<p>To recognize captivity, you have to know you’ve been captured.</p><p>I didn’t.</p><p>The first time he snuck into my bed, I was only seven.</p><p>I had a knife.</p><p>Father shouldn’t have craved me as he did, so I sunk the blade into him…</p><p>I was a child of many demons, all of whom they had created.</p><p><br></p><p><em>No one missed the child that disappeared from sight because they knew where I was—where I’d been hidden away—for when they wanted the girl with no hands.</em></p><p><br></p><p>To understand you’ve been freed, you have to learn what freedom even is.</p><p>Could I learn?</p><p><br></p><p>This is a dark story that I wish I hadn’t lived, but had I not, I never would have known the Angel of Death.</p>