“Lachlan. I really must insist—”
“Do you know how much money my father contributes to this school annually?”
“That’s hardly the—”
“Can you imagine explaining to the head that he won’t make those donations any longer because he doesn’t appreciate how his only son and heir is treated.”
George’s eyes switch from the teacher to me and back again. She sends a last pleading look in his direction, then he shuffles his feet. “Well, please make sure you both get to class on time. The bell will—”
I flap my hand in his direction, still not turning. I don’t need to look at him to register his footsteps heading away.
Meanwhile, George’s gaze drops. I bend my knees to catch it, but she looks to the side, then closes her eyes altogether to avoid me.
It’s like she’s snuffing out the only light I had in my darkness, leaving me cold and grieving its lost glow.
I take my hands away from her and step back, tilting my head. Her large upper lip snags my attention again as she nervously bites at the corner. “Get down,” I order her, and she jumps off the bench, using one hand to steady herself against the wall. “Now on your knees.”
“No, I’m not going to—”
“They’ll restrain you. That’s how they start. Put you into stress poses until your joints scream with pain.”
Her gaze locks to mine again, shaking her head while her eyes say they believe every word.
“They won’t feed you, won’t give you water. Your body breaks down, and it won’t take long before you’re begging. That’s when they’ll start in on phase two.”
I should stop. I want to stop. The images pulsing in my head need to be locked away, tamped down, buried so they never again see the light of day.
A deeper part of me wants to sit back and see how far they get if I let them escape, propelled by my words. My mouth doesn’t care that part of me is begging my lips to stay locked together, trapping the obscenities inside my head where they belong.
“They’ll rape you,” I tell her and her body sags against mine, betraying her fear, her weakness. “So many men and so many times you won’t be able to tell them apart. Just one long constant fuck until you’re raw and bleeding and once you can’t stand it any longer, they’ll just start in a new hole, repeating the process until they’re done. And the next day? The day after theyfinished fucking your cunt and your mouth and your arse into entirely new shapes? They’ll start over again from the beginning. Do you know what a ring gag is?”
Her lips tremble, eyes so wide, gleaming with unshed tears, that I can see her imagination churning out a slideshow of images to accompany my words. Remorse tugs my hand, making my fingers twitch. But I clench it into a fist, crushing it the same way George crushed my treasured memory.
As the pause lengthens, she slowly nods, taking as long to understand I expect an answer as she does to give it.
“That’s what my dad likes to use when a girl cries too much or screams too loudly. He’ll fit one of those to keep her mouth wide open and give the men free rein. Can you imagine?”
George shakes her head, struggling to turn away from me but I hold her in place. Given her small stature, it’s hardly a strain.
“Cock after cock in your mouth all day long, choking you with cum until you’re so full of it you can barely swallow. The men who do it, they’re not good people, George. They won’t see your pleading eyes and think about how you’re an innocent just caught in her father’s mess. All they’ll see is a hole they can stick their dick in and fuck until they get relief. And when they zip themselves up, half of them will walk to the end of the queue to wait for their turn again.
“You think I’m joking or exaggerating but I’ve seen it. By the end, there’s nothing left in those girls’ eyes that’s even close to human. You’ll be a piece of meat to be used and abused until you’re not even good for that any longer. You know what happens when you get to that point? When they can’t wring another cent worth of income out of your battered body?”
She doesn’t respond, eyes bulging in terror. But that’s okay. I pause to be polite, to give the full horror space enough to dig into her brain and stay there, like a cruel parent might speak at lengthabout the grotesque monster lurking under their child’s bed so they don’t misbehave.
“Someone will come along and snap your delicate little neck. They’ll toss you onto the rubbish pile and tip you into a hole to become landfill.
“Even if you got a grave, no one would cry over you. You have to be a person to inspire that level of emotion and you’ll be no more human than a rotten side of beef.”
I hear other students turning up for class, gathering, watching, staring as George turns from a classmate into a nervous wreck, her dignity shredding in real time.
Listening is bad. To live it is so much worse that I doubt she has the capacity to even imagine it.
I don’t have to use my imagination. Thanks to Daddy Dearest, if I want to see it, all I have to do is close my eyes.
The moment I do, the wretched woman he made me watch appears in her full-blown horror. My mind plasters George’s face atop hers and horror surges inside me until I choke, struggling to swallow back the dread, the revulsion, the disgust.
Forget the memory loss, after my current outburst, she won’t be able to look at me again without seeing the filth that’s now part of me. The traits that horrify the boy I was yet disappoint my dad because he wants that persona to take over, take more, to take all of me.
