It was almost midnight in the Hong Kong Local streets, where I lived with this soulless man. The old temple belonged to distant monks who soiled into better temples but he would never know. The stroke that had rubbed him of his senses would keep him hospitalized in the sanatorium where he now resided until death took him to a better place.

The tiny room where i arbored was at the far end of the sprawling building, supposedly for my well-being. But sometimes i argued about the location. Isolated from the other rooms, it was simple for Richard to pick me anytime he wanted which from time to time, came calling.

Tonight, Veil slept curled up against a little teddy called mistletoe. Mistletoe was dark and chubby and on occasion still comfort her. Veil liked her well enough but always slept on the edge of the bed for fear she would fall off, and tonight was no exception.

The ceiling fan squeaked with every rotation, but the repetitive sound on seven year old Veil face was oddly soothing. They were familiar things that proved no threat.

She was dreaming about playing in a field with a man, his face was blur but the tenderness he showed her was extreme. The breeze she'd been feeling on her face was no longer blowing. It had happened before and meant bad things would happen. she started to squirm. There was something that she needed to remember what happened when the wind stopped blowing. But she was so deep into sleep she could not make her self wake up. The mattress beneath her started to shift. Mental warning bells went off so loudly that she sat straight up in bed with a gasp.

"shh" a voice whispered. it's okay my darling.

Veil knew the voice too well, Richard's voice. she also knew he didn't care if she was sad or not. He was why the wind quit blowing. Every time he learned over to pick her up out of bed, he blocked the air from the fan. He was going to take her to his room again, and she didn't want to go there.

"No", she cried and started pushing him away. she didn't want to go she was absorbed by the fire of its terror.

"easy, my darling. you know it is going to be all right, Richard always take care of his baby".

"No" Veil begged, now struggling to get out of his arms, but he was unwilling to overcome his urge that night.

"Be quite, you might wake the neighbours".

Within a second, one of the doors opened. A young girl walked out into the hallway. She was tall for a ten year old and wise beyond her years. Richard saw her and frowned.

"Mary! go back to bed".

but the young girl stood her ground

"please, Richard let her go"

"it does not matter what you want"

" take me instead, i will go in her place"

"I don't want you now go back to bed before i make you sorry.

By now, Veil was crying uncontrollably. Mary reached for her, but Richard slapped her away, then shoved her inside and slammed the door.

There was a shuffling sound on the other side of the door and then death silence. In a moment, Veil stilled. she knew that if she made any more fuss, Mary would come after her. If she did, Richard would get mad, real mad. And when that happens, people get hurt. she didn't want Mary to be the victim of circumstance.

"that's my girl" and gave her a huge hug.

she turned her face against her sleeve and closed her eyes, unable to understand why this was happening to her. In her eyes, her mother had just gone off and left her here. she did not know what happened to her parents, and even f she had, in her child's mind, she would never have understood the ramifications of what that meant. All she knew was that she was alone with this terrible man that hurt her. She also knew that if she raised a big fuss, Mary would get in to trouble and she loved Mary. She was her senior sister and best friend. so she stifled her sibs and closed her eyes, already letting her mind go to another place where nothing was bad and Richard didn't exist.

Richard had no idea what was going through the little girls mind, and if he had, wouldn't have cared. He was focused on the business at hand. A couple of seconds later, he turned the corner of the hall. just before that went inside, he heard Veil whisper

"Don't do it to me" she begged

"I cant" he said softly, and kissed the tousle of curls on the top of her head. "I want you baby girl. My body all wants you. you know you are special.

"I don't want to be special" she said

"But you are" Richard said and then opened the door.

Immediately, jade closed her eyes as Richard carried her across the room. she felt the silken fabric of the sheets as he laid her on the bed. She held her breath as footsteps crossed the room, then stopped near where she was lying.

He touched her face, then her arms, then her legs, then tugged her nightgown over her head and put his hands between her legs.

"open your eyes, honey. Look what i have for you to play with".

She struggled to wake up from the bad night mare but completely her mind was evoked. Pink flashes of light spangled across her windows, she stared down to see a man playing around with his child, and something hard pierced her heart and questions kept making her unstable like What is her father like, who is the blurred vision of her knight and what would a family be like if she had one......

Pink and green reflection from the flashing neon sign outside the bedroom window painted the two sisters sleeping on the bed in eerie, garish flashes of color, giving their faces a harlequined appearance.

Outside the hotel, a police car sped past with serene screaming. At the sound, Mary flinched and then started moan, which quickly roused the other woman beside her.

Mary rose up on one elbow to look at her, wincing as movement caused the room to tilt. Ignoring a slight wave of nausea, she swiped a shaky hand across her face, then looked down to her only sister.

She was dreaming again. He could see it on her face. The hell of their childhood had scarred them both in ways no one could know. If she had believed in God, she would have prayed for peace in their hearts, but the way she figures it, God was just a myth. if He had existed, He would never have let what happen to them. so it was up to her to ease her sister's nightmare.

She bent down until her mouth was only inches away from her ear, then whispered softly, "baby..... baby, its all right darling no one is going to hurt you.... not any more".

Then she slipped her arms beneath the curve of her neck and pulled her close against her chest.

somewhere within her mind, the familiarity of Mary's voice registered. when it did, her panic subsided. she shuddered, then signed.

She slept again but Mary did not. Sleep had become her nemesis, stealing time was reluctant to waste. There was a knot in her stomach that had nothing to do with the nausea she'd suffered only moments ago. it was fear, pure and simple. Her sister was her life, her world but in her need to protect her from hell of their past, she'd done something wrong, something that she had to put right. she'd come to depend on her so much that she wasn't sure if she would ever be able to function on her own. she hadn't meant to do it. but it had happened just the same.

still asleep, she turned in his arms and then laid her cheek against her chest. The warmth of her sigh was a caress upon her skin. She swallowed past the knot in her throat. then threaded her fingers through her hair, unconsciously fisting the length of it in her palm.

"love you pretty girl", she said softly, then turned her head towards the window, waiting for dawn.

She glanced up from the stack of paintings she was packaging, eyed the one Mary was holding then shrugged,

"its perfect for the collaboration, we need money".

Mary frowned. " we always need the money, but this is a painting of your mother".

she straightened, then turned, fixing her with a cool, pointed look.

"that's not my mother. that's Ivy".

Mary's frowned deepened. "They are one and the same thing, and you know it"

"No, they aren't. My mother was....a she.... damn it, May I can barely remember her or Ivy. My mother turned into some mushroom smoking hippie named Ivy. When she died, she left me to hell, why should I care about some stupid picture of her? I don't even know why I painted it to begin with so pack it".

"Yes, ma'am".

She glared at the smirk on Mary's face, trying to maintain her anger, but she couldn't. Instead they packed up their Stuff and headed for the office. Her driver was giving them a ride in their Lamborghini. The sun was shining, the sky was clear. it was promising to be a good day.

She smiled at Mary as they rode in the back of the truck, holding on to the paintings she was hoping to sell. She glanced at her and winked, then forced on the stack of canvas she was holding.

She signed, she could never be mad at the woman who'd saved her life. she wasn't just her best friend, she was Her entire heart. And the fact that she'd taken up her talent to make a living for them after they struggling, hungry and homeless far more than she cared to count, so saving back any of her paintings, even the one of Ivy, was not only foolish but wasteful. Yet as they rode through the busy Streets, she couldn't help staring at the faces of the people they passed convinced that one day their past would catch up with them and terrified of what would happen when it did.

She had little or no memory of anything before Ivy. Only now and then did she dream about a tall, dark-haired man who had played with her in a wading pool and rocked her to sleep. But the facial features were always vague, and when she woke, the image was always gone.

Most of the time, the face in her nightmares belonged to her abuser. Abuser of the smiling face who smelled of incense and smoke, who brushed her hair and stroked her face and, the day after Ivy died, had replaced her tiny, six year old prepubescent body to a pedophile. He had been the first, but certainly not the last, men who'd pay money to ravage her body. And for the ensuring six years, she like Mary, became a marketable product for all these people.

she couldn't remember a time when Mary had not been part of her life, the young beautiful girl child four years her senior who had never known a mother or a father and to the best knowledge, didn't have a last name. She was a product of the same commune in which Ivy had died and had no existence outside of Raf control. That man had been her father figure. she had known nothing beyond obeying the wishes of the charismatic leader doing nothing to garner the rare moments of affection her father had bestowed upon him. She'd suffered the strokes of both her so called father and his friends not knowing that there was any other kind of life.

Then one day something happened that shattered her perception. It was a small crack, hardly more than a weakness in the ties that bound her to the world into which she'd been born. But to a child who'd never had a say in one waking moment of his life, it was huge. Mary hadn't known it was possible to say no until he'd witnessed her sister throw a screaming fit and refuse to obey their prey's demand.

The Unthinkable happened. she began to mature. Her body was no longer that of a thin, hairless doll. she was becoming a woman just like Mary, which made one "uncle" very unhappy.

Moses Frank had paid this man has usual five hundred dollars for an entire night with her. He'd been with her numerous times before, but never for the whole night, and not in the past six months. When she did arrived in his room and he had seen what nature had done to her body, it infuriated him. The sight of her budding breast and shapely hips had ended his erection in a way that nothing else could have done. Angry and embarrassed that he couldn't "get it up", he tried a little acid. Within minutes, her tiny breasts seemed to grow before him, turning colors, then changing shapes, while the terror on her face turned into a laughing, shrieking bitch.

Horrified by what he was seeing, he lashed out, hitting her over and over with his fists. By now, her body seemed a voluptuous symbol of what he should want but did not. He staggered, and as he did, reached out to steady himself. When his hand closed over a bottle of wine, he grabbed it by the neck and swung. it missed the girl by inches, instead shattering on the bedpost. Wine and glass went everywhere, turning colours and then exploding in Moses's mind like fireworks on the fourth July.

Suddenly the jagged neck of the bottle morphed into a sword. He spun abruptly, swinging it toward the shrieking screaming bitch, wanting to silence her forever.

The slash of glass against skin was sudden, the skin parting like a hot knife through soft butter. Through a drug induced fog, he saw the woman reaching for her body, then trying to hold it together with both hands.

When the child sank to the floor in a puddle of her own blood what Moses saw was a body of a headless serpent.

"Yes"! he shouted and thrust his arms upward in gesture of victory, still clutching the sword.

Another woman, Mary had been awakened by the sound of her sister's screams. At fifteen, she was already 5.7 feet tall and strong beyond her years. With heart racing, she dashed out of her room and then down the hall. He kicked in the door with one blow, saw the almost lifeless girl lying in her own pool of blood, picked up and overturned chair and swung it across the back of the man's head. There was a loud pop, then the man went limp, dropping to the floor like a felled ox. Mary shouted for help. Soon, footsteps could be heard running towards them. Expecting that the help that was coming would be for them, Mary picked her up off the floor.

She was still breathing but faint, she picked up a broken glass in her hands as Mary picked her up, she waited for the right moment and just in time the man that started all her pains walked into the door, she knew that even if she dies she had nothing to lose with all her might she held the glass tight even when it was piercing her, she made the glass through his chest and made sure she had buried it well. Mary mad for the door even though she was not sure why her sister would stab him and when she turned that man was already on the floor.

The time something inside her snapped. If she wasn't already dead, she had only this one chance to save her. So once again, She was kidnapped, carried out into the night without her knowledge. Only this time, it was to escape the hell into which she'd been thrust.

Mary laid her in the passenger side of Raf's van, then ran back into the house, into Raf's private room, and stole every penny of the money the man kept in his desk. His legs were shaking as he bolted out of the room and back to the van. She hadn't moved but she was groaning when Mary got there, she jumped into the van. With a prayer on her lips, she turned the key. The engine turned raggedly for several tries and then suddenly started.

He didn't die he came out running, calling Mary's name when she had already taken off, he didn't know where they were going or how badly injured that girl was, but he did know that their survival hinged upon escaping the old farmhouse and himself.

Twelve years later, they were still running, living by their wits and the occasional turn of good luck till she became the CEO of Beauty art firm, but certain that if they were found, they would go to prison for murder.