The bad man did not teach me his rules. He left that to his girls. It started with the one who found me and pointed me out to him. It was continued by the others though. If I had lived in that neighborhood. If I hadn't just been there with my mother every weekend to babysit the one who found me and her brother while her mother worked night shifts, I don't think I would've gotten away. I think he would've made me disappear like he made others disappear. As it was, it took longer for him to break me down into small enough pieces to transport.

I don't blame her for finding me. I don't blame her for bringing me to him. I don't blame her for breaking me. If she hadn't done it, he would've broken her. She was his favorite for a very long time, and falling from that height within the hierarchy he created for us would've been hard. Lots of other girls would've hurt her for the privileges he gave her. She got to choose who she slept with. She mostly only had to sleep with him.

That changed when I showed up, when he realized how much he could hurt me before I'd be too broken to stop, when he realized that I'd rather have the pain than have his hands on me, when he realized how much I would do to keep him just hurting me and not fucking me.

I bought my virginity from that man, and the price I paid was in skin and blood.

In the end though we all paid our prices.

The cost of admission was to follow the rules. This is an account of what some of them were.

You get to decide how much of this is real. You get to decide how much of this is fiction or bullshit or the fractured memories of something that was dismantled by an expert and haphazardly reassembled by people who were more concerned with covering the mess than with being thorough. I can't make that decision for you.

He's dead now.

He is dead.

He is dead, and he will never touch me again.

I think.

I don't know how much of it is real. I will never know if he's actually still out there. I don't know if he's going to fulfill the promise he made to me when I was still a child, before he stole my ability to ever be a child again.

I don't know.    

It is better if you let them fuck you.

If you try to resist, they will hurt you. They will be angry. They will make you pay so that you will not resist next time. They will make the cost of resistance too much for the market to bear. They will do this not only so that you will not be able to afford resistance a second time but so that everyone else will know that they can't even afford it once. If you make them, they will kill you, and it will be you who made them kill you. You knew you had a choice, and you chose this. You chose to say no and to try to make it stick.

And then they'll fuck you anyway. It will be for nothing. It doesn't matter if you cut out chunks of their flesh or gouge out their eyes or even slit their throats, they will still fuck you. They will fuck you and they will bring others, because there is an inexhaustible supply of bad men out there who will step up and finish the job if a girl gets out of her place. They can't afford to let even one of us slip. It's bad for business.

If you let them fuck you, they'll usually just go to sleep. If you do it good, they may even be nice to you until they get tired of you. Most of them will call you a whore and make you know that they only fucked you because you wanted it. Even when you're fighting them, they'll insist that you want it. That, like the fucking, will not change. At least they won't hit you though, as long as you're fucking them and making them think that you're the only person they want to fuck. That you'll only fuck others if they tell you to, or because someone, usually a man, made you. It's them you want to fuck. It's still better than the fight.

If you fuck a person who is not them, they may hurt you still, so it's important that they know that you only like it when they do it. If they find out that you've said this to someone else, they will hurt you and fuck you harder to remind you where you're supposed to be. They will punish you with sex.

Sex is a tool. Sex is a punishment. Sex is the only token that you have of any value, but remember that they have other girls who they can get that from too.

Maybe when they're doing that they'll leave you alone for a bit. It's not so bad.

The more of them you fuck, the more of them who are going to seek you to fuck. You get a reputation for being a reliable source of sex. This is good, because it gives you power, but bad, because it's more likely to make them angry at each other, which they will take out on you. You are easier to attack than another of the bad men. They need each other to get girls.

It's a balancing act. A tight rope.

Some of them will like you better if you resist. They are not the sort of people you should be cultivating. They are bad.

Many of them will like you best when you're new. They like corrupting something good. If you can maintain that vibe, that sense that you are a good, pure thing, then you'll get these. They can be good or horrible. It's a toss up.

Some of them like it when you're used up. Many of them feel that at that point they can do whatever they want to you, but I need you to know this now. This is an illusion. There is no magic number that makes it so that they can do whatever they want to you.

They always could.

It doesn't matter if you've been had by one men or one hundred men or no men at all. Any of them at any moment can do whatever they want to you. They don't need a single excuse or provocation. You are never safe. Never safe. Never never never never.

And it's easier if you just let them fuck you. It usually doesn't last very long. Then they're tired. They leave you alone.

If you were smart you would've made it so that they wouldn't even look at you, but now you're here, and there's no avoiding it.

No matter what you do, you're fucked. 

I hope this makes you sick. I hope this makes you retch, clutching your sides until you can't stand it anymore, like I did when all of the shards of my memories pulled together into something that I could finally recognize. I hope that it makes tears force themselves out of your eyes like he forced himself down my throat. I hope that there's a lump in your throat, a lump that hurts, that you can physically feel, when you think about this.

I need you to know that i was lucky. I need you to know that I got out and I'm alive, and even though half the time I wish that they'd just killed me, I am so fucking lucky.

I need you to know that there were girls who couldn't get out, and and whether he's alive or dead, there were others there to whisk them away into captivity and hiding, girls who no one cared about when they disappeared.

I need you to know that this happened. I need you to know that as much of it as I can remember I am releasing into the mayhem and that it hurts me to do so.

I need you to embrace your fear and disgust and put it towards the people who deserve it. Not me. Not the girls. The takers. I need you to take that anger, that rage, and that confusion and put it squarely on their shoulders. I need you to push past the lump of shards in your throat and scream your indignation to the world.

No one cares about us. No one cares about us when we're small, and no one cares about us when we've grown. They could kill us all, and they do kill many of us, and no one cares. I need you to care. I need you to fix this. I need you to fix. this.

Don't pretend you didn't see this. Don't pretend that we aren't right here, in front of you, staring at you and making you feel how you have failed us, each and every one of you, sitting in front of your computer or phone, doing nothing. Inaction, apathy, lack of movement, **is an action**. It is direct aid to the takers, who know that they can walk right in front of you and snatch us out from in front of your faces without you doing a single thing.

I need you to be disgusted by this. And then I need you to do something about it.  

It is your fault that you are here.

It is your fault, Rachel, that you are here and that bad things are happening to you.

You made this happen.

You were not smart enough to stop it.

You were not strong enough to stop it.

I know we talked about how this was inevitable and was going to happen no matter what you did.

Now I need you to remember that IF YOU WERE ------ ENOUGH THIS WOULD NOT BE HAPPENING TO YOU.

IF YOU HAD DONE ------ THIS WOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED, AND YOU DIDN'T, AND IT DID.

You are a bad thing.

You are a badness.

You are the reason this is happening.

Not the one who found you. Not the one who groomed you. Not the one who shoved his cock down your throat and ripped your skin and marked you so that everyone would know what you are. Not the ones who paid for you. Not the ones who sold you. Not the ones who turned away to their own lives while you were violated in their sheds and back yards and next door to them.

It is you.

YOU

It is all you.

You're disgusting, Rachel. This is your fault. 

Your body is a wrongness.

It is wrong, Rachel.

Your body is the reason you are here, being harmed.

If you did not have your body, you would be okay.

It is not good enough for people to be nice to you, and you should be ashamed of it. If you looked like me, then you would be treated better.

Also, it's a sexual thing, and that's a wrongness, and that's why they're fucking you.

Your body is your enemy, Rachel. Your body and the sex feelings that you have are what makes you hurt and what is going to make the bad man take you away from everyone you love.

But no one loves you, Rachel. And they don't love you, because of your body.

This is why I started hurting myself so early. This is why I wanted to die. This is why they found me in a bathroom stall with a scarf around my neck when I was 12. I wanted to escape my body. I wanted to walk away from it. I didn't want to feel the eyes of the other people on it, making me remember what I was and what I would always have to be.

I wish I could be normal. I pretend to be normal. I live a relatively normal life. Anyone who interacts with me on any kind of casual or friendly basis wouldn't know. Now they do, and a bunch of them are going to avoid me now, because this kind of shit makes people uncomfortable.

That's how they get you to be quiet about it. That's how they keep doing what they're doing of.

In speaking of which... 

In speaking of which...

Everyone will know.

Everyone will always know what you were here and what you are, and it won't matter why you became that way. All that will matter is that you've been marked and now they can all do whatever they want to you.

I know that I said that it didn't matter what had happened to you and that they always could've done whatever they wanted to you, but that was then and this is now.

Everyone will know that you are a whore.

Every man who looks at you will know that you are a whore and use you as such.

Every other person who looks at you will disdain you.

And if you ever have the poor judgement to try to tell people what happened, they will shun you.

Don't you dare ever tell a soul, because when you do, they will know that it was your fault that it happened. You'll just be confirming what they already knew. That you are a whore. that you have even less worth than they thought you did before.

And they will all know.

And also you were a whore before the bad people found you, and that's why this is happening to you.

But also it's your fault that this is happening to you.

And also everyone will know for the rest of forever amen. 

She said he was her boyfriend when we saw him drive by in his car one day, exploring the streets of the run-down little neighborhood that we were in.

I didn't understand. He was an adult. He couldn't be her boyfriend.

She turned on me and reared and made me know that he was her boyfriend and they were going to get married when he took her away from here.

The implication that I learned later was that this would happen as long as she followed his rules.

What was not implied was that I was not his girlfriend. I was a whore. I was property. Before he even laid a hand on men, I was already lower than dirt.

I'd seen her flirt with the three men who lived next door, and I was confused. I didn't know why they looked at us that way, at me that way. I didn't know why they would look at us that way when they were adults. I didn't know how my mother and her mother could sit on the porch and see them look at her that way and see her talk to them that way and laugh it off.

Girls will be girls. Sexual experimentation is normal in children.

They were not children. They were men.

And I was a wrong thing. 

I always had the sense that it had happened because I'd hit puberty.

I had breasts when I was seven. Small breasts, but breasts.

I already had little hips when I was eight. That was also when I had to start buying special things from the store.

Tampons. They were tampons. Be an adult.

I had the sense that because my body had already acclimated towards this thing, that was why they were hurting me.

I mean, that's not true. Most of the other girls were well before puberty.

I guess it made me a novelty? I don't even know. I can't even guess where their heads were.

I do know that it made the girl who introduced me to the bad man hate me more. She was angry that I was taller than her and that I already had what was the beginning of a woman's body. She was older than me.

It was a bad thing, to be a woman so young. It was a wrong thing, and she made me pay for it.

It took me a really long time to be okay with my body, with the fact that it's curved.

Dad stopped taking me to church-functions at that age, because older men had started making passes at me (without my knowledge or understanding), thinking that I was somewhere in the area of sixteen. I was nine. Dad made them leave me alone.

If he'd still been taking me to weekend church stuff, if he'd felt that it was safe to have me there without the fear that someone would use their hands on me, my mother never would've had the responsibility of taking care of me on weekends.

She never would've taken with me when she went to watch the children of her friend who had to work weekend night shifts.

The girl who she was watching never would've introduced me to those men.

That said, men were already making passes at me, and statistically, it would've happened another way.

I don't think that makes my father feel any better about it. I don't blame him though. My mother, I blame. She watched me with those men who my new friend was flirting with and she told me to my face that it was normal for little girls to start flirting with men around that age and that it was harmless.

She is such a stupid bitch. She brought me there, every weekend, practically gift-wrapped me for those disgusting pieces of shit. Unbelievable.

It's not my fault it happened. It's not the girl's fault it happened. It is the adults around us who were and are to blame. No matter what they all told me. 

Men treat you bad. It's their job. Women are sexually available to men. It's their job.

We played games. We played "house". The end result of "house" is that we were pretend-married to men who were angry that we didn't have everything ready for them at home and who hurt us. That we had been prepared and given to them in marriage. (This included us dressing up in her costumes and putting on make-up as part of the game.) The game progressed into our having multiple children, who were baby dolls. It progressed into us escaping and the men finding us and taking us home and raping us to punish us for leaving.

When she "punished" me for leaving, it was by violating me with the baby dolls.

The implication was that men are like this. It is the way.

Women are used. It is the way.

Even if we were adult women with children, if we tried to leave the system, they would find us. They would find us and kill our children and make us pay for leaving.

I still wake up screaming, thinking that he's in my room.

My boyfriend still has to promise me repeatedly that he's not going to find me.

I know that he's not looking, but part of me thinks that he's still going to kill me.

I'm so scared every day.

Because men hurt you. It is their job.

When women do not do their job, the men have to punish them.

And it is our fault. We made them do it.

Even though it would've happened no matter what we did, because it is their job. 

Being a child is stupid. You should want to be an adult.

Go ahead, Rachel, tell me the things that you like to do. Tell me about the fairy tales that you read. Tell me about your dreams.

I'm going to laugh at them.

They're stupid. You shouldn't want to be a princess.

You should want to be a wife. You should want to go to parties. You should want to go to clubs. You should want to fuck men.

I know that you're nine. I know that I'm only ten. But childhood is stupid. You're stupid for liking it. You would like being an adult better.

My mom says that there are parts of a woman that can only be touched by a man fucking you and that it feels good. I bet you'd like to do that.

No?

Well, you're stupid. That's why I have a boyfriend and you don't. That's why I have friends and you don't. That's why you're a stupid baby and I'm not.

I know that you look like a woman and I still have a child's frame, but you're stupid and a baby.

It's stupid to be a child. Men are better than anything you have as a child.

I'll treat you nicely if you stop being a child.

You should want to be treated like an adult.