1850

London, November 15th, 1850; Abby awoke late again, to a chilly damp, foggy dark grey November in ol’ London. The cold! The never-ending bone-chilling cold, it possessed her very soul!

Her room is small, dark, with imposing wooden walls, half-eaten by time and the invisible bug inhabiting its surroundings; the floor creaks eerily under the slightest of weight, and a small, crooked window struggling to keep the icy wind out, is only but the cruel reminder of her lonely life.

Her sheets, stained with sins only matching the innocence of her life's perception, where her nights are so dark, the dawn is merely distant, but simply beyond her imagination... the minutes extend endlessly, repeating the anguish of the hours that went before, nights filled with sorrow, unseen, but felt a thousandfold, her body sore with the mauling, grip of men, generous, with ferocious thrusts until the break of day, all this for mere sad pennies, a living apparently...

Abby always tries to dress well, if only even slightly elegantly at best, somehow desperately attempting to hide the shame she believes to be perceived by others outside, where, surely her truth lies exposed like an open festering wound for all to see. But the slums of Waterloo do not welcome the delicate frills into its darkened alleys, filled with the stench of poverty-stricken paupers and muddied excrement that engorge its streets. Yet she walks and walks with the dark grey angry groaning sky following her everywhere, seemingly, judging her too, like all these people so estranged from her, it was as if it were another world entirely.  

The condemning looks full of disgust and disdain for her kind, the righteous regulators, the enforcers of harsh punishments, the wise scholars; a laughable status, idiosyncratic really, because these were the same men who will come knocking at her door when darkness falls, eyes brimming with lust, and anger or whatever mood would behold them then...

For her, for these individuals, repugnance persists, 'necessary for the deed’ she guesses, but the truth is... necessary for her survival really; what can a beggarly, uneducated, unskilled lass do?

Yet, she longs of gentle, beauty, affection and even dares to imagine... love. Maybe, just maybe, romance doesn’t only live in books or her day dreaming moments? Maybe her prince charming will knock at her worn-out door, with eyes glittering with kindness and love, taking her away from this Hellish place where souls are lost to vice and ugly - slowly dying from the inside out?.      

A loud bang resonated in the distance taking her away from her wandering day-dreaming state of mind; she reached Covent Garden and its amass of vendor stalls. It is a loud, feverish, smoke-filled large market where the delicious aroma of freshly baked bread entangles itself with rotten fish and floor-covered filthy waste, a true juxtaposition of senses.

She can only afford a few vegetables, last day's bread, a little milk, and if anything is left, maybe thin scraps of meat. Everything is so expensive here, so brutal so unfriendly, so loud, so dirty, so unforgiving!  A sudden ray of soothing sunlight pierced the dark sky to illuminate the grotesque scenery for a short moment of abstract beauty, clashing with the nasty ruckus of the world below, she pauses to absorb the moment,  lost in what seems like clarity,  she is consumed with a single thought... Is anyone listening?.  

To any woman who have been forced at some point in her life to do a deed she never wanted to do, without support, without choice, with shame and pain in order to survive or care for others.