I've lived through worse, dying each night he came to my room only to have to try and remember to act alive the next day.
At least here, nobody is making me act alive. In fact, they almost seem to prefer that I've been playing dead.
Dead girls don’t fight. They let the men do what they want, because if your choices are fight or flight, but neither of those is a real option, the only other thing youcando is freeze.
I froze inside the truck when it was my turn, when the brutalized woman whose hand I’d held through it all pointed to me with her fingers trembling as they asked her who their next victim was.
If the ride had been just a little longer, I’d have faced the same decision. It’s why I didn’t hate her for choosing me, even as they dragged me from Parker’s grip as he fought to defend me, to save me from a fate that had already been sealed. It’s why I didn’t hate her as the man clawed my clothes off of me like the beast he is, slamming me to the ground where Parker lay before me, bleeding and bruised, moonlight filtering in from the open door.
Wherever we pulled over was remote enough that my screams went unheard by anyone outside of the truck. When I saw that my fight made Parker struggle harder and the man’s boot press against his throat deeper, I abandoned them. I refused to give them another goddamn sound as the man with the bandana slammed into me, each thrust feeling like sandpaper shoved deep inside of me as my dry pussy protested his presence.
That was the last time I gave my tormentors what they wanted willingly.
They can take my body and twist it into whatever the fuck they want. They can hurt me and make me bleed, and they have.
But they will not get my desperation.
I went dark before the first man ever pulled out of me in that truck, making room for Parker’s abuser to come take his turn, kicking him one last time in the head so that he went unconscious.
I didn't cry when I saw the wasteland they’d taken us to, with nothing around, or when they pried me away from Parker’s body, or when they stripped me down and shoved me under an icy trickle of water in the shower that was red with dried blood and rust.
I didn't refuse like some of the other girls when they handed me a pair of cheap, see-through panties and a white tank that left nothing to the imagination. I didn't try to fight them off when two of the guards held me down so the doctor with her vicious red nails like talons could draw my blood and spread me with her speculum, taking samples from me like I was some sort of lab rat.
That wasn't the last time the guards held me down... I guess I passed their tests, because they came back to tell me I was 'clean' and help me 'celebrate'.
I don't think I'll ever be clean again after this place... if thereisan after.
I've been quiet because I've been watching, assessing. If I have any hope of getting out of this place alive, I have to be smart.
And losing my shitreallyisn't smart.
I feel bad for the ones who had no idea how cruel the world was, how perfect of prey they were simply by existing. I have an edge over many of the girls here; I've learned to leave my body completely at will.
It's a trick I picked up athishouse, one I want to share with the other girls. But I screamed too hard when they first beat the hell out of Parker, before they even delivered the final blow, and my voice seems to have dissolved.
I can't speak, even if I want to, so I had to show them.
They don't have enough cells here for all the girls they have, so they've thrown four or five of us together in some cases, adjusting as needed.
I started off with one other in my cell, but when the redhead across from me snapped and tried to gouge out the blonde's eyes, they tossed the blonde in here with me. Courtney, a twenty-five-year-old librarian. It's ironic to me on a few levels, the first of which is that she looks more like a librarian pulled from a man’s fantasy than any true librarian I ever knew. And even more ironic, she never stops talking. It might be annoying if I hadn't figured out how to escape into my mind already. She doesn't hold it against me when she realizes I'm not paying attention to her; I think she talks so she won't forget who she is.
Lissa was the next to join our cell and also the first to leave. I still can't figure out what they did with her. They simply came in one day, the guards forcing us against the wall as they isolated her, and she begged them not to. But they weren't there to fuck her that time; Ma'am came in with a needle, stuck it in her neck, and they dragged her out. It's been a while since then—five days, by my estimate, based on how many disgusting bowls of watery oatmeal they've delivered to us—and they haven't mentioned her again.
They took Mae next, forcing her to her knees by shattering one of them with a baseball bat. The needle in her neck was a blessing, surely, because the agony she must have been feeling made my stomach churn.
That left Mia, Courtney, and me here in this cell. Across from us, the redhead whose name I never learned is still there, shaking her bars like that willaccomplish anything. We began taking a roll call after our dinners, since we can't see how many of us there are. I think we started at twenty-three.
Slowly, the cells have emptied. There's no rhyme or reason to it. They don't come at the same time every day or a set number of times per day. They show up at random, but they always know exactly who they're going for. That's why, when they come for me, I know I'm number thirteen.
Courtney jumps away from me, my dirty hair slipping through her fingers from the braid she was making. She backs against the wall, aware of the drill by now. I don't even have a chance to move before they're upon me, dragging me to standing. The guard the other girls call Joker because of the tattoo of a playing card on his forearm smirks at me.
“Last chance to put that pretty mouth to good use. What do you say, Rosie?”
I've never figured out why he calls me that, but I don't care enough to try and ask. I despise him for using a name so intimate—one that actually means something to me.
I simply stare at him, waiting for the needle, for whatever comes after this. Death, I think. The idea doesn't scare me; I have flirted with death a few times before. You can only tease someone so much before he makes good on his promise to take you.
“That mouth…” One of the other guards, the one they call Buffalo, groans, watching Joker squeeze my cheeks into a fish face, my cheeks hollowing under his touch. “So fucking tempting to stick my dick in it.” He licks his lips. “A weaker man would…”
