Free Freedom's Child by Jax Miller Page A

squeeze past Sharon in the doorway to get to me. But before they could, I’d already put my fist through the window. Glass severing my vein wasn’t part of the plan, however. Blood squirted and poured; horror washed the color out of their faces.
    “HIV-positive,” I yelled to the men. It was the only thing that came to mind to keep them back. “I’m HIV-positive and if you come near me, I’ll aim for your eyes and mouth, I swear on everything that is holy!” They didn’t come any closer as I crouched down and shuffled through the files that Sharon had left on the floor. And the plan worked.
    I memorized the details: Virgil and Carol Paul, Goshen, Kentucky.
    And then I fainted from the blood loss.
    —
    “Mattley.” The voice sounds far away
, through what sounds like TV static and distant foghorns. “Help me out here. This woman is hurt.”
    “Whootha…” I try to ask, pretty pissed that this guy has a bright-ass flashlight in my face.
    “She’s not hurt, she’s just drunk,” says the all-too-familiar voice.
Fucking great
.
    “Awwficer Matt…Lee…is that you?” I try to formulate sentences, words, anything. I struggle to sit up on the rocks.
    “That’s just Freedom. C’mon. Help me get her up,” Officer Mattley sighs as he helps me up.
    “Don’t, you fuckin’ raper…rapist…rape.”
    “She always says this,” Mattley tells his new partner. “Always afraid cops have nothing better to do than comb the rocks for drunk women and rape them.” They help me to my feet, but I can stand for only a few seconds at a time; my bones become rubber bands. They are relentless sexual predators. I can swear this when I’m drunk. Sober? I really respect Officer Mattley. In fact, I’m head-over-heels in love with the guy. But if you try to tell me while I’m drunk that you’re not there to rape me? I’ll just scream it louder. And Mattley knows how I am when I get drunk. He’s one in a very few who knows how to deal with me in this state. “Yes, Freedom, I want to…you know.” I see him cringe at the thought. “But only if you get in the car.”
    The rape that occurred twenty years ago never really left me. I don’t talk about it, don’t really think about it. But when alcohol livens up the darkest corners of my brain, those alleys where many of my skeletons dance, they just spew the most cringe-worthy parts of my mind, of that rape, right out of my mouth. The liquor dissolves any filters that I might have been born with. I don’t mean for it. When I black out, those demons like to come out.
    “OK,” I say as I walk with them to the car. For the record, he’d never in a million years do such a thing. But for whatever reason, this works when I’m drunk.
    “Matt…Lee,” I dribble in the backseat of the cop car. “This new cop is newbie, new. Is he gonna rape me too?”
    “What?” asks the new partner with shock. This amuses me. I see Mattley in the driver’s seat nudge the new guy.
    Mattley answers from behind the steering wheel. “He says he will, but only if you promise to go to sleep as soon as we get you home, OK?”
    “Fan-fucking-tastic.” Everything around me is distorted. “Tell him I like it rough,” I slur.
    “I will, Freedom.” Mattley starts the car. “Just try and get to sleep fast, then, OK?”
    “Sir, yes, sir.” I begin to sing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”
    “Quick, turn around and grab her head,” Mattley yells to the newbie.
    “What?” he responds. Is that all this guy knows how to say?
What?
Mattley skids the car to a stop on the soft shoulder. He turns from the front seat and grabs my head, right as I’m about to head-butt the window. Don’t ask me why I do the things I do when I am drunk, I just do. I hurt myself constantly, try to start fights so I get hurt, I feel I deserve to be raped, I’ll sleep with anyone with hopes that they’re sadistic just to feel the pain. This goes back to the glutton-for-punishment thing, I suppose.
    After a small