I am no angel, and neither have I ever claimed to be one, but this was right on the edge of legality, at least as far as our present society sees it; evil... ? I don’t know, how do you quantify evil? I mean, I am not hurting anyone, am I?

Her mother had said that she was a virgin, just turned fourteen, already started bleeding.

The girl, herself, couldn’t tell me her age either, she was functionally illiterate – and I’m not certain that her mother was any better. The man of the house, allegedly a drug dealer had been incarcerated, and had been killed in prison, just months ago.

The two females seemed to have fallen through the cracks, they had been forgotten.

I had become allergic to the big city. It was the air pollution, the noise pollution; everything conspired against me. I was unable to go an hour without sneezing, and I had a chronic headache.

While my mother’s doctor tried to get me onto yet another experimental drug, I had decided it was time to strike out on my own, and see if living in a small town might be better ... and healthier for me.

And so, here I was. The house was on the outskirts of town. The realtor had given me directions, but she was unable to get there straight away, possibly wouldn’t arrive for at least another hour; some family emergency, or other.

The utilities had long been off, the bills had been unpaid; but no one had bothered checking up on the two women staying in the house.

The mother, Helen, didn’t even own a car, she didn’t have her licence. Neither did she work. Cindy, her daughter, had not attended school in quite a while. They were both looking very malnourished; the kitchen garden had plenty of herbs; and as far as everything else went, the garden was well-tended, but was heavy on starch, and little else. With no utilities, the chickens were also failing.

Helen, although too thin, and having a very gaunt, drawn face, was still good-looking. She must have thought herself too old, or too ugly, and had offered her daughter as payment, they desperately needed food.

It was already late afternoon, and I phoned the realtor, postponed for the next morning.

I booked the two ladies into a motel room, the one next to mine. That evening, they had the first bath, let alone hot bath, either of them had had in a while. I had gotten some fried chicken at the takeout, they ate sparingly, not because they weren’t hungry, but rather so as not to get sick, trying to ingest too much, too quickly. I had also acquired some multi-vitamins; hopefully, they could get their bodies back into proper working order.

I hadn’t actively been thinking of the benefits of helping anyone, and my mother’s notions of charity were the last thing on my mind. I just couldn’t abandon these two souls, who were so in need.

In the morning, I got them both moving; they were still lethargic. The realtor was amazed that anyone had been staying in the house. Her information had been that the house was unoccupied, with the utilities off.

She had never even seen the place before today; it really wasn’t in very good condition at all, and would need a fair amount of work done on it. I had been hoping for almost immediate occupation, or at least as quickly as possible.

I had graduated with a bachelors in IT, and had already gotten my own consultancy going, I was able to do almost all of my work online, on the odd occasion that a client demands communication other than email, I either use the phone or Skype; but that still requires that I have my computers, with attendant peripherals installed, somewhere! Somewhere that I could call home.

I’m not certain what the realtor’s game had been; was it to show me a crumbling bungalow on the edge of town, was it all a ploy that I would then be willing to spend more money on the much better looking, much better maintained white picket fence home in a more upmarket suburb.

I will admit that my initial requirements had been – and I suppose that I had enumerated them as such – a single bed bungalow. I hadn’t been thinking of further needs or anything like that; although financially I was able to afford the white picket fence place.

Although the sheriff and the county child services had been to visit, and had talked to Helen and Cindy, they had latched onto me, I wasn’t complaining either. I knew that a housekeeper could cost me almost as much as the extra money I would spend on groceries for the extra two in my household, if not more. Helen had offered herself as my housekeeper.

The sheriff and child services both told us that at the time of Dennis’s incarceration, a federal agency being involved, both the state and the county / town, had thought that the other had taken custody of the ladies, and then been put into a halfway house / place of safety and vice-versa. There just was no excuse, as far as I was concerned.