VIP
By:
M. Robinson
This book is a work of fiction.
References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locations
are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used
fictitiously. All other characters, dead or alive are a figment of my
imagination and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s mind's
eye and are not to be interpreted as real.
Copyright © 2013 M. Robinson
Cover Design ©
Arijana Karčić, Cover It! Designs
All rights Reserved.
No part of this book may be used
or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the
author.
Dedication
This
book is dedicated to my one and only lobster; my husband! Ben, you are an
inspiration to me, my best friend, and my soul mate. We have been through so
much together in the last decade and I couldn’t imagine my life without you.
You’re the first thing I think about when I wake up and the last thing before I
go to sleep. Thank you for pushing my dreams and being my co-captain. You are the
reason I wrote this book after pushing to do it for over a year. I love you to
pieces! XO
Acknowledgements
To my
parents for always giving me the best example of hard work and determination,
for always providing unconditional love and support. I would be nowhere without
you.
To my
sister who drives me insane, but I love her nonetheless.
To my
nieces who I love more than anything in this world, you are like daughters to
me.
To my fur
babies, Tropper, Kobe, and Geo.
Jettie
my forever PP (Perv Princess) for always listening and helping me through this
process of my first novel. You continued to push me everyday to finish it and I
wouldn’t be here without you. And for making me laugh…a lot!
Julie
for beta reading and being completely honest with me! You are my #1 VIP.
Summer
for telling me that I was onto something with VIP and to keep going.
Crystal
(A Writer’s Helping Hand) for beta reading, editing, and putting up with my
constant questions and craziness.
Rachael,
you have been AMAZING with everything!!! Thank you so much.
Cover it
Designs, for a perfect cover.
Pimpslapped
for designing excerpts, teasers, & trailer.
Island
Lovelies Book Club, Dreams Come True Productions, & Loving the Book Launch
Party for providing support and helping with promoting me and VIP.
To all
the bloggers who have been nothing but supportive and excited for me, THANK YOU!
Last,
but not least, I’d like to say a special enormous thank you to Heather Harton
for coming through last minute and beta reading for me. I can’t thank you
enough.
And of
course to all the fans!!! You guys will always be my VIPS!!!
The beginning - A point in time
or space where something starts.
This isn’t
a love story, but a story about love. I have answered several questions
throughout the years; the one that I am asked often is; if it was all worth it?
I always answer it the same way, if it is all you’ve ever known then you don’t
know what to expect. In all honesty, in order to understand my happiness than you
need to know my sadness.
So
here begins my story…my name is Ysabelle Telle.
The
world is surrounded by countless distinctions. You can think of any word and
there is an opposite meaning; happiness and sadness, pleasure and pain, joy and
misery, companionship and loneliness, life and death, and love and hate. The
list could go on and on. I have experienced every one of these emotions
tenfold.
So
here begins my story…my name is Sebastian Vanwell.
Most
children grow up wanting siblings, especially little girls. They want someone
to share their secrets with, to have a best friend; to always have someone to
talk to. Fuck that, not me.
It was
more than enough to have one person in this screwed up environment that I grew
up in. I couldn’t imagine two of us going to bed hungry, I was barely able to fend
for myself. That’s exactly what would have happened; me having to take care of
another little person. Taking care of
me
came naturally. It was a fight
or flight mentality, only the strongest survive, kill or be killed, that type
of shit…my mom was a fucked up person, I had to survive. Period.
My
childhood memories are fuzzy, although clear, if that makes any sense at all.
Like it or not, it was my life, and for whatever fucked up reason or purpose,
it was my reality.
I didn’t
live in the suburbs on Shooting Star Court. I lived off of Nebraska in Tampa,
in the ghetto where men hung around outside with a court and a blunt. Women screamed,
and hit their kids as if it were nothing.
Oh…the beauty of living in section
eight housing.
Seeing a five year old on the streets was a daily occurrence
several times a day, that didn’t make it any less scary. My mother never
thought about what was in my best interest; fuck, she never thought about me at
all. Nevertheless, to give her the benefit of the doubt my mother never thought
at all. She was always too fucked up on drugs or booze.
I’d like
to think that walking the streets were the only times I ever felt scared, that
would be bullshit. I think I was born scared. However, five seems like a
reasonable age to be afraid…right? I was scared way before the age of five. My
mother haphazardly liked to leave me alone, ever since I could remember.
One particular
night sticks out in my mind; I awoke in the middle of the night hearing loud
noises. I ran into my mother’s room and she wasn’t in there. I remember looking
out the window, where I heard the loud noises coming from below, seeing cars
with red and blue flashing lights reflecting off the houses.
My heart
sank to my stomach. It was the first time I felt pure panic. I had taken a
candy bar from the BP gas station, earlier that day, when my mother had dragged
me in with her to buy a pack of smokes. I thought the cops were coming to get
me. I ran to my room as fast as I could, and hid underneath the bed until I
heard my mother stumble in with some random guy. Only then, did I think it was
safe to come out. It’s actually kind of funny now that I think about it, to
feel safe around my mother, that’s a fucking joke. I didn’t sleep a wink that
night, and hoped that my mother would come in and check on me to make sure that
I was alright, though she never did.
Shocker…
Our
neighbor, who we all knew as “Old Pa”, lived two doors down from us. He was
always really nice to me, offering guidance; like to put my shoes on and to
stay off the streets. I remember him yelling at me once for walking in the back
alley. He was really mad. At the time, I was too young to understand why he was
so mad. I know now it was probably, because of the man sleeping between the two
dumpsters, or it could’ve been the needles that he kicked away when he carried
me back to his house to feed me. In my defense, I was only trying to pet the black
kitten that kept running away from me, he was probably hungry, too.
That was
the last time that I saw Old Pa. I had heard people talking about how the cops had
come and taken him away. I never found out why though. I’m sure if I searched
the public records I could find out why, ignorance is bliss. I want to remember
something good from my childhood, and Old Pa was good to me.
Riding
the school bus became one of my favorite parts of the day. I got to watch other
children interact with two loving parents. I pretended to have that, too. When
I was on the school bus, I felt like I could be anybody that I wanted. I could
be like all the other kids with new clothes, shoes, and really awesome
backpacks. A backpack and a lunch box were only a few of the items that I never
owned as a child. I wanted a backpack though, one that looked just like Natalie
Johnson’s. It was pink with sparkles and glitter all over it. Natalie had
everything that I wanted. She was the last stop on our bus route. She lived in
a bright yellow house, with white shutters, and pretty flowers. There was even
a wooden swing on the front porch.
Natalie
had two parents, a mother and a father. They always waited with her at the end
of their driveway. Before getting on the bus, she always got a kiss goodbye
from both of them. The second she got on the bus, I would turn my head to watch
her father kiss her mother before he got into his car to go to work, I presumed.
Even at that age, I knew that he wasn’t kissing her like the guys kissed my
mother. He loved her. I could tell that even at the ripe old age of five.
I know
now that Natalie wasn’t what you would call rich. There were far more exquisite
homes in the Tampa Bay area; she was rich in my eyes though. Her blonde hair
was always so pretty. It was shiny, well maybe shiny isn’t quite the word. To
be completely fucking blunt, it was clean. Her headbands always matched her
outfits, as did her stockings with her baby doll shoes.
This
may be the dumbest thing to remember from riding the school bus; one afternoon
on our way home Natalie had on the shiniest bracelet I had ever seen. It called
to me, so when she wasn’t looking, I reached out and touched it. She must have
felt my fingertips, because she immediately looked at me disgusted and moved
closer to the window. She whispered under her breath that she wasn’t allowed to
talk to me, and to leave her alone. I didn’t understand why. Kids could be so
cruel. I wasn’t a bad girl. At least my teachers always told me that I was a
sweet child.
I
quickly learned to have a love/hate relationship with school. At least when I
was there I knew that I was going to get the free lunches. The kids weren’t
nice to me. They were actually very mean, except for Austin. He was always nice
to me. We had the same teacher up until the middle of fourth grade. We always
sat together at lunch, and played at recess.
I
remember one time he got into trouble for sticking up for me, when Nathan Black
called me Cootie Bella, when I had somehow contracted head lice. Austin pushed him
to the ground and Nathan skinned his elbows. Austin had to sit in class for the
next three days, while the rest of the class played at recess. I tried to
explain to Ms. Allen that Austin was defending me, she said we needed to learn
how to use our words,
‘Stupid Cunt’
how about that for some words?
The
whole class waited in line at the clinic that day, while the nurse checked each
of them for the epidemic of lice, complementary of little ole me. That was the
first time I remember feeling shame; immense shame. I was pulled to the side
and singled out. The school of course couldn’t get a hold of my mother to come
and pick me up. Our phone had been shut off…again. The school sent a letter
home with me, and my mother was pissed. She immediately grabbed the scissors
and hacked off all of my hair. Crying the entire time, I begged her to stop,
promising her that I would be more careful.
I went
to school the next day with a boy haircut, and everybody laughed at me. I went
from being called Cootie Bella, to Bella’s a boy. Austin was my only real
friend. He held my hand the entire day, and even let me eat his Jell-O pudding.
Up until
the middle of fourth grade, Austin was a part of my life. He had been absent
for four days straight. I finally asked our teacher where he was, and why he
hadn’t been at school. She explained that Austin was now in the
system
and
had a new home. I had no idea what that meant. I did know that I wanted to be part
of the
system,
too. I cried for a whole month after he was gone. I went
from being alone to being; invisibly alone.
My mother
was a smart fucking woman when she wanted to be. I should have been taken from
her the day I was born, I wasn’t. The one and only time a social worker came to
check on me, my mother was on point. There was no way she was losing her
welfare check for me, or her food stamps that she exchanged for drugs and
alcohol. She played nice that day and make pretended that she was June Cleaver.
She bribed me with a new doll, knowing that I didn’t have many toys. She also
knew that I was naïve enough to fall for it. My mother was a piece of shit. Plain
and simple.
By the
time I was in the fifth grade, I was put into
special
classes. Of course,
I didn’t really know what that meant then. I know now that I was being singled
out….again. Mr. Mayor had explained to me that it was for students that needed
a little extra help. In one sentence he was telling me I was special and in the
next he was telling me that I needed special classes. I didn’t understand how
he could use the same word for two different meanings.
The next
time I thought about Austin was during the summer, I was about to go into
middle school. It would have been nice to have one friend to start out with. It
was our fifth grade graduation and the entire gym was full of mothers and
fathers, except for mine of course. I had asked my mother to come; she had said
she didn’t have time. I knew what that meant. She was going to be sleeping off
the night before. I knew I was right; I saw the needles on the counter before I
left, right next to the empty bottle of jack, and the used condom on the floor.
I sat
alone waiting for my name to be called. I pretended that my mother was there
and that she was proud of me. They got to the letter T in the alphabet and soon
my name was being called.
“Ysabelle
Telle.” My principal announced, who was the only one who clapped for me. The
rest of the room kept about their business and conversations, while the unimportant
girl accepted her accomplishments.
Don’t
you dare feel bad for me. I’m not writing this for you to shed tears. My story
goes a whole lot deeper than this, and I definitely don’t want your pity. I
adapted. I embraced, whatever the fuck came or would come. That’s what I do.
I knew
what my mother did for a living, well for her living. She sure as hell didn’t
give a fuck about me. I guess a part of me always knew what her profession was.
You can’t really blame me; we lived in the same house. I was usually the one
that had to pick up the used condoms, which were never in her fucking room
might I add. I wouldn’t have given a damn if she had kept the revolting things
in her room, nonetheless my mother liked to get it on all over the house. I had
even found some in my room here and there. She had no fucking decency or moral
code.
The
summer that I was twelve years old and about to go into the seventh grade I
became a woman, as my mother had called it. Trust me we didn’t have a
mother/daughter bonding moment. This wasn’t an afternoon special. She simply
handed me a cardboard stick with a string attached to the end of it. I didn’t
have a clue what I was supposed to do with it. I ended up putting toilet paper
in my panties until the next day, when I went to the clinic and asked the nurse
for a maxi pad. She explained to me that the cardboard stick was a tampon and
that it went up my vagina. She even went as far as to demonstrate how to put it
in. She didn’t actually demonstrate, she just advised me to put one leg up on
the toilet and to lean forward so that it would go in easier. To say I was
fucking mortified would be an understatement.
I should
have known what was coming. I should have felt it or something. I could have
been better prepared for it, if that’s even possible. I wasn’t. I was raped
when I was twelve and it was by one of my mother’s Johns…yes…I just said Johns.
I couldn’t even tell you what the John looked like or what his name was, all I
know is that I woke up in the middle of the night with a hand over my mouth and
a body between my legs. That’s how I lost my fucking virginity.
Romantic,
isn’t it?
He
wasn’t gentle at all. The fucker held my mouth the entire time, while his other
hand fondled my breasts. There was nothing I could do. I just laid there in a
state of shock. I didn’t even cry nor did I try to fight him off. I beheld the
ceiling and waited for it to be over. Every time he thrust in and out, I
pretended that I didn’t feel the burning and ache between my legs. I pretended I
didn’t smell the marijuana or the cigarettes on his breath. I pretended I didn’t
taste the tequila on his hand. I pretended that I didn’t hear the grunts,
groans, and dirty shit that he was saying in my ear about my pussy being so
tight. I found out later that my mother was paid more money for this John to
“use” her daughter than he would have paid for her.
I know
what you’re all thinking, what kind of mother would do this to their own child,
their own flesh and blood. Although, maybe, she thought she was doing me a
favor. In her world and mind all men were trash. I experienced a lot of firsts
in my life; firsts that should never even exist, let alone be firsts. I eventually
learned how to embrace and expect them. They became a part of me, like a body
limb would be. My home life would be everything that you would expect it to be,
dirty ass house, never any food, old and used clothing, and a revolving door
for both my mother and her Johns.
After my
initial encounter with her John, I learned real quick to keep to myself and the
more I became invisible the safer I would be. At this point I couldn’t even
trust my own mother for my safety, not that I ever could. I began to be home as
little as possible, even learned a few tricks from my mother on male mentality.
You would be surprised with the things boys would do for you as long as they
got a hand job, how they would sneak you into their windows at night or even
leave you an extra plate of food once in a while. When I really needed
something, I would bring out the big guns, like a blowjob or even them doing
some light petting on me.