This story is based on a true event and is about a girl who is abused by her own father. The names of the characters are made up.
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Nerves were running through 15-year-old Nicole's body, and droplets of sweat were slipping from her neck between her breasts. She sat in the dark on the floor of her bedroom, her back against the door. Occasionally she would bend down to catch a glimpse of her father sitting in the living room from beneath the split under the door. She hoped he was as drunk as a skunk. He would fall asleep faster then. What if he stayed in the living room all night? How would she escape then? That thought gave her a stomach ache.
Nicole wiped away a tear that was rolling down her cheek, thinking back to when her father wasn't a monster. And when her mother was still alive. What a fine time that was! But Covid- 19 brought a turnaround in her life like she hadn't expected at all.
First, her father's business went bankrupt due to the drastic decline in the hospitality industry, and then her mother died because she was infected with the Covid- 19 virus. Her father became depressed and addicted to alcohol.
About three weeks after her mother's death, he surprised her for the first time in her bedroom at two in the morning. Nicole had not understood at first what was going on. She thought her father was sad and wanted to talk it out. But then she felt his hand grab her crotch. In a panic, she began to scream. His dirty fingers clasped her mouth and she struggled, fought, and punched. But that had earned her nothing but a black eye. After he had cum, he had collapsed on the bed beside her. She had stayed there crying and sobbing until he got up, turned on the light, grabbed her phone and laptop from the table and walked away with them.
"No! Not my phone!", she screamed. But he didn't answer. He walked out the door, locked it from the outside, and since that day she had been locked inside the four walls of her bedroom. Each day she was allowed to go outside for fifteen minutes for a quick shower and a toilet visit. If she needed to pee outside of those fifteen minutes, she did so in a bucket he had dumped in her bedroom. Twice a day she was given something to eat and at least every other day he came back and put his fingers on her. After the first two weeks, she hadn't balked.
She had tried to throw down small pieces of paper from the small window of her room, with her apartment number and the word "help!" on them, hoping that one of the neighbors would find the papers and come and free her. But with the lockdown that the government had instituted to reduce the number of Covid-19 dispersals, few people went out on the streets and so it was that no one had seen the papers. The heavy rains had also made the papers wet and if someone would have found them anyway; they would not have been able to read what was written on the small pieces of paper. An attempt to hang herself from the curtain rod had resulted in a sore shoulder.
And then came the dream. The dream about her mother that gave her some strength. Since then she had been searching hopefully for ways to get the door open without a key. After two long weeks, she had finally succeeded with a hairpin. Every night she had practiced. During the day she didn't dare, because he practically never left the house. Food, the little he ate himself and fed her, and all the bottles of alcohol he ordered online.
The plan was to escape from the building and tell the truth to the first police officer she encountered. But most of all, she had to make sure her father didn't get suspicious. She began to observe him through the split under the door. She discovered that he had a daily ritual: every night he would sit in front of the television sobbing and fall asleep there. By mid-morning he would wake up, turn off the lights and either go to his own bedroom to continue sleeping or he would pay her a visit. She hoped he would spare her today. Oh God, how she hoped that! If he came to her, he would surely sit with her for a while and she would have a hard time escaping. If he went to his own bedroom, he probably wouldn't come out until morning.
Nicole sighed. How? How could her father do this to her? She thought back of the times when she was a little girl playing in the park and he would join. And of the days when they built sandcastles together along the beach. But then she saw again those eyes that looked at her full of lust. She wiped another tear that had escaped her eyes and bent down again to look outside. She saw him stagger to the kitchen counter. Then he walked over to the couch in the living room. For a brief moment she thought he was going to sit down, but then he turned off the television with the remote. The adrenaline made her hair stand on end as she watched wistfully for what her father would do next.
When the lights went out, her heart immediately made a leap of joy. Thank God!
She would wait another hour before leaving. He would surely be asleep by then. She didn't dare turn on the light to look at her watch, so she would just count down the seconds. One, two, three...up to 3600. Then she stood up and with trembling hands she took out the hairpin which she had already put in her pocket. In the darkness, she scanned the lock and tried to open it. It worked the first time!
Nicole wiped the sweat from her forehead. Now she hoped she could open the outside door as quickly. Because she hadn't been able to practice that, of course. She crept through the living room to the door that led to the corridor which provided access to the elevator and the outside world.
There, too, she first tasted the lock. Her eyes had already begun to get used to the dark and so it didn't take much effort to insert the hairpin into the lock. Good...and then turn. Click. The first attempt failed. No way! She was already so close to her release. Nicole felt a lump in her throat. What if it didn't work now? She tried again. And again. On the third time, the lock jumped open.
Relieved, she ran into the hallway, to the elevator: quickly to the first floor. Once outside, she kept running. She ran as if her life depended on it: away from the monster! Surely there had to be officers roaming the streets, picking up lockdown violators. But Nicole saw none. After running for a mile into nowhere, she finally saw a cop on a bicycle. Astonished, the officer looked at the girl who fell down at his feet crying and let out a loud cry of relief.
Thank you for reading.