“Abby!” I shake her lightly trying to wake her up.

“Elly, I need Grandma … I hate you.” Abby thrashes her arms and legs desperately.

She hasn’t been asleep for long. She cried for hours and whimpered a few times after she fell asleep. Everything she says is incoherent, yet scary when I analyze her words. My unsteady hand combs through her long hair as I whisper for her to come back to me, to wake up.

I still hear her voice while I was jacking off.

“I won’t do it, you can’t force me,” she screamed. “This time you won’t catch me.”

Her eyes were lost somewhere else. She’s confusing the present with her traumatic past. Please, God, help me. I can’t handle seeing her hurt this much. I’m at a loss. I have no idea what to do anymore.

“Abby, baby. Please wake up,” I beg her.

Her red, swollen eyes open slowly. Her gaze travels everywhere around the room, and when it finally focuses on me, Abby shuts her eyes again.

“Abby,” I say kissing her forehead.

“I think I’m going crazy,” she lets out a little whimper.

“Why do you think that?”

“Every little thing triggers the memories. Then it’s like they’re following me. I swear, I saw Shaun outside the office.” She looks around carefully not meeting my eyes. She bobs an awkward nod.

“Or was it Corbin? I’m not sure.” She draws a sharp breath. “But how did they find me?”

“What are you talking about?” My mind goes blank. I tilt my head reading her expression. It’s pointless—too many emotions swirl in that lost gaze.

She sits up, moving herself farther away from me. The simple withdrawal feels like a punch in the gut.

Abby covers her eyes, shaking her head. “Don’t mind me. I’m going insane. It’s just my imagination. The guilt eating me. My past finally catching up because of what I did.”

“What did you do?” My mind races, searching for answers.

She goes still, her chin quivering. “I let them abuse her.”

Abby extends her hand toward the nightstand, seeking the teddy bear Dad gave her when she first came to live with us; she grabs it tightly with both hands. As her knuckles turn white, she mutters tearfully to herself: “I didn’t do enough.”

“Baby?” An overwhelming sinking feeling plagues my stomach.

The truth is finally here and it’s truly as dark as she describes, I can feel the shadow overtaking the light and sucking out all the air. My pulse quickens. I brace myself to listen to every word she has to say.

“I should’ve told someone.” She chuckles humorlessly.

“I did once.” Her lips press together in a slight grimace. “He was a police officer, but he didn’t believe me. Corbin and Mom told him I was mentally ill, that I made up stories. Corbin was a respected man. Charming. Everyone loved him. Or they owed him favors.”

From scanning the police report, I remember reading something about mental illness. I just didn’t put two and two together. Without thinking about it, I head to my room for the reports and hand them to Abby.

“Will it make it easier if we read through this together?”

She shakes her head and says, “You do it. I’m not strong enough to read it by myself.”

I arrived home around midnight. I didn’t notice anything different when I drove into the garage, but panicked when I heard the commotion coming from inside the house—the screams, the wailing. My heart beat as I thought of my girls being in danger. They weren’t mine, but I loved them both as if they were. When I came out of the garage, there was a man lying on the ground. Bleeding on the sidewalk. I ran into the house. It was messy. I noticed the lamps were gone. They were expensive antiques that my late wife bought for our anniversary.

Olga, she passed away and now … I didn’t care about the house once I heard the cries. “Ava,” Abigail called her sister’s name. She’s a special kid, but she cared for her little sister. Abigail has problems in the head and makes up shit, but I recognized her tone. It was real pain.

She was in their room, sitting next to Ava crying. My little girl was bleeding. Two gunshot wounds. I just don’t understand why her and not the other one. My Ava was good and pure. So innocent and smart. Abigail said something about three men getting into the house. She was able to hide in the closet, but not my poor Ava. I don’t know if that’s true because she confuses fantasy with reality.

She said that the men, that they abused Ava before killing her. They took our things. Money, computers, and some of my equipment. I guess it was more than one because they were able to make off with almost everything I own. Abigail said more but I can’t believe much of what she told me. As I said, she’s mentally ill and her head is all mixed up.

“He said that?” she howled. “Of course, he did. If I ever talked, it’d be the word of a crazy person against his.”

“There’s more,” I offer.

“It’s all a bunch of lies.” Her nails cut into the back of her neck. I flinch but don’t say a word.

“Did he mention Shaun?”

I scan through the documents for the name without reading the rest. There’s no son or anyone named Shaun mentioned in any of the papers.

“No.”

She breathes deeply, closes her eyes and lets out the words, “I’m going to lose you, and it’s okay.”

“What are you talking about?” I feel as if a steel band cuts through my chest cleaving me open. She’s ready to stab me with a knife.

Her eyes open, her gaze remains fixated on the papers. “This was amazing while it lasted, and whatever happens next will be for the best.”

“I’m not a good person. On the contrary, I have done bad things.” She presses her lips together. “Illegal.”

My heart thunders inside my ribcage waiting for the story.

“Corbin was an entrepreneur. If you asked what he did, he’d say that he was in media and ran a pharmaceutical shop.”

“A pharmacy?” I frown.

“No, that’s the fancy way of saying he was a drug dealer. If you needed a painkiller, he had all kinds. His websites were porn sites.”

Abby Age Seventeen

After six months I thought that my life had improved. Mom ignored me for the most part. She never cared about my whereabouts or even acknowledged me. Marriage suited her. At least her relationship agreed with me. I had finally shed the abuse from my life. Although, my house changed a lot during the first few weeks after the Stanley’s moved in with us. We had a daily parade of strangers coming and going into the basement. Some stayed for only minutes and others … I never saw leave.

I didn’t pay much attention because I went to school and worked part time outside of the house. However, the late noise bothered me. Corbin and Shaun watched TV in the basement. It was loud. Women wailed, and men grunted. Cries for more or to take it harder, bitch went on and on. One night, I heard mom complaining.

“Shaun was watching porn,” she whined.

It was troubling to see the mean witch behave like a teenager in love. Corbin had a big hold over her. Had it been anyone else, she’d have yelled until the other person begged for forgiveness.

“He’s an adult and watching adult movies is healthy,” Corbin defended him.

“Fine, but can you ask him to turn it down a little?”

“We’re renovating the place, so you won’t hear much noise in a couple of months.”

“As long as you pay the bills,” she said with disdain. “I don’t care what happens downstairs. But maybe he should look for a woman instead of just watching that trash.”

My ears perked up because that didn’t sound right. Shaun was downstairs watching porn twenty-four-seven? He had too much time on his hands. Either way it didn’t affect me. My life was outside of that house. I could do almost anything I wanted—even run away. I wish I had done that. During the week, I spent all day in school and in the evenings, I was working.

A few weeks later I heard Corbin say, “We’re soundproofing the basement, babe. The construction crew is coming in today to start tearing up the walls and building a couple of rooms. One of them will be my office. They’re replacing the sliding glass doors in the back. Shaun has visitors often, and I don’t want them to intrude.”

True to his word, the noise stopped. The number of visitors however, increased. From my window, I watched as guys came through that new basement door. Ava wandered downstairs too. She’d be gone when I arrived home from work. Around three or four in the morning she’d come back to bed, always crying. I never questioned what was happening until one night when she came upstairs bleeding. Her clothes were torn.

“What happened to you?”

I had a hunch, but didn’t want to assume. I mean, she was with her father. Nothing bad should happen to her. While I helped her into the shower, I studied her body horrified. Her breasts were purple, her wrists red with rope marks, and blood dripped down her thighs.

“We should call the police,” I suggested.

“No, don’t do that. They’ll punish me—or you.”

“Who?”

“Dad.”

I felt sick to my stomach while Ava told me that a man had done this to her with her father’s permission.

“That’s wrong.”

“I’m eighteen,” she said. “A consenting adult. He didn’t do all this until I was old enough. Before it wasn’t as bad.”

“What do you mean?”

She was vague about what happened to Shaun and her, but it was clear to me.

“He’s molested you?” I asked, horrified.

“Something like that.” Her voice was broken and so was she.

My heart broke. This couldn’t be happening. Not in my house. I promised her that I’d take care of her, that I’d make it better. Her father had to be stopped.

“You can’t escape them,” she said. “I already tried, and they beat me. It was so bad that I couldn’t leave the bed or open my eyes for days.”

“Shaun … does he need help too?”

She shrugged. “Dad gives him stuff to keep him happy, and if he wants more, he’d better obey him.”

I couldn’t wrap my head around everything she was telling me.

“My mother likes you. She might want to help you.”

“I don’t think she likes me as much as you think,” she snarled.

“Well, if no one listens to me, we’ll run away. I have money.”

The next morning, I talked to my mother and told her everything that Ava had said.

“You’re a fucking liar,” she said, pulling my hair.

“Corbin!” she called him desperately.

“Tell him, tell him what you just told me, bitch.” She slammed my head against the wall. “Tonight, you’re not sleeping in your bedroom. In fact, I’ll have them get rid of your bed. From now on, you’ll sleep on the floor.”

“What’s going on?”

His eyes flared with pleasure when he saw the way my mother was treating me. Whatever passed through his mind scared the fuck out of me.

“She says that you’re abusing Ava and that you’re a drug dealer,” Mom explained.

“You bitch,” he roared, with his hand pressed against my neck, choking me. “If you ever repeat that you’re going to pay.”

My eyes stung. He pushed me to the floor and kicked me in the stomach and the head. This couldn’t be happening. Instead of going to school, I went to the police station and reported what was happening at home. Corbin and Mom came to pick me up.

“Sorry. She’s mentally ill,” Corbin explained. Mom nodded in agreement. “She stopped taking her medication. She watched a movie last night, and now she’s starting to mix fantasy with reality. We love her so much.”

Neither one said a word to me, but when I got home, Shaun dragged me to the basement. He kept me there for several days. I understood what Ava had gone through. He filmed everything he did to me. Shaun made me watch every video and look at every picture of myself as he uploaded them to the websites.

“I like it when you beg me to stop.” He palmed his dick, licking his lips.

Since the principal called to ask about my absences, they allowed me to go back to school. Corbin didn’t want to raise any red flags. They made me quit my jobs.

“If you say a word, Ava will pay for it,” Corbin threatened me.