The young girl exhaled, different than all the other times. Because this time around, her exhale was not out of utter terror, but rather from all the sweat she had shed on her way to a safer place. She was only sixteen, and there laid a million men in her past of none of which she chose. Would it change anything at all even if she chose a few of them herself? She was just a kid, and they were ill-hearted men that were much older than her. Her mother had sold herself first and then her daughter, Raven, to satisfy her cravings for drugs.
Loads of men would come and go each day to the house that had become a shell of what was once a home. The poor little kid would live alone, locked in the basement. Her eyes were always purple, no one could tell if they were an offspring of all the beatings she had received or from the countless sleepless nights. Even she couldn't tell the difference sometimes. Two cups of dog food were put in front of her daily, no more, no less. The kid would eat these with enthusiasm. She knew that if she did not eat these, she would starve all day. Her mother's clients would be with her mother first. The poor kid would have to listen to the bed's cries for help from downstairs. The screams of the creaking bed would get tangled with Raven's cries and hiccups. She would sometimes feel that her tangled hair represented the noise in the house day in and day out. The increase of the sound mixture would whisper to the child that it was her turn now.
In this never-ending fight of loud noises, the sounds would have a truce as the footsteps coming downstairs would be heard. Sometimes even that hundred-year-old staircase would have a respectful moment of silence against the little girl whose pain had exceeded her age, or maybe she would feel that way. She would always look around, searching for friends to acquaint with her pure soul, this friend would sometimes be the stains on the wall, sometimes the pillows left there to rot, and sometimes her heart that was left to be broken over and over again. The young girl would cry each time she remembered, she would forget as she cried and she would remember as she forgot.
She was not the little five-year-old that would shake in fear hour after hour, she was a strong young woman who had been through a whole universe worth of pain.
Her mother had passed from a heart attack as she was having intercourse with one of her clients. If Raven was a regular teen, it would not be very understandable for her to be excited over her mother's passing. but for this poor young girl, this was the biggest and only opportunity of her whole life. The client who had realized the woman's passing had fled as fast as he could. Which had presented a big slice from the hope cake to Raven, as she left the house before the new "workday" even began.
The heels of her feet were almost whipping her buttocks as she ran as fast as she could, her legs felt as free as they could after years. This was her first time running since her childhood. When the girl previously thought she would run to her death, with a sudden change of mind from the author, she was running for her life.