"this tainted love you've given,
I give you all a boy could give you,
take my tears and that's not nearly all,
oh, tainted love,
tainted love."
Hawkins was a place where nothing happened. Everything was routine. High school football ga...
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THE GIRL TREMBLED in the corner of her room, her cell. Her knees were brought to her chest and her thin, frail arms held them tight as she rocked slowly. Her slender fingers curled into her tangled, short hair and pulled harshly. When her fingers pulled away, strands of dark hair were curled around the brown fingers. Her dark eyes stared fearfully at the window where Mallory stood frozen in shock.
Mallory had expected the room to be bare like number eleven but that wasn't the case. There was still a bed but in the far corner of the room were four small towers of books, stacked precariously. There were torn pages from picture books stuck to the walls, and a few drawings, though they weren't very good. And in the corner, a scared teenage girl. Mallory would have mistaken her for a child considering how thin and frail she was. But the files indicated that the girl was far from weak.
The words from the file should have acted as a warning to Mallory. Dangerous. Killer. Deadly. But they didn't. Mallory saw past them to the scared, helpless girl in front of her. She couldn't leave her there. So she pressed the key card to the keypad beside the door to the room and her heart fell when the light flashed green. Her father was allowed in this room, he had probably been in this room.
The strange girl's eyebrows furrowed at the sight of an unfamiliar face and her tense shoulders deflated, though they quickly tensed again when Mallory took a step into the room and towards her. Mallory raised her hands in surrender and quirked the corner of her mouth at the girl in an attempt at an awkward, friendly smile.
"I'm not going to hurt you," Mallory reassured her, though the girl was still shaking and she even whimpered.
As Mallory slowly got closer, the girl curled closer into herself and her trembling lips pressed together, determined not to cry in sheer terror. Mallory's heart broke for the girl. She could only imagine all the horrendous torture people like her father had put her through. And she didn't want to imagine.
"I'm not going to hurt you," Mallory repeated but the girl shook her head furiously with another whimper. It was clear she had heard those words before and they meant nothing to her.
Mallory crouched to meet her line of vision and she lowered her hands to rest on her thighs. The girls now sat only a couple of meters apart now, their dark eyes scanning the other. Up closer, Mallory could see how cracked and dry her lips were, how dark the circles under her eyes were and how malnourished her skin looked. Her eyes moved to the marks on the wall near her head. It looked like she had dragged her fingernails down the wall. Her eyes trailed the entire room, noticing the way the torn pages of children's books were glued clumsily to the walls. They must have been covering up more scratches with happy, colourful illustrations. But the children's books in the other corner were intact, although their spines were clearly worn from use.
"I know you can understand me," Mallory challenged her gently, finally meeting the girl's gaze once again. "I'm going to help you, I promise."
To her surprise -and satisfaction- the girl's eyes softened. Mallory wasn't sure entirely what she understood, but hoped that she at least recognised the word help. That was all she needed to know, all that Mallory cared about in that moment. Helping her. Tentatively, Mallory offered her hand to the girl.
