Red

Chapter One

Chapter One

When I was five, I laid in the blood of my mother, and wept on cold, unfamiliar steps. This is the earliest memory I have. I remember the copper-like smell of the sticky substance and the shaky, ragged, wet sounds of her final breaths as she sang to me a song to stop me from crying. In a voice fit for an angel, even in that moment, she whispered sweet words into my ear that I would rely on heavily for the rest of my life.

To say that this moment did not affect me for the rest of my life would be a fallacy. Every day when I wake up, I vividly remember the feeling of slick skin, coated thickly in blood, sweat, and tears. I see it as a metaphor, of the sort. It's as though her strength and bravery in her last moments had transferred over to me and that now I was the carrier of this strength, and its consequences.

To be a strong woman in a society where woman are considered to be weak, is almost comparable to murder in this world. It has earned me a lot of beatings, and I have been sold several times. Of course, there have been many times when several of my owners just...died. From a "spontaneous accident" the coroner's report always says.

I have no qualms about killing men who deserve it.

If I were doing it for my own safety, I would not have killed them. I do not worry about myself, for I shall only be here for a short while, so it does not matter to me if that short time here had been cut shorter.

I kill those men for the little girls I see in their cages at the far end of the hall, the ones who are barely old enough to sell. I kill them for those girls who weep so loudly for their mothers, the ones who have no idea what they're getting into. The ones who have no idea how hard it is to be a girl.

The little girls I see every time I get sold remind me of myself.

#

The first time I got sold, it was my ninth birthday. The legal minimum age for a girl to be sold is 9, so if you're in an orphanage, like I was, you were kicked out when you were 9. The state had recently begun to cut back funding on things like infrastructure, schools, and orphanages, so the money was tight at that point in time. I had always been exceptionally beautiful, so the leader of the orphanage, we called her Mistress, knew that they would make a decent amount of money for me.

I remember that day like it was yesterday. It was a cold October day, with freshly fallen snow all around us. The street was silent, no one walking down the street, or playing in their driveways like they usually do in the suburbs of New Hampshire.

The rickety old car's heating system had broken down, so the only sounds were the rumble of the engine and the loud chattering of my teeth.

Irritated, Mistress turned to me with a sneer on her face. "Could you stop that? You're giving me a head ache." I narrowed my eyes in anger and snapped at her.

"I'll stop chattering my teach when you turn this car around and don't sell me like I'm a worthless piece of meat." I scowled at her and chattered my teeth harder.

Her eyes softened at me and she looked away at the road. "You know why we had to do this, don't you?" I crossed my arms and leaned back in my chair, still glaring at her. "No," I muttered.

She sighed. "Yes you do Red. I've told you this three times in this car ride alone."

"Well, I don't get why I can't become a teacher or own an orphanage like you. Why are girls sold and bought? Why can't guys? Boys are stupid anyway. Girls deserve respect and all of the same stuff the guys get."

Mistress sucked in a sharp breath and pulled into the parking lot of the auction building. She turned to me with haunted eyes, tightly grabbed my arm, and whispered lowly to me. "Listen to me, and listen to me good. Do not ever, ever say that again, you hear me? You're an adult now. Remember all of those warnings I gave you when you acted out of line? Well now, people aren't going to give you warnings anymore. They're going to do horrible, horrible things to you. Knowing you, you'll probably talk so much that you'll be dead in a year." She threw my arm away from her in disgust and stepped out of the car. I meekly followed after, clutching my only possession in my hand, a red handkerchief from my mother.

My head spun in fear of the unknown. Horrible things? What kind of horrible things was she talking about? I was only nine after all.

When we stepped into the warm air of the facility, I let out a breath of relief, but soon I realized that what I was seeing was literally Hell on Earth.

#

In all actuality, I should have listened to her advice. The painful blur of broken bones, bruised ribs, and forced smiles that had now become my life could have been avoided if I had just kept my mouth shut.

But, I never was good at being quiet. One of the burdens I carry from inheriting my mother's personality is a quick temper and a quick wit to match my fiery red hair. When I had something to say, I said it, no matter the consequences. Of course, this has gotten me in trouble several times, as women are to "be seen and not heard". I, of course, am an exception to that rule. I can't be missed, with the fire atop my hair and burning in my eyes, and my sharp tongue cannot be ignored.