Like I had a choice,I thought, shifting my weight on my knees as the water pressure increased.
I knew the drill.
Staying still was the best option, along with holding the water in as long as possible, no matter how much pain came from doing so.
It didn’t take long. Maybe a few minutes before the cramps began. They were weak at first, easy to ignore as my stomach began to round up from the liquid. But they grew stronger with each passing second.
A single tear leaked out, and I forced my body to stay on all fours.
My instinct was to curl up in a ball, to cry and beg and plead. To pull out the tube and let the water out.
So focused on breathing through the pain, I yelped as something hard and unyielding smacked me across my back.
It came again, Wack after whack.
My body reacted before I could stop it, flinching away from the hurt even though I knew I wasn’t supposed to move. My mind was a storm of noise, begging for everything to stop, begging for a way out that I didn’t have.
By the fourth blow, something inside me just…let go.
I stopped fighting. I stopped hoping. I stopped trying to hold on to anything that made me feel like a person.
I gave myself back to this place, to the people who seemed determined to grind me down to nothing. Any scraps of hope I’d held onto, that I might escape; that life might get better, slipped away like they’d never been real.
I just gave up.
Tears broke free before I could swallow them down, and sobs shook through me in sharp, uncontrollable waves. Every movement made everything ache, inside and out, but I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t pull myself together. I couldn’t be quiet the way I was supposed to.
All I could do was fall apart.
My breath stuttered, my vision blurred, and my chest tightened in a way I couldn’t control.
A soft sound escaped me, but it was enough to break whatever fragile balance I had left.
The tears spilled over. Hot and unwanted.
I squeezed my eyes shut, but that only made them fall faster. My shoulders shook, and every inhale came too quickly, like my body decided for me that it was done pretending.
“Well, that was a disappointment,” the handler huffed, tossing the instrument he had been using off to the side. “I thought for sure that’d take you longer to break. You areweak.”
With the last words, my upper body was pushed down, forcing my butt to stay in the air.
Turning my head to the side as I sobbed, breath hitching every few seconds, the tube was roughly pulled out before something larger. Something ice cold, pressed into me.
I cried, a high-pitched sound, knowing I would have to suffer even longer.
Please, have mercy on my soul,I begged as my hair was grasped in a hard handful, forcing my body to kneel upright.
All that did was put pressure on my insides as they screamed at me to release the liquid from within.
“Omegas cry so beautifully, though.” The words slid under my skin like a cold blade.
I locked my jaw, trying to hold myself still. I tried to keep the trembling in my chest from showing but knowing I was already failing.
Crying felt like I was handing over something private, something I didn’t have much left of.
I hated it. I hated how easily I fell apart. I hated that I couldn’t stop it once it started.
But I couldn’t hold myself together anymore. Not this time. Not after everything. The weight of it all pressed down until I couldn’t breathe around it, couldn’t think past it, couldn’t be anything but a shaking, crying mess.
