It's not professional and I'm doing it for the fun of the hobby(but hell if it gets published more power, right 
) It's written a little different
as there is a story in a narrative and switches to journal entries. The journal entries are Allie, Janis' daughter, but that will all be explained when the
story breathes more.
the story is called Velcro and it's a little graphic involving the rape of a minor.
PROLOGUE
I was almost killed before I was even alive. When she felt that I was old enough to hear the truth, I found out from my grandmother that my mother was planning on getting an abortion. If not had it been for my sex, my fate would be determined by a vacuum machine and not more than a thousand dollars. It scares me to think that if I had been a boy, I would be doomed before being given the chance to breathe.
Despite this act of cowardice, I don't hate my mother for what she wanted to do to me. She wasn't going to win Mother of the Year awards, but in the end she still gave me a chance to experience a life. I got to experience life with all five of my senses. Tasting Grandma's chicken noodle soup whenever I got sick, hearing classical music speak to me without using words, smelling the air just before a rainstorm, seeing my beautiful prom dress for the first time in the window of a downtown Chicago boutique, touching my husbands lips to mine as he entered me on our honeymoon.
1.
It was 1967 in Chicago, Illinois, sixteen year old Lena Hayes was your stereotypical hippie. Sporting nifty blue bandanas, tye-died t-shirts, and bell bottoms. She listened to the music of the culture and loved nature in all its forms including free love and opposed conventional standards and customs of society. Her friends were just like her in that all belonged together as a family of humans who supported each other when their real families did not. At the time, she wasn't thinking about the dangers of drugs. She was only young and experimenting and it was all a part of the era that would soon fade into oblivion. If you asked Lena now if she had any regrets, she would say it would be that time of her life. What always seems like a good idea when we're young doesn't translate to being a good idea when we finally grow up.
The only thing she doesn't regret is the birth of her daughter, Janis, named for Lena's favorite musician of the era, Janis Joplin. When Lena was just as confused about her life as any sixteen year old, she would put her headphones on so she could experience every sound of the music of Janis. Coincidentally, Joplin was playing on the record player while Lena and her boyfriend conceived their daughter. Joplin would take her to another place that wasn't the shithole in which she lived. When Lena ran away from home, she took Janis Joplin with her to live in a commune with people who understood them.
Lena despises talking about her life back then. She never spoke about it to her daughter or her granddaughter and intends to keep it that way to her death. The man she thought she loved, who promised to take care of her and their daughter, who preached making peace and love not war, ran out on Lena two months before she was due to give birth. She would then be just a pregnant teenage unwed mother hippie.
When she bore Janis Hayes, Lena immediately gave up the lifestyle. Men would be in and out of their lives for the first six years of Janis' life. No man was strong enough to take on the challenge of a mother. Lena was feeling like a man as a lover in her life would be impossible as if she were looking for a father, not a lover. And she knew they were right. At 22 she was struggling through college and working paycheck to paycheck to support her and her daughter.
Her love life would soon change when she met Trent in her communications class in college. He was a charming young man with a smile that would draw women in like insects to a burning light bulb and he had his light on her. The most important thing to Lena however, was making sure Janis was happy with Trent. To a six year old Janis, he was just another boy that Lena brought home and would soon leave, but days and months passed and Trent was still active in her life.
Trent and Janis bonded as a father and daughter, she even called him 'daddy' and it always made Lena's face glow. As the next couple of years progressed, Lena felt her family was full and that accepting Trent's marriage proposal was the final step into happiness. She imagined Trent walking Janis down the aisle to give their daughter away to their future son in law, Trent teaching her driving lessons and showing her how to fix a car if it breaks down. The adorable father-daughter dances when she would stand on her dad's feet while he did all the dancing.
One early afternoon, Lena came home early from work and found the most horrific image a mother could not bear to witness. The man she loved for so many years was under the covers of their bed, forcing himself into her ten year old daughter. Janis was crying and yelling as tears streamed down her face. Lena grabbed Trent by the hair and pulled him off of Janis.
"What the fuck, Trent!" Lena yelled as she pulled a drawer from her desk and threw it at Trent, who was cowering on the floor, covering his face with one hand and trying to block himself with the other. Janis laid on the bed, curled up in a ball and shaking, hardly being able to breath with all her crying.
No amount of begging would make Lena forgive Trent for performing such a dastardly act. She gave him a swift kick in the stomach. She picked up a chair from the dining room and threw it at him, hitting him in the back of the head. Lena picked up the phone and called the police to report Trent while he was unconscious from the beating he endured by his wife.
Lena started crying and laid on the bed next to Janis, trying to comfort her daughter, but no gentle soothing back rub or hair stroke could undo the damage she will now suffer with for all eternity. Janis fidgeted and refused her mother's comfort, slapped her in the face and yelled "How could you let this happen to me?!" Janis ran into her room and slammed the door, Lena left alone on the bed, still feeling the sting of her daughter's palm against her cheek.
The cops came and Trent was no longer knocked out. He confessed to raping Janis and they took him away in handcuffs. They spoke with Lena about what was going to happen next and tried to talk to Janis, who refused to speak to anyone. How could you when a grown man took a shovel to her heart and continued to dig a hole until it was too big to tell if there was even anything there in the first place.
Trent had been doing this to her for the last two years. He said it was the only way he could prove how much he loved her and her mother. She hated being left alone with him and when her mother was around, Janis couldn't say anything. She was too afraid, too ashamed of what was going on. Her insides were full of misery while she wore a façade of happiness in her mother's presence.
Lena knocked on her daughter's door. It had been three hours since the police left.
"Janis? We need to talk."
"Go away, mom!"
Lena started to tear up again. She placed her forehead on Janis' door. She was thinking about what she did to be the bad mother. Maybe she put too much trust in Trent without seeing deeper into his soul. Who was she kidding? No monster who violates a child has a soul. She kept leaving her alone with Trent as if to say there she is, she's all yours. She wondered why she didn't see it before.
Journal Entry #1
I can't believe I found the old journals I used to keep when I was a little girl. My grandmother gave me my first journal on my eighth birthday and I wrote an entry in it everyday. Each time I ran out of space, Grandma would buy me another one. As I got older, I made less entries and eventually all of my thoughts disappeared when I stopped writing. Cameras and writing journals are two of the greatest inventions anyone's ever made. They offer proof that we once lived on earth and that we had a family, thoughts and feelings all captured and locked by a lens or a pencil serving an everlasting sentence. We always want to be remembered, don't we? Even ancient kings wanted sons to carry the legacy of their name.
I decided to start writing to you again, because I looked through my old journals and it made me sad to think that time made my entries fade away. I don't want to fade away with it. Don't worry, journal. I'm still alive and I'm going to continue writing to you, my first love who listened to everything I had to say without interrupting or complaining.
2.
Janis stepped out of her room for the first time since it happened in the middle of the evening. She walked into the bathroom and shut the door, only to be greeted by her reflection in a mirror. For the first time in Janis' life, she didn't recognize the person on the other side. Her blood began to boil, her eyes lit on fire. She hated the reflection, staring back at her mimicking her every move. It's been mocking her for the last two years. She picked up the blue Boots Hairdryer and hit it against the mirror, shattering it into large shards of glass. She stepped into the tub and turned the shower on, feeling like she had fallen in a puddle of mud. But the caked mud had settled into her skin, unable to be cleaned with a bar of soap. She sat down at the end of the shower, curled her knees to her chest and placed her head between her knees, she let out a deafening scream that triggered Lena to knock on the door. When Janis wouldn't answer, her mother's knocking turned into banging.
The bathroom door had a small hole in the knob, as most of the doors in the Hayes home. You could put a screwdriver through the hole and within a few seconds have the door unlocked. This is exactly what a panicked Lena did when her banging on the door didn't raise a reaction out of Janis. Once the door was unlocked, Lena came in and the first thing she noticed was the mirror destroyed, but most importantly her daughter was curled up in the tub, a lifeless rock.
Lena reached out to her daughter and placed her hand on Janis' shoulder.
"Janis, I know this is difficult for you. It's not pain from falling off a bike, or even breaking an arm. I know I wasn't there when I should have been, but honey I want you to tell me what I can do to help you."
"I want my childhood back."
Lena looked at her daughter. She knew that was something she couldn't give to Janis. She may still be a child, but she's far from living a normal childhood. Her innocence was stolen, torn from her body as quickly as a thief ripping a purse off a woman's shoulder. Every thrust into her was the footstep of the thief, getting away with robbery.
"Honey, you know I can't do that. Look, if you won't talk to me should I send you to someone? They have counselors who deal with this all the time."
Every word Lena tried to say to Janis, she would continue to say no, each no getting louder until it was piercing Lena's ears. Lena stood up and wanted to yell back at her child, but she knew it wasn't the time or place to do that. She was being treated as the villain in Janis' story. She almost wished she could be the antagonist, just so she could at least have a role when they make it into a movie. But right now, she hasn't even gotten past the audition.
"Dinner is being heated up on the stove."
"I'm not hungry."
"That's fine, you don't have to eat now. Watch out for the broken glass when you decide to come out and I'll clean this up later."
Lena carefully stepped over the shards of glass and left Janis to her privacy, the best thing she could do for her child.
With the continuous rapes over the last couple of years, Janis understood there was something that separated her from all the other kids. She envied their lives, wanting to trade but not wanting to put another child in the harm of wearing her own shoes. She felt things inside her that a child as young as her wouldn't. She would do things Trent would do to her to other boys her age. Stripping in front of them, doing things that no normal kid would do during an innocent game of doctor, show me yours, and truth or dare.
It didn't stop with the young boys. It's as if all the grown weirdos who had fetishes for young children knew that she was the one to go to for relief of their urges. Her soccer coach who was married with a daughter on her team, a school custodian who forced her into a stall when she was trying to use the restroom, a man who saw her walking home from school on the side of the road and the list goes on. They're all the same and she hated them but she hated herself more for allowing it to happen.
) It's written a little different
as there is a story in a narrative and switches to journal entries. The journal entries are Allie, Janis' daughter, but that will all be explained when the
story breathes more.
the story is called Velcro and it's a little graphic involving the rape of a minor.
PROLOGUE
I was almost killed before I was even alive. When she felt that I was old enough to hear the truth, I found out from my grandmother that my mother was planning on getting an abortion. If not had it been for my sex, my fate would be determined by a vacuum machine and not more than a thousand dollars. It scares me to think that if I had been a boy, I would be doomed before being given the chance to breathe.
Despite this act of cowardice, I don't hate my mother for what she wanted to do to me. She wasn't going to win Mother of the Year awards, but in the end she still gave me a chance to experience a life. I got to experience life with all five of my senses. Tasting Grandma's chicken noodle soup whenever I got sick, hearing classical music speak to me without using words, smelling the air just before a rainstorm, seeing my beautiful prom dress for the first time in the window of a downtown Chicago boutique, touching my husbands lips to mine as he entered me on our honeymoon.
1.
It was 1967 in Chicago, Illinois, sixteen year old Lena Hayes was your stereotypical hippie. Sporting nifty blue bandanas, tye-died t-shirts, and bell bottoms. She listened to the music of the culture and loved nature in all its forms including free love and opposed conventional standards and customs of society. Her friends were just like her in that all belonged together as a family of humans who supported each other when their real families did not. At the time, she wasn't thinking about the dangers of drugs. She was only young and experimenting and it was all a part of the era that would soon fade into oblivion. If you asked Lena now if she had any regrets, she would say it would be that time of her life. What always seems like a good idea when we're young doesn't translate to being a good idea when we finally grow up.
The only thing she doesn't regret is the birth of her daughter, Janis, named for Lena's favorite musician of the era, Janis Joplin. When Lena was just as confused about her life as any sixteen year old, she would put her headphones on so she could experience every sound of the music of Janis. Coincidentally, Joplin was playing on the record player while Lena and her boyfriend conceived their daughter. Joplin would take her to another place that wasn't the shithole in which she lived. When Lena ran away from home, she took Janis Joplin with her to live in a commune with people who understood them.
Lena despises talking about her life back then. She never spoke about it to her daughter or her granddaughter and intends to keep it that way to her death. The man she thought she loved, who promised to take care of her and their daughter, who preached making peace and love not war, ran out on Lena two months before she was due to give birth. She would then be just a pregnant teenage unwed mother hippie.
When she bore Janis Hayes, Lena immediately gave up the lifestyle. Men would be in and out of their lives for the first six years of Janis' life. No man was strong enough to take on the challenge of a mother. Lena was feeling like a man as a lover in her life would be impossible as if she were looking for a father, not a lover. And she knew they were right. At 22 she was struggling through college and working paycheck to paycheck to support her and her daughter.
Her love life would soon change when she met Trent in her communications class in college. He was a charming young man with a smile that would draw women in like insects to a burning light bulb and he had his light on her. The most important thing to Lena however, was making sure Janis was happy with Trent. To a six year old Janis, he was just another boy that Lena brought home and would soon leave, but days and months passed and Trent was still active in her life.
Trent and Janis bonded as a father and daughter, she even called him 'daddy' and it always made Lena's face glow. As the next couple of years progressed, Lena felt her family was full and that accepting Trent's marriage proposal was the final step into happiness. She imagined Trent walking Janis down the aisle to give their daughter away to their future son in law, Trent teaching her driving lessons and showing her how to fix a car if it breaks down. The adorable father-daughter dances when she would stand on her dad's feet while he did all the dancing.
One early afternoon, Lena came home early from work and found the most horrific image a mother could not bear to witness. The man she loved for so many years was under the covers of their bed, forcing himself into her ten year old daughter. Janis was crying and yelling as tears streamed down her face. Lena grabbed Trent by the hair and pulled him off of Janis.
"What the fuck, Trent!" Lena yelled as she pulled a drawer from her desk and threw it at Trent, who was cowering on the floor, covering his face with one hand and trying to block himself with the other. Janis laid on the bed, curled up in a ball and shaking, hardly being able to breath with all her crying.
No amount of begging would make Lena forgive Trent for performing such a dastardly act. She gave him a swift kick in the stomach. She picked up a chair from the dining room and threw it at him, hitting him in the back of the head. Lena picked up the phone and called the police to report Trent while he was unconscious from the beating he endured by his wife.
Lena started crying and laid on the bed next to Janis, trying to comfort her daughter, but no gentle soothing back rub or hair stroke could undo the damage she will now suffer with for all eternity. Janis fidgeted and refused her mother's comfort, slapped her in the face and yelled "How could you let this happen to me?!" Janis ran into her room and slammed the door, Lena left alone on the bed, still feeling the sting of her daughter's palm against her cheek.
The cops came and Trent was no longer knocked out. He confessed to raping Janis and they took him away in handcuffs. They spoke with Lena about what was going to happen next and tried to talk to Janis, who refused to speak to anyone. How could you when a grown man took a shovel to her heart and continued to dig a hole until it was too big to tell if there was even anything there in the first place.
Trent had been doing this to her for the last two years. He said it was the only way he could prove how much he loved her and her mother. She hated being left alone with him and when her mother was around, Janis couldn't say anything. She was too afraid, too ashamed of what was going on. Her insides were full of misery while she wore a façade of happiness in her mother's presence.
Lena knocked on her daughter's door. It had been three hours since the police left.
"Janis? We need to talk."
"Go away, mom!"
Lena started to tear up again. She placed her forehead on Janis' door. She was thinking about what she did to be the bad mother. Maybe she put too much trust in Trent without seeing deeper into his soul. Who was she kidding? No monster who violates a child has a soul. She kept leaving her alone with Trent as if to say there she is, she's all yours. She wondered why she didn't see it before.
Journal Entry #1
I can't believe I found the old journals I used to keep when I was a little girl. My grandmother gave me my first journal on my eighth birthday and I wrote an entry in it everyday. Each time I ran out of space, Grandma would buy me another one. As I got older, I made less entries and eventually all of my thoughts disappeared when I stopped writing. Cameras and writing journals are two of the greatest inventions anyone's ever made. They offer proof that we once lived on earth and that we had a family, thoughts and feelings all captured and locked by a lens or a pencil serving an everlasting sentence. We always want to be remembered, don't we? Even ancient kings wanted sons to carry the legacy of their name.
I decided to start writing to you again, because I looked through my old journals and it made me sad to think that time made my entries fade away. I don't want to fade away with it. Don't worry, journal. I'm still alive and I'm going to continue writing to you, my first love who listened to everything I had to say without interrupting or complaining.
2.
Janis stepped out of her room for the first time since it happened in the middle of the evening. She walked into the bathroom and shut the door, only to be greeted by her reflection in a mirror. For the first time in Janis' life, she didn't recognize the person on the other side. Her blood began to boil, her eyes lit on fire. She hated the reflection, staring back at her mimicking her every move. It's been mocking her for the last two years. She picked up the blue Boots Hairdryer and hit it against the mirror, shattering it into large shards of glass. She stepped into the tub and turned the shower on, feeling like she had fallen in a puddle of mud. But the caked mud had settled into her skin, unable to be cleaned with a bar of soap. She sat down at the end of the shower, curled her knees to her chest and placed her head between her knees, she let out a deafening scream that triggered Lena to knock on the door. When Janis wouldn't answer, her mother's knocking turned into banging.
The bathroom door had a small hole in the knob, as most of the doors in the Hayes home. You could put a screwdriver through the hole and within a few seconds have the door unlocked. This is exactly what a panicked Lena did when her banging on the door didn't raise a reaction out of Janis. Once the door was unlocked, Lena came in and the first thing she noticed was the mirror destroyed, but most importantly her daughter was curled up in the tub, a lifeless rock.
Lena reached out to her daughter and placed her hand on Janis' shoulder.
"Janis, I know this is difficult for you. It's not pain from falling off a bike, or even breaking an arm. I know I wasn't there when I should have been, but honey I want you to tell me what I can do to help you."
"I want my childhood back."
Lena looked at her daughter. She knew that was something she couldn't give to Janis. She may still be a child, but she's far from living a normal childhood. Her innocence was stolen, torn from her body as quickly as a thief ripping a purse off a woman's shoulder. Every thrust into her was the footstep of the thief, getting away with robbery.
"Honey, you know I can't do that. Look, if you won't talk to me should I send you to someone? They have counselors who deal with this all the time."
Every word Lena tried to say to Janis, she would continue to say no, each no getting louder until it was piercing Lena's ears. Lena stood up and wanted to yell back at her child, but she knew it wasn't the time or place to do that. She was being treated as the villain in Janis' story. She almost wished she could be the antagonist, just so she could at least have a role when they make it into a movie. But right now, she hasn't even gotten past the audition.
"Dinner is being heated up on the stove."
"I'm not hungry."
"That's fine, you don't have to eat now. Watch out for the broken glass when you decide to come out and I'll clean this up later."
Lena carefully stepped over the shards of glass and left Janis to her privacy, the best thing she could do for her child.
With the continuous rapes over the last couple of years, Janis understood there was something that separated her from all the other kids. She envied their lives, wanting to trade but not wanting to put another child in the harm of wearing her own shoes. She felt things inside her that a child as young as her wouldn't. She would do things Trent would do to her to other boys her age. Stripping in front of them, doing things that no normal kid would do during an innocent game of doctor, show me yours, and truth or dare.
It didn't stop with the young boys. It's as if all the grown weirdos who had fetishes for young children knew that she was the one to go to for relief of their urges. Her soccer coach who was married with a daughter on her team, a school custodian who forced her into a stall when she was trying to use the restroom, a man who saw her walking home from school on the side of the road and the list goes on. They're all the same and she hated them but she hated herself more for allowing it to happen.
