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This was what i had started writing earlier in my Journal and it turned out to be my final writing piece before the end of the school year. So here it is. ^^ i'm very proud of it. please tell me what you think.
“We’ve found her! We’ve found her!”
They moved in as a rush of black armored men. Melanie cringed but lay prone, too weak to put up any sort of a struggle despite how her mind raced. A man approached her, dressed in a dark suite. He had a kind face, but wore a worried expression. He held her tenderly, wrapping a blanket about her bruised body. Too tired and scared to argue, she wrapped her arms around the figure and let him carry her away from the torture. Slowly, her eyes closed and sounds faded as warm blackness enveloped her senses…
“She hasn’t spoken for days…” the doctor spoke in a hushed voice. Behind her, Melanie could hear the handle on the door turn. She pivoted her head slightly to listen, but remained looking out through the window. “Good morning, Melanie.” She turned and said nothing. “You seem to be recovering quickly. Are they taking good care of you?” Melanie shrugged and looked at him. He seemed oddly familiar but she knew that they had never been formal acquaintances. “So how’re you doing?” She shrugged lightly and turned away. She’d had this happen for the last several days now; strangers would arrive every so often through out the day to ask her questions that she didn’t want to answer. Her face pinched and she felt her throat tightening. She heard him walk and the shifting of fabric as he sat down upon the bed she had been assigned. This was different from what she was used to, however. Melanie turned and looked at him again. Most of the others had left after realizing she wasn’t going to talk to them but he just sat there. He actually had taken out a small book from his pocket and had begun flipping through its pages. She slid down the wall leaning against it and wrapped her arms around her knees. He took long enough to glance at her but then returned to his book. She glared at him in frustration. Who did he think he was, a psychiatrist? The clock ticked quietly. She wished he would leave. He was making her uncomfortable. His sudden sigh made her jump.
“We need to hear, from you, an account of what happened.” He explained calmly. He had a nice voice to listen to, she thought. It wasn’t gravely or strained with high pitches. It was smooth and low. Melanie shook her head and dropped her chin to her knees. “I know it’s hard…and I’ll sit here for however long it takes you.” One of her hands moved as she raised it to brush her hair from her face. She watched him through her lashes. He gazed back. Melanie licked her lips and thought. She had nightmares about the ordeal every night, even as the bruises and the cuts faded; she knew that it wasn’t a dream. She relived the horrors at night, what made them think she wanted to relive them during the day too? They sat in silence for over a half hour and the man sighed again.
“Melanie, I didn’t want to have to force you to talk, but I need you to. We found you in an abandoned apartment at the edge of a bad neighborhood in the thick of the city. No one knew where you had come from, or who you were. You were all but nude in a room with no windows, a single bathroom, and a doggy door where food was pushed to you upon a cookie sheet. We found evidence that you had been drugged, beaten, and sexually assaulted. However, we still have no idea how long you had actually been kept there.”
Her lips moved slowly, inaudibly, finally she murmured. “No one would come to look for me…” The man paused and watched her. He flipped through the pages in his notebook. “I seem to remember hearing you were waiting to be set into a foster home.” Her single sentence, detached as it was, kindled hope that she would actually speak.
“The government doesn’t care about us…” She whispered. “We’re the leftovers, the unwanted brats. I’m sure you know that I’m not the first of us to go missing.” Her voice trailed off, but her lips still moved and he had to strain to hear her. “I never once heard about an Amber Alert set up after any of us were taken…. bastards.” He took a breath and opened his mouth to speak and was taken aback slightly. He flipped the book open to several blank pages and took a pen out of his jacket pocket. This wasn’t the information he was searching for, but at least he was getting somewhere.
As she spoke quietly, he scribbled down her words upon the little pad. A lapse of two hours flowed toward the end of Melanie’s story. He had come to sit next to her with a box of tissues stretched toward her in case she needed them. She stared at the ground; her shaking arms wrapped around her legs. Finally, the man had the chance to actually look at her. She wasn’t a plain girl, but she wasn’t exceedingly beautiful either. Her appearance would have to be classified as “handsome.”
For the first time since he had first seen her, she turned slowly and gazed into his face, her lips twitching in an attempt to smile softly…
The room was filled with more than a hundred people. Twelve sat inside a small wooden pen with chairs, watching the man intently as he spoke. “ I come before this court and assembled jury to tell the story of a young girl, traumatized by her experience and to plead for her to be put into protective services.” He turned to look at the girl sitting at a small table. Her gaze was cast down, her hands folded demurely in her lap. She had been clothed in a simple dress and her hair had been curled slightly. But her whole appearance was unable to mask the cuts and bruises that were still healing. “This court would like to hear Miss Turner’s account of what happened.” Melanie stiffened and slowly looked up. The next few seconds passed in silence as her eyes donned a glassy texture that accompanied her expression of looking at something that only she could see. Her lips began moving slowly as she explained what she saw through the silent movie playing across her eyes as a foggy memory.
“ I had just been walking in the park that day. It was around lunchtime and I needed to get something to eat. When I walked up to the hotdog stand, I didn’t think anything was going to happen. I was a few cents short of being able to pay for the food, and outta no where this guy walks up and pays for the remaining 75 cents or something… I thought he was just being nice… I don’t know what happened but I remember waking up in a bedroom that wasn’t mine. I was nervous, but I didn’t feel scared or upset at first. Maybe I was relocated? Who knew?” She shook her head slowly. “ But I grew to fear the sound of footsteps outside my door… He use to knock before walking into the room… He didn’t seem like such a bad guy at first, but when he looked at me I couldn’t help but feel like I was going to throw up. He kept walking toward me, always wanting me to come closer, always wanting to touch me….wanting me to touch him…” Her voice grew softer. “ When I tried to escape…that’s when things finally became scary. I had heard stories from older fosterlings claiming to have known the kids who had been kidnaped and never seen again. And this man fit every description I was ever told about. There was almost never a light on…I would sit in complete darkness, listening to only his footsteps and a T.V. in another room. After the first few days, I learned that even the food wasn’t safe. I figured it was poisoned or drugged. When he would notice that I hadn’t eaten anything, he would act sincere about being worried for my well-being, but you could tell that he was pissed. When I still wouldn’t eat or drink anything, he came into the room with a vile. He set me down in a chair and tied me to it, telling me that everything would be all right and I’d be much calmer if I didn’t afterward. I was scared. I thought he was going to rape me… It might be hard to believe but maybe that would have been better…maybe then I could tell you honest accounts of what all happened but I don’t remember… He forcefully drugged me… I could feel the liquid from the injection run through my arm. The first several times I was scared, I didn’t want it, I fought back. But the longer I found myself imprisoned there; I welcomed the comfort of the intoxication. Nothing he did hurt…nothing he did, I could remember afterward…” Tears began streaming down Melanie’s cheeks, her face twisted into an indescribable expression. “Thank you, Miss Turner; we will not need you to relate anymore information to us.” Melanie stood down from the stand, walking between the various seats and glancing around at the unfamiliar faces staring back at her. She wiped at her cheek where a single tear that was still falling and looked across the room at the man staring at her with hatred. From behind her glassy expression she thought of how he looked when the police had finally caught him...
Clouds had covered the sky in a gray sheet; Outside black patrol cars sat, waiting for the call to rush forward on the house that they had in their sights. As rain began falling, they fell forward, swarming the double roomed house, rushing through the door after bursting it opened. Voices called out angrily and the black armored men dragged a struggling man from the depths of blue and white walls. As they spoke to him, relating his Miranda rights, his fierce and angry eyes searched over the occupants of the many vehicles. Suddenly he saw her face. She seemed somewhat familiar but he couldn’t place it. She stared back at him with a sorrowful anger that only sparked his memory. He had never asked her, her name. He hadn’t cared. There wasn’t ever a need. He had been sloppy this time, and he knew he was paying for it. Closing his eyes, he allowed the officers to escort him into the patrol car...
She left the great hall and stepped passed the door that had been held open for her. Melanie sighed and leaned back against the black seats of the car. She stared at the seat in front of her. The feeling of a hand clenching over her heart had finally released.
kindreanselkie · Fri Jul 06, 2007 @ 04:52am · 1 Comments |
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