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    CHAPTER 1
     
    The rampant beats of her fearful little heart threatened to
betray the cover of darkness black as a night’s fickle soul she found for a
refuge.
    “Sarah, honey, stay in there.” A woman’s muffled, frightened imploring slinked in through the dark. “No matter what happens, do
you hear?”
    Sarah had only ever known this voice in caution and fear,
however the fume of terror it carried today was nothing as she had heard
before. Its echo magnified the weight of her own dread ten times, and so
burdened, all she could do was nod in answer.
    There was no nook or cranny left in her room where her
desperation had not led her to seek a cloak of safety. She had once been small
enough to hide under a pile of clothes. But whatever place she had chosen to
scurry behind or beneath, a feeling of bone deep chill always followed her
there.
    Today, it found Sarah in her closet with beads of primal fear
running down her temples as a man’s foul oaths, quickly drawing closer, rose to
hulking bellows. Under its menace her back throbbed remembering the furious
lash of his anger it bore the last time.
    She shut her eyes against his vile effusion. Clapped
her ears to render mute the approaching flounce of his heavy feet. But
as always, both actions proved no protection against either threat.
    A loud bang rent the air when the door to her room was kicked
open.
    “Where’s she?” The man snarled.
    Within the darkened closet, Sarah heard no answer given. The
agony of unknown was weighing her down when a purposeful stalking pierced
through the dense silence. What followed was a gouging angry scrape of her bed
being violently shoved aside. Then a vicious, “Where?!” brutally jangled her
wadded nerves.
    “Bradley, I .. -” The woman, too,
faltered–years of abuse bridling her bravado.
    “I’ve seen you mutterin ’ thin’s to her.” He hurled the
accusation. “Have you already taught the girl how t’ barter for the meat on her
bones? Don’t delude yourself even fo ’ a second, that
I know nothin ’ of those countless bastards who come sniffin ’ aroun ’ your prime ass.”
    The man’s drunken risqué scorched the girl cringing in the
blinding dark.
    “That’s not true! Let go, Brad, please. You’re hurting me ..” The woman sobbed miserably.
    To her earnest plea, the man growled, “You don’t know what hurt
is, yet.”
    Furious crashings commenced from here,
punctuated only by the roars of this livid man and the howls of the frightened
woman.
    A sudden thunderous slamming of the closet door against its
hinges sent Sarah cowering farther within its shallow depth.
    Then she heard a fractured begging, “ P .. Plea.se ..” rise from
somewhere very close.
    The tenacious bond that existed between this woman and herself
wrenched tears of blood from Sarah’s heart. She could literally picture the
broken woman sliding down the closet door in abject loss.
    Even paralysed with fear herself, knowing there was nothing she
could do to help, Sarah wanted to stand beside the
woman, sharing her plight if nothing else. Only the knowledge that her being
discovered by this man would hurt the woman far more than any injury he
inflicted upon her person stopped Sarah from coming out in the open.
    “ Thas all you eva do, beg! ‘M sick an’ tir’d of it.” His slur became
thicker.
    “You’re sick and tired?!” The woman spat scornfully as her
endurance finally snapped.
    No.., no don’t. Sarah nearly cried for her to keep
silent. Provocation of him had always ended things much worse. She prayed the
woman would not prod him further into bestiality.
    Perhaps her prayer was taking longer to reach the Almighty,
since the dreaded happened.
    Unwisely, the woman again shot back. “It’s you, who come
begging, harassing me for every last cent I earn working hard day and
night!”
    “Shut up.” The man horridly ground the two words together.
    She continued, unable to restrain the flood of resentment for
once. “You dare