Page 1 of Vendetta

Medusa; They raped her when she was beautiful

and they killed her when she was ugly.

Her

The first cut is the worst. The second is almost as bad. I can feel my skin splitting, my blood pouring out, covering me.

I scream but it doesn’t make any difference. It doesn’t make them stop.

My hands are behind me. Held behind me. I’m unable to fight. Unable to defend myself. Someone rips at my clothes and I vaguely register the freezing air hitting my skin.

Another blow comes, this time it hits me in the side of my head and it rattles inside me, making my very brain shake. I can feel someone touching me, groping me. I fight again, or at least make an attempt to and they laugh at the pitifulness of it.

I’m a joke to them. A laughing stock. My pain, my utter terror is a source of amusement to these men, to these rabid animals.

I try to wriggle free and the hands holding me let me fall hard into the disgusting stench of the alleyway that they dragged me into. My face slams into the concrete and I feel the rainy water soaked ground leech into what little clothes I have left.

I roll over, my breath catching in my chest and I stare up at them with my eye which isn’t swollen shut.

And they stare back. They laugh. I don’t even know them. Not properly. Not really. But apparently they know me. They’ve been watching me they say. Admiring me for nights on end.

They stand over me, their shadows covering me and I know I’m trembling, shaking, petrified of their next move.

I’ve pissed myself. I can smell the stench of it, the stench of my own acrid urine. It fills my nostrils. It mixes with the iron taste of my blood.

One of them laughs nudging me with his boot.

If I’d given in, if I’d let them fuck me willingly then perhaps I wouldn’t have ended up like this. At least that’s what they’re saying. That this is my fault. I deserve this. I shouldn’t dress the way I do. I shouldn’t walk the way I do. Look the way I do too.

I glance at my torn off clothes. Jeans and a t-shirt are hardly the clothes someone wears when they want attention but apparently I was asking for it.

“Stupid bitch.” One of them says grabbing my hair and wrenching my head up.

I spit at him and it lands right in his face making him snarl.

He pulls a bottle of something, gives it a shake and pours it over my face as I scream once more.

The liquid burns even as I try to get it off. I can feel it searing into my skin, melting my very flesh. I curl up. Contort. I’m in agony as I shriek louder and louder and they stand there, watching, laughing again.

I can’t see. I can’t think. I thought the pain of their knives was enough but this new torture is something else entirely.

As the darkness takes over, as the agony of each horrific millisecond gives way to unconscious I see them running. Fleeing.

Someone new is approaching. Another stranger. Another man I don’t know.

Only I’m too broken to fight now.

He pours more liquid onto me and I whimper but it doesn’t burn like the last time. It almost soothes.

And then he picks me, cradles me, and as he carries me away I give in.

I give up.

I surrender.

Him

I’ve been watching her all night.

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