Who am I?

She wakes to find herself broken, and it is the first question that enters her head. The next: where am I?

She feels drugged, sluggish. Her head is heavy, her senses dulled, as though she were underwater. And there is a fire in her throat. The sensation when she swallows is of trying to ingest crushed glass.

She blinks. Her vision clears but it is the smell of this place she’s in that is revealed. The room stinks of damp, booze, days-old urine. It hits her and makes her gag. The only thing that stops her vomiting is that her stomach is so utterly empty. When did she last eat? How long has it been since she even allowed herself to think about food?

She rolls from her makeshift bed—a too-thin blanket, already as soiled as its surroundings—and onto all fours, and her right arm immediately gives way beneath her. She screams out in pain and hits the floor hard, shoulder first, which makes her yell out again. She waits, sobbing, for the pain to clear, then examines her unclothed arm. There’s no wound but there is a bruise like a rotten sunset running from her elbow to her wrist, and she has no idea how it got there . . . until she remembers.

Him.

He hurt her arm. He put her here.

And the cold reality sinks in.

Where she is. Why.