by John Hunt
Over the years, she examined every inch of the room. Everything had been bolted down. There was nothing sharp in the room. The corners of the dressers were rounded. It had been built and designed with soft edges. The mirror, made of hardened plastic, would not break. They had suspended pink curtains on the wall. Nothing behind it, certainly no window just more cinder block pink. It was a decorative curtain, suspended by string. She considered choking someone with it, but they were never alone and to think she could overpower even one of them enough to get a string wrapped around their neck seemed a ludicrous idea. Even if she managed to somehow get the string wrapped around a neck, the flimsy thing would probably snap with the slightest pressure. And she remembered what happened after she tried to ambush them with the curtain rod. There was nothing she could do.
After some time, believing this horror had become her life, she didn’t want to keep on living. For what? To be those sick men’s plaything? Getting whittled down when she dissatisfied or angered them in some way? What would be left of her at the end? A torso? Helpless in bed, unable to defend her self in any way? What would her life be like?
She fought for the sake of fighting. She couldn’t stop herself. When they walked in, expecting to take from her, she shook with anger. Why should she make it easy for them? After a time, the uselessness of her actions took a toll on her. All she ever got for her efforts was punishment. More pain, more degradations. She never got out of the tiny cell, hadn’t even seen beyond the door. So she would fight, she’d get hurt, the Gorilla would rape her and then after her wounds were tended to, they would leave. If she didn’t fight them, she would be raped. If she did, she would be hurt (maybe get her nose cut off) and still raped. What was the point? They made it clear to her she no longer had control over her life. Her life belonged to them. They could take it at anytime. Before they did though, they could make it hurt. They were masters of pain.
She wanted to die. It was the one decision left to her, one she could contribute to, at least one thing she had control over. How could she get it done? There was nothing lethal in her room to do anything to herself with so instead, she made the decision to do nothing. She would starve herself. She wouldn’t eat any of the food they gave her. It was hard at the beginning. Her stomach rumbled and complained and she ignored it by sleeping, turning her back to the plate of food on the dresser calling to her with its smell. She thought of flushing it down the toilet but didn’t trust herself to get too close to the pancakes, eggs, or whatever else they had made for her. The two men would come into the room, look at the untouched plate and remove it. Sometimes the Gorilla would chuckle and say something like “How’s the hunger strike going?” or “Don’t get too skinny, I may not want you then and wouldn’t that be a shame?” She felt herself shutting down, despondent and indifferent to everything, living in her mind. She moved to use the toilet and the water in the bowl tempted her. She was so thirsty and look at all that water, right there in a bowl for her and all she had to do was dip her head in it and lap it up. The sink didn’t tempt her near as much. She would have to turn on the tap to see the water. In the toilet, it didn’t hide, it was right there and she was surprised that water had a smell. Now, a chlorine pool she could smell from quite a distance but she never considered water, out of the tap or in the toilet had a scent to it. The longer she didn’t drink, the stronger the smell became. She ignored it and letting the thirst build and the hunger carve out a hollow hole inside her, she felt her energy sliding away. Weakness allowed her to ignore the hunger and the thirst, well, to a certain extent. So, to keep it at bay, to force herself not to give in, she slept and when she wasn’t asleep she travelled into her own mind. She stopped using the toilet. She went in her bed although she was amazed at anything coming out of her since she stopped giving her body anything that could create waste. Maybe it was her own body eating itself. To give her energy. And the waste was the dead parts inside getting out. It didn’t matter. In her mind she was already dead.
Hours passed in a slow, grinding fog. She developed skin burns from the urine and crap and although a part of her was disgusted, it was a small part with no real voice. That annoying voice couldn’t overcome her lack of nutrient induced lethargy. She hoped to eventually blend into the background so they’d forget about her. Meld with the sheets on the bed and disappear into painless oblivion, a place where cruel men couldn’t take you apart piece by piece. Stupid, but at the time it wasn’t. To her, it was a way to escape them without having to physically escape and face punishment. She pictured them coming into her room, their masks twitching here and there in panic when they couldn’t find her even though she lay right on the bed, giggling into her pillow, or more accurately, the pillow giggled because she had fused with it. She believed in this idea the way a young child believes in Santa Claus. A belief sustained by faith and hope. Like all her hopes since she had been imprisoned, they were shattered with careless ease.
The Gorilla and Jackal creaked open the door and the Gorilla said, “What the fuck’s that smell? Did she shit her bed? Is that what that is? Jeeeeesus!”
He stomped over to her. When he kneeled before her, his dark angry eyes boring into her, she knew he saw her and that her illusion was just that; not real. She didn’t disappear at all. Stupid, stupid girl. She cried.
“You better fucking cry. What is this? What do you think you’re doing here? Not eating and now shitting in your goddamn bed! This isn’t no hospice! When you’re no use to me, you’ll get hacked up and hung in my freezer! I’ll toss your fucking guts into the woods for the animals to eat. And then I’ll cook you on the skillet with extra virgin olive oil and some spices, maybe with a bottle of white. When I have a bit of your meat beside some mashed potatoes and carrots on my plate, I’ll think of all the good times I had with you. Goddaaamn, that sounds good. You know what, that idea is making me hungry.” He canted his head towards the Jackal and said, “You hungry for that Jackal?”
No answer from the Jackal. He never answered anything.
The Gorilla stood and glared down at her. He waved his arm at her, “This, whatever it is you’re doing, doesn’t make you useful to me. It makes you more work. I got enough work to do as it is and I don’t want anymore. Now, this shit is gonna stop. You’re gonna clean yourself up and eat the fucking food I take the time to cook for you.”
A razor blade, the old fashioned kind with a handle, danced before her eyes. “Or I start using this. I’ll cut off your fucking nose. Then I’ll pop it in my mouth and eat it in front of you. And honey, you know I will.” He ran the back of the blade down the bridge of her nose. She shivered.
Her gaze shifted to the Jackal. There must have been a pleading in her look because Gorilla chuckled and said, “You looking in the wrong place for help, girlie. There’s no help for you here. Not in this place.” The truth of those words gutted her.
The Jackal stood against the wall, his arms crossed over his chest. Even if she couldn’t see his face, his posture was a description of indifference. No help for her from him. So why try to live? To be raped, left alone to heal and then raped some more? Death would be a blessing. It would be a merciful end considering the alternative. She hoped at one time the Jackal would help her. He had looked after her. After she bled from orifices, legs trembling and too weak to stand, he helped her to the shower with great care. He applied ointment, he gave her pain medication and never, ever tried to fuck her. He’d been gentle every time. Taking care to clean the wounds with a light touch and whenever she hissed in pain, he’d pause until the pain subsided. Why would he be like that if he didn’t, in some fucking-crazy-psycho-man way, care for her? There was no reason for it. She had hoped to seduce him into friendship, help her get out of here, but realized now how foolish that idea had been. It could be part of the Jackal’s whole fantasy to care for a damsel sorely wounded, even if it had been him that did the wounding in the first place.
They never visited her alone. They were careful. And for many reasons. Safety a primary one. What if, by some miracle (up there with Moses parting the red sea type of miracle) she did get the upper hand on one of them? She might escape. And say, by coming alone, one of them actually developed real feelings for her? Got to see her and know her out of the rape context and saw her as an actual person and not their personal Barbie doll? But they never came in alone did they? Their policy of always visiting together had a purpose. A clever one. To prevent feelings from building and to diminish the possibility of her getting the better of one of them. There’d be no escape. There’d be no help. It was meant to discourage hope. It worked.
She turned her head away, expecting the cold razor against her neck before the burning pain of the slice bore her to nothingness. A part of her hoped for it. He didn’t cut her neck. The Gorilla stuck a knee into her side and leaned on her, pinning her to the bed. He pinched her nose and she thought, he’s going to do it, he’s going to cut off my nose, then he let go of her nose and pulled her right ear so hard it hurt and then the razor cut into it. He sawed and cut off her right ear. Oh how she screamed and bucked! Her legs kicked out, her arms pressed against his legs and punched at his sides. Nothing stopped his sawing motion or the feeling of blood flooding her ear and the sound of her own tearing flesh as he pulled and sawed, pulled and sawed. At the back of the room, as always, the Jackal watched.
Afterwards, the Jackal carried her to the shower, her trembling legs too weak to sustain her. Blood ran down her shoulder, back and legs. So much blood. She wanted to touch where her ear had been, to make sure it had happened. It throbbed with pain, the air even hurt it and she didn’t want to know for sure, not really. All this can’t be real, can it? Abysmal cruelty swaddled her in despair. The Jackal, with gentle hands, cleaned her, bandaged her and combed out her long hair. Gorilla man changed her sheets, complaining and swearing the entire time. He muttered to himself, “I got carried away again didn’t I? How is she supposed to clean this shit up when I cut off her ear? I suppose we’ll need a new mattress and sheets. And I’ll have to go get it, as usual.”
The Jackal bandaged her head over the spot where her ear had been. They sat her in a chair, left the room with the mattress and sheets and returned with new ones a short time later. They must have a stash of stuff somewhere, for when their charges mess up or when they mess up their charges. After the mattress was down and the clean sheets put on the bed, the Gorilla raped her. They were making a point. It can always get worse. They educated her on that. She had earned her Ph.D in the theory of how-things-can-always-get-worse. Her life, what consisted of one, became a regular routine of irregular rape and torture. What she did do though, after the Gorilla took her ear, was eat the food they brought her and shower with almost consistent regularity. She never knew when they would show up. There was no schedule she could figure out. Her aches would disappear, she would have read three or four of the books they left for her and for moments, she could imagine she were at home in her room with her dad downstairs surrounded by books and awaiting a phone call from a friend. Peaceful and quiet and then the door would creak open and two masked men would enter to damage her for their own amusement and destroying any illusion she had built in her mind. Time passed, marked by a different depravity, a unique indignity she would be forced to suffer. Usually with that fucking Ava Maria playing in the background, a soundtrack to her captivity.
She had been cured of suicide. A sharp razor took care of that. She hadn’t been cured of depression. A dark cloud hovered over her. Sometimes, she would think of her dad. She would cry until her stomach cramped and her eyes burned. Other times, she sat in her reading chair, open a book, and hours would pass without a page turned or a word read. She’d lose hours in a haze. Her neck, arms and legs would groan from the sudden movement of startling awake. She wouldn’t kill herself. It wasn’t because she harboured hope of escape. It was because she feared their lessons if she failed. She had lost three toes, two fingers and an ear. They told her the next time, she would lose her leg. And Gorilla man promised he would feed it to her. After all she had been through, she believed him.
-5-
They always entered the room together. The Gorilla man first and then the Jackal. She would hear the deadbolt turn and the squeal of the hinges as the door pushed open, a heavy door, displacing the air before it and there would be a breeze on her face. The Gorilla man would offer a greeting in a happy tone, as though he was asking how your vacation had been but the words belied the joviality of the voice. “How’s your snatch? Ready for another round is it?” He would put the key in his pocket and take off his clothes, folding them neatly and placing them on the floor. Strong shoulders and a broad chest suggested an athletic youth. The years added girth to his waist and even though he could lose a few pounds, he was fast. With his giant hands, he would reach for her, pinching her in the sensitive spots to make her cringe and squeal. It had been that way since the first night. A routine she could count on. That’s how they treated their prize.
So when the door opened, announcing its intention to admit her tormentors, she pulled the blankets up to her chin even though she knew it would not protect her. A reflexive reaction to fear developed in childhood, hoping the blanket would hide her from the red-eyed monster breathing in her closet. A shiver coursed through her and she grit her teeth against it. Olivia prepared her mind. She had healed nicely, physically at least, from the last time and felt anger she would be messed up again. Anger felt better than fear even though they constantly fought for ascendance within her. Getting hurt and then healing just for them to come along and hurt her some more was getting to be a tired fucking routine. Split lips were the worst because it was hard to eat. Everything stung. Especially when she would be chewing along, mind on something else, and she would crunch into a scab inside her mouth, pulling it open again. That hurt a lot. Her mouth would fill with salty blood and mixing with the food, the combination made her want to gag.
She told herself this time, just maybe, he might be gentle. He might be nice. Illusions and lies were all she had left to indulge in, like she did when she’d read and imagine herself back at home. She wasn’t back home. She constructed the illusions expertly.
The door clanged shut. The lock clicked. The Gorilla man stood alone. No Jackal. The blankets dropped from her hands. Her mouth hung open so wide a bird could have fallen in it.
“Time for a private session, my love. I’ve had enough of holding back.”
Holding back! Was he fucking serious?
He unbuttoned his shirt, folded it, and placed it on the dresser.
“I never liked an audience. His fucking rules though. ‘Do this, don’t do that.’ A man can get tired of that shit.”
Olivia had no idea what to say or even if she should say anything. He looked agitated. Nervous. She wondered if he had killed the Jackal, but dismissed the idea. Somehow, she knew the Jackal to be the dangerous one. The one to come out on top if they ever had it out.
He kicked off his shoes. He dropped his pants, folded them and slid off his boxers and put them in the pile. He didn’t take off his socks. He never did. Probably because the floor was always cold. His penis hung limp. Also out of the ordinary. Maybe he didn’t feel as brave as he pretended.
He stepped towards her on the bed. She pressed herself back. His penis stiffened.
“You know what? I hate this fucking mask! Can barely see! Fuck this thing!” He unlaced the back of the mask and tore it off his head.
Oh fuck! He’s gonna kill me now. Countless times over the years Olivia prayed for death and now, faced with the certainty of it, she found she didn’t want it. Why else would he take his mask off? That night long ago, when she had been taken, even though they told her they would never let her go, a small part of her believed otherwise. Of course she did. What is life without a
spark of hope? Wearing the masks helped her sustain the hope. If she were never to escape, why bother wearing the mask all the time? With the mask on, escape or even more ridiculous, release, was a possibility. Another constructed lie, sure, but she fluctuated between wanting to believe and thinking it foolish to do so.
When the mask dropped to the ground terror squeezed out a scream. A short bark, window dressed with hysteria.
He pointed a finger at her, dark eyes blazing, “Shut up, bitch!” Spittle gathered at the corners of his mouth. The Gorilla was scared. It didn’t make sense. Yet she knew it to be true. She knew he was breaking the rules and feared the Jackal.
The first time without a mask made a huge difference. The masks infused them with an inhuman quality, monstrous and unreal. His face humanized him, still a monster, but terrible because it made the nightmare all the more tangible. Dark hair, dark eyes, someone she might have considered, in a different situation, middle-aged handsome. Now the mask on the floor was all she could focus on. The rubber, hairy gorilla mask she had hated all this time. The cause of so many nightmares and real life horrors, discarded on the ground because now was the time for her to die. No more fucking around. After a bout of raping, beating and maybe, if he’s feeling frisky, some digital amputation. Maybe her nose this time. Or her lips. A bloody gash for a mouth is all he would leave her. Then he would cut her throat. She shivered on the bed and pointing at the mask, begged, “Please. Please put that on. You have to.”
He stopped, a confused eyebrow climbing his forehead. His face bloated red. She knew he thought she were insulting him, telling him to put the mask on to hide his ugly face and she wanted to tell him that wasn’t the reason and she opened her mouth to say it and instead, his fist connected with her forehead and the ceiling undulated and spun and time passed in flashes.