My reflection looked back at me, her face dripping and her eyes tired. Damn those nightmares. They were the same every night anyways. It's been a whole week now.

I was in a change of clothes that Mom had brought me, including my lucky hoodie, which currently settled around my waist. Like a shield against the world.

After brushing my teeth, I hesitantly returned to my hospital room and began packing the little I had on me. Discharging Day meant leaving this safe little heaven... into the real world.

The real ugly world who either knew about me or was oblivious to it.

I tossed Porkchop in the bag, along with my tattered clothes. I would burn them when I reached home. Other than that, I had nothing on me.

"Where's the discharging girl?" Mom came in the room, making me yelp.

She laughed as I tried to breathe evenly. "Calm down, honey, it's just me."

It's just me. The rough voice resonated once again in my ear, dragging me, forcing me back into that dark alleyway, the tobbaco-laced breath. The shadow that smothered my presence as his desperate weight pressed against me, my thighs bruising from how hungrily he grabbed me, all the time whispering, "It's just me".

"Cheshire? Cheshire, you're sweaty." Mom tried to wrap her arms around me, but I slapped them away. I felt her sigh.

"Darling, it's been a whole week. It's time you snap out of it and return to your old cheerful self. It's really not that hard, yeah?"

Old cheerful self, huh.

I barely know my old self now. Bubbly, well-liked, perhaps, even pretty, too. If I switched on my phone, the lock screen would show a grinning girl cosplaying as her Tim Burton namesake, holding her best friend in her clutches. Alice McKay was blonde, shy, and attracted boys like bees to honey. That Halloween party, she was Alice in Wonderland. I was her Cheshire Cat.

"For real now, Cheshire Oaks. It's time to go home." 

Home. 

Where was home for me now? Not where I resided, that's for sure. I was so close to the warmth of home, the essential oil-fueled lavender drifting around the house, the cobweb-clothed fireplace that would soon spark to life as winter approached, when it all went down. I was two streets away from block 63, where someone took me and used me and left me like... this. 

Where was everyone?

In a daze, I was back at my familiar family car, whirring to life at the sight of me. Astra sat, smiling in the backseat, next to where Cheshire used to sit. I sat in her place, a broken ragdoll forgotten how to live. I tensed, perching at the edge of the saggy leather. 

"Why are you sitting like this, Cat?" asked Astra cautiously, her grin dwindling a little. 

"I'll make the seat dirty," I muttered. 

"Cheshire Oaks, please. Don't give me that attitude." Mom glared at me through the rearview mirror.

Dad looked over from the driver's seat. "Honey, it doesn't have to be like this." He tried to kiss me, but I flinched. "Get off!" 

"Cheshire!" Mom was getting mad, I knew. Dad breathed heavily and Astra squirmed in her seat.

The sight of the three of them judging me, perceiving me like an outsider was too much. I broke. "I DON'T CARE!" I cried, curling into a ball on the car floor. "Leave me alone! I can't do this! I'm dirty now... oh, so dirty..." I sobbed and sobbed and no one could do anything. Not even persuade me to get on the seat. 

So my parents broke a zillion driving laws and drove with me wracking my insides out on the car floor, bumping my head against the front seat more often than not, either dulling or increasing my headache, I can't tell. 

But my heart ached long and hard, flushing with longing of something I can't reach, grieving over the most precious thing I'd lost: my life. 

I didn't know what to tell them, how my heart tugged and pulled for me to sit next to Astra, kiss away her worries and tell her that I was fine, just a little shocked by the hospital lights. I longed to snuggle up to Dad and ask him to tell me a story, being Daddy's little girl. And Mom, to apologise for making a fuss, give her a big hug and bake her favourite apple crumble for dessert tonight. All these things that were easily routine for Cheshire was now beyond impossible for this reduced pile of ugliness, dark circles and hoarse voice and bruised body and broken soul. 

Oh, how my heart longed for love and to love, to comfort and be comforted. But my mind saw ot all: how my tainted being would be impossible to achieve all of this. Astra would have a slutty sister and a broken reputation. As for Dad and Mom... the pressure of the press, the bullying... It was better to hurt for an acquaintance, rather than a daughter . They went back and forth in a violent whirlwind of tug of war, ripping me to unfixable shreds and beyond, so broken and unclean. 

Once we got home, I stumbled into the new sterile surroundings I was so used to. Sure, there's a crevice in the flooring and I knew to avoid bumping into the corner table, but many things were so wrong. At least, I felt like a black dot on a sheet of white paper. Different. Tainted. The more I moved around the more this horrible smudge spread. Without saying anything I bolted to my own room.

A cry of dismay, maybe mine, met my ears. Cheshire Oaks' room was also sparkling clean! Sure, there were clothes littered here and there, but traces of her perfect life was evidence that she once knew happiness before it was taken away.

I wished I could cling on to that. But mercilessly, in a big leap I huddled straight into the unkempt bed, the bed that was two streets away when Cheshire Oaks died, messing up the perfect peace that was once her life. I could've reached that bed if I ran maybe, or messed up my own face, or didn't dress like a slut. Perhaps even t-shirts were in Playboy fashion now. 

I took Porkchop out of the bag I'd brought with me and cuddled him close as the tears came again. 

"Who are you?" I whispered to myself. "Why are you in my room?"

Who would've known a small bit of residue dirt, some cigarette ashes maybe, or simply the neglected alleyway of block 63, would be so heavy? It was dragging me down into an abyss of nothing. I was falling and I couldn't find anything, any rock or cliff to grab and catch my breath, being tossed around in the ocean of never-ending sorrow and shame. It marred my face and my twisted my life in what? 5 pleasureable, selfish minutes? But no amount of scrubbing with soap or bleach would wipe my title above my head: Whore. 

I couldn't be clean again. Dirtiness beyond my peers' understanding would be my life now, or whatever little of it I could recall back. 

Whoever did this, why me?