She stared out the open window; her life lay before her, fragmented. A jigsaw where more than one piece was missing. A shattered windscreen beyond repair, that was she. She was that sheet of glass. A road torn up so many times that it looked like a patchwork quilt and full of so many potholes that it was dangerous to drive along, that was her too. A broken china doll, strung on the wall, a layer of dust settling on her, she was like all these things except worse. She was stuck like this. The jigsaw would be completed one day, or a new one started. The glass would be replaced, the road would eventually be filled and cleaned and the doll would be mended with loving care. Would she ever be that lucky?

She shook her head to herself. No one was going to repair her, she could not just forget everything and start anew. This was her, forever. Could she live with herself that long? Surely she would be insane long before then. Isolation, fear, torment, these things wore her down daily. She hated herself, long ago; she had had an argument within herself and had not made up since. This was her life, this existence of pain.

She wanted to pull her hair out, to drag a knife down her arm and let the life seep out of her. She wanted to die. She was so frustrated, why couldn't she change things? Why? Others could. Why not her? Why was she so incapable? Was she just below average? To get herself into this situation, she must be. An intelligent person would have seen it coming. They would have swerved out of the way and carried on. Not her, she hadn't even seen it coming and here she was, months later. Suffering.

She ran her hands down her stomach, the silky skin mocking her, the slight bulge terrifying her. If she could tear it out, she would. Would that change her life? If she killed herself now, would that be murder? Murder of the unborn? Could she really call the thing inside her a real life, it was part of her and her existence wasn't even worth calling life. It was a slow death, a death she would welcome with open arms. The thing inside her was his invader, his way of branding her as his for the rest of her life. She would carry this child to term, and she would bring it up. She would sacrifice what she had left to bring up a child sired by a monster.

She blamed herself, and as she stared out to the wintry afternoon, she thought of ways of suicide. What would people say when they found out? She was only a child herself, changed forever by a man she never knew. A man who had taken everything from her, her innocence, her virginity, her life and he still walked the streets, free. She didn't even know what his face looked like.

He was a rapist, and no one knew. No one knew what he had done to her. She was afraid, she had let it happen - what would they say? They would call her a slut, a whore. Free sex. She wasn't. She was a frightened child, eating for two. A girl caught in the innocence of youth, suddenly thrown into the turbulence of being older, an adult.

Now she was faced with the prospect of piecing back together her life, telling people what had happened. What would they do? Make her tell the police? Would her parents throw her out? What would happen to the demon’s child eating her alive? She had considered trying to traumatise the unborn into death, she thought about running in front of traffic. Throwing herself out of her window. She couldn’t do these things, deep inside herself, she screamed that she could not stoop to the rapist’s level, he had stolen her life, she could not steal the life of another innocent. A child conceived out of hate, is still a child conceived. She couldn’t face abortion,;she feared that he would return. At least pregnant, she had nine months where he could not affect her. She didn’t even really think he would return, that he even thought about what he had done. But she thought about it everyday and with each day, she convinced herself more and more that he would return, to finish her off. She hid the bruises, the knife slash on her leg. How much longer could she go on?

The late afternoon dusk began to settle and with the evening’s arrival, tears flooded down her face. She gripped at her knees, and for the first time, she let go. Her body was racked with sobs and she shook uncontrollably. She was unaware of the car driving into the garage; the woman who got out was an older, but near identical version of the girl. The woman walked with confidence and entered the house in a happy mood. She called upstairs, greeting her daughter. She strained to hear an answer, all she heard were the loud sobs, echoing throughout the house.

She rushed to her daughter’s room and flung the door aside. The girl looked at her mother and broke down; her voice was barely audible as she whispered the words, the truth. The mother too, broke down. Her daughter had been violated. Her baby was frightened. She held her daughter close and the story flooded out. The girl felt relief and as she began to calm down, in her mother’s warm embrace she murmured the words, "Mum, can I live this life?"

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