Iconoclast -- "Amelia's Dawn"

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Iconoclast -- "Amelia's Dawn"

Amelia's Dawn...by aeon

"Hey, little girl. Want some candy?" A raspy voice leaked out of the alley like steam escaping a broken pipe. Amelia turned and looked. She saw nothing but a shadow within a shadow, but that was enough to tell her that someone was standing a few feet away, holding something out towards her at waist level, so as to partly conceal it.

She debated. She was already late for school, but it wasn't as if that mattered. None of the teachers there cared whether she lived or died. One of seventeen public schools inside the dome, hers wasn't the best or the worst. But it did have the reputation for being located in one of the worst areas of the city. She was supposed to be taking the bus. She'd decided to walk.

She wasn't naive. Quite the opposite, in fact. She assumed the guy was offering one of two things, neither of them candy. Drugs or sex. She'd tried neither before, and now she was suddenly getting the opportunity. She'd be foolish to accept, of course, but even more of a fool to refuse the experience. What would Buddha have been had he not seen poverty and death, after all?

"What did you have in mind?" she asked in a throaty whisper. A slight intake of breath from the shadows indicated surprise from her friend; he'd expected refusal or flight, not an invitation. Knowing she now had the upper hand, she stepped forward and decided to play it sweet and dumb.

"Sure mister, I'd like some candy," she said in her best baby doll voice. "Is it chocolate?" At this point she realized that what he was holding was a knife, so she skipped forward and pressed close against him to catch him off guard. He snarled and grabbed her by the arm. She nearly squealed with glee, but luckily he clapped a hand over her mouth, muffling her laughter. He was so pathetic, she realized. His grip was all wrong, and his stance was such that a well-timed kick to the back of his knee was all it would have taken for her to escape. Dad had showed her how. But she didn't want to break free. She wanted to be broken free. Broken from routine. Broken from boredom. Broken from childhood. So she struggled a bit to keep up the pretense as he carried her lithe little body down into the alley away from the light.

"You want candy little girl, you're going to get candy." Confidence building in direct proportion to the shadows around him, he pulled her arms behind her back and pushed her down on the ground, tearing her blouse in the process.

"OK mister, I'll be good. Just don't hurt me, OK?" Thankfully, it was too dark for him to see her mischievous, pixieish grin.

"How old are you little girl?" he asked, trying unsuccessfully to fumble with the buttons on her blouse while holding her arms behind her back. Realizing he had no choice, he let go of her left arm and set his knife down on a trash can, then reached around in front of her and tore open her blouse, roughly fondling her tiny breasts. It wasn't drugs he was going to give her, she knew for certain at last.

"Ten," she said. "I'm ten years old."

"T...t...ten? Just a little girl..." He mumbled to himself, half-frightened and half-excited by the possibilities.

"I'm not a little girl though," she said, trying to hide the anger in her voice. "They pushed me ahead in school. I'm..."

"Shut up," he said. "Just be quiet." His breathing grew heavier, and he pushed her down to her knees, hard. Hand fumbling beneath her kilt, he fumbled for a moment before realizing she wasn't wearing any underwear. His pulse grew even quicker as he pushed her onto her hands and knees.

"Don't hurt me mister," she repeated, trying not to wiggle in anticipation of what she knew was coming. After all, half the girls in her class had "done it" already, and she wanted to be able to tell them about this at lunch. Then maybe they'd accept her into their little clique.

A hand clasped the back of her neck, pressing her face to the ground. Her head began to throb from the pressure. Then he fumbled around her backside for a moment, positioning himself. She briefly thought about changing her mind. And then...

It Hurt.

"Stop," she said. He ignored her, panting, thrusting, slamming her head into the ground with each thrust. "Please stop," she said again, more firmly, voice tinged with fearless pain. The pain in her head grew to a dull screeching noise, nearly blinding her.

IT HURTS.

"You're hurting me," she said.

"I know," he said. "I don't care. Now shut up, bitch."

STOP.

"Stop or...I'll kill you," she said.

He ignored her and laughed.

She screamed as her vision went blood red...

***

"Amelia Dawn, please come to the nurse's office." The intercom woke her from her stupor, and she only dimly realized that she was in class. Shaking off a haze, she suddenly realized that somehow, semi-consciously, she'd walked to school. The eleventh grade class whispered and muttered, but she ignored them and walked shakily out the door, brushing remnants of dirt and blood from her scabbed knees and rubbing her screaming, pounding temples. Ms. Stevens simply looked annoyed at the interruption; in her eyes, the little genius bitch had come to English 301 fifteen minutes late and was now leaving a half hour early. It didn't matter why.

Stares followed her as she walked down the long hallway, the noise in her head throbbing, and she realized it was mostly because her blouse was torn and her arms and legs were covered in blood. She ignored them all and focused on the door at the end of the hallway, growing, growing...then she was inside, and someone had her up on a white table and there were whitewashed nurses and black-coated policemen and white lights and black instruments and noise noise noise.

She screamed and clutched at her ears, but the noise wouldn't stop. Something pricked her in the arm and the lights all went away.

But not the noise.

***

"...ten years old. Can you imagine that? Awful. And so intelligent, too." The noise receded and faded, resolving itself into voices. Gradually, she realized she was semi-conscious, and she forced herself all the way through. When she awoke, there was a lot less of everything. Less people, less lights, less noise and less clothing - someone had removed her clothes and placed them in little plastic bags which sat on a chair across the room. She was covered by a white sheet and nothing else. They were talking about her.

"Poor kid...I can't imagine going through that. Did you see her charts? Her readings are all over the place. Totally abnormal. It's amazing she's even conscious with that amount of apparent brain damage. But there's no bruising. I don't get it."

Amelia wiped a spot of blood from her lip and coughed. Her insides hurt - they'd been prodding her in the wrong place, in the front, looking for evidence where there was none. The fools.

"Amelia? How are you sweetie." The nurse looked genuinely concerned; it must have taken a lot of effort on the bitch's part. She didn't look nearly as sweet when she was giving AIDS inoculations last month.

"Fine."

"Do you know what happened?"

"Yes."

"Good. Then if you feel all right, this policeman would like to talk to you."

"Sure," she mumbled, hoping her assent would make the nurse thing go away. It did.

The cop was an ASS, one of them Auroran Security Agency guys. Big and quick, bred and enhanced to be a cop, a whole cop and nothing but a cop. She loathed them. Most people did.

"Hello there little girl. Would you like to tell me what happened?"

"Sure. I guess." He was assuming she was a typical 10 year old. Asshole. He was no better than any of her teachers, or the rapist in the alley. She was just "a little girl," a nameless victim. She probably had a number already. Little girl number 15. It was easier to deal with her that way.

"Do you know what happened to you?"

"Some man asked me if I wanted candy. Then he grabbed me and threw me on the ground, and he raped me from behind." Her voice shook...they knew all this. Why were they bothering her? The cop mistook her quavering for blubbering and put a hand on her shoulder to calm her. She pulled away.

"Sorry," he turned, apparently to let her compose herself, and asked the nurse where the girl's underwear were.

"I wasn't wearing any," she offered although she hadn't been asked.

"Excuse me?" said the cop, turning to her.

"There are none. I wasn't wearing any."

"Oh...uh..." he looked uncomfortable, jotted something down, then read the next question on his list and blushed. Clearing his throat nervously, he looked at her, then the nurse, then the floor.

"Have you...uh...started your...uh..."

"I'm ten years old," she said. "No, I haven't gotten my period yet."

"Oh," he said. "OK...um...Well, then have you..."

"These are stupid questions," she said, rubbing her temples. She had a headache. Again.

"I'm sorry...but we have to ask...."

"Where's my father?"

"We're trying to call him now," said the nurse. "He's not an easy man to get a hold of."

"Oh." This was true. Daddy was a busy man. Being one of the ten richest people in the city, and a mutant to boot, kept him occupied most of the day. As daddy told it, mostly avoiding people who wanted him dead, or out of business, or both. Daddy got headaches too, so he understood how she felt. Sorta.

"So how many men were there in the alley little girl?" The cop wasn't even taking notes...he didn't want to be here. He wanted to be shooting bad guys. Or steroids. Hard to tell.

LITTLE GIRL?

"Amelia," she said dully, the pain resounding in her skull. Her temples throbbed.

"Hmm?"

"Just one. And my name is Amelia. Not little girl."

"Sorry...there was just one man, you say?"

"Yes. Why? Does it take more than one man to sodomize a little girl?"

"Well..." Her bluntness put him at a loss for words.

THEY FOUND HIM.

"Did you find him?" she asked. The shrill screeching in her skull grew louder, making it difficult for her to hear her own voice.

"Yes we did."

THEN WHY THE GODDAMN QUESTIONS?

"Then why so many questions?" Her vision grew cloudy, and she worried that she might pass out. But at the same time, she felt strong. Powerful. Vengeful.

"Because, lit...Amelia, someone murdered him."

YES THEY DID.

"Tell me about it," she said coldly. His reluctance to talk about it fascinated her. Enraged her. And she didn't know why.

"Amelia, I don't think..." The nurse stepped closer.

"TELL ME!" she screamed. "You," she pointed at the cop, who shuddered and dropped his ugly little PDA, fingers twitching helplessly. "Tell me what you saw."

"We found the man that raped you hung from a fire escape," he said in a half-daze. "Seven stories up. He was...dead." His face twitched from an inner struggle, his eyes rolling back in his skull. The noise in her head intensified, focusing itself. No longer a jackhammer threatening to shatter her skull, now just a shrieking pinprick pain at the center of her forehead.

"Tell me more."

"His genitals had been..." He choked...spittle ran down his chin.

"Tell me."

"...chewed off. His eyes had been gouged out. And he was hung with..."

"Say it," she hissed.

"...with his own intestines."

"There are no other men," she whispered, turning away as the pain rippled across her head in waves, agony dropped like a ten-ton stone onto her forehead. With a gasp, the cop backed away from her, confused, shaking, fingers still twitching towards his gun as he fought off an intruder that was no longer there.

"You're not here to ask about my rape," she said, ignoring his discomfort. "My rape doesn't matter because I'm still taxable. You're here because you lost a taxpayer. You're here because of a murder."

"What?"

"I know all about it. Don't play dumb. I've been on the streets. I've seen how it goes."

"Amelia, I..."

"I killed him."

"I think you're confused..."

"He raped me, so I raped him," she said.

"I think that you should just..."

"SHUT UP!" she screamed. The cop fell backwards, striking the nurse. Both fell to the floor as if pressed by an invisible hand. "SHUT UP." They turned to stare at her, unable to turn their heads away.

"He. Hurt. Me." she enunciated. "So. I. Hurt. Him. More."

Nurse and cop were at a loss for words.

"But I can see that you can't handle believing that," said Amelia, eyelids half-closed, voice monotone, speaking without thinking and not caring that she had lost control again. "So I'll tell you what. The two of you can go on believing that someone else killed him. That's easier to handle. So believe it. Let's all make believe that a knight in shining armor rode out of the 12th century and showed up in this sick twisted place we call a city in the 21st century. And instead of something awful happening to someone awful, you just go on believing that there are good people out there, and that I'm just another innocent little victim. You both go ahead believing that we're all just little girls with lollipops in our mouths, afraid of the big bad wolf in the bushes. Go on. My rape doesn't matter. My abuse doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Screw it." She sighed and closed her eyes, only half aware of what she'd said. Her headache faded, slowly, running into her shoulders and making her neck ache. Maybe daddy would give her a massage later, after she rubbed his aching shoulders.

The glazed look on their eyes faded as well, and the cop looked at her, confused.

"Go ahead," she said, waving her hand. "Ask."

"So how many men were there in the alley little girl?"

"Two."

"Can you describe them?"

"No, it was dark. I'm sorry, but I've just been raped. I'm tired and sick. Can I go now?" She refused to answer any more questions, and her father remained unreachable, so they sent her back to class with borrowed, ill-fitting clothing. The noise in her head came back, and it hurt. Finally, she made herself vomit and they had no choice but to send her home. Ms. Stevens looked thrilled to be rid of her for the day. When they couldn't reach her father, they said they'd call a police transport to take her home. She told them she'd take the bus.

She walked home.

The next day, the search for the second man was deemed hopeless, and the case was dropped. Ms. Stevens had a little trouble with her blender while making breakfast margaritas, and it took seventy stitches to put her fingers back on. The nurse and the cop suffered blinding headaches and bouts of nausea, causing them both to be hospitalized for several weeks.

And Amelia... Amelia was transferred to another school, her fifth in two years. The noise went away, for a while. And her father loved her, and she loved him, and they understood each other, and nobody else mattered, and nobody else cared.

And for a while, Amelia Dawn got forgotten.

They would remember soon enough.