.' And on, and on. When she finally woke up.it was bad.

"When she was ready to talk, it wasn't pretty. The first thing she said was: 'He raped me.' Her stepfather had raped her, almost every week from the time he and her mother got married until a week before. Her mother knew, or at least Jill thought her mother knew, but she didn't do anything. She was eleven when it started, and it had been going on for five years." Kitty continued to talk, to let it all out. She eventually sat down again on top of the dryer, which had long since stopped whirring, and was now buzzing away annoyingly.

Jillian's mother had beaten her, whipped her, her stepfather joining in to pound his fists into her tender abdomen. Eventually they told her to leave, to go, and never come back.

"And she did. She came to me, knowing that I owed her, that I would help her. I took her to the hospital.I told them that her mother and stepfather had beaten her. That he had raped her, and then beaten her to the bloody pulp that she was. And they brought them in, and they were just so cold, they admitted it, acting as if it was their duty to beat the devil out of her, as if her stepfather shouldn't even have tried to resist his pedophiliac tendencies." She paused, her voice having choked up almost beyond recognition by this point.

"Jillian died two days after she came to me from uncontrollable internal bleeding. Her parents were never charged with anything." She paused, looking altogether torn apart. "About a month after that, you found me, and I came here. I probably wouldn't have survived if you hadn't found me."

She remembered how he had found her. Staring down at the blood dripping off of her wrists, watching it pool on the dirt beneath her. The dirt and the blood seeping together to form a twisted, sickening mud. She'd just been waiting, waiting for her blood to stop flowing so that she wouldn't have to face the nightmares of rape anymore. The thoughts that she'd always be alone, that no one would ever care about her ever again, because of what he had done to her.

"He raped me." She said, the words coming out before she could stop them.

"I thought you said he stopped." Scott said, thinking she was talking about her date.

"No." She said coldly. "He raped me." She paused, her eyes dilating as she flopped to the ground. "I had been going to the police station for about two weeks, I'd been trying to get charges put on them, but the police said that there was no evidence. No evidence." Her voice changed, got colder, deeper, as if she was possessed. "As if her dead body wasn't enough." A cold, almost evil laugh slipped out of her lips. "I walked out of the station, the same way I always walked, and he pulled me into the alley." Her eyes widened, full of fear and hostility. The look in them scared Scott. Her pupils flared and she continued. "He undressed me, and tied me to the fire escape, my wrists tied together, my legs twisted around the sides of the ladder. Then he took his belt off, and started whipping me with it. He kept saying that I shouldn't have helped her, that she was just a slut, that it was her fault. That it was my fault that this was happening to me. It felt like he was trying to convince himself.

"After a while, I guess he got bored." Her eyes widened in terror as she curled up and pressed her back against the washing machine. "He took off his pants." She didn't want to remember the act, she didn't want to remember the ripping, searing pain that she felt as he tore through her. She closed her eyes, defending herself against the memory. "Then he raped me. When he was finished, he untied me, and just left me there. It was a long time before I could move.

"When I could finally move, I went and bought the blades. Then I went to the park, and I just did it. I cut, and cut, and cut, and cut, and cut, until I was so weak I couldn't anymore. And then you found me." Her arms were around her knees, and she was rocking herself. "I wouldn't have survived if you hadn't found me."

Of course she wouldn't have survived if he hadn't found her. She'd been trying to kill herself.

And now he knew exactly why.

She had never wanted anyone to know. To know why she woke up crying in the night, trying to cling to someone who wasn't there.

And now he knew. The one she always woke up reaching for, the one person who could rip her heart out and leave her soulless, leave her empty and wanting and desperate.

She had never wanted him to know, because, no matter how much she knew-deep inside-that he wouldn't turn her away, that he wouldn't rip her heart out. She had never trusted anyone after what had happened.

Anyone.

Even herself.