The policewoman felt her way into the dark room, smelt dead fish and saw ropes hanging from the walls. The light was so dim that she heard the child’s soft sobs before she saw the tiny, petrified girl tied to the rusty pole in the corner. The door slammed, heavy work-boots scraped and the harf-harf harf-harf of an asthmatic wheeze lifted the soft hairs on the back of her neck like zombies rising in a graveyard. Her trembling hands reached for the taser in the side pocket of her belt, she turned and shot the barbs and the dark shape froze, jerked and collapsed onto the concrete. The policewoman rushed to the child, wrapped her arms around her and whispered, You’re safe now.”
Katie (aged 13)