The Characters of My Life

There was no denying it; she was only seven years old and she was already fucked. Yeah, you heard right, fucked. She knew the word perfectly well. Her father hardly ever stopped cussing now days. You rarely heard any other words from him. He constantly drank as well. Ever sense her mother died two years ago that’s all he ever did; curse and drink.

Sitting on the old, worn-out couch, Lorena smiled at the picture of her mom. It was about eleven at night and she didn’t quite know why she was waiting up for her dad to come home. He’d just be drunk again. And sure enough, in stumbled the man, cursing up a storm and struggling to stand. She looked up, concern written on her face.

“…Hey Dad…” she called out quietly. She would later regret that.

“Lorena….” He muttered, his eyes narrowed as he tried to focus. He staggered over to the couch, knocking a lamp over along the way. He stood in front of her, eyes glazed over in lust, before hitting her across the face. Lorena let out a yelp as she crashed down on the floor, landing hard on her shoulder. Her father punched her again, attempting to make her pass out, but failing due to his drunken state. She screamed, pain shooting up her body, when he yanked her pants down and stuck two dirty fingers into her.

“That’s right, scream for me, you filthy little bitch!” he yelled, punching her once more, trying to stop her struggles. She screamed again, tears streaming down her face from the pain. Her father pulled his fingers out, now clumsily trying to undo his belt. He was finally about to pull down his pants when Loren had had enough. She kicked him hard between the legs, causing him to double over, then ran, forcing past the pain that shot up through her. She grabbed her pants from the floor, wondering when the hell they had left her body, and darted out the still-open door and into the dark, cold night.

-A few days later-

Lorena found it actually easier to live on the streets than to live with her father. The bruises where now black and blue, but she was fine. She had received worse before. Now, she wondered aimlessly up and down the back alleys. Lost in her own depressed thoughts, Lorena turned a corner, leading into another alleyway, and stopped dead.

In front of her was a young boy, curled up and splattered with blood. And as far as she could tell, the blood wasn’t his. She gasped and took a step back, suddenly terrified of this young being. The boy shifted, having heard her intake of air, and lifted his head. She took a step back again when he looked at her with one eye. It was an inhuman color of red, blood shot and glazed over with insanity, the other covered by his black hair. He had two twin scars that ran from below the outside corner of his eyes to the lower jaw bone. By now, his look of surprise was replaced by a crooked grin, revealing a set of unnaturally sharp teeth.

“Hello there.” The boy said in a quiet, sweet voice.

“Um…. Hi….” She replied after a pause, her voice weak from disuse. The boy grinned wider.

“What’s a young child like you doing here at night?” he asked, a pleasant look on his face. His speech pattern made him sound like he was older than he looked, or what people would call an ‘old soul’, sort of like Lorena.

“I don’t know,” she replied, knowing that she shouldn’t trust this stranger at all, but doing so anyway. “I have nowhere to go, nowhere to be.”

The boy looked surprised. “Really? And why is that, if you don’t mind me asking?” he questioned, suddenly looking far too open. Lorena ignored this however, even though her gut was telling her to run. She shuffled her feet and looked around, trying to decide whether or not she was going to tell him what happened just a week ago. At the thought of the incident, and completely against her will, she started crying. Through her tears, she could see that the boy was shocked by this sudden outburst of emotion. He stood up and walked over to the sobbing girl.

“Come. Tell me what happened.” He said quietly, leading her back to where he had been sitting.

After 20 minutes of talking and more crying, Lorena finally calmed down enough to sit quietly, curled up in a ball at the boy’s side. When she had looked up at the boy’s face when she was finished speaking, it was a mix of sympathy and anger, though she didn’t understand why. For the first time in four days, she realized how much the incident had hurt her. This was the first time she would cry about it, and certainly wouldn’t be the last.

“I’m sorry that something like that had to happen to you…” he said gently, pulling her closer to him with a one-armed hug. She just curled up tighter and nodded, muttering ‘S’ok…’

They sat in silence for a while before the boy broke it. “What’s your name, by the way?” he asked, trying to get her mind off of the topic at hand. She looked up at him, red-eyed and quivering.

“Lorena.” She replied. “And you?”

“Rae.” He said, smiling kindly. And though she didn’t know it then, Lorena had just found the one person who would be able to comfort and heal her in this painful time. And he was completely insane.