Yes Sir (with a smirk)

'who is this stupid fuck?', I think to myself as he walks ahead of me, his body language suggesting that maybe I should follow.

'If he thinks I'm going to call him 'sir', he has another think coming', I continue, but decide to humour him and play along until I find the lie of the land. I've handled adults before, and I will again. I rub my hand against my throat as I walk, kicking my converses against the boards is a mild act of defiance; it is sore, and I swear my parents wouldn't like that, if they knew. Not that I'm going to tell them. I don't need them and their prissy fucked-up ways.

I follow the stranger down the hallway. The house looks quite nice, extremely well kept, with not a thing out of place and expensive rugs covering the antique floorboards. The man stops ahead of me, reaching for the edge of the rug, and I pause, quizzical. He turns it back and reveals some sort of doorway concealed in the floor under the mat. He unbolts it and lifts the heavy trapdoor with quite some effort before looking across to me.

"This will be your home, young lady, until you have learnt some manners"

I back away a little, "You gotta be kidding me?"

But he reaches across and grabs my wrist. ('Damn he's strong!') pulling me towards him and showing me the rough wooden steps that lead down into the dark below. He then pushes me ahead of him.

"Go on Missy. Down you go"

I resist, pushing back at him, but he is like a rock at my back, my small frame making no impression on him at all, and he pushes me step by step down the stairs into the dusty gloom. I stop when I reach the bottom, uncertain. There is no light and it smells damp down here, the air is stale and dusty, as my eyes try to adjust in the gloom.

There is a click as the man pulls on a cord and a light appears in the room. I am dazzled, briefly, by the sudden change but soon things are laid out before me. I go quiet, uncertain but angry inside.

What light there is comes from a single bare light-bulb hanging from a frayed electrical wire in the centre of a wooden ceiling. It illuminates a very bare scene. The room is small, hewn out of the bare earth, but with some boarding in places with what looks like rings or hooks hammered into them. The air is dusty. There is one piece of furniture, although that is stretching the definition somewhat; it is a metal bed frame with an old, thin, stained mattress upon it and what looks like an old discared shift. There is a jug by the side of the bed. There is a bucket. There is a bare earth floor. That is it.

"This is some kind of joke, right?", I speak out, turning sideways to look up at him, but I am met with a cold gaze as he tugs my bag away from him and pushes me into the room.

"It depends on your sense of humour, Missy"