Eva lay on her soft bed at Hearst Castle, sunlight streaming through an open window, a soft breeze gently pushing on flapping curtains, her warm body half covered by a down comforter, one leg luxuriously wrapped around the soft white material. A hint of roses wafted through the air.
The Lord Admiral said something charming and began rubbing her back, his fingernails dragging long streaks down her skin. She groaned with pleasure, rolled over and looked at him. A large octopus head had replaced his face.
She screamed in shock and she was falling, falling in the dark, falling endlessly and she opened her eyes and realized she was back in space. Her first trip into space had been over so quickly that she hadn’t had time to savor it. It had been all business, up into space, get undressed, get disinfected, get dressed again, watch the Ambassador do something that must have been collossally stupid, because he was collossally stupid, get undressed again, then climb into a sleep chamber.
She reflected on the feeling of falling that never went away. She floated in space, floated among the stars, but felt like she was always falling. She tried to move about and saw her arm had no space suit covering it. She looked down at herself and she was still naked. She was naked in space.
She woke up in the dark, darkness endless like space, and her stomach churned. The nausea grew as she tried to move, so she lay as still as possible, huddled in her wool blanket. The hard stone under the blanket reminded her of her location, the pain in her head reminded her of the blow she’d received from a Hrwang man who’d come into her cell, and other pains gave her the impression of the things he’d done while she was unconscious.
Rape was taboo in Hrwang culture; the way the Lord Admiral spoke of it, the aliens punished it more harshly than they did murder.
Apparently the threat of punishment didn’t deter everyone.
Her head pounded. She diagnosed herself with a concussion and hoped it wasn’t too serious. She saw stars sometimes when she opened her eyes and kept them shut mostly while she tried to stay warm.
Crawling in the dark to find her bowls, to drink water and eat the nasty, foul tasting food that provided her only sustenance was as difficult as it had been on her first day when she was recovering from the flogging, and she fell quickly asleep afterwards, exhausted.
She awoke again to the clanging of the door, the blinding light, and another swift blow to the head.
She wondered how much time had passed between the two visits from her new friend and her waking up again. She couldn’t keep taking blows to the head. He must have been large and strong, and if he hit her the wrong way, if her head bounced onto the rough stone floor the wrong way, she was going to be brain damaged. She had to make him stop.
She lay nervously in her blanket, terrified if she fell asleep he would wake her up coming in and then hit her again to subdue her. But she couldn’t stay awake, exhaustion and pain overcoming her often, and every time she woke, she berated herself for falling asleep.
Food came, but she couldn’t eat. She drank her water, it was warm today, and curled up in her blanket. It was her only relief from misery.
She eventually heard noises, like feet shuffling, and her entire body went rigid in terror.
“How are you today?” Visitor asked her from the dark beyond her cell door.
“Your guard is raping me and beating me,” she tried to cry out, but her words slurred and the sound didn’t come out right. She, herself, didn’t understand the words.
“I don’t understand,” Visitor replied.
“Woowoowoo,” was all that came out of Eva’s mouth. She struggled to clear her head, struggled to form words and make herself understood, but she couldn’t.
“I’ll come back tomorrow,” he said.
She got out, “Wait,” but he didn’t. She sat up, her back against a wall, her blanket draped around her, and she cried.
Another feeding came and went and Eva formed a plan.
Sitting in the dark, she practiced speaking until her mouth cooperated. She had to stop the beatings or she wouldn’t recover. Her brain would be permanently injured. Worried she’d already had a stroke, she reviewed her plan repeatedly. It was simple, but it hurt to think about it.
The time finally came.
Something went into the door lock.
She remained in the corner farthest from the door, looked away so his light wouldn’t blind her, and when the door opened, she spoke the fatal words.
“Don’t hit me. I’ll cooperate.”
He grunted, and she thought he might attack her again anyway, but he didn’t. He closed the door behind himself and began undressing.
A strange thing happened to Eva after the man left. She remembered the ordeal, remembered what he had done to her, but it was as if she were watching a movie, as if the assault were occurring to another person and she were merely present, trying to avoid seeing it but unable to avoid experiencing at least part of the horror.
He came again later, it couldn’t have been an entire day since the previous time, and this time Eva’s disembodied spirit avoided watching what happened, but took advantage of his lantern to inspect her tiny cell. It was no more than eight foot by eight foot, although the Est would have used a different unit of length and it would have been considered to be five by five in that measurement system, with a small pit in one corner and a heavy metal door in the center of one of the walls. The ceiling was also about eight foot high, making the cell a cube, and it was all made of rough hewn stone blocks cemented closely together.
She ate mechanically afterward, drank her water, and thought of the men she had manipulated to do her will. She thought of Tomes, the Lord Admiral’s Lieutenant Grenadier, who’d fallen completely in love with her. She’d used him, just like she’d used the Lord Admiral. She’d used others, wearing her ‘recruiting’ dress to get college boys to fill out applications, flirting with men to get them to allow her to go places and to do things she wanted to do. She’d used her body, her looks, to get what she wanted, and now God, or the Universe, was paying her back.
A quiet depression settled into Eva and she lay in her blanket waiting for the man to return. She told herself she even looked forward to the light he brought with him, and when he did return, she looked away from the light until her eyes grew accustomed to it, and she watched his clothes lying on the ground, almost within her grasp, and then he left again and she mourned the darkness.
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