A creak piercesthrough my mind, which is the only sound I can make out. Other than my pulse pounding in my ears.
And I see it.
My life…
The faces of my parents. My brothers. My friends.
I let loose a lung-shattering sob and hide my face because it’s all I can do. Agony sears my heart.
Will it hurt badly? Will it be over quickly?
“That’s her!”
The thuds grow louder until I realize it’s not my heartbeat. Footsteps. Lots of them.
When I peek open one eye, the figure with the machete is gone, replaced by two tall men in gas masks. Heads tilted. Studying me carefully.
All my rage settles into my legs. I lash out.
Springing from my spot, I scratch at their faces. Punch their chests. Kick their torsos. Growl likean animal.
“No!” Voice like a warrior’s cry, I wail out several times.
But they’re unrelenting. Even as I twist in their grasp, one grips me tighter. He’s like a wrestler and knows how to hold me no matter how I turn. Like those finger traps, every movement makes his hands clamp down tighter on my body.
“Fuck, she’s a fighter!” one of them says, voice muffled through their mask.
I keep it up. All the way down the hall. Even get a solid kick to the nuts on the guy holding my ankles. He keels over, groaning, then falls to the floor. I grit my teeth in a seething smile of victory. Down to only the guy hauling me toward the end of the hall.
He’s huge. And he easily hoists me over his shoulder and slaps my ass until the breath is knocked from my lungs.
“Stay still.” It’s barely audible. The respirator makes it hard to understand him.
By now, a few more men have joined us, like they’re all on the same team.
I’m so tired, I can’t even protest. Marathons are slow and steady. I know how to regulate my muscles through that kind of exertion. Soccer uses spurts and sprinting. But this? Fighting off these men isexhausting.
He kicks open a splintered door, revealing a dusty room filled with a crowd of men in matching respirators covering their faces. Giving them all an unearthly appearance.
My stomach drops out of my body. Tongue dries up. I can’t even swallow.
All of them look hungry… Especially when they unzip, unleash their cocks like weapons, and begin to stroke. Everyone is dressed the same. Black hoodies. Black jeans. Black boots.
And those grim gas masks.
It feels like I’ve been abducted by aliens…and am about to bepollinated.
Adding to my terror, the floor changes from a weathered blue to white as a cloud of smoke swallows up the area. The thickness of it is suffocating.
The moment the stench hits my lungs, I cough uncontrollably. Tears erupt from my eyes. It only makes it easier for the man holding me to wrestle me onto a makeshift altar in the center of the circle of men. One made of a pile of crumbling cinder blocks and a stained, threadbare mattress laid on top.
This is it. Where I’ll betaggedby however many men line this large bedroom. Gray, somber lighting. The stench of gunpowder and rot. Wallpaper peeling in weeping curls from the walls as if they’re crying with me.
It’s my tomb. Where part of me is about to die.
I hate myself for it, and maybe I’ll think about it for the rest of my life, but I wonder if Ellis had it better than me right now. Not having to live through this.
I’m drier than the Sahara. This is going to be horrid. A different kind of pain than the sharp snap of a blade through my intestines. Or…maybe similar.
