The doors slammed shut. The light disappeared. Still, I kept staring into the darkness, praying Father would return and pull me back into the world I knew.
He didn't.
I eventually fainted.
Some time later, I woke to the loud creak of the doors opening. Two men entered. Their clothes were dirty, their expressions uglier than anything I'd seen in my life. When their eyes fell on me, they dragged me out of the container. My body felt too numb to resist. They carried me to a car. Two other men in suits blindfolded me and we drove for what felt like half an hour. By then, my senses had fully returned.
When the blindfold came off, I saw the largest mansion I had ever seen. It was as big as this brothel. Inside, everything looked beautiful, luxurious, sparkling. For a moment, I thought I had stepped into a king's palace.
And on top of the grand spiral staircase, wearing a robe, stood the powerful man who had shaken hands with Father.
He blinked once, then walked down toward me. The men who brought me left. He untied my hands and legs himself, carefully, almost gently. He removed the plaster from my mouth as if I were something fragile.
Maybe I should have run, but I followed him upstairs instead.
I know exactly why. He had an unnatural charm, something that softened my fear, something that pulled me along like a thread.
Upstairs, he led me to a room and locked the door behind us.
The next moments are ones I do not describe. I will never describe them. What I faced in that room was the beginning of the darkest chapter of my life.
I only remember the fear, the helplessness, the feeling of being trapped inside a nightmare that refused to end. I remember wanting to scream and finding no voice. I remember the coldness of that room swallowing every part of me.
When it was over, he left me there on the bed.
He laughed before closing the door.
Something inside me shattered.
When I finally regained enough strength to move, I ran. I stumbled out of the room and down the stairs. He was sitting on the sofa in the living hall, laughing at a comedy show on the television, as if nothing had happened, as if he had not destroyed someone's life moments earlier.
Every memory of my father, everything I had loved, everything I had lost, everything I had suffered until then flooded through me. Rage, grief, shame, guilt, hatred, all twisted together until I could not think straight.
I crept into the kitchen, grabbed a knife, and returned to the hall. I approached him from behind, gripped the knife with all my strength, and struck.
He turned at the last moment. The blade plunged into his shoulder instead of his neck. Blood gushed instantly. He roared in pain and tried to stand, but I yanked the knife free, and he screamed again.
This time he hit back. His punch knocked the air from my lungs. I flew across the room and crashed to the floor. When I stood again, coughing blood, I reached for the knife that had fallen from my hand. He kicked my legs out from under me. My face hit the ground. Then he kicked me again. And again.
I lost count of how many times.
He beat me until I could not move. When he saw that I was alive but helpless, he finally stopped and staggered upstairs, clutching his bleeding shoulder.
That gave me a chance.
I crawled to the knife, hid it under my body, and lay still, pretending to remain unconscious.
After some time, he returned with a mobile phone. I was lying on my side, so he nudged me with his foot, forcing me onto my back. He thought I had given up. He lowered his guard.
The moment I saw an opening, I drove the knife into his foot with everything I had left.
The blade went straight through his foot, the tip glinting on the other side. Even I felt the pain of it for a moment, but compared to everything boiling inside me, compared to the terror and betrayal, it was nothing. My anger steadied my hands.
I gripped the handle and began to pull. He shrieked, a sound that rattled through the walls. The knife had gone in deep, and it refused to come free, but desperation gives strange strength. I pulled until it tore out in a rush.
He lashed out, kicking me with his other leg. The blow barely registered. Before he could recover, I drove the knife into his thigh.
His scream this time was so loud I thought my ears would burst. I didn't stop.
I yanked the blade free once more, raised it, and plunged it into his abdomen. Warm blood spilled over my hands, over my clothes, over the floor. He collapsed, the life draining out of him, his breaths turning ragged and shallow. Then he stopped moving altogether, his body falling heavily beside mine.
Had I been able to remove the knife from his stomach, I think I would have stabbed him again. And again. But it stayed lodged inside him, buried too deep.
Even in that nightmare scene, something bizarre caught my attention, something that twisted the knife deeper into my mind than his body ever felt. His manhood still held a trace of the same vile energy he had used to destroy me. Seeing it, something inside me snapped, and I stamped on him, on the last remnant of his arrogance.
Only when everything from him fell still did I step back.
For a moment I simply stood there, drenched in his blood. When Grandma died, my heart broke. I cried until I could cry no more. But seeing him dead on the floor… the feeling was entirely different.
My hands began to tremble. My heart thudded painfully. Fear, real fear, coiled around my ribs.
That was when his phone rang.
The sudden sound nearly made me scream. My mind, still fogged and shaking, forgot how to use it, even though I'd only learned a few hours earlier. Instead of turning it off, I accidentally answered. A voice crackled through the line. Panic took over and I threw the device across the room, watching it shatter against the wall.
Even then, a small part of me stayed strangely calm, the same part my school friends teased when they called me an old lady. That quiet part pushed through the terror and whispered what I needed to do.
Move. Now.
I stumbled back upstairs, into the room where everything had begun, and searched the wardrobe. I grabbed a coat and pants—anything that fit well enough to hide my body. In another shelf, I found a set of watches with glowing dials. All of them showed the same exact time: 8:34. They were broken, but I pocketed ten of them anyway. Beside them lay a box containing a car key.
I opened the next wardrobe hoping for more valuables, but it was filled with tools I couldn't name. Time was slipping; I grabbed what I could and ran.
The mansion's garage held a car unlike anything I'd seen before. I took it, hands shaking as I turned the key, and drove. Through the woods. Onto the road. Up the hill. Down the hill. I drove until the fuel tank ran dry.
By then, the beautiful machine looked like nothing more than crushed metal. I left it behind and stumbled on foot.
Three days passed with me running barefoot. Hunger gnawed at me until I finally sold the watches, ten of them for a single gold coin. I didn't know each one was worth at least that much by itself.
I ran again. Buses, cabs, walking, hiding, collapsing, running again. I ate whatever I found. Slept wherever my legs failed me. Bought a dress, wore it until it fell apart, bought another.
Every day, one thought echoed through my skull: Run. Run as far as you can. Don't look back.