I haven’t been good lately—I know it. Heck, my father knows it, and so would my mother, if I had a mother. I don’t often pray, but please, please, let them stop. Let them stop the car and get this itchy blanket off and this dirty shirt from out of my mouth and I won’t tell anyone, not a person, not a soul, I won’t remember any names or faces dear Rainere just let it stop—

When the blanket folds back after we hit a bump I can see more than darkness with my left eye. I can see over the shoulder of the driver’s seat into the front of the car. Smoke is coming from their mouths, filling the cabin. I cough. The man in the passenger seat reaches back and hits me twice—three times. In the stomach. His hand is like a chunk of ice. On his neck he’s wearing—

The man in the passenger seat is wearing my thong on his neck. He turns back to me, smiling, smoke rolling down the dusk-colored contours of his rocky arms, the pink elastic loose and torn beneath his grinning chin.

"Wakey wakey little miss." The chin is covered with the shrub of a beard.

His breath rots like fish. It mingles in the cabin with the smoke from his cigarette. The driver tells him to shut up, shut up and let her be, but I`m already sitting up--already I feel the flesh of my naked thighs rub against each other, the nylon cords that keep my hands bound behind my back, the dryness in the back of my throat swelling into a cough that wants to be a scream.

Dear Rainere, save me.

When I was eight there was a man by the downtown wharf who danced for money. His name was Crazylegs, or at least that`s what my father called him. "Let`s see what Crazylegs is up to today," my father said on Saturday, when we went to the wharf to watch the fishing boats come in and sometimes take a trip on the boat with the glass floor and eat fried candy from the dock vendors. When I was older and took dance lessons my father called me Crazylegs sometimes. I remember it now because the man in the passenger seat reminds me of the original Crazylegs, the bum who danced for money, the one whose nickname I inherited—they have the same knit brows and open faces.

But the man in the passenger seat, unlike Crazylegs, has skin the color of pale cream mixed with ash. It’s island skin. He wears my torn thong around his neck like a string of skulls—I can tell it is mine, red with the pink trim, the Pennington’s logo embroidered into the shape of a heart, a heart that is throbbing right above the lump of the man’s Adam’s apple. Smoke rolls over his exposed skin like tiny waves, gathers in the center of the car. It stings my eyes. The man in the passenger seat tells me that he loves me.

“Shut up,” the driver says. “Don’t talk to her.”

The passenger says it over and over again, like the words could convince me that my hands aren`t bound, like the words could remove my thong from his neck and put it back where it belongs, along with the tight pants—too tight now, I know I know—that are gone forever now and put me back on the rain-glazed streets under the soft fluorescence of the Egmont night.

Sitting up I can see over the rim of the window. We are leaving the city, the gap-toothed skyline receding in the twilight. Buildings are still missing from the rock-demon attack all those years ago. My father’s office was nearly taken down. He called me that day, from some secure location, to make sure I was ok. I was young then, very young, but I still remember the day. I thought he was dead. I thought the phone was ringing to tell me he was dead, taken by the flames or the devastation of rock.

“I’m fine,” I said to him.

“Stay inside. Don’t move until I get home.”

“What’s going on?”

“It’s dangerous out.” And he hung up.

Sometimes I hate my father.

On his neck he’s wearing my thong, the man in the passenger seat. His smile seems familiar. I might have seen the same smile on my father. A predatory grin. Sweat Rainere, his neck! When I rub my legs together I feel only flesh, sweat, cold—I’m naked. Please, goddess, let this be over. I’ll give them what they want—they can have me—they’ve had me! Have they had me? They can! They can. I won’t tell on them. Rainere, just let them take the shirt—my shirt? my shirt!—out of my mouth and I’ll tell them—it will be over. They can’t do this to me once they hear my voice, my name. They’ll think of their daughters and wives and mothers—please Rainere let them have daughters and wives and mothers! Let them have daughters and wives and mothers with the same name as me! Please…

The fist returns and knocks the breath from my lungs and then mashes my face into the warm leather of the back seat. Like he heard my thoughts, and decided to punish me for them. Like he heard this prayer.

Prayer is for the weak? I am weak. I admit it. My family name won’t bear to hear me say it but I am weak. Why else would father look at me like he does?

I twitch and shuffle under the blanket. My feet—bound. My hands are tied high behind my back. I think the wrists are bleeding. The man in the passenger hits me again, but this time just once, not as hard, like he’s just saying “Shut up” to a friend. Let him see the light, Rainere, let him know he’s not that bad inside. He’ll turn to his friend the driver and tell him to stop, pull the car over, let her go, this is over… No, wait, he’ll want to let me go but the driver won’t want to, so they’ll fight, and he will win, and he’ll take my panties off of his neck and hand them back to me and say he’s sorry and drive me home, knock at the door and…

Oh sweet Rainere don’t let my father know. He can’t know about this. Not ever. I pray they haven’t called him yet, haven’t yet asked for the money he would never give. Hot tears—or blood?—are coming from my eyes, obscuring my vision. If I tilt my head up a bit I can see a bit of the highway. We—the three of us, driver, passenger, and me. I just want the best for us, Rainere. Leave me by the side of the road—they’ll carry this in their hearts forever until the guilt makes better people of them—they don’t need a jail. If they would just look back and see me.

Suddenly there are lights flooding the interior of the car. Is that you goddess, riding down on a shining halo of justice? I want them dead, Rainere. I want them to burn in holy fire. Let it start in their eyes, smoldering like the damned sinner of old. Burn their eyes to ash, and then their throats and mouths until they have not even the release of a scream to dull their pain. I lean up over the back seat, unable to keep quiet on the leather interior. Neither man seems to notice.

It’s not you, Rainere. It’s a truck. The headlights are right behind me. I could almost touch them. I never had a mother, Rainere—I know I haven’t been good—but doesn’t that mean anything? I was conceived in science with the aid of only one genetic source—my father. He made me as much as any man can make anything. The first thing I remember is lights, the bright glare of hospital lights. They told me my memory started earlier because I was engineered that way. See, Rainere? Engineered. Not even created. Can you take pity on an artificial girl?

I bob my head frantically to the headlights, hoping the driver can see me. Maybe you sent him, Rainere? Maybe you sent him to help me. Maybe the driver is some manner of angel. Maybe he doesn’t even know it.

The man wearing my thong knows I’ve been moving. He can see the shadow my head leaves as it passes back and forth. Before I can turn he’s in the back seat with me, hands curving over my body like hooks.

“Leave her alone,” the driver says.

Yes, Rainere, let him listen to his friend.

After a moment, the driver adds, “She’s mine, before anything else.”

The headlights from the truck are gone, leaving us in darkness. The man with rotting breath pushes the blanket up over my face, pushes the fibers into my eyes. The scream cannot leave my throat. He pushes me down, weight holding my legs to the leather beneath—and suddenly we tilting, falling. Sliding, maybe, down the side of a hill. The blanket comes up from my face. The man wearing my thong is back against the window, a speck of blood dotting his nose.

It was the truck. Is this where I thank you, Rainere? I am going to live. These bad men will not have me—they will be caught. I will be saved. He’s beside us now, the angel truck driver, headlights blazing with holy fury, lighting the highway like an avatar of justice. The wheels are mighty, invincible, the sides of the semi shiny like polished steel. In the dim of the semi-truck’s cabin I can see the faint outline of my savior—could it be you, Rainere? The truck rams up against the side of the car—almost gently. It’s trying to force us from the road.

“The fuck!” the driver screams.

“I’m bleeding,” the other many says.

“Fuck you and your bleeding. This guy’s trying to kill us!”

He drives faster, passing a taxi. The dark land blurs around us. The truck grinds faster to keep pace. Why does he follow?

Does he know that I kissed a boy tonight, Rainere? Does the man in the truck know that I wanted to see that boy again, his wavy hair and perfect legs and quick smile? I think that he does. I think that you told him. I think that you told him there is a girl in the back of that car who needs an angel because she’s knows—even at this young age, even being born in a tube like she was—that life is worth living and she wants to live it a while longer. He’s chasing after me—he doesn’t even know me!

Or maybe… could it be one of my father’s people? Someone who knows my father? Recognized me from a newspaper? Heard about a reward? I stare into the gloom of the semi’s cabin. It could be my father in the shadow of the driver’s seat, racing after me. It could be.

The driver—my captor—brakes suddenly, harshly. Metal grinds. The truck slams into the rear and I see the plain face of the truck driver before I am pitched forward into the front of the car, into the dash. My head hits. My captor speeds up, pulling away, using the momentum to get away.

When I look up there is blood in my mouth.

“Get your head down, bitch,” the driver says, but his hands do not leave the wheel and I disobey. Behind us, the truck that was following me is a ball of flames. I stare.

My angel. My anything. Flames.

People say they would do anything but they don’t know what anything means, not the way that I know what anything means. When I say I’d do anything so that you would send me away from here, I’m saying my life is yours, my body, my words—I’d give up what’s left of myself to breathe the cold air outside this moving cage, away from these tainted men, animals—it’s not heresy but choice. The scientists thought they could own me, and when they sold me to my father he thought the same. I choose to leave, if you would just send me. Send me to where my father is forgiven for betraying nature, where the city glows at night and I walk the streets alone in perfect comfort, like an open-air hospital for the heartsick. Send me to that healing place where sickness is cured and wounds are given time to heal, if heal they can. This is what I’d give anything and everything for—even myself to these two men. They can have me. I’m already there, already sent. Thank you Rainere, thank you thank you thank you. Eyes closed, I’m traveling. The car is gone, the men and their stone biceps and wicked skin are gone. Just send me.

Send me to that place—that place where the fawn-eyed boy with sun-browned legs dances at the edge of my dreams—send me send me send me send me send me.