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Two years ago

‘Hey kid,’ said the voice from the other side of the hostel room, in the usual mocking tone that I had come to dread.

I sighed as I turned to look at my roommate, Marianne Weston. A blonde with a figure like a model’s, tall and slim, who hated me for no reason that I could fathom.

Except perhaps that I was so different from her—I came from a small town and was not wealthy, perhaps?

As always, she was lounging on her bed, looking like a million dollars, a cigarette dangling from her perfectly manicured hand.

*

Right, let me introduce myself: I’m Proserpina Martinez, from a small town named Annabel’s Run, and I had to literally scrape through to earn my scholarship to get into one of the best universities in the neighbouring big city of Charlesville.

My roommate’s parents were rich, and that would be an understatement. They fawned on their beautiful, spoilt daughter, lavishing her with presents that were ridiculously expensive, which she discarded as easily as used paper.

Unlike the unabashedly lucky Ms. Weston, I had never seen my father and did not know who he was; my mother had waltzed out of my life when I was three years old. She had gone on a date with a truck driver, promising to be back in a couple of hours.

She never returned.

The only wise thing she had done was to leave me with her sister, my Aunt Beth, before she disappeared. So my uncle, Stan Lawford, a pillar of society, never made me forget what a burden I was on him and his brood of six daughters and how lucky I was to have a roof over my head and food on my plate. Overwhelmed by guilt, I tried to ingratiate myself by taking on the majority of the chores in the house and was soon managing the cooking, for Aunt Beth had a large family with a new baby almost every year.

I was not overly blessed in the looks department either; short and rounded, too busty by half, as my aunt used to sigh, and with my mane of dark chestnut hair, I knew I was no beauty. My mouth was too full, my brown eyes too large...

Working odd jobs, waitressing, babysitting, anything and everything I could do, I had made the money for my Greyhound ticket when I was sure of my scholarship.

I had fled from the pocket-handkerchief town of Annabel’s Run after high school, with a scholarship, no less, which had left my sour uncle amazed. When girls my age were going out on dates or laughing with their sweethearts, I was swotting in the library or scrubbing pans in the diner I worked at in the evenings after school. I had big dreams of getting a job; my childhood fantasy had been finding my mother, and maybe my father too.

But with age comes maturity and I soon figured that neither of them was ever going to return.

*

So I set off with my meagre money and some cash which Aunt Beth had furtively pressed into my hands, my eyes full of dreams.

But the reality in the big city was a lot worse than I had expected.

My roommate, Marianne loathed me. She kept making snide remarks, although I had tried my best to be pleasant when I was allotted the room with her in the college hostel, eager to blend into this new world and make friends. She hated that I preferred to study, making it impossible for her to bring her string of boyfriends around and spend the night with them. Now I huddled on my bed, reading, trying to ignore her evil looks.

I did not fit in with the other students either; with my rather limited and old wardrobe, I was often the butt of snide jokes though I ignored them for the major part. You get to be that way after a lifetime of being jeered at.

Yet my roommate’s continued ridiculing of me stung. I was desperately lonely and with no friends to go out with, I felt miserable and unhappy.

That had been the norm all of last month but this evening, she looked at me, a glint in her lovely blue eyes.

“Wanna hang out with us this evening, Martinez?’ she drawled in her Texan twang.

I sat up, my mouth falling open in shock.

Later on, I was to kick myself for not suspecting something. I should have guessed that she meant no good but then, I was just too glad to be accepted by her, for I was lonely and simply did not fit in.

’Yes,’ I said eagerly and saw the look of devilish glee on her face which she quickly hid. That should have warned me but I was too happy.

‘Then let’s get you dressed,’ she said, a sly smirk on her face, her eyes moving dismissively over my plump frame.

“Uh…where are we going?’ I asked in a small voice for I had no clothes in any way comparable to the Texan girl’s lavish wardrobe.

She shrugged her shoulders and said mysteriously,’ Somewhere you have never been to, baby.’

*

Seven hours later, we were before a large building, dark and foreboding, almost hidden away in an alley.

As we stood before the large doors, I trembled. It was just the cold, I told myself but I was terrified. A feeling of unease pervaded my body and I could not shake off the disquiet that had been with me all evening.

My dress, or what there was of it, was a lacy red thing that barely covered my full breasts and clung to my wide hips lasciviously. It came up to my knees but that was because it belonged to Marianne who was a lot taller and slimmer than me. In fact, I had had to squeeze into it! Marianne had done up my eyes and the smoky look made me look like a different person altogether, someone who was promising a lot…As for my mouth, she had colored it red, a soft, sultry red and I shuddered. If Uncle Stan had to see me, he would drop dead with outrage, I thought, holding back a hysterical giggle.

Swallowing, I asked in a small voice, as I shifted from foot to foot, balancing precariously on my high heels,

‘Ummm…just where are we, Marianne?’

“Shut the f*ck up,’ she hissed as she stepped up to the door and pounded on the massive knocker.

The doors swung open and a man with beefed-up muscles and gelled black hair, scowled at us, his gaze softening as he looked at Marianne.

’We have a pass,’ she purred and he blinked before nodding his small eyes skimming over her proffered hand. His salacious eyes went over me and I shrank, hating the look in his eyes; it made my skin crawl but I moved forward, obediently following Marianne inside as the door slammed shut, closing out the world.