“Don’t touch me, don’t touch me.” Aubrey screamed as she felt someone put their hand on her shoulder. The woman had no idea what time it was, she knew it was some time during the night but the amount that had passed between her staggering back to the front stoop of her apartment block and leaving her parents house were hazy. Her whole body was on fire, every time she took a breath it was as if her own body was about to rip in half down the middle, part of her face covered in congealed blood, tears long having dried from her cheeks where they’d been pouring for hours before. She trembled like a leaf, afraid to stand incase the unthinkable had happened to the baby, even if she wasn’t sure it was the thing she wanted most of all right now, she’d made a decision to keep it so it was her job to protect it. Moments from early flashed through her mind like electric bolts, the screams of hatred that echoed through her childhood home, the thud as her back had hit the corner of the work surface, once, twice, three times. How her vision had been engulfed with stars after her head bounced off the kitchen table, insults ringing in her already ringing ears. How her father hadn’t been anywhere to be seen, vanishing like he always did, the most elusive man in the world when he wanted to be. Her mother knew she was pregnant so there was nothing to hide now, not for the older woman, because Aubrey wasn’t going out onto the stage the next night, and she knew that. In fact she wouldn’t be on stage for months. She knew the girl would scurry back to her apartment, stay there until any evidence of what had been done to her was gone because of the intense shame that surrounded the reason for it. What her mother hadn’t banked on was her daughter not being able to get all the way to her front door before her injuries took over, forcing the girl to her knees. “Don’t...” She screamed, hands coming up like claws to cover her face as she shrank into the wall.
