Flashback

Chapter Five: Leather and Blood

I had to rip his stupid bean bag!?

I'd planned on sitting on the same one because it reminded me of the bean bag at home in my bedroom – and now it was ripped. Reminder of home and safety gone in blink of an eye.

No matter how small and insignificant a reminder it was, it still gave me hope that I may have a real, normal life after I returned home.

I couldn't believe how stupidly I'd reacted. That closeness had somehow reminded me of something... I had been feeling anxious because I still feared what a man could do to me with his hands; how a man could hurt me in so many ways, methods that included belts and buckles and canes, and many other tools of destruction that would leave scars and bruises all over my body. Left me bleeding severely, left to nurse my own wounds with nothing to quicken the healing. Left to weep without any consolation. Without any comfort. Without someone's shoulder to put my throbbing, light head on, and feel like there was still hope.

Every single time, I would have to wake up to the dark, hard surface of the back of a black van. Every wall would be covered in black leather and garbage, windows blocked out by layers and layers of thick black paint. A wall of black painted metal partition between the front seats and the back of the van for the comfort of the driver. All of that did not matter and was insignificant when my eyes used to fall upon the black leather upholstery. It was not clean or smooth. It used to have layers upon layers of a thick, sticky, dried, blackened liquid, splattered in undecipherable patterns and shapes. This liquid was the blood of the poor, female souls that the rugged, ruthless, unforgivable bastards raped in the back of the van. It was the life that slowly sucked out of those girls as they pleaded for them to stop, stop the pain, the agony, and the pure, cold blooded, painful, mind-numbing torture.

They did not used to stop till they were sufficiently satisfied for the moment. They would continue in their pleasure and the torture of the girls as they pleased. The creatures that oughtn't be called men at all, but rather reincarnations of Satan himself, would often take the raping to another, ghastly, horrifying level where the screams would increase to shrieks, and then slowly their voices would die out from the pain, becoming numb. I had decided to think of them as mere beastly creatures from then on, not men. Men couldn't be so heartless; I'd made myself believe. These creatures were only ever in a horrible mood, an understatement, and that was when something hadn't gone according to their plans and preferences. Unfortunately for these poor souls who would get raped at their hands, this mood appeared often and more than the girls could bare at times.

The squall of an eagle outside my room window brought me out of the thoughts of the leave and I realized that my cheeks were wet with shed tears that I hadn't realized as they dropped from my eyes. I noticed that my hands were clenched into tight fists again. Fortunately, nothing became victim to my unforgiving fists this time.

I steered my thoughts back to the safer, calmer ones of the meeting with Jerry. His kind face swam into the front of my mind and I smiled as I remembered his tousled hair in his teenage picture. I smiled at my fortune of achieving that modicum of peace even after the months of misery and torture.

A three-tap knock on the door sounded, vibrating through the bedroom. I stood up from my cross-legged position on the bed, and padded to the carved walnut bedroom door. It had no peephole, so I couldn't tell who my visitor was. Thinking that it could just be Juno with my dinner, I twisted the doorknob to the right and flicked my eyes downward to my dress, hoping there were no creases and put a smile was on my face. When I was satisfied, I pulled the door open completely and froze with my hand still on the knob. The smile I'd tried to stick onto my face faltered and eventually disappeared completely. The reason for this was the pair of eyes that I had so easily trusted; the eyes that were so sad and grief filled, and those that used to occasionally flick over to mine as we'd share an internal joke.

Those were the same that had betrayed me to the beasts that became my torturers, and that were staring back at me.