Author bio: The author is in 7th grade and enjoys drawing, watching movies and writing.
I opened up my closet door, which made an unusually loud creak, and flicked through the ten or so shirts that I owned, before deciding on a white t-shirt, and a baggy charcoal hoodie. I put on jeans with rips in the knees (not trendy, just old), brushed my curly hair, touched up my eyeliner and thudded down the stairs, passing through the living room where my mother was passed out on the beat-up couch. I flipped her off before I left, even though she couldn’t see. I did this almost every time I left the house. It was my way of paying her back for the bruises she left on my arms, my legs, and my back every time I screwed up. On my way out the door, I nearly stepped on the wet grass in my socks before I remembered that I forgot to put on my ratty sneakers.
I could tell I was at the right house when I got there because it was loaded with cheap Halloween decorations, blasting awful music, and colorful lights pulsing out the window. I slipped silently through the door and was greeted with overwhelming chaos. The music was so loud I doubted I would be able to hear anything tomorrow. That’s alright. I didn’t give a crap anymore, not after Dad died.
I made my way onto the dance floor and lost myself in the flow of writhing bodies, letting the music wash over me. In this crowd, everyone was invisible, and that was exactly how I wanted to feel. In this crowd of strangers, I wasn’t the ratty loner girl with a dead father and a mother who beat her- I was just another partygoer.
When I couldn’t dance anymore, I made my way to the kitchen and grabbed a Coke from the fridge, which I chugged in a few gulps. I ignored the prickly burn of the carbonation in my throat, and instead focused on the sweet taste and rush of caffeine. For some kids from health-crazed families, soda was a luxury, a treat. For me, it was my daily beverage. It was cheaper than milk, so it was what I drank as I sat alone at the kitchen table, eating microwave mac-and-cheese and listening to the hum of the TV. I turned around to head back to the dance floor but found my path blocked by a tall figure in a dark hoodie and jeans. I couldn’t make out a single detail of their face. I shook my head and blinked violently. I must be hallucinating. I turned back around, giving them the cold shoulder, and when I looked up again, they were gone. I thought nothing of it and returned to the dance floor.
When I’d had enough, I maneuvered my way through the mass of bodies and towards the bathroom, when I hit my shin on the corner of a coffee table, stumbled, felt someone grab me by the hood of my sweater, felt an icy touch on the back of my neck, a stabbing pain, and everything suddenly went black.
…
I opened my eyes but found myself just as blind as I would be if they were shut. I blinked again and sat up. I’d been lying on a cool wooden floor, as the touch of my fingers told me. It creaked an eerie and piercing noise when I shifted. The dark room smelled musty, with a faint salty odor that I couldn’t identify. It was so incredibly cliche that I couldn’t believe it was actually happening. I blinked a few more times and began to make out the outlines of a few items- a chair, a table, and two odd lumps.
There was a faint line of light at the bottom of a faraway wall, which I took to be a door. I became aware of a pounding in my head and a searing pinch on the side of my neck. I raised my hand to it and felt a faint bump that burned when I touched it. It felt like someone had stabbed a needle into my neck. Drugs? I began to breathe harder, panicking.
I stood up shakily, thrown off balance by the pounding headache, and unsteadily made my way to the door. Locked, as I expected.
Next, I headed towards the two mysterious lumps. I reached out to touch one and my fingertips brushed warm flesh. I drew my hand back, startled, then reached out again and shook the person gently. When they didn’t wake, I ran my fingers over where I thought was her head. When I found her nose and I knew that I was in the right spot, I slapped them across the cheek. The person jolted awake with a gasp. They shrunk away from me, tucking their knees into their chest and leaning against the wall. As my eyes adjusted more, I made out their face, and recognized that she was a girl with a slight frame, wispy, disheveled hair that hung just past her chin, and fear and hurt in her wide eyes.
“What the hell?” she whimpered, “where are we?” Her voice wavered like she was on the brink of tears.
“I don’t know,” I said harshly, “but if we want to get out, you need to be strong. No crying.”
“Do you have a p-p-problem with- with emotions?” she whined. Yep, she was definitely crying. The light from under the door illuminated the tears streaming down her face.
I rolled my eyes, “Didn’t you hear what I just said? Be strong. This is a don’t-panic situation.”
She glared at me, but gave a large sniffle, wiped her face and stood up. “You find a light switch, and I’ll wake the other person”
I stood up and ran my hand along the wall, walking the perimeter of the room. Several times my fingers touched something wet and sticky, and wood splinters pricked my palm. I finally found the switch and turned it on. The light flickered a few times before turning on, emitting a slight buzzing noise. It was a bare, old-fashioned light bulb that hung from the ceiling from a chain. It illuminated the room, including a rough wooden chair, a rickety table with five-gallon jugs on it, and wood-paneled walls with odd, sticky brownish stains. I shuddered. They looked like blood.
I wiped my hands on my jeans and returned to the corner where the wispy-haired girl- who couldn’t have been more than five feet tall with light brown hair, greenish-brown eyes, and a splash of freckles across her nose- was attempting to wake the third girl, a tall, muscular girl with dark hair tied into a tight ponytail, wearing ripped jeans and a fancy leather jacket over a white top. I ran my hand through my own curly hair, feeling the fuzziness of the shaved part. Rubbing my hand over it always soothed me.
The girl with the ponytail finally awoke with a gasp and a startled exclamation-
“Who the f*ck are you!?” she yelled, her face contorting into a glare. I stepped back. “Cool it! We’re all on the same side here. We’re trying to figure out what the hell is going on.”
The girl with the ponytail stood up and loftily brushed off her jacket. I could read her eyes- she was pretending to be all high and mighty, but inside she was deeply terrified.
“I’m Jade. Why don’t you guys introduce yourselves?”
“Andrea. Don’t ever call me that, though. Andy is fine,” I said.
“I’m Maisy,” the wispy-haired girl said shyly. Her voice was soft and sweet. “Do any of you know what’s going on?”
“I dunno,” I said. “I was at a party, I fell over, then boom, I was here. I dunno what’s going on.”
“I was taking the bus home from dance, and as soon as I got off at my stop, some rando stabbed a needle into my neck and I woke up here,” Jade explained.
“I was walking my dog, I tied him to a post outside the library so I could return a- return a book, and when I came out he was g-gone. I heard him barking nearby, so I went down the street a- a little bit, and someone yanked me into a side alley and I passed out.” Maisy’s lip trembled. “I… I don’t know where he is…” A single tear slid down her cheek.
I rolled my eyes and bit my cheek to keep from criticizing. Normally I wouldn’t have a problem with her emotional-ness, but now, in a potentially life-or-death situation, it was annoying. She needed to get a grip.
“Get it together, all right? We’re all in a similar situation. It’s life or death now,” said Jade angrily. Wow. You took the words right out of my mouth.
Maisy began to cry harder.
“Now look what you’ve done,” I sighed, despite having wanted to say the same thing. Jade glared at me.
“Look, Maisy, now isn’t the time to be ultra-sensitive,” Jade said, squatting down next to her and adopting a softer tone. “I understand this is very scary for you, but you need to be strong. I can tell you’re a smart, strong girl, and we could really use your talent to help escape.” I was startled at Jade’s observation, as I had categorized her as somewhat of a crybaby.
Maisy nodded, wiping her nose. “Okay. Okay.” She stood back up, grabbing at the wall to assist her. Her hand brushed one of the nasty red-brown stains on the wall, and she jerked her hand away, shuddering. Her fingertips were stained with red.
My headache had subsided, and I didn’t feel so sluggish. The lights flickered on and off again, leaving me with chills down my spine. A hidden panel in the wall slid open, revealing a TV that crackled with static. It blinked once, twice, before showing its picture- a dark room with walls covered in various weapons, all stained with blood. In the center of the room, there was a chair, in which a tall figure wearing a hoodie and jeans reclined. I recognized him as the hooded man at the party. Next to me, Maisy whimpered and frantically chewed her nails. Jade remained calm, but her hands shook slightly.
The screen flickered again, suddenly cutting to a close-up shot of the figure. I could now see the outline of a twisted grin on their face. Goosebumps raised on my arms as they began to speak, in a harsh, grating voice that I could identify as masculine.
“Hello.”
That word alone was enough to lower the temperature in the room ten degrees. Every hair on my body stood up. I shivered uncontrollably. His voice was like nails on a chalkboard. Next to me, Maisy sank to her knees, in tears. Jade seemed shell-shocked, her eyes glazed.
“You’ve surely noticed the door by now. Go through it, if you value your lives.” I resisted the urge to clamp my hands over my ears and scream.
Jade helped Maisy to her feet.
“And what will happen if we don’t?” I challenged.
“Do you really wish to find out?” His twisted smirk grew wider. I heard a shink from behind me. I turned. A crap-ton of gleaming, foot-long spikes were now protruding from the wall. Blood dripped from many of them, and an organ was impaled on one- a liver, maybe? A kidney? I didn’t get close enough to find out. Weird. Gross. Ew. Then the room started shrinking- the back wall was moving closer. I was the first one out the door- hell no. I wasn’t about to get impaled on a spike. Maisy and Jade were right behind me. Maisy was white in the face, but Jade seemed to have a new resolve, a steely determination set in her face. The door slammed shut behind us.
The new room was nothing but a platform of wood bordering a deep black chasm. On the other side of the room with another wooden platform, though it was way too far away to cross. To the left of us, there was a heavy metal bank-vault style door. To the right, another TV screen, with the dark man in his darkroom sitting quietly. Static crackled across the screen in short bursts.
“To unlock the bridge, you must face your worst fear,” he said in his horrible, scraping voice. “Maisy darling, what are you afraid of?”
Maisy’s skin was pure white, and I’m completely serious. Her face was literally the color of milk. She whimpered, but couldn’t seem to form the words.
The platform beneath us began to retract underneath our feet. Maisy yelped and jumped backward, pressing herself against the wall.
“Say something!” I screamed. “You don’t get to be a coward now, not when it’s all of us in danger!”
Tears slid silently down her face, and she whispered something that I couldn’t make out, but the man seemed to be satisfied because the platform returned to its normal spot and the bank-vault door slid open with an enormous creak.
“Head on in, Maisy sweetheart,” he said.
Maisy nodded, swallowing hard, and entered the room. A large red timer flashed to life on the other end of the chasm, counting down from 10:00. Those ten minutes were the tensest moments of my life, as Jade and I waited for Maisy to return. Tension hung in the air like static electricity. To make the horror even worse, the TV static kept crackling, and in between the bursts creepy lullaby-type songs played. I closed my eyes for what felt like an hour, but when I looked up, the clock read 8:32. I sighed. Jade sat down and rocked back and forth gently.
Several minutes later, when the clock read 2:45, we heard a horrible, bloodcurdling screech that pierced my eardrums like a needle. I tensed, the hairs on the back of my neck standing up. Jade stood up and paced the platform. We waited and waited for Maisy, but nothing happened. The clock ticked down to one minute, then thirty seconds. Nothing.
10. 9. 8. 7. 6. 5. 4. 3-
Maisy burst out of the door, in tears. Her arms were covered- and I mean covered- in tiny pinpricks, beaded with red globes of blood. Her face was spotted with what looked like spider bites. She immediately collapsed onto the floor in the fetal position, sobbing. Whatever she had to do, it worked, because the bridge appeared. Maisy wasn’t budging, so Jade scooped her up in her arms and carried her over the cold metal bridge. I followed behind them. Nobody said a word. We didn’t ask what happened, and Maisy didn’t offer up that information. Even though she sobbed at the slightest scare, it took a lot of guts to go into that room and go through all that, whatever it was. I had gained a newfound respect for this brave little girl.
At the other side, I went to open the door but found it locked. His voice crackled over a hidden loudspeaker again, making me jump-
“Cut off your finger. Anyone of you can do it. Any finger. But do it within five minutes, or one of you will die. You’ll find a knife in the box next to the door.” The large LED timer lit up again, starting at 5:00.
I looked down on the floor, next to my feet. Yeah, there was a box. I looked inside and found a rusty, dull kitchen knife and a dingy white rag- to bandage the wound, I assumed.
Maisy straight-up fainted. She slumped over in Jade’s arms, her eyes closed. Beads of blood leaked from her arm wounds. Jade looked like she was about to throw up.
I picked up the knife. “I’ll do it.” There was no way Maisy could cut off her own finger in her current state, and I didn’t want to make Jade do it. I raised the knife to my left pinky, setting the blade just above my knuckle. I took a few deep breaths and began to cut.
I screamed in pain. It was hardly more than a paper cut, but it burned like fire. I tried to cut deeper, clenching my teeth to resist screaming again. As soon as I hit the bone, I couldn’t do it anymore. I dropped the knife, crying. The clock read 2:14.
“I can’t do it,” I sobbed. “I can’t.” I collapsed onto the floor, shaking.
“Fine,” Jade said. She set Maisy down gently and picked up the rusty knife, now stained with my fresh blood. I picked up the rag and pressed it to the cut.
Jade took a deep breath and started to saw through her left ring finger. She clenched her teeth, her eyes watering in pain. She managed to cut longer than I did, but eventually dropped the knife, sobbing as I did. Neither of us could do it, and Maisy wasn’t waking up. I felt so weak, so cowardly at that moment. I couldn’t cut off a single finger, and now one of us would die for it, but no matter how much I knew that I had to, I couldn’t pick up that knife again. Jade and I slumped against the wall, nursing our cuts, waiting for the clock to run out and for one of us to die. I wondered if it would be me. Honestly, it was better me than any of them. Jade was just too good of a person, with too much going for her, to die now, and I couldn’t let Maisy die now. I’d started to think of her as a little sister, someone I needed to protect at all costs, especially after her unspoken ordeal behind the bank vault door. I would’ve been way too scared to go in, but Maisy went in without questioning it. It made me wish I had been easier on her in the beginning, and I promised myself that if I didn’t die, I would be so much kinder.
My finger throbbed with pain, and I pressed the rag tighter to it until the bleeding stopped and the pain lessened. I focused sharply on my finger to distract myself from the fact that someone would die in seconds because I was too weak to cut off my finger. Yet no matter how hard I willed myself to overcome my pain, I couldn't bring myself to pick up the god damn knife. So I sat in silence, feeling numb and cold. My only comfort was that Jade couldn't do it either.
The timer ran out.
There was a muffled gunshot noise, but neither Jade nor I fell over dead. We looked at each other, confused until it dawned on us simultaneously.
“Maisy!” we cried at the same time. We scrambled over to her body, and Jade picked her up. Blood blossomed across her chest, and she wasn’t breathing. For the first time today, despite the horror of the whole situation, I cried. Jade was crying too. She had let Maisy fall to the floor. Her face was in her hands.
I slumped over her body. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” I cried into her shirt. I lifted my head up and realized her blood was all over my face and in my hair, which only caused me to cry harder, ugly, hiccuping sobs. “I should have just cut my finger, I should have done it, I’m such a coward and now you’re, you’re dead… I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, Maisy. I’m sorry for everything that I said. I’m so, so, so, sorry.”
Jade got to her feet and offered me a bloodstained hand. She had stopped crying, but her tears had left paths through the field of dirt and blood on her cheeks. I took her hand gratefully and stood up, wiping my nose. The door was open now, but the mysterious man had nothing to say.
The next room was similar to the room we had awoken in, with a splintery wood floor, bloodstained walls, and a flickering bare bulb, except there, was another door, A screen was mounted on the wall. In the center of the room, there was a rickety table, on which rested four glass bottles, each with a different color liquid inside- purple, amber, green and blue.
Jade and I left a trail of blood going into the room, dripping from the cuts on our fingers, from my face, from her hands. As soon as we entered the room, the door slammed behind us.
I was so tired, I realized out of nowhere. I just wanted to sleep. I was too deep in shock to feel scared or angry anymore.
“What do you have for us now, you stinking bag of crap?” Jade yelled. I wondered how she found the energy to be angry.
The screen flickered to life, again showing the man in his creepy-as-hell room. I cringed when he opened his mouth, dreading his horrible, grating voice.
“Two bottles are poisoned. Two are safe. Figure out which ones are safe to drink, and when two of the bottles have been consumed, the door will open.”
The screen turned off.
“Oh god,” Jade cried. “This is the exact sorta problem Maisy could have solved in minutes. She was smart like that, I could tell… She would have known exactly how to measure the chemicals and crap...” She broke off into tears.
I was so done with all of this. I didn’t care anymore whether I drank the wrong bottle. All I cared about was that Jade drank the right one. She deserved to live more than I did. My mother wouldn’t miss me. Then I realized something. He never specified that we each had to drink one, just that two bottles had to be drunk.
Before Jade could stop me, I grabbed two bottles at random, the amber one and the blue one, and chugged the first one as fast as possible. It tasted awful, like hand sanitizer, but I forced myself to finish it and I didn’t die. Lucky guess. I could have easily let Jade have the second bottle, but I didn’t want her to have to take that chance. I drank the second bottle too, which tasted like seltzer that had gone flat. I relaxed my muscles, preparing to die.
Jade lunged towards me. “Why the hell did you do that?” she yelled.
I didn’t answer. Why should I? I was dying.
I waited for my body to shut down, for the sweet relief from all my pain, my fear, my sadness. I had waited for this feeling many times when I would cower on the bedroom floor and wish I was dead so I didn’t have to feel her fists anymore. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.
But I remained awake. My heart kept beating. I had somehow chosen both right bottles.
I wasn’t sure whether I was grateful or not. On one hand, Jade and I still had a chance to escape. On the other hand, I was done with the traps and torture this horrible man had set up for us. I didn’t have anything going for me at home. I had no real friends, my father was dead and my mother was an abusive drunk. I wasn’t smart enough to get into a good college someday. My life wasn’t worth anything. Why should I live?
I put all that aside. I needed to be strong, to ensure that Jade still made it out alive. It wasn’t done yet.
The door opened.
The next room was in stark contrast to the previous one. Rather than being dilapidated and bloodstained, it was cold and sterile, with a hospital-style tile floor, smooth metal walls and a white glass table in the center of the room, on which rested a small black handgun like the one my dad used to keep by his bed before he died. Another TV screen was set into the opposite wall, but instead of flickering with static, it was just turned off.
As soon as we stepped in, the door slammed behind us. The TV turned on, this time with no static.
“Congratulations on making it this far,” the man said. I was expecting to hear his nails-on-a-chalkboard voice again, but instead, his voice was deep, smooth and relaxed.
“This is your final challenge. Jade, your job is to pick up the gun and shoot Andrea.” The TV screen cut out, just like that.
I jumped away from Jade. She wouldn’t do that. Would she?
Jade took a slow step towards the table, then another.
“Don’t do it, Jade. Do you know how much I sacrificed for you?” I begged.
She ignored me.
“I drank those bottles so you wouldn’t have to, Jade. Please!”
She took another step.
“You can’t do this to me now. Jade, you can’t do this! We can still find a way!”
She took a final step and picked up the gun.
“I’m sorry, Andy,” she said coldly. “But I think we can both agree that I deserve to live so much more than you.”
My jaw dropped. After everything? “Screw you! After everything I did for you, after I cut myself hoping you wouldn’t have to, after everything we went through, after Maisy… you would just turn on me like this?”
“Without hesitating.” She smiled coldly and raised the gun. “Anything to ensure my survival. Your life is worthless compared to mine.”
I didn’t detect a single tremor or sign of remorse, and I wondered if this ordeal had hardened her or if she had always been like this. Hell, I wondered if she had been in on it all along.
I caught the tiniest twitch of her finger when she moved to pull the trigger, and dived out of the way, smacking my face painfully on the cold tile floor. The gun fired, a shockingly loud noise in the small, echoing room, and the bullet hit the wall right where my head had been.
But rather than sticking in the wall, it ricocheted off the hard metal, bounced back, and hit her square in the chest.
She collapsed into a heap onto the floor, blood pooling beneath her. Her chest heaved once, twice, then was still.
I didn’t react. Suddenly, I’d lost all my fear, all my pain. That traitor deserved exactly what she got.
The TV screen turned on, yet again showing the dark man in the dark room.
“Well done, Andrea. You have proved yourself to be the strongest of your friends. You are selfless, resilient, able to overcome your fears- and so incredibly scared of pain. This will make it so much more fun when I torture you… I love hearing your screams. You will be my slave, dear Andrea.”
Like that’s ever going to happen.
I was filled with a new desire to escape, to make him pay for what he did to Maisy, to be stronger and to do something with my life. Whether I would take the light path or the dark path, I wasn’t sure. All I knew right now was that I wanted revenge, and I was never going to give up trying. Despite what he had said, I wasn’t scared of pain anymore.
If I was making a bad decision, I wouldn’t have known it then. I was filled with rage, and I had lost all sensitivity to blood, horror, death, whatever might happen.
He was going to die for what he did.
When he stood up in his chair, I anticipated what he was going to do- enter the room I was in. As soon as he was out of sight, I scooped up the gun from Jade’s body, checked it as fast as I could- there were two more bullets, an incredible stroke of luck- and shoved it in the pocket of my bloody hoodie- thankfully, it was small enough and the pocket was large. He opened the door just as I had stuffed the gun away.
“Hello, Andrea,” he drawled.
I pulled out the gun and shot him point-blank in the head.
Wow, that was easy. He didn’t see that coming?
I took a wary step closer. He didn’t move. I took another step. Still nothing. I used my foot to turn his face up. Yep, definitely dead. I saw his face for the first time. It was coldly handsome, with hard-set lips, harsh cheekbones, a chiseled nose, and bitter blue eyes. The bullet hole was just above his right eye. Beneath his head, blood was quickly pooling. I was faced with a dilemma: Should I use my last bullet to ensure that he was dead, or should I save it in case of trouble during my escape?
Then I realized I could probably take one of the many bloody weapons from the man’s creepy room to protect myself- if I could find it. If I couldn’t, I needed the gun. I checked one last time to make sure he was dead, then left through the open door and back into the room with the bottles. A hidden panel in the wall had slid open, the entrance to another room.
Sure enough, it was the man’s creepy room with all the weapons. There was the chair he sat in, an enormous computer monitor with multiple screens, and of course rows and rows of swords, knives, guns, saws, and chainsaws, scythes, axes, brass knuckles, you get the picture.
I wandered around the perimeter of the room, looking for a concealable and effective weapon that wasn’t too bloody and gross. I saw a few knives that looked good, but the only one that wasn’t absolutely disgusting was a small dagger with a blade hardly longer than my hand. I wiped it off as best as I could with my bloody, sweat-drenched hoodie and tucked it into my belt, just in case. I then moved onto the guns and found a small, nice pistol that I could easily hide in my large hoodie pocket. Then I searched through the desk his massive computer monitor sat on- handcuffs, for some reason, an assortment of pens and pencils, a giant stack of blueprints for the horror traps he had built, and there it was- gun ammo. I loaded the gun to the maximum and dropped the box on the floor. Bullets rolled everywhere, with the loud clanging of metal on metal.
No doors? No problem. I hefted a massive chainsaw off the wall. It roared to life like a lion, emitting a harsh rumble, as chainsaws tend to do. I knocked aside all the weapons on a section of the wall and cut into it with the chainsaw. It sawed through the flimsy wood like it was made of popsicle sticks, taking me all of a minute to cut a six-foot opening that I could walk through. Miraculously, it opened into a nice-looking living room, with squishy leather couches, a cozy rug, and most importantly- a door and windows. Seems like he was running his horror house behind a facade.
I turned off the chainsaw and left it in the weapons room, then wandered around the house until I found a bathroom. I took off my sweater and scrubbed the blood out of it until my fingers were raw, stole a pair of clean socks from the laundry, and cleaned the bloodstains off the dagger I took.
It had only been several hours since I last looked in a mirror, yet somehow I was a whole new person. My eyeliner was smeared all over, giving me that real edgy, slightly insane look, my normally curly blond hair was limp and matted, my eyes were empty, my lips chapped, my cheeks hollow. I combed my hair, thoroughly scrubbed my face clean of blood, though I left the eyeliner smudged- I thought it suited me a little more now- then used the bathroom, drank some water straight from the faucet, then went to the kitchen and gorged myself on food- god, I was starving. The food in the kitchen was fresh, hearty and unprocessed, something I wasn’t used to, but it just didn’t have the same effect on me as it would have before.
The tiredness hit me in a sudden wave, so strong I nearly fell over, but I couldn’t sleep now, so I made myself a hot, strong coffee and chugged it, savoring the burning in my throat- it was the only thing I’d really felt since Jade accidentally shot herself. Despite cleaning up, eating, drinking, waking up with coffee, I still felt empty inside. I had made him pay, but I still wasn’t satisfied.
Outside, the sunshine was shockingly bright, yet calming in a way. A bit of relief from the cold, dark horrors of the house. I was on a cul-de-sac in the super-rich part of town, full of towering mansions that could be hiding anything- even a horrifying horror gauntlet where two teenage girls lay dead.
I thought of all the other people out there, victims of serial killers, kidnappers, even people with abusive friends or family, who didn’t have someone to defend them. I was a criminal now. I was going to fight for all those people, no matter what laws I broke. I was going to make all the abusers pay like I had made the man pay today.
And I was going to start at my own house, with my own mother.