The Will To

T W E N T Y - N I N E (mass)

Warning: discussion of rape/sexual assault. This chapter includes the emotional impact that can result from such an attack, which may cause discomfort for some readers.

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Night had fallen. Purple hues shaded the sky, and a smattering of blinking lights cut holes in the increasing darkness. I'd never felt one with nature but I did right now. The night sky and I shared something in common: we were both a blackening mass, seemingly endless, that was punctured over and over again. I wondered if the countless punctures eventually diminished the dark, annihilating it and leaving nothing behind. If I was the darkness, would there be anything left of me if the many holes eventually overtook me?

My chin drifted to the parking lot where a dozen or so cars were crowded inside. They were a reminder that the building behind me housed people who'd seen me at my weakest, and they surely weren't soon to forget. I thought of Rey and the way he'd held me. I still felt his soothing embrace on my skin, but I also still felt the immense pressure around my throat. Embarrassment roiled in my stomach as I thought of Rey having seen me that way. It wasn't me. I was stronger than that. He was sure to look at me differently now, like the weak, damaged girl that I was.

Another tear slipped down my cheek and I wiped it away, feeling the cold of the curb underneath me. The night grew darker.

The sound of the door opening made me turn around. Talia emerged with an apprehensive expression, but it wasn't guarded. She slowly approached, taking a seat on the same curb. Her slender arms wrapped around her chest. Sighing, she said, "You scared me there, Will."

"Sorry."

She gazed at the deepening night, and I wondered if she saw the stars the same way I did, if they were a reminder of something broken.

"When I was a senior at WSU, I was raped in my own apartment."

I didn't look at her. I couldn't move. I was too stunned. With goosebumps running up my arms and legs, I finally turned towards her and said, "You were raped?"

Talia pressed her mouth together and continued watching the sky. "I'd just come from the library. I'll never forget it, and that just makes me so..." She shut her eyes. "I was dating this guy at the time. Nice enough. Loved his family. Always talked about them. No red flags, other than he liked to drink, but what twenty-one year old at university doesn't like to drink?"

I thought of the hundreds of students on campus who spent their entire weekends consuming alcohol as a car drove down the street, fracturing the strained silence.

"Anyway," Talia continued. "I came home from the library and found Tim, my boyfriend, inside my apartment. Not out of the ordinary. We'd been dating for six months and I'd given him a key." She swallowed. "Everything was fine until I realized that he was drunk. Completely trashed. He made some comments to me—what, I don't remember, maybe the only thing I don't remember—and I asked him to leave."

Blinking, I held my breath.

"He didn't. He got angry—angry for no apparent reason other than I was telling him that he needed to go." Talia rubbed her hands together. "Things escalated quickly. He got angrier and angrier, rage fueled by alcohol—the worst kind." She turned to me, and her next words came out in a strangled rhythm, "He raped me. I couldn't tell you how long it lasted. A minute. An hour. I don't know. And then he left and I was just there. All by myself.

"And what I'll never forget is the disgust—the disgust with myself for letting it happen. For not fighting him off, for just letting it happen," she said.

"Talia, I didn't—"

She shook her head. "Let me just... Will, I'm telling you this because I want you to understand how afraid I was, how scared, how full of complete disgust I'd been, but, despite all of that, how entirely empty I felt. He'd been my boyfriend for months—for months—I'd trusted him, gave him a key to my home, and then that. What did I do that made him think he could do that to me?"