The daughter of a widowed career military man, Sabella spent most of her life moving from one place to another, including such diverse locations as Okinowa and Manilla. As a result, she can speak or at least understand very basic pidgin phrases in several languages and has experience with a variety of cultures. The only constant in her life has been her deep faith in the Catholic Church – she is never seen without the rosary that belonged to her mother.
When she was fourteen, her father remarried and it seemed like things were finally going to normalize and settle down; when he died under questionable circumstances less than a year later, it was the beginning of a slow, downhill slide. Within a few months of his death, her step-mother had a new partner – a fellow female soldier. Sometimes the stereotypes about women in the military are true; Maureen and Brenda were closet dykes. The marriage to Daniel Fallen had simply been as a means of more convenient access to his very innocent, innately submissive daughter. It was easy for them to convince the military that as an orphan, Sabella needed to stay with them at their off-post quarters in Vicenza, Italy instead of being entered into the foster care system and sent back to the States.
Sabella became their slave, in all senses of the word – rarely permitted to leave the house during the day, oftentimes shackled by one wrist to their heavy oak bed at night, working from first light until midnight, cooking, cleaning, and her in-house job – washing and ironing laundry that Maureen took in for other soldiers. The pair were sexually and physically domineering of the girl, turning her out to their friends and forcing her to participate in the seedy, hidden underworld of the lesbian/femdom culture in Europe. (As a result, Sabella has a very non-American viewpoint on sex and a high tolerance for pain, though she takes no pleasure from it.)
This abuse continued for two years and was ignored by all those she tried to go to for help. Over that span of time, Sabella scrimped, saved, and stole enough from her stepmother (praying for the forgiveness of the Virgin each time) to enable her to escape. She made a break for it one rainy night in late spring, trying to hide herself in the bustle of nearby Trento. Like many runaways, she fell into one disastrous situation after another. Not surprisingly, many of these involved pimps trying to bring her onto their strings through seduction or guile, attempting to play upon her vulnerability. Time after time, she would flee like a terrified rabbit, starting over somewhere new – a few miles or a few cities away. She tried to make ends meet through a variety of honest jobs – waitressing, bicycle courier, dancer – but meals were few and shelter was always in question. This pattern continued for several years, and eventually her repeated escapes brought her to Grafenwöhr, Germany, with only her passport and a small backpack of belongings including her journal and a few worn photos of her family.
There, she managed to convince a fellow Catholic soldier to show her mercy and let her sneak on board an aircraft headed for the US. The trip was dangerous and long, hidden amidst the pallets of a C-130 load heading back to Ft. Benning. He helped her get off base without official detection, and left her at a bus stop in Christopher, Georgia.
At the age of twenty-three, she found herself in the United States for the first time since her birth, with a passport, a rosary, and little else. Two years of hitchhiking, waitressing, and running from pimps, con men and the occasional crooked cop brought her to the outskirts of Dead End City. There, she was quickly observed by a local drug dealer and procurer named Abe Shackleton. Unbeknownst to her, he shadowed her for several days, watching and waiting. He silently observed the places she tried to find work, her cautious explorations of the city, and the squatter’s spots she slept in. Her journal was pilfered from her backpack one night, returned before she woke, and from it, he learned of every hope, fear, and horror of her short life – and what a valuable commodity she could be for him.
Unlike the others who attempted to pull her deeper into a criminal lifestyle using guile or flattery, Abe used the direct and effective brute force that had made his reputation in the city’s underworld. On her fifth morning in the city, she woke cuffed to a post, her head swimming with the sedative he had injected her with as she slept. His explanation was simple; she was his property now, to use as he liked. If she fought, if she tried to escape, he would find her, punish her severely, and sell her back into the slavery she had escaped from in Europe. One demonstration of his sexual sadism was all it took for his ‘rabbitty’ girl to realize this was one fox she could not escape… and that things truly could get worse if he chose to make them.
She has been owned by him for six months, now. While her Catholic faith was all that kept her from suicide in those first, dark weeks, she has become more resigned to her fate. By day, she works at The Dirty Laundry, using the skills she learned under Maureen’s tutelage back in Italy. Through her obedience, she has earned a few small freedoms; a second part time job dancing and bartending at Lulu’s, the luxury of a new dress, a visit to the library, her own Bible. One of her most treasured privileges is the fifteen minutes per day he gives her to feed the stray cats at the docks of the City, and an hour to attend Mass each Sunday.
Each has been granted with a reminder that it could all be taken away. He is the devil she knows; other paths are no longer an option. Her faith gets her through the times he turns her out in dark alleyways to cruel men wanting to sate themselves on the helpless. [And, as he has told her, ‘Doin’ what I tell you to do, doesn’t make you bad. It makes you a good girl.”] Her core, submissive nature is channeled in the acts of kindness and service she can provide to others – and in the small voluntary sacrifices and offerings of her pain she makes to Abe to please him.
Recently, though, his dominance over her has taken another turn – the introduction of some of the drugs he sells. It varies: ecstasy, speed, narcotics… sometimes as she sleeps, other times, he tells her to look away… She doesn’t entirely understand the addiction that is taking hold, only that her body has cravings she cannot define or explain, an itch she cannot scratch, and somehow, he is the one makes it better. . .
