on the fourteenth of november 1992, timothy and eloise lewis rushed to the a&e department of john radcliffe hospital in oxford, england. at 9:02 pm, they were blessed with a beautiful baby girl by the name of KATE SARAH.

she cried when she was born, loud and angry, but she barely cried afterwards. those beautiful blue eyes refused to weep.

mother was thin, dark hair greying before its time, and cared too much what everyone thought. father drank, an angry drunk, was potbellied like a pig, and didn’t give a shit.

kate never liked her parents. she knew you were supposed to love them, but even as a small child, she bordered on despising them. timothy was a handsy brute, and eloise stood by, watching it happen, making sure no one would find out what happened behind closed doors. 

those closed doors were like bars of a cage, holding kate in, keeping her mouth slammed shut. timothy liked to touch, find the places of the child’s body that should not be known for years, make them his own       -  leave bruises where he gripped too hard, or where she struggled, or where she simply said no. kate grew up with broken jaws and arms and ribs, bruised eye sockets and wrists and pelvis. the few times she had to go to the hospital, she convinced them that she attended kickboxing and the boys were a little too brutal.

eloise sent her to a catholic school, as if it would wipe clean the sins her father left within her. leave her a clean slate for prayer & reflection       -  bullshit. 

                CHILDREN, OBEY YOUR PARENTS IN EVERYTHING, FOR THIS PLEASES THE LORD. the bible, collosians, 3:20.
                         subtext: let him touch you, let him fuck you, let him do what he wants, for this pleases the lord.

                FUCKING BULLSHIT. kate lewis, fucking bullshit, 24/7.

she knew she was gay at eleven. didn’t know what it was called but knew it. girls were pretty and lovely and boys were just bullies or allies. there were no friends, never in her childhood. if they got too close, they’d find out.

( her father had always told her how horrible those children’s homes are, how anything he does would be multiplied tenfold if she ended up there, how her real family are rich and happy, how she’d be so much worse off if       - )

one friend. the girl in the library. dylan told kate he was a boy, and kate told him she was gay, when they were fourteen. they turned around and continued to play mario kart. kate gave him his name. they hung out and smoked cigarettes and drank whiskey and dylan never once asked about the bruises. he knew, but it was always unspoken. he’d hug you when he saw terror in a black-ringed eye. you thanked him for that.

wandering hands syndrome was the name of kate’s father.

her real family came round for dinner one night at dylan’s. they were sixteen/seventeen, sent to dylan’s room while the adults laughed & talked & drank. 

and then the laughter stops. the best friends hear heavy, stomping soles, the smash of a steel-capped boot marking dylan’s door. the hurried panic of dylan’s long hair being grabbed, of him being pulled away, of kate having no power to stop any of it. her own father comes into the room too quickly, pins her down, gives her two black eyes and a split lip. whispers that he’d fuck the bullshit out of her while she sobs & screams on dylan’s mattress. she screams she’s sorry. but it’s not for her fuckbrained father ( she’s got fuck all to apologise for to him ), it’s for dylan.

timothy drags her out, slams the car door behind her. they have a long conversation that night, him sat on the edge of kate’s bed, her tucked up beneath the covers willing him to just fucking die.

eloise is crying in the kitchen, he says. you’ve made your mother cry, he says. don’t you wonder what people will think, he says, of our only daughter being a faggot ?

she feels his hands, beneath the covers. she bites her tongue and wishes for the morning to come quicker.

her phone rings four times, all from dylan, all left unanswered. it’s been her mayday to him for years, means meet in the park please help me. but this is bigger. he’s never done it before, and she knows it’s time.

she packs her school bag with clothes and steals her father’s least used credit cards from the jacket he left in her room, puts on her school uniform and leaves early without breakfast. before eloise & timothy have woken up. posh fucking twats.

the park’s only round the corner, and their spot is tucked away behind the bushes. dylan’s slept there. she sits & slides a cigarette between his trembling lips. they don’t move until sunset, when she burns her school clothes for warmth.

they live rough for a while. six weeks maybe. watching the clouds and the stars, walking during the day and finding themselves nowhere in particular. kate cuts dylan’s hair with nail scissors. it looks like shit but she did it, so he gushes over it. kate uses her father’s credit cards to buy food, and watches as dylan doesn’t eat it. he’s still getting thinner by the day.

they’re sleeping by the river that christmas eve, in sleeping bags and hoodies. comfortable in discomfort. until they’re not.

they’re both tranquilized, and dragged away.

wake up in this lab thing.

& this guy - he’s injecting both of them with this… green shit that looks like hulk diarrhoea. about an hour after every shot, he slices them up, all up and down the stomach and the neck and the arms and the legs. watches their healing. then he starts again.

they’re always awake, always paralysed. the green stuff makes kate feel heavier by the second. their kidnapper’s obviously not seeing the progress he wants to see &      -

it’s the new year when she watches when he slices dylan’s throat.

she can’t struggle, but she can cry & scream. he’s dragged away, floor painted with blood. & when the scientist returns, she’s better.

emotional stress triggers the response, he mutters into his stupid fucking voice recorder.

she heals when he next cuts her, fibres reassembling around the wound. he lets her wake up but keeps her tied down. tells her how she could have saved her best friend if she’d only been stronger. 

this is training.

the knots are untied from her arms and legs when she seems controllable. there’s an adjoining empty room, her weak body thrown to the metal floor. she struggles to breathe. the one metal chair is broken in two with barely a thought, & he fucking smiles.

six months. six months of this. six months until she’s strong enough. for what?

to kill him.

she phases out, just like he said. she’s blurry & unfocused through his eyes, and he can’t see for shit where she is. he lunges for empty space. she crushes his sternum.

there’s no security. she runs away & leaves him in a pool of his own blood.

everything is loud. she’s heard nothing but the scientist’s machines & his voice for so long that the sound of a car rev sends her stumbling towards the ground with her head in her hands. the lab was near the river, a part she’s never seen before, and she lies in the grass of the riverbank, her body out of focus and misshapen, her hands covered in blood, and cries silently until the sun comes up.