Eutopia (First version)

Chapter 2

Lust is a sin.

‘Isn’t everything?’

Your duty isn’t. A sardonic tone.

‘This is my duty.’ Spoken through gritted teeth.

So you think. Everyone has a path to follow.

‘Some just can’t read the map, right?’

A gentle chuckle echoed in reply.

It was the silence that finally woke her, creeping into her consciousness as she slept. Eutopia’s place was never silent, what with the constant throb of drum’n’bass that vibrated through the walls day and night from the pot-head that lived next door…  and the lack of noise was disturbingly unfamiliar, though admittedly a welcome relief for the pounding in her skull. Her whole mouth ached with a pain that spread with reaching fingers along the right side of her face. She probed her flesh, hesitant and gentle as she explored the damage. Her closed eyes squinted with pain and she soon stopped poking. She wasn’t sure, but nothing in her face seemed to be broken. At least she still had all her teeth, though she ran her tongue over them slowly, more than once, just to make sure. 

Struggling through the layers of sleep that still surrounded her Eutopia opened her eyes a crack, letting a dozy golden light stream into her vision. Oh, God. She knew instantly that this wasn’t her tiny, comfortingly messy bedroom. Eutopia raised a hand to her head, pressing fingers hard against the undamaged side of her face as though willing some kind of memory to return from the night before. Cold blue eyes, sharp and as icy as a scuba dive in the North Pole, her own eyes snapped open. Flickers, images, fluttered through her fuzzy brain. A car. Mr Muscle... pain. She winced.  

God. Oh, God.

Eutopia swung her legs down from the brown leather couch she found herself lying on and instantly wished she hadn’t bothered. A wave of nausea, fast and thick, crashed up to meet her and set her head swirling and thumping all at the same time. Wild tangles of her almost black hair, wavy from the rain and tousled from sleep tumbled around her in a dark cloud settling halfway down her back. She pressed the heels of both palms to her eyes and hoped the pressure might ease the ache and the sickness she felt in the pit of her stomach. A few moments of deep breathing and very little motion left her free to lift her head from her hands and peer cautiously about. She could tell from the rich quality of the light peeping from between the closed slats of a sleek venetian blind that it was way into the afternoon. But where the hell was she?

With effort she eased herself up from the couch, her bare feet silent on the polished, warm oak floorboards that wouldn’t have been out of place in a stately country home though the room she found herself in was by no means grand in size. As she stood a quilted silk throw that had been draped over her pooled into a vanilla-cream puddle, slipping off her damp jeans to lie discarded on the floor.  Eutopia took a step forward and her shins bumped against a long, low coffee table made from a rich coloured wood and the jolt made her glance down. Her breasts were almost bare. The scooped neck of her blood-spattered t-shirt had been ripped jaggedly; the fabric across her chest dangled uselessly at either side and exposed the shredded lace of her black bra. Eutopia pulled the tattered edges together and tugged at the stretchy material modestly, one hand resting on her breasts to hold the gathered fabric and prevent it from slipping down again. She whirled at a noise behind her and noticed for the first time the doorway set a few feet back from the sofa.