Chapter 2

In the slums, adulthood comes fast. Innocence is consumed like firewood and used as soon as it is convenient. Once Kate had known innocence, she held it in her hands like a little glass ball spun of her hopes and dreams, but glass is delicate and soon shattered, and all that's left of those hopes are shards and blood. Blood stains in long black streaks.

This Kate had found out six years after her mother had made her promise. Life had been okay at first. The apartment was nasty and cramped, but it was better than living on the streets. Mom worked as a waitress at the diner around the corner. After Kate got home from school, she would do her homework then cook a small dinner for when her mom got off her twelve hour shift. Mom would be so tired that sometimes she would doze off while eating her meal. Kate would laugh a little and wake her up. Mom would smile sheepishly and then tell Kate about her day. Kate would try to be cheerful but she could see the drawn pain in her mother's eyes. She could see the way she carried her broken body. Sometimes Kate didn't know how mom got up for her shift the next morning. Mom said it was worth it, and sometimes Kate believed her. Perhaps Kate should have seen Mom cracking. Perhaps she could have run. She didn't, and then it was too late.

Mom met him at the diner. He was handsome and smooth. Kate had an eye for his type, she avoided them on the street. Mom didn't see it. He charmed her and he gave her money and soon he moved in with them. Kate felt for the first time in her life her voice had failed her. She knew something was very wrong with this man. He had slicked back black hair and eyes that sent all the wrong messages to a 12-year-old girl. Kate told Mom, and Anne said that it was okay. Secretly, she thought that Kate was a little scared of all men because of her father, and she just couldn't see Johnny's good side. Johnny joined their home, and for the second time in her life, Kate found herself cowering close to the walls.

Maybe that is why she wasn't surprised the first time he touched her. She was doing her homework a few hours before her mother came home. He smiled at her and leaned over her shoulder and rubbed his hand across her chest, and when she shuddered away, he smacked her hard. She knew somehow that she couldn't cry now, that it would make it worse if she cried now. He shoved her off her chair and she knew then that she was dying. That all she felt was black hatred as this man forced himself on her and helplessness because he was too heavy for her to push him off.

If Mom knew, if she saw the bruises, she never said a word, and that night when Kate cried herself to sleep, Momma didn't hear her. She curled up into a tiny ball and she prayed that he wouldn't touch her again. She hoped the gods could hear her because she hurt so bad. She had carefully cleaned the dark dried blood off her thighs earlier, but she didn't know how to make the hurt go away. The next morning she got up and she put on her clothes, but she couldn't look at Mom and she couldn't look at Johnny. Instead she edged out the door and to school.

She realized for the first time that Mom was her only friend--that she couldn't tell the other girls what her mom's boyfriend had done to her. She took her seat and she listened to the teacher, but she couldn't hear anything. If she cried at lunch, no one saw. She ate all alone, the food tasting like sand to her. Her mouth was dry and her hands hurt. She walked slowly and kept her eyes down, but all she could feel.... all the feeling that was left to her was pure dread that the school day would end and she would have to go home. She knew she had to go back, but she felt the bruises and she didn't want to hurt that way anymore. Kate was dead.

When the shadow that was Kate crept back into her apartment, he was waiting at the table. He smiled a warm, friendly smile and she backed up against the wall.

"I like it when you play hard to get, girl."

She crossed her hands over her stomach and more than anything she wanted to run, but in those few moments he had crossed the room and one hand was around her neck and one hand was on her thigh. She couldn't cry out because his fingers extended over her lips. A muffled, dry gasp whispered out of her, and he laughed to feel his power. The second time was easier. She didn't bleed as much, even if he hit her harder. She stared forward, feeling nothing. When Johnny was finished with her, he shoved her into the wall. She crawled into the bathroom and was violently sick, coughing up the lunch she couldn't remember. She washed the vomit off her face and stared at the mirror to see a thick purple bruise on her cheek that disfigured the way she looked. She took some of Mom's make-up and put it over the bruise so it didn't look so ugly.

When she went to school the next day the teacher barely looked at her. They saw a lot of abuse in the slums and had learned the hard way that if you got involved you risked your own life. Still, if it hadn't been for school, she might have never gotten the idea. The teacher told her about the Shin-ra/Wutai War. She saw how tiny Wutai was on the map, but it fought back. Johnny had raped her day after day and she had taken it, but she there had to be someway to stop it even if her mother no longer looked at her. When she had told Anne that Johnny had hurt her, she told her daughter to not make him so angry. He couldn't help himself. The girl who was once Kate knew that she had to make it.

Thus when he touched her the next time, she bit into him hard; she tore and drew in blood. He slapped her and her mouth filled with blood and she didn't know if it was his or her own. She spit the blood on to the floor in a scarlet stream and could feel the slickness in her mouth where her teeth had cut. He grinned the same vicious grin that had crossed his lips so many times, the grin that told her she couldn't do anything. He backed her slowly into the kitchen. She cowered to keep him at a distance. Then his eyes saw the pan that Kate had put over the fire to cook dinner. He slid his deadly hands around the handle and raised it up. Kate's right arms was up in a flash to protect her face from the brand of the pan.

The skin on her arm sizzled and puckered as she screamed and screamed. She could feel red flame shooting up her arm in waves of pain that blinded her. In that moment something broke--something new. She reached up for the handle of the pan and she ripped it away from him. Rage like she had never known streamed through her. She lifted it and brought it down heavy. She hit him again and again.

When the fog over her brain, her vision lifted, she could feel the intense open wound on her right arm. Johnny was in front of her branded as she had been, and his brains splattered over the walls in strings of grey mush. His eyes were still wide open, but clouded and staring into the distance. Beneath him was a puddle of blood where she had smashed his teeth in. His jaw hung loose and twisted, detached from his face. Kate took all this in and she puked there and then slowly pulled herself up the wall.

She took a bath and then switched into her only other outfit -- the one not covered in blood. She carefully looked at her burn and then put a thick bandage on it. She collected up the things she owned and stuffed them into her empty school bag. She edged around Johnny in the kitchen and got what food she could and a long knife. No man would ever touch her again.

She locked the door so that Anne's things wouldn't get stolen and then she began to walk slowly to Sector Six. They wouldn't find her there. No one ever got found in Sector Six.



Chapter 3

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