The light of the morning meeting my eyes, as it signals a fresh start… I open my eyes and see a beautiful little girl lying on the pillow in front of me. She is still asleep, her little breaths evenly distributed. Sitting up in bed, I smile, this unusual feeling… a feeling of hope which I am unaccustomed to overwhelming my senses.

Getting ready was easy, I felt light on my feet as I showered and dressed for work. As I prepare to leave Violet motions for me to come to her. I kneel next to the bed, curious what she needs.

She is hunched over, working on a bundle of what appears to be tiny wires, “What are you working on Violet?”

She doesn’t respond for a couple seconds, eventually looking up, “I’m fixing my broken wing, it’s normally quite strong, but the tree got lucky.”

Eager to help the little woman, I quietly ask her “Can I get you anything you need?”

“No, I’ve got the stuff I need Alice, I called you to ask, Do you want to leave tonight?” she asks, her hands firmly on her hips.

Shocked, I whisper, “That’s... really fast.”

She looks down, “I know, I don’t want you to endure any more abuse, but it’s up to you. I need a couple things before we can go.”

“Like what?” I inquire, curious what this woman from another world could possibly need my help finding.

“So I’m not normally this tiny Alice, I have a device which helps me grow and shrink in order to suit my needs, it got damaged the other night…” she projects an image from her wrist. “I need some… what do humans call them…”

“I know what those are! I make them at my job, how many do you need.”

Violet looks me up and down raising an eyebrow, “That is a crazy coincidence… and I need twelve.”

I smile, taking another look at the schematic she was holding in her tiny hands. I am shocked that this little space explorer needs my help to find something as simple as a handful of 550 microfarad capacitors and a few odds and ends. I smile down at the tiny lady, “I’ll see you after work.”

She simply smiled, waving me off and returning to her wing. I spin around and ascend the stairs, flying through the kitchen and onto the path to work.

This is normally the part where I would contemplate the futility of life and dream of a better future. Except today was different. Instead of my eyes being glued to the ground, they wandered in the sky… I imagined worlds of people, places free of the crushing influence of my father. For the first time in my life, I feel… hope.

Approaching my place of employment, the factory that has been my safe haven for years, I suddenly realize it is one of the few things I will miss about home. Entering the building I have a smile on my face which none of my co-workers have ever seen.

I turn the corner to enter the main floor and I run straight into Jeff, and since he’s a big guy, I bounce off and land on my ass. He looks about as shocked as I was before a big smile spreads on his face. His eyebrows raise, “Holy shit, are you smiling Alice?”

I blush, and look away, realizing that for the first time ever, I was smiling at work! Taking Jeff’s extended hand, he pulls me up. “So what happened Alice?”

“Remember, when I told you about my home situation?” He responds with a compassionate nod. “Well, I made a friend who offered to let me live with her, and… I know it’s the right thing to do…”

“So,” he gives a fake disappointed sigh, “you are leaving?” I smile and nod, and he continues, “Well, I hate to lose such a good worker, but I understand, let me know if I can help.”

I hand him a little piece of paper with the list of capacitors and components that Violet needed to fix her device. “I need these things before I go.”

Jeff rolled his eyes, “Of course kiddo, and I’m not even going to ask why, how about that.”

I look down, embarrassed at my request, “Thanks Jeff.” Now smiling I go around him to take my place on the line and finish my last shift as a quality control lady. Checking the caps and circuits today was easy, and I spent most of the time thinking about the future. I had so many ideas and concepts floating through my mind. As much as I imagined the future I realized that I had no idea what awaited me. Fortunately fear couldn’t grip my mind. I had someone who was willing to guide me into a new world…

Her name is Violet, and she is a beautiful person… and I feel inextricably drawn to her…

Seeing a batch of bad circuits I send them off the line. Despite my excitement, I still want to do this job right! Putting my head down I focus until the end of the shift.

At the sound of the buzzer, I stand up, running my hand along the back of the seat. For the last time I would leave this structure, and in so doing I would enter my future. Jeff was standing just outside his supervisory seat, holding a small plastic bag with the things Violet needed.

I run up and hug him. He was always so nice to me. “Thanks for being good to me, all these years.”

“Of course kiddo, you’ve done a good job,” As is his custom, he squeezes my shoulder in a fatherly way, “and I hope everything works out.”

Taking the bag, I slip it in my pocket, as I leave the building I look back one last time, I look back at the only father figure I have ever known. Turning out, I step boldly out into the fresh snow making my way home.

Arriving at the house, I am pleased to discover my father’s truck is gone. I enter, quickly finding myself downstairs. “I’m back!”

She is nowhere to be seen. “Are you here Violet?”

Fearing the worst, that she left without me… I nearly give into the despair of a lost opportunity when a blue streak of light blazes through the window, a three-foot long sleek metal tube with two protruding metal wings sweeping back to a glowing blue ball following it.

Three legs unfold from the superstructure and it lands on the floor.

All I can think is, “What the shit?”

An aperture opens on the left side, and Violet steps out. “Sorry, I wasn’t here… I had a harder time finding this then I thought!”

I cross my arms, “What exactly is it?”

She smiles, “Do you really think I fly through space with my wings sweetie?”

I blush, covering my face, “I didn’t even think about it…”

The little girl laughs, extending her beautiful, and apparently repaired wings and fluttering up to my shoulder, landing and resting her hand on my neck. “Alice, this is my ship, the UNS-Arrow. It is fast, quiet, and comfortable… and right now, very, very small.”

Smiling, I lean over to Violet, but I wasn’t thinking and I knocked the tiny girl from her perch. She flung herself off and allowed her wings to catch her, she glided in a circle down to my lap, landing on my leg. She wore a big smile and laughed at me. I realize what I did, covering my face with my hand as I start to laugh, “I’m so sorry!”

She simply dropped down and ran her little hand back and forth on my leg, laughing. I realize she isn’t hurt, and I start laughing harder.  She looks up to me, “Were you able to get the things we needed?”

I smile, pointing to my pocket, Violet walks across my leg, pulling the little bag out of my pocket. She takes a quick look at the contents as a smile forms on her face. She jumps to my stomach, hugging me, “This is perfect! I’ll get to work right away!” She flutters, with the relatively huge bag over to her ship.

She takes the parts in and I see her poke her head back out, “You should pack the stuff you want to take! Anything else I can get for you later.”

Realizing the truth of her statement, I grab a bag from the closet, to pack the few things that are important to me. I enter the closet, and fold my gown, the dress that helped me see myself for what I wanted to be… instead of what I was made to be by the monster upstairs. I place it in the bottom of the bag. I take the small amount of make-up I had acquired over the years and put it in a little pocket of my bag.

I take a couple comfortable shirts and a pink nightie, and my only intimate wear… a beautiful bra and panties that I tried on in the store, but had never worn since. I then stuff a couple skirts and a tight pair of jeans into the bag.

The last thing I grab is a picture of me with my work crew. Everyone who was nice to me there… they deserved to be remembered… especially Jeff. I hold the picture close, and slip it in the bag.

Putting the bag on my back, I laugh as I exit the closet, and encounter Violet with a crazy look in her eye as she exits her ship. “It is fixed!” She lifts it and presses a button, and nothing happens. Her crazy look drains.

“What happened?”

She stands there, motionless, I assume she is thinking, but she soon raises her hand again. “I apparently forgot something….” She spins around and walks back into the ship, small noises of repair resume and I hear the sound of a truck transmission slamming into park.

I look down at The Arrow, “Shit. He’s home. If he comes down here we are fucked.” I whisper.

Violet yells back from inside her ship, “I’m almost done, if you can stop him from breaking my ship, I can help you!”

Fear gripped my heart… how could I defend her ship… I can’t even defend myself… I hear a faint voice in the back of my mind, gently telling me… “You can.” I didn’t understand where the voice came from, but it was an emboldening experience.

I suddenly realize that right now, I hold my own future in my hands. I know I need to face this problem now… and instead of cowering like I have my entire life… I will protect myself from the monster that ultimately helped create me.

Then the door at the top of the stairs slams open. He can see everything. “What the fuck are you doing down there.”

With my new courage, I yell back, with an intensity he had never before heard from me. “None of your business! Stay up there!”

He starts to descend the staircase, “I do what I please in my house bitch, what is that on the floor?”

“Something you are not allowed to touch.” I widen my stance and make it apparent that I am going to hold my ground.

He steps down to my level, his lumbering body, powerful when not entirely inebriated with alcohol, filling the path before me. Gesturing to the side, he furrows his brow and grunts, “Get out of the way little bitch.”

“No, you will not get your way… not this time.”

Clenching his fist he throws a punch. But this time, instead of accepting the impact I put up my arms and cross them. Blocking the punch and sliding back instead. I step forward, holding my ground I kick his shin, and elbow his descending jaw, and he yells in pain, connecting his fist with my stomach, knocking me back to the side as he steps back to the door.

I feel powerful, but I know that he won’t stay back for long… and I’m not sure I can withstand another punch and still be able to stand.

I return to my place between him and the ship, I am visibly weakened, and he approaches slowly. He is beyond close for comfort when a blue flash is emitted from The Arrow, and a small “yes” can be heard throughout the room. I look back to see Violet’s wings blur my vision as she flies directly between me and my father.

“Thank you, Violet,” I mumble under my breath, as I wonder what she is going to do…

She is wearing a form fitting blue armor suit that I had never seen before, reminiscent of middle age knights, but the joints glow, and it is precision cut and far more elegant, to protect her perfectly. Her wings glowing, she brandishes a blue hard-light sword, emitted from her wrist, it appears as threatening as any sword could look at her size.

Protecting me, she addresses my father, “You have abused this woman, and tortured her, held her against her will, she does not belong to you, and I will free her from you… you bitch.”

A look of amusement crossed his eyes, “What is a runt like you going to do? Talk me to death? Seriously?”

Violet shook her head in adamant disappointment, “If only you had left when Alice gave you the chance abuser.” Violet raised her hand emitting a powerful white light, as her form expanded, she continued to hover in the air, as her body grew from its minuscule eight centimeters, to twenty, to almost a meter.

She lowered her hand, and she accelerated her growth, doubling her height and falling to the floor as she dismissed her wings. Her growth was fast but had my father not been so dumbfounded this would have never worked. She matched his height, pulling back her arm and sending it squarely into his chest, sending him flying into the stairs. The look on his face was one I had never before seen. He looked like he was the prey. For the first time, I was watching as he had his ass handed to him. No longer my predator, but a weak and paltry prey.

Stepping forward, Violet’s head impacted with the ceiling, halting her expansion. She looked back to me as she placed her sword over me and her ship. She smiled and said, “Please stay put,”as she began growing again, raising her head into the ceiling.

I watched as this once tiny woman expanded to enormous proportions, collapsing my childhood hellhole to debris in a matter of seconds. Walls fell, and the roof split in two, a single support truss fell knocking out enemy back off his feet. Nothing in this building could withstand the expansion of Violet’s body. She finished growing and I looked up to her knee, I only reached her ankle.

Lifting her foot, and dropping herself down to a kneeling position, she dug through the debris, picking a little form out of the debris, dropping it on the floor in front of me. It was so… small…

“What is that?” Violet turned and walked away.

I looked closer and realized I was looking at the diminished form of my worst nightmares. He looked up with anger. “You destroyed my ho…” The anger washed from his face when he realized that he was not even as large as the finger I held over him.

“You know… I have feared you my whole life. You have made my life a fucking misery. Right now, though, things are as they should be. I am a bigger person than you… A better person… There is no way for you to fix what you’ve done. So, unlike you, who abused me for decades, your end will be quick and merciful.”

I raise my foot over his limp and nearly motionless body, and press down swiftly. He splatters instantly, no match for the power in my feminine leg. I rub his guts off my shoe, into the debris of this hellhole. I turn around, as a smile spreads across my face as I walk away.

The evil which had always dominated my life… was gone.

Forever.