Tasteless Cravings

Toni is an adult that has been abused all her life. As a 9-year old, her mother told her she was going to be right back and instructed her to stay in the house and not open the door under any circumstances. The minutes turned into hours, and the hours turned into days, and her mother still had not returned. Eventually she went outside to play, and demonic eyes, intoxicated with bad intentions, prey on her young, innocent soul. What is worse than being the only child of a drug-addicted single parent that often leaves her alone without food is her becoming a victim of rape and abandoned on the side of the highway in the middle of the night far away from home. Toni becomes a ward of the state and is sent to the foster home of a couple that really wants her.

Unfortunately, the Tates want her to be much more than a daughter, and the abuse continues, but this time in ways unimaginable. She dreams of normalcy. She dreams of living in a normal family with two parents that love her. She dreams of being like the other girls, but she is too grown and mature to even fit in with other teenagers in her school. She then becomes pregnant as a teen, and drug addition, as well as sexual addiction, follow. With every decision she makes, her life becomes worse than before, and as an adult she’s forced to fight or flee, and she does plenty of both as she selfishly disregards others in an attempt to make a better life for herself and her child. She creates a new life based on lies and tangles others in her web of deceit ― her life gets better on the outside despite the torture within her soul that she desperately tries to ignore. She has questions about her mother, her life, God, and her sexual identity, but the sins and decisions of her past constantly catch up with her and manipulate the answers. Can Toni continue running? Does she have any fight left in her? Her freedom to make her own decisions may be taken away from her by a past that is stronger than she thought.