Bonus Chapter - Breakage

Sissy had been a normal child. All unicorns and rainbows in pink dresses.

Sissy had been a normal teenager. First kiss at eleven, first kiss with feeling at 14, first abortion a year later.

Sissy had been a normal twenty-something. Student debt, boring nine-to-five, married at 24, divorced with a kid at 28.

Sissy started her thirties by losing it. She grabbed a change of clothes, emptied her bank account at the ATM, pocketed the 980 pounds, bought a train ticket with cash, and left her son to be found by neighbours when the smell of his rotten body got too bad after three days.

When she arrived in Liverpool, she went by her full first name and made up a last name. Not many people wanted her full name anyway. The landlord wanted cash in advance. The pimp wanted his cut and to do regular quality control. The police…she avoided the police.

Cecilia wasn’t a normal thirty-something. She could barely hold a conversation, but the men she interacted with didn’t want to talk anyway. She had once dreamt of leaving it all behind, of starting a new life somewhere warm. Now she had started a new life, but the demons lurking in the shadows wouldn’t keep quiet, whispering kill, kill, kill all night long. She knew she had to keep quiet, or they would come for her, but she didn’t remember who they were.

It had been a long August evening, serving customers for pocket change on the side of the road. Cecilia was so tired she dropped into bed without even undressing, falling asleep instantly despite the demons tittering from under the bed. As time tuned into the earliest morning, even with no clock showing 5:03 in sight, a dream snuck up on her. “Want to get rid of the demons?” She didn’t need anything more. “Yes, yes, yes!”