On The Run

Chapter One - "Hope and Seventy-Eight Dollars"

Copyright © 2013

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This story, “On The Run”, is copyrighted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This includes all chapters, prologues/epilogues and associated content (i.e. fan-fiction, teasers, and content within blogs, social networks and eReaders). Any unauthorized copying, broadcasting, manipulation, distribution or selling of this work constitutes an infringement of copyright. Any infringement of this copyright is punishable by law.

Please note:

The social care system, the NYPD and other organizations mentioned have been modified for the purpose of this fictional piece of work. They have none or very few similarities to the actual organizations. 

 

Chloe

 

I was very grateful for the creaky step on the staircase; it was like my own personal warning. Robert never bothered to muffle his footsteps when he was coming up to my room, but then again, why would he? It wasn’t like there was much I could do to prevent the inevitable.

He stepped across the threshold; the thick smell of alcohol wafted up my nostrils. With a toothy grin and a salacious smirk, he said, “Chloe. You didn’t come down for dinner. Is something wrong?” I felt the tears filling my eyes, but I held them back. Whenever I cried, he just became more forceful and was anything but sympathetic. Knowing what was coming, I hoped my stubbornness would bring on the beatings, until he knocked me out.

And it did.

 

That was the norm for me. Robert was always drunk; it was the one constant. And when he was, he got violent, making Steph and I victims of his wasted state. Me, more than Steph, well, because he seemed to like to play around with me. When I tried to defend myself, he’d knock me out. And when I’d curl up underneath the bed, if he found me – that was just double the trouble.

The first time it happened, I had barely been with them for about five months, and I was just getting accustomed to the neighborhood and the environment in general. They were made my foster parents until a more permanent placement could be made for me – yeah, right. Robert had accidentally – I say accidentally, because I’d like to think no one plans these things – walked in on me getting dressed, in his drunken stupor, and ever since then, my life has been the worst possible version of hell; I became his number one obsession. It took everything I had in me to keep fighting.

But everything I had was diminishing.

I woke up sore the next morning, but fully clothed, and Steph was there, watching me. She'd always turned a blind eye whenever Robert started to get his way with me, and it was almost worse than what he did to me. But, I guess her fear of him was way too much to overcome, just to defend me. She slapped me around a couple times herself when she was drunk, but other times, she just pretended like I didn’t exist.

My teachers had noticed the bruises and my sunken eyes, and had questioned me, but as I always did, I said was fine. They’d still called child protective services anyway, but it seemed that my social worker had had better things to attend to, and of course, Steph and Robert had accused me of making stuff up, so everything multiplied. The thing about it was, most visits happened more towards the start of my stay, and shifted to more frequent telephone check-ins later on. Since everything was all jim-dandy in the first few months, I guess my social worker decided to sit back and relax.