Trigger warning.
That's what the front entrance should say. Instead, it lies the same way the outsiders do. Week after week, it cheerfully ushers unsuspecting loved ones and visitors to the registration desk where they'll sign day passes to visit us: the broken girls. The lost. The forgotten. The damaged. The twisted.
Every Saturday—Sundays on holidays too—outsiders will visit with no clue what really goes on in the place they've sent us to where nothing ever changes. With dull eyes and plastic smiles, we'll nod, grin, and take their hopeful offerings of trinkets from a deceitful world they don't believe we're ready for.
When the visit concludes, we'll return to the perverse happenings that go on seven days a week inside The Retreat. Only now, we'll do it with new rules because they've taught us so well what it is to be cruel, broken, and even triggered. We have secrets too.
The difference is, unsupervised, we'll be honest with you.
Welcome to The Retreat.
We're waiting for you…