Instincts

Caroline's Story

If only I had listened to my instincts, then I wouldn't have been in that situation. It all started about six months ago. All I did was go to my room to do my homework. I had no idea it would come to this. I should probably tell you what happened though.

After two years of living with this man, who is supposedly my father, I had learned what his plans for me consisted of. I didn't want to let him complete his plans, so I distanced myself from him. He didn't like that much. That's when things started getting horrifying. He waited for the others to leave and then would beat me. As time grew on, things got worse. After three weeks of him beating me, he started sexually abusing me. At the one month mark, he got so mad that he took me and had me raped. At the two-month mark, I was brought to this terrible place. Now let me explain a little about him. He is much larger in size than I am. The others are proud to call him dad, and daddy. I was adopted into the family, you see, so I was never seen as an equal to them. I was the odd one out. They didn't really enjoy my presence and so nobody cared what happened to me. They didn't even pay attention to the cruel things done to me. I was the slave that nobody noticed. The hut was always a mess, and for that I was beat.

I was stuck in this terrible place for about four months. My instincts told me not to distance myself, yet I didn't listen and so I was left to die in a cold, dark, metal, cage that smelled of iron, vomit, urine, and scat. They would give me a substance to eat, I wouldn't call it food. It was brownish, textured like oatmeal, and tasted like dirt. The first time I ate it, I vomited immediately after I finished; but I was so hungry I kept eating it. It was just barely enough to keep me from starving to death. They gave me enough water to keep me alive, but no more than that.

I had stayed sane because I kept singing, day after day, night after night. The louder the others screamed, the louder I would sing. One day, while I was singing, another prisoner joined in. The voice was familiar, but I couldn't pinpoint who it was. I knew it was a boy, but I don't know where I had heard him before. I had been singing the same song since I got there, hoping, praying that I will eventually get out, and be safe. At one point, I had stopped singing and started crying loudly. The same person who had been singing with me, had called out to me.

"Don't cry Princess. We will make it out! Your voice is gorgeous, never stop singing. You're helping me stay alive, and sane!"

"How am I doing that?" I had asked timidly.

"When you sing, it reminds me how beautiful life is. You remind me of bright red roses, a freshly mowed lawn, the bright blue sky, a puppy, a kitten, and rainbows. You are absolutely wonderful."

"For that," I replied with a new-found calmness, "I will continue to sing."

I had started singing again, and he joined in. After about twenty minutes, he stopped. I eventually stopped, as the guards had opened my cage, and threw someone in there with me. I recognized him.

When they had left, I walked over to him, and he started to sing. He wasn't just singing any song, he was singing the song that I had been singing. He wasn't just anyone, he was my guardian angel who gave me a reason to keep doing what I had loved to do even as things got rough. We then planned our escape. The plan had been to steal some keys, so we could get out of the cage, and the maze-like building. We were then going to go straight to the river that was nearby, which was where we got our drinking water. He was going to take the long walk to the nearest town with me. We were supposed to stick together. Nobody was supposed to leave anyone. But it didn't work like that.

I wasn't sure how we were going to do this exactly but we watched the guards' routines closely. We realized that after they pass the cage 5 times every hour. After the fifth time, they separate to go to their stations. One was stationed right outside of the cage we were in. When he got back to his station, he would always fall asleep. Once we had the path memorized my guardian angel started planning how we were going to get the keys off him. We used the spoons that were given to us at meal times to get a long enough stick so we could reach them, we would test to see if it was long enough while he was napping. As soon as it was long enough, we used a spoon to grab the keys.