“Thorns of Yesterday” is a completed manuscript that was finished back in 2020 but has not seen the light of day until now. One of the main reasons that it has not been released is because of the content.
The story deals with a girl who escapes a child sex-trafficking ring then years later, seeks revenge on the man who had kidnapped her. The original version was not Sapphic, but I am in the process of changing it up to fit my demographic—although, the content will be very hard to stomach. While I will not go into graphic details when she was a child, the memories of this now-woman will play a significant role in her healing.
Due to the content, I will be placing this story behind a paid-wall. This prologue sets up the stage and is available for everyone to read as it doesn’t contain tramatic content.
If you’d like to follow along, I suggest you upgrade your membership. With this extremely big discount, its hardly anything to upgrade.
August 26, 1989
The teen’s eyes adjusted easily to the surrounding darkness. She lived in the darkness most of the time in this damp basement. On the far end of the large room piled with dirty mattresses, there were two doors; one was for a man named Rio. The other led to a small hallway used to visit Señor Rivera or his friends.
She could maneuver her way through the bedchamber without waking the others, doing it often. She stepped between the mattresses on the floor with other sleeping girls her age or younger. Any noises led to Rio coming in to quiet anyone or everyone, by any means necessary.
The teen opened the door to the hallway. A pungent odor hit her nostrils immediately. In the bathroom, with no door for privacy, sat a frail red-headed girl, only about ten years old, on the toilet, doubled over in pain. With a glance behind her into Rio’s room, she found it empty.
She peered back into the darkened bedchamber with a hand pressed into her private parts; she needed to urinate. The last time the only bathroom for thirty young girls was in use, one of them squatted in the room’s corner. Rio beat the girl to a bloody pulp and forced her to lick the urine from the floor.
She wanted neither, but if she didn’t do something soon, she knew she’d feel the wrath of Rio. There was another bathroom. It was just behind the next closed door. She had used it multiple times on her way to see Señor Rivera.
The youth of the teenage girl still had some curiosity they hadn’t killed yet. With a turn of the handle, the door opened. The girl’s eyes widened. She glanced into the lit hallway, eyeing the room she knew was the extra toilet. If she could get in and out without Rio noticing, she’d be home free. With a tiptoe, she stepped into the hallway and pulled the door closed behind her.
Creeping down the hall, she walked to the restroom. Not knowing the consequences for being in the hallway without supervision, she braved it. This was an emergency. She had to pee. Before entering, she peeked around the corner to see if anyone was coming, but what she saw was the bright light from the street.
Daylight and an open door. No one else.
Urinating took a backseat as she tiptoed around the corner, keeping an eye out for Señor Rivera, Rio, or any of the other men with guns.
Empty.
She stepped in the doorway. Looked around. No one.
The teenage girl ran.
She didn’t care that she was dirty. Or naked. She just ran.
When she hit the street from the back alley, she turned left. Running wasn’t something she had ever done before. Her legs just knew what needed to be done. She hung a right, then left, then right again. People around her were a blur as she zigzagged away from where she had lived her entire life, or what she remembered of it.
People jumped out of the way of the barefoot, skinny teenage girl who had urinated in the midst of running. Huffing and puffing with her arms pumping as if her life depended on it. And it did.
If she were caught, Rio and Señor Rivera would kill her.
The underdeveloped teen didn’t know where she was, how to get anywhere, or even where she should go… except away.
She ran. Zig. Zag. Left. Right. Run.
Sweat ran down her face and chest, over her immature breasts. Her legs hurt. Her feet were worse. She had stepped on something that made her want to scream out in pain, though she couldn’t stop. If she went left, then right, then left again, and continued that pattern, she’d never go back into the darkness. She would never return to Señor Rivera or the men who had touched her.
Sirens blared.
They seemed louder as she ran, though the young woman didn’t know what they were. As she swung a quick right, she stopped dead in her tracks. Five police cars and ten officers had guns pointed at her. She had never seen a policeman; she didn’t know they were the good guys. Only guns were bad. They had killed some of her bunkmates—the ones who disobeyed.
She didn’t want to die, or did she? She didn’t know what was worse: returning to Señor Rivera or sleeping for eternity.
What she knew and what they had programmed into her undeveloped mind was when a gun came out, she needed to drop to the ground. The autopilot told her to get on the ground and wait. She did.
She pressed her stomach and face to the ground then waited for the word. Levantanse.
It took her quite a few times of being kicked to understand it meant to get up. Yet these armed persons had not cleared her. No one said the word. Instead, two officers dropped their guns and ran to her side.
“Are you okay? What’s your name? What are you running from?” a female officer asked.
A bunch of questions fired in her direction, but the shaken girl remained quiet as they put handcuffs on her wrists and placed her in the back of the black and white car.
Panic set in. Her breathing, still heavy from running as fast as she could, didn’t calm for fifteen minutes, even though she had no concept of time. Never knowing when one day ended and another one began.
#
In the hands of the police officers, they led the girl into the Miami police station and took her into an interrogation room. Two officers entered the room with her, motioning her to sit down at the table. They offered her water, which the girl took and gulped down immediately.
While out on the street, a female officer caught a glimpse of a familiar-looking tattoo on her arm. Now inside, she could see it better. An odd geometric symbol with a Roman numeral date. It had only been seen on dead bodies before now. Ones that had been discarded, usually around the age of eighteen. Occasionally there were younger ones, shot in the head with bruises all over.
This was a lead.
Hoping no one else noticed it, the female officer returned with clothes that would hide this evidence. “Here. Let’s cover you up.”
The girl dressed without a word.
“What’s your name, sweetheart?” Officer Angela Ortega asked the scared girl.
The girl said nothing.
“Do you know your name?”
In a barely audible voice, the girl mumbled. “No.”
“You don’t know your name?” Ortega confirmed. The girl shook her head. “Do you know how old you are?”
Another shake of her head.
At that moment, Officer Ortega knew this was a kidnapping and sex trafficking victim based on the tattoo. Based on the age, it might have been possible this child had been either born into the cartel or brought in as an infant.
“I’m a police officer. We are the good guys, and we want to help you,” Ortega stated, using a soft and comforting tone. She’d need to tiptoe around this girl so that her fellow officers didn’t intervene. Doing so could endanger this girl because there was a mole in the precinct, though she didn’t know who.
Innocent. Scared. And on the verge of tears. By the looks of the girl, Angela knew she was malnourished. Her skinny torso suggested she lacked exercise. No muscle development. Her age confused her. She may have been somewhere around fifteen or sixteen.
“I’ll be right back, sweetie.”
Angela locked the room and hurried to her sergeant’s office. The police force had been a boys’ club until a new sergeant cleaned up the precinct.
“Hey, Sergeant. The young girl running naked downtown is in interrogation room two. She has a tattoo on her arm. A Roman numeral date and symbol. Like the other John and Jane Does popping up.”
The sergeant looked up. “Rivera’s? A live one?”
“I think so. She doesn’t know her name or her age. Malnourished. I wish we knew how long she had been running and from where. If she is an escapee, it’s not safe to take her back out there to hunt down a location.”
“True. Has anyone else mentioned the tattoo? Anyone else seen it?”
“I don’t think so. I cuffed her so her arm was against her back. She’s wearing a long-sleeved shirt now. That should give us a little time to take her somewhere safe,” Angela told her superior.
“Stay with her. I will get CPS down here as soon as possible.”
Angela left the office and returned to the interrogation room, where she locked the child with another bottle of water and some cookies. When she placed it in front of the girl, she scarfed down the cookies like she hadn’t eaten in days. Angela watched, her heart bleeding for the underage girl who just escaped horror. “You’re safe now. I’m going to make sure you stay that way.”