eventually lifts her eyes, eyeing Dawn with a frown before glancing at me and cringing away. Dawn glances over her shoulder, her eyes smouldering. “Wait outside?” she pleads, and I nod, throwing the woman one last look before standing at the doorway where she can’t see me, but I can still hear. I can hear the rustle of them shifting before Dawn’s sweet voice comes again. “I’m sorry for what they have done to you. What’s your name?”
“I, erm, I’m Kelly,” she whispers, voice a bit stronger now.
“Hi, Kelly, how long have you been here?” The woman doesn’t respond, and I hear Dawn sigh. “I swear they won’t hurt you again, I swear it, Kelly. Look at me, that’s it. I know what it feels like to be seen as nothing, to be a punching bag. To be scared of your own shadow. They make you hate your own body, make you feel like it’s no longer yours, but it gets better. I promise you, you heal. You don’t forget, but you heal and come out stronger. This? This is a blip in your life, you are so much stronger than you will ever know. Look at you, surviving in the midst of such destruction. And you have another to think of now.”
“I—he—it,” Kelly stutters before lowering her face. “They-they raped me,” she cries out before getting a hold of herself. “It’s—this thing in me could be a monster.”
I stiffen at her admission. They forced their seed into this woman? I will spike them all!
“Look at me, Kelly. We both know human monsters can be so much worse. This baby in your belly, they might have made it, but you will raise it, it’s part of you, and trust me, sometimes the monsters are better than those who paint themselves as your saviours.”
“I’m tired,” Kelly admits. “So tired, I don’t think I can fight anymore. I thought when-when that thing came that I would die, but then I didn’t. But now I feel it, the baby, moving inside me, and now I don’t think I can do this.”
It goes quiet and I listen carefully, knowing this woman is on the precipice of giving up, I have seen it in soldiers often. Their will to go on gives out and they die.
“You will go on because you have to. It’s never easy to be a woman, Kelly,” Dawn starts, her voice strong and commanding, that of a true leader...a queen. “When men are born, they are told the world is theirs for the taking, to dream big and never give up. Us? We are told that the world isn’t fair, that our dreams might not come true and to be prepared for that. As I grew up, I was told to bite my tongue, because boys will be boys. I was told not to be too smart. Too loud. Too sexy. Too opinionated or rude. Well, fuck that.”
“I was told what I could be while men were told they could be anything. Even when I became an adult, I saw the injustice every day. The men I worked with, dated, they stood before me confused as I got angry, because they have never had to fight just to be heard in a room full of men. To be taken seriously. To have to walk home quickly, clutching your keys out of fear. To cry in the shower as blood runs from my body, because they made it their own. And it’s not mine anymore, and no matter how I dress or how I act I will never be good enough.
“I became an object, like you, since birth, raised to be perfect for men. But I never was, even when I was everything they dreamed of. They still hurt me, still pushed me around and treated me as lower than them. Just an object. Fuck that,” Dawn spits, her anger palpable.
“If you want to scream, do it. If you want to rage or run naked down the streets, do it. I will do it with you. If you want to get drunk and tell every man they are wrong and womansplain their asses, do it. If you want to murder the people that hurt you, want nothing more than to kill them. I’ll help. If you don’t want this baby, that’s fine. It’s your body, your choice. You are not just an object. You are a person. You are stronger than any man because you have faced battles they never could. We