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“All right,” he says, pulling the sock mask on, making his lips look fuller and pinker in contrast with the rough fabric covering the rest of his face. “But I think I’ll be okay. They should be too stunned to fight back while I’m giving the injection. I just have to be sure not to hit them too hard.”
I slip the mask over my face and tuck my hair underneath. When I open my eyes again, I’m seeing Danny through frames of black cotton and the reality of the moment hits hard enough to make me flinch.
It’s here. We’re ready and there is no turning back.
“See you on the other side,” he says softly.
“On the other side.”
He reaches out a hand and I take it, squeezing his fingers between mine, drawing strength from his touch, his presence. Tonight, I am not alone. Tonight I have the upper hand and J.D. and Jeremy are going to learn what it feels like to be powerless and terrified.
Outside, the sound of a car pulling into the driveway rumbles through the night air before it falls silent. A car door slams and a moment later, I hear Rosa’s laugh and her lightly accented voice telling the men that the rest of the party is inside. My hand slips from Danny’s as I move back into the shadows behind the door and he takes his place around the corner, hidden from view in the hall leading into the kitchen.
Any second, the men I came here to punish will be walking through the door.
The knowledge fills my mouth with a bitter, acrid taste. My heart races and my nerve endings feel like they’re catching fire, but at the center of the storm, there is a calm place that fear and panic can’t touch. And from that calm place I reach into my own mind, doing what I have to do.
I take a deep breath and let go, pulling back the calloused skin that protected me for so many months, flinging open mental doors I’ve learned to keep locked tight. These are the rooms where the horror lives, where there is nothing but blood and pain and the sounds of my own screams. But tonight, these memories won’t bring me nightmares or leave me sweating and shaking in my bed, reliving every helpless moment until I don’t know if I’ll live to see morning.
Tonight, they will bring me strength.
As the doorknob begins to turn, time slows to a crawl and I go back.
Back to the pool table’s rough felt beneath my cheek, back to the smell of sour beer and whiskey breath and the sweat of unfamiliar male bodies dripping onto my face. I go back to J.D.’s hands shoving me down onto the table and ripping my jeans down my legs while I kicked and screamed and Todd and Jeremy egged him on.
He was the first and I was still fighting hard. J.D. isn’t much taller than I am or much bigger. There was a chance I could have fought him off if Jeremy hadn’t crawled up on the table and grabbed my wrists, pinning them to the felt as he trapped my head between his thighs and squeezed, holding me in a vice grip between his legs as J.D. forced himself inside me, tearing me apart.
I had never been with anyone but Danny, had never known any pain associated with sex except that slight sting and ache the night Danny and I were each other’s first. He had always been careful with me, always taken the time to be sure I was ready.
J.D. didn’t take time; he took my dignity.
He took something that should only ever be about pleasure and gave me pain and degradation. He showed me that I was nothing to him. I was not human or even animal. I was an object unworthy of kindness or compassion. I was something to be used to make him feel powerful and then passed around to his friends.
Now, he will pay.
Now, he and Jeremy will learn what it feels like to be nothing.
I watch Rosa swing inside, wearing a tiny red dress and stiletto heels, in slow motion. My blood is rushing so loud in my ears I can’t make sense of what she’s saying to J.D. and Jeremy or what they say in return. I don’t feel like myself anymore. I am nothing but rage so huge that it feels like my soul is expanding past the confines of my body until it fills the room, shatters the windows, explodes into the night sky leaving a trail of fire behind.
And then Jeremy and J.D. come through the door and everything happens at once.
Danny comes out swinging and Jeremy falls almost immediately, the thunk of the bat connecting with his skull followed closely by the sound of his body crumpling to the floor. J.D. turns to run, but I’ve already kicked the door closed. In my peripheral vision, I see Danny’s bat swinging through the air as I reach for Rosa. She’s unsteady in her heels and falls into me as I wrap my arm around her neck and squeeze, applying pressure to her carotid arteries.
