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to her knees.
    Am I going crazy?
    She wanted answers. Needed them.
    The image on her chest meant something. It wasn’t just some cancerous growth or mutant bruise – it was a sign, it had to be.
    “Tell me, please. What do you want?”
    Clutching the photo to her heart, as if it were her lifeblood, she saw…
      The little girl screams and tears are flowing down from her eyes as the man starts forward, eyes glowing with evil lust. “I have something for you,” he croaks. He digs into the bag and pulls out an old rag and a knife. The little girl screams and begs the man to leave her alone. She tries to run, but the man grabs her by her golden hair and punches her in the face. Sobbing now, the little girl lies still on the mattress, while the man shoves the rag into her mouth. He clutches the knife in his hand and with his free hand, undoes his pants, freeing his erect penis. “I have something else for you. Something you’ll really enjoy.” He grins and laughs and kneels down, pulling the little girl’s nightgown up around her waist. “Don’t worry, this won’t hurt. Just stay quiet and it’ll all be over soon…”
    She is the girl. She’s hurting, scared and afraid. She knows the bad man that’s been hurting her and touching her. But she doesn’t want to think about that now. As the bad man presses down on her, she squeezes her eyes shut and thinks of Mommy and Daddy and Sammy and, yes, even her rotten brother Craig. Of last summer when they all went to the beach and swam and played volleyball and Mommy kept on hitting the ball into the water. She made Daddy go in and get it. Sammy was running around chasing the gulls, silly doggy.
    As the pain rips through little Amanda, she keeps a firm hold of her photo and tries to block everything out. Everything except the good memories. Like the day she took the photo. The one she managed to grab before the bad man had taken her. The one that he hasn’t found yet, because she keeps it hidden, keeps it folded and hidden so the bad man won’t find it and tear it up. She clutches the photo hard and tries to remember the day, the very first time Daddy let her use his camera and Daddy and Mommy and Craig all stood outside their house while she waited for them to stop kidding around so she could take the picture. Even Sammy managed to stay still long enough for her to take the picture. “Cheese,” she had said, then pressed the little button. After they had gotten the photos back, Daddy had said that hers was the best one out of them all and he let her keep it in her room, beside the bed, which is where it stayed until the bad man came. But she still has it and keeping it close to her heart makes her feel that Mommy and Daddy are close and that everything is going to be okay. They are going to come and take her away, because the mattress stinks and she wants to go home, away from all the fairies and elves and magic wands…
    Julia was awoken by a soft rocking and somebody speaking her name. When she opened her eyes, she at first saw only darkness. Then a light, shining down upon her.
    “Jules, hey Jules.”
    It was Claire, crouching down beside her.
    The stench hit her next – a disgusting, but familiar odor of beer, piss and dust. But most of all it was the stench of death and decay.
    She sat up and saw she was in the abandoned house, surrounded by fairies and elves and wands. She was on the mattress, her body covered with a jacket, but she was naked underneath.
    “What happened? Why did you come here?”
    Julia was startled by the unfamiliar voice. “Who’s there?”
    Two people stepped into the beam of the flashlight. Two very familiar people.
    “Jules, this is Amanda Waters’s parents – Heather and Sebastian.”
    Julia gazed up at the two people. They looked different than the picture – older, not as attractive.
    “That’s what I was trying to tell you on the phone. The photo you found, it was of Amanda’s family. After I got home from our lunch, I dug