I fall still, holding in my breath. I don’t know what to expect…
The person steps closer, approaching me with a startling sense of familiarity. Their touch is no different—the personcrosses boundaries, gripping me by the front of my blouse and producing a knife. I let out a strangled gasp of air as they slice through the fabric then move onto everything else I’m wearing. My bra’s sawed into and my leggings torn away.
Each layer of clothing that’s stripped off makes it harder to breathe. I come up short dragging air into my lungs. They’re too busy shuddering away, struck by an icy coldness. Soon it’s like I’m encased in it—my whole body feels frozen inside a block of ice.
“Please don’t do this,” I choke out to the figure.
But they’re not listening.
They proceed in stripping me naked, my arms still stretched toward the ceiling. The last layer done away with are my panties, tugged callously off my feet once they’ve been cut into.
“Please!” I cry, my voice thin and frantic. I’m shaking on the spot. “Please don’t hurt me! Please… please whoever you are?—”
SMACK!
The person wallops me across the face with the back of their hand. The apple of my cheek stings like I’ve been burned by a flame. Instead, I’ve been smacked so hard my entire head’s snapped to the side.
I can’t even react at first. The shock I’ve been struck in the face is too great.
Too upsetting.
I’ve been slapped… like nothing… like I’m less than nothing…
“Speak when spoken to,” the person snipes. Definitely a female voice. One that’s deep and crackly, maybe from age.
I’m left whimpering in tears, restrained in place, shivering naked in the cold. The door slams shut and total darkness recommences. My sobs only pick up.
I cry until I have no more tears and my eyes itch from how swollen they are. The rest of my body feels stiff and numbedover. The cold’s stopped feeling cold and become the new unpleasant normal.
Time feels infinite and unquantifiable.
An hour or a day could pass by and I wouldn’t know it.
At some point, I doze off. I’d collapse to the floor if not for the hard leather binds cuffing me to the ceiling.
The next time I wake it’s because of the loud scrape of the door as it opens. A thick silhouette of a man appears. One as broad and tall as almost the cell itself. His presence makes the space feel much smaller, more constricting.
I break out into another panicked cry. “Please… don’t hurt me… please!”
My pleas only fall on deaf ears.
His large boots clack heavily against the floor in foreboding fashion. The ominous sound speaks for him as he walks around where I’m tethered, my arms bound. Maybe the most intimidating sound I’ve ever heard. He disappears behind me.
“Please,” I sniffle.
But I know it’s useless.
There’s no point begging for mercy that’s never about to come. Nero’s captured me, and I’ll be used and harmed until they decide to dispose of me.
This is truly the end.
I hear the rip of a zipper traveling down its track. The man shifts closer, bending my legs up so my feet no longer touch the ground.
“Don’t!” I gasp, sensing what’s about to happen. “DON’T!”
But all other words leave my mind as pained screams rip from my throat. The man slams into me in a single brutal thrust. The first of many, as he winds back his hips and pummels into me, almost ripping me in two.
SIX
