erebus7

The young woman hunched over the workbench was a rather skinny specimen. Had she been a bit prettier, she might have been compared, albeit unfavorably, to a young Audrey Hepburn. But even putting aside the signs of physical abuse (the black eye, the split lip, the cast on her left wrist, the ring of bruises around her throat), the obvious malnutrition, the fishbelly-pale skin that plainly hadn’t been in the sun in months, the filthy surgical scrubs that she was wearing, and the brutally shaven head with scabs in places, uneven brown stubble in others, she would have missed being considered beautiful by most observers. Her brown eyes were a bit too large for her face, her mouth a little too wide. She looked like the sort of girl who’d spent high school being described as “kind of cute,” college being described as “really smart,” and the very few years after college to this point being ignored by those interested in women. She flinched as she heard the door open. The voice, that