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Maeve

8 Years Old

The hospital smelled like antiseptic and something worse underneath—like the air was choking me.

I clutched Bear so hard that I saw his stitching stretch. Daddy didn’t look like Daddy anymore. His skin had turned the colour of old newspaper, and his voice rasped like wind through dead leaves.

“Daddy loves you. I’m sorry that I need to go, Maeve.”

I climbed onto the bed, pressing Bear between us like a shield. His ribs felt sharp under the thin hospital gown. I remembered how they used to shake with laughter when he carried me piggyback through the park. Now, they barely moved at all.

The machines beeped while my mum sobbed.

“I love you,”

I whispered into the hollow of his throat, already knowing this was the last warmth I’d ever steal from him.

There would be no more playing, laughter and trips to the park. The way he spoke to me and Bear, no one did that except my Daddy. I tried to be brave but began to cry. They told me Daddy had to leave.

“Don’t go, Daddy. Don’t leave us,”

I sniffed against the pale blue pyjamas he wore. “Please.”

When his arm fell away, it took my childhood with it.

He left me with Bear.

And my mother.

Maeve

13 Years Old

“Mum? I’m home,”

I said after opening the door to our apartment. I sighed in relief when there was no answer.

I would wait five more years until I turned eighteen, or if I couldn’t make it until then, I would wait until I was sixteen. It took me a long time to stop making excuses for my mum, but when I started high school, the observations I made put things into perspective. My mother was sick.

I closed the door and stuffed the keys into my ragged school bag. After my dad died, everything changed. My mum couldn’t cope and began to drink. When that didn’t work, she took drugs. She was angry all the time and took it out on me.

My classmates had no idea how lucky they were. I took my shoes off at the door before putting my bag in my room. The smallest thing would set my mum off, and I wasn’t in the mood for a screaming match or to get slapped around today. The kitchen was bare, but there was enough bread and jam to make a sandwich. I took my plate into the living room to watch some TV.

It was time to start clock-watching and wonder when she would return and, more importantly, if she scored or not. I ignored the fear, briefly thinking of my Dad before I switched off to immerse myself in the cartoon blaring on the TV.

**

I blinked in the dark but realised I was in bed. When I heard someone talking outside my room, I lifted my head to listen. It was my mum and Gavin, the local dealer. They were talking about money. I clutched Bear a little tighter, listening to them argue.

“I suggest you take this somewhere else. I don’t have all night,”

a man said, interrupting them.

It wasn’t a voice I recognised, but there was something about the way he spoke. He sounded—posh, but it was more than that. He was cold and dismissive. The way Gavin and my mum reacted was to try and pacify him. My mum had a mouth on her, but she stayed quiet until my door opened.

The light poured into my room, and I saw her silhouette before my head hit the pillow. I closed my eyes, hoping she would go away. She turned the lamp on but didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what was going on, but it couldn’t be good.

“I know you’re awake. It’s time you earned your keep,”

she said, but I didn’t react or open my eyes until I heard the door close.

I sighed when I finally opened my eyes and saw she was gone. The footsteps down the hallway were heavy, and I heard her and Gavin laughing before the TV volume went up. I frowned at how loud it was but pulled the covers around me and turned over.

A man stepped out of the shadows, and I almost screamed. He was unbuttoning his shirt as my mind returned to my mum’s words. He was tall and slim, but the malicious, twisted expression on his face turned my blood to ice. Under the dim light of the lamp, his cold blue eyes stared at me in a way I’d never experienced before.

“I will be etched inside forever, Maeve, but I like pretty broken dolls. When I come back, that is what I expect,”

he said in a cold, calm manner while pulling his shirt off.

“And I always get what I want.”

I sat up, but instead of running or screaming, I sat there frozen in fear. His threat was more like a vow, and little did I know that his words would remain with me for the years that followed.

Fighting made it worse, but eventually, I lay there bruised, battered with him on top of me, grunting like an animal. The demeaning words he uttered and the clean scent of mint turned sour, mingling with the smell of sweat and aftershave until it no longer mattered.

I counted the cracks on the ceiling, glad I’d pushed Bear off the bed. When that stopped working, I focused on the sound from the TV, the dull sound coming from the wall. The only sound I would remember vividly from that night was my mother’s laughter as she spoke to Gavin.

This was the beginning of her clientele list.

Maeve

15 Years Old

You learn to wear your skin like a costume—too tight in the wrong places, gaping where the real you used to be. The smirk in the hallway is armour. The eye-roll at teachers, a deflection. You let boys touch you not because you want to but because if you control the ruin, it can’t control you.

They label you slut. Troublemaker. Lost cause. You lean into it, brazen, because the truth is a fist in your throat. No one knows the girl who whispers to Bear at 3 AM. No one sees how you flinch at the smell of mint or aftershave, how you count the seconds until the front door unlocks. That was their perspective.

No one ever knew the real me. I never let them. No one knew but my mother and the men she brought home. The mother who never spoke about her cruelty. Part of me began to hate my father for leaving me, but it didn’t stop me from crying into Bear, the last gift he gave me.

My silent witness.

At night, I press Bear’s matted fur to my nose and inhale the last trace of before, pretending he wasn’t as tainted as me—the scissors glint in the moonlight as they press into my skin. The vodka burns the back of my throat. And for a moment—just a moment—I feel nothing at all. Just for a moment, I forget the man who started it all.

Then morning comes.

Another day begins.

And life goes on.

**

The blue-eyed man came on shortly after my sixteenth birthday. My eyes snapped open when I heard the front door close. The cold voice that made my stomach churn. I gagged as I listened to my mother simper. Within a few moments, my door opened, and it was my mother. I remembered the pain of his cruel fingers around my neck and the blows to my abdomen when I fought back, but that was when I was a different person.

She stepped into my room, but my eyes remained in the doorway until he stood there. I didn’t need the light to know who he was or see the evil in his eyes. The black silhouette of his body was enough. He switched the light on, and I searched his eyes, but they were the same.

Cold. Dead. Cruel.

I was so focused on the man that I never saw my mother come at me with the needle.

Maeve

16 Years Old

My eyelids felt heavy as I tried to open them, but I closed them again when I felt the pain. It burned my insides, front and back. I leaned over the bed and started to retch, coughing up my dinner until there was only liquid left. I touched my throat because the pain wasn’t from my throwing up.

“I kept an eye on you, got reports from your mother and the odd one from Gavin. You’re not as broken as I expected, but that is what I am here for.”

I froze at his voice and looked at the floor. It was grey, not brown like the carpet in my bedroom. When I raised my head to look around the room, it resembled a prison cell from a movie. The room was bare, with grey walls, a bed, and a toilet.

“Who are you?”

I croaked out but grimaced at the pain in my throat.

“Your Master,”

he said with a malicious smile as he stepped forward.

“Welcome to your new home, slave.”

Fear didn’t just claw my insides. It hatched inside me, a thousand spindling legs scuttling up my ribs. I needed Bear. God, I needed Bear. But looking away from him would be like turning your back on a knife.

Three years. Three years since that night, here he stood, looming in the light like he had every right to breathe my air. No suit now, just a tight black T-shirt stretched over predator’s shoulders, jeans riding low on his hips. Same slicked-dark hair. The same glacial blue eyes, glinting with the same knowing malice.

The flashbacks came to me against my will.

His fingers around my throat and in my hair.

The sour-clean stink of his sweat.

The way he’d smiled when I’d begged for my mother and he’d whispered—

“She’s right outside, darling. She held the door open for me.”

My bladder threatened to let go. The pain between my legs burned, fresh as if he’d just—The pain extended to my back as I jerked.

Oh, God.

Unconscious. He’d—while I was—

He licked his lips as he saw the realisation crack me open.

“I enjoyed that tight virgin shithole of yours. Your mother didn’t just sell you to me, little doll,”

he murmured, stepping closer. Shadows pooled in the hollow of his throat.

“She gifted you. And I take such good care of my things.”

“No, she wouldn’t—" I started to say, but I stopped as my brain worked through the events of the evening leading up to his visit.

Yes, she would and did.

My blanket fell, but I stared at him blankly because I knew the pain I felt when I cut myself was nothing compared to what this man was capable of.

“We will have so much fun together. Won't we?”

he said before his hand whipped back, and he viciously slapped my face.

It was nothing like my mother's slap. The force of his slap echoed around the room and made my head spin as I fell on the bed. My face burned while my head throbbed, but I didn't react.

“Silence won't be acceptable as a response. Say, ‘Yes, Master’,”

he spat out.

The tears came as I forced the words out while the storm raged inside of me.

The one hidden away inside of me, locked away.

“Yes, Master,”

I said, but I didn't recognise my voice.

It sounded dead.