Free SPARKS: The Smoke & Fire Series (Prequel Book 1) by Michele Wesley

 
    Part 1
     
    Sori Knight - Smoke
     
    Being welcomed into the world
with a foot-stomp versus a butt slap should have been her first clue.  Sori
came into this world at the bottom of a foot, or at least that’s what she
remembered. Staring up at a foot as it came smashing down towards her face was
her very first memory. The incessant kicking came from her foster parents as
her small arms fought to block the forces of evil.
     
    Sori was showered with attention
in its rawest form: abuse. Her endearments were verbal slashes and physical
strikes that cut deep. She couldn’t remember anything before her fourth year,
her mind still too mushy to form concise and clear patterns of thought.
     
    At four years old, it happened,
Sori’s own Big Bang. All she knew was her brutal reality, awakening to a world
that seemed like it didn’t want her and found every chance to reject her.
     
    Growing up without a sense of who
she was kept Sori wondering about her lineage and who her parents were. Growing
up in foster care was the whipped cream on the disaster pie of her life.
     
    She heard her foster parents say
many times they were giving her back to the state. Due to her mistreatment and
harsh abuse, it would have been a gift to be given back. Anywhere seemed better
than living with two adults who substituted abuse for affection.
     
    Daily beatings and being yelled
at had become Sori’s norm. At five, Sori’s six-year-old foster brother Brad was
hospitalized with a broken collarbone and several cracked ribs. Since Brad’s
injuries had been so severe, it caught the attention of the Department of
Health and Human Services. Sori was taken and remained in a state facility for
about six months before being placed with another family.
     
    By the time Sori turned ten, she
had been tossed around to so many foster homes she lost count. The world of
adulthood seemed like an angry, hateful place. They were all abusers, verbally
and physically. She had yet to be placed in a home where the adults didn’t seek
out ways to inflict abuse on her.
     
    She spent time with couples who
weren’t opposed to admitting they only entered the foster care program for
financial gain. Some entered the program seemingly to have someone to abuse. 
The system, as she lived it, wasn’t working. How many children had to suffer
injuries or die before someone realized the system was severely broken?
     
    Sori’s most peaceful years were
from age ten to twelve, placed with an older woman, Ms. Gurtie McNeal. Although
the woman didn’t provide much in the line of affection, she wasn’t abusive.
Sori learned at a very young age that not having someone abuse her was a big
blessing.
     
    At the unlucky age of thirteen,
Sori found that no matter how bad she thought things were, they could always be
worse. She ended up in the clutches of a couple who were not only abusive, but
easily the most disturbed people she had ever been placed with. The couple,
Debra and Rodney Littlejohn, raised the bar on abuse by teaming it with
belittling torment and emotional assault.
     
    Sori, along with her foster
sister Sherri, were forced to star in a series of homemade kiddie porn films.
At thirteen Sori looked no older than ten, so she appeared the prime age for
the couple’s target audience.  The couple’s studio was located inside their
spare bedroom.
     
    Severe beatings were the result
of disobeying her foster parent’s orders, and Sori disobeyed often. Living most
of her young life as the recipient of abuse, the prospect of being beaten
wasn’t a scare tactic that frightened her as much anymore. Sooner or later,
Sori feared Debra and Rodney would make her favor a beating over the
alternative; being forced to have sex.
     
    Sori had a clear understanding of
sex and how it worked. Although her foster parents hadn’t yet forced sexual
intercourse, she and Sherri were forced to pose and pretend like they were
having sex with adults. They were also forced to touch and