I peeked out the front window of our house then bolted out the back door. The second man in white grabbed me. I screamed and struggled as he secured the straight jacket around me. Resigned there was no way to escape, I watched Lucinda hand the signed papers to the driver.

“Let’s see here,” he said, reading. “Promiscuous, belligerent, violent tendencies. Anything else?”

Surely, there were other sections on the paper Lucinda wanted to circle to drive me deeper into a hole. My mother only shook her head. “Isn’t that enough?” she asked, her face smug and determined.

Just before being dumped in the back of the wagon, I caught my mother’s Triumphant grin. She spat the words, “For the lips of a forbidden woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil, but, in the end, she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death. Proverbs 5:3.”

I hated her.

The driver snapped the reins toward San Antonio.

“I didn’t do anything wrong. I’m not crazy.”

Pleading did no good.

“Not for us to decide,” they laughed.

“You’re a pretty thing, though,” the driver said.

Excerpt from The Last Bordello

Daily word prompt: Triumph