It was Tuesday. Not that she cared or even knew what day it was. She didn't even have a clock in her new so called home, letalone a watch. She woke in a damp, smelly, dark room full of girls just like herself. Some of them were asleep, some of them awake. It was so strange, how unnerved she was by the fact that this was her so called life, sleeping on a smelly mattress, eating whatever she could, barely weighing forty kilograms, falling asleep once everything had worn off, when only six months ago she would not go to sleep at night without giving her parents the comfort of a goodnight kiss, a hug or two - now look at her. She didn't even know where her parents were now. They could be dead for all she knew. Not that she didn't care - she just couldn't. She hadn't eaten in days. She rolled over on her thin mattress, revealing her scarred arm - pinpricked with a million dots, each representing every wrong desicion she had made untill this point. There was no way out now. She had no money. Any money she had would go towards a hit - not that she could get it without these guys watching over her like hawk. The irony was that she could not survive without anyone here, yet given the chance, she would open fire on them all.

A few tinkerings at a lock, and the rickety door burst open, illuminating the dark room with a burst of intense light. She slowly opened her temporarily blinded eyes, she saw a familiar man in a trenchcoat and thick black boots sillhouetted against the bright light. He put her here. Along with her bad judgement. Another clearly drunk man entered the room, waking the rest of the half-dead girls. Given the energy, they would have looked to see who it was. Her head was faced towards him. He pointed to her, and gave the trenchcoat man a few dollars. He then approached her, before being abruptly halted by the muscular arm of the trenchcoat man. He muttered something to the drunk man, and came back a few minutes later, with her cage - in the form of some brown liquid in a needle. She barely flinched as he jabbed her, though inside the flinch that failed to show was magnified a million times in a cold silent scream.

She remembered back when she still went to school. Back when boys, friends and parties were all she cared about. It was close to her birthday that she suddenly left. She was as good as dead that day. She would have rather died then than live through this. This was something she would have pitied back then. This was something everyone looked down on. People told her how drugs wreck peoples lives. It was all the same old thing, don't do it, it'll screw you up. She couldn't possibly forsee this that day she thought she was going to die. She may as well have. Nobody here cared about her. Nobody here loved her. Nobody here cared if she died. She came back down to earth. Whiskey breath was in her face, as she looked up. She was in a different room now. She was barely moving as this random stranger dipped inside her. She always wanted her first time to be special. Who would have thought it would have been a smack-induced rape?

There she was. Sitting idly on the couch. The trenchcoat man walked in holding two needles. He carefully injected her into her perfect untouched skin. It couldn't hurt. She flinched, but as her brain rattled with the feeling of strange emotions, she started to enjoy it. Suddenly the trenchcoat man hit her in the face. Hard. She screamed, but he muffelled it with a forced kiss. He tore off her top and fumbled with her skirt. She felt helpless. All the while numbed out by her own stupidity. What could she have expected from this guy? It was not like he was going to just give her a hit and not want anything back. She was stupid. Her first red dot, her first terrible and costly decision. When he was done, he drove her to her new home, and neither spoke a word when she was locked away forever. This was it. Her end. Her whole life.

The drunk man was still going. She didn't know how long he'd been there. She didn't know how long she'd been here. She didn't care about this guy. He didn't care about her. His greasy sweat dripped onto her once - perfect skin. Suddenly he gasped, moaning as he finished off. He eventually got off her, leaving her to be taken back to the room. He got dressed and walked out. She didn't here the footsteps coming up the stairs. The trenchcoat man found her as he often did; exhausted, blank and staring. But as he noticed after yelling at and hitting her a couple of times, that this time she wasn't going to get up.

She was seventeen.

- Copyright Michael Allison 2003