by Bella King
I rinsed off quickly, humming happily to myself as the water poured over my body. I took soap only to scrub my fingers and under my fingernails were moss and other vegetation had gotten into during my splash in the fountain.
I rinsed off the rest of my body with water and turned off the shower, the knob squeaking loudly as I rotated it.
“Hey, little Rose,” a voice said from behind me.
Not again. I would have been comfortable with the deepness of Andrew’s voice as he said my name, but this wasn’t Andrew. The voice was female, and someone who I didn’t want to see in my vulnerable state.
I spun around to face Natasha and six other women, all standing with their arms crossed. Two of them had blunt weapons, while Natasha held a knife in her boney hand.
I knew that the only way I was getting out of this was through force, but there were too many of them for me to fight on my own. Even running through them would be difficult. I was wet and naked, and that meant I was likely to fall and crack my skull open on the tile floor if I fled at full speed.
“Let’s talk,” Natasha said with a wicked smile. Her eyes were bugging out of her head like she was about to lose her sanity. I wondered if she had any to begin with.
“I’m not talking to you. Andrew is going to have a real issue if you try anything,” I said, trying to sound strong, but feeling so terribly weak.
“I’m not concerned about Andrew. He’s nowhere close to the man he used to be,” she snarled.
“He’s better than you’ll ever be,” I stated boldly.
She laughed, and her henchwomen laughed with her. “I told you to fall in line when you first arrived at Ridgeview Boarding School, but you failed at that. You attacked Laney, who is pretty upset about it.”
“She attacked me,” I said, holding my hands up in innocence.
“That’s not what she told me,” Natasha said , still smiling like a lunatic.
“She’s a liar then,” I replied.
“Maybe you want to talk to her then,” Natasha said.
She snapped her fingers, and the women in the room rushed me. They grabbed my arms and legs, slamming me against the wall and pinning me there like an animal skin stretched against the side of a cabin to dry in the sun.
I tried to move, but with six women holding me down, there wasn’t much I could do. I was at the will of Natasha now, it seemed. Jesus, the terror never ended. Couldn’t I have this one moment to enjoy myself before I became a punching bag for the school bully?
“Laney!” Natasha barked, holding the long knife out beside her.
Laney entered the shower room, walking with a prissy stride that could only have belonged to her. I was so tired of this bitch. I was amazed I ever felt sorry for her. She didn’t look like she felt very sorry for me.
Laney snatched the knife out of Natasha’s outstretched hand, grinning at me as she came forward. I tugged against the women who were pinning me against the wall, trying hopelessly to get away from her, but it was no use. I knew it wouldn’t be, but my instinct told me to get the hell out of here before Laney could get to me.
“You don’t have to do this,” I said, trying to plead with her.
She didn’t so much as blink at my words, striding up to me with the confidence of a woman in power, the blade of Natasha’s knife glittering under the pale fluorescent lights.
“It’s time for you to learn your place, little Rose,” Natasha said, the last part drenched in mockery.
“Fuck you,” I spat as Laney came toward me with the knife.
“Hold still,” Laney said, brandishing the knife in front of me. “Where would you like me to start?” She asked, cocking her head to the side. “Maybe with your eyes?”
I shook my head. “You won’t get away with this,” I said, trying to mask the fear that was overtaking me.
“Well, you’re wrong about that one. Maybe you want me to start with your pussy. I could carve it right out of you. That might teach you a lesson,” she said, her eyes dancing with the devil.
“Stop. Please,” I said.
My heart thumped beneath my ribs as she lowered the blade to my thighs, teasing it against my flesh. She let the blade slowly travel up my leg, resting between my thighs. The cold steel sent my body on full alert. I felt like I was watching someone else’s body below me as she pressed the side of the knife into my skin.
“Get on with it,” Natasha screeched.
Laney rolled her eyes and brought the knife to my stomach, pressing the blade into the flesh beneath my breasts. I felt a sting as the knife began to draw blood. I winced at the pain as the horror unfolded before me.
Laney worked the blade over my stomach, etching the letter W into my skin in painful red cuts. Blood trickled down to my legs, running down in frighteningly large amounts. How deep were the cuts she was making in me? I was afraid my insides might spill out.
Laney continued, ignoring my cries as she worked the blade over the top of my stomach, smiling the entire time she cut through my flesh. It burned worse than a cat scratch or a tattoo. This was next-level pain, searing through my skin with no sign of remorse.
I felt myself retracting into a pleasant corner of my mind where nothing could hurt me. I had to go there often when Lucas had been tormenting me during our relationship. On the night that he had kidnapped me and beaten me, I went there. It was a nice place in my head, but to get there, I had to be in the worst of situations. This was one of them.
I never remembered what happened when I was there. I would blackout and come to at a later time. When the police picked me up from the side of the road, I had come back from a blackout. I didn’t even know what was going on when they cuffed me and threw me into their car.
The past was painful to remember, but things weren’t getting much better for me. I was constantly in a state of mortal danger, and I had more enemies than ever before. The people who were supposed to be protecting me where nowhere to be found. I was lost to the world and at the hands of my captors.
“I said, look at it,” Natasha screamed into my face as Laney stepped back from me.
I was still pinned against the wall, but Laney had finished carving my stomach. Now, Natasha was screaming at me to look at the work Laney had done, but honestly, I was too scared of what I would see. It’s bad enough to see someone else’s bleeding body, but to witness your own body permanently disfigured by a blade was something else entirely.
“Look!”
I looked down, focusing my eyes on the bloody mess that used to be my beautiful stomach. My eye widened, trying to make sense of the inverted lettering on my stomach.
WHORE.
The wound was too deep to disappear as it healed. That nasty word would be scarred into my skin for a long time.
I felt dizzy as I looked at my blood stomach, taking in the message that had been given to me. Laney laughed from behind Natasha, who was grinning like a lunatic at my horrified expression. I was humiliated, and just wanted to curl up and die. Unfortunately, Natasha had other plans.
“Give her a beating she’ll never forget,” she said to the women holding me down, crinkling her nose in the most obnoxious smile she could muster.
The hands that pinned me against the wall finally released me. I could barely feel my hands and feet as I fell to the wet ground, but that was the least of my worries once the shoes began to slam against my bloody stomach and ribcage.
The breath was knocked out of me as I collapsed, face first, onto the floor. I watched as Laney and Natasha left me in the shower room alone with her gang as they beat me senseless. The damage that one man can do to you is a lot, but six women all at once were more than enough to put an end to your life if they felt like doing it.
I curled into a ball, struggling to breathe as the aching pain of kicks rained down on me. I felt more than helpless. Once again, I was the pathetic woman in need of a hero, but this time, Daniel wasn’t here to help me. Nobody was. I had gotten caught again, and now I was paying for it dearly.
/> I Had been careless after having sex with Andrew. I let my gleeful mind lull me into a false sense of security. Everything was fun and games at the party, but I couldn’t forget that Ridgeview wasn’t the place to relax and have fun. You had to watch your back at all times, and I had failed at that.
The women who were beating me didn’t even know who I was, and I doubted they cared. They were only doing this because Natasha told them to, but who the fuck was she? What had she done, besides fuck Andrew, to come into so much power? She was a nobody, but yet, I was the one who was a bloody mess in a pool of cold water. I was the one who was in pain while she walked free. This had to change.
Unfortunately, that would take time. For now, I had to focus on guarding myself enough to stay alive. I didn’t know when the beating would end, but I prayed for them to grow weary of my rigid body and leave me alone. The problem was, they didn’t want to stop at the beating.
“Grab her legs. I’ll get that arm. You get the other,” a woman in the group snapped, directing the others to pull me apart like they were carrying a corpse.
They forced me out of my fetal position and hoisted me up, swinging me around until they could steady themselves. I felt like I was floating, and if my arms and legs hadn’t been in so much pain, it would have even been pleasant. It was certainly better than the cold, wet floor.
“Bring her quickly,” the woman close to my head said, and I felt myself being moved from the shower room.
I was barely conscious, and my vision was blurry as I was rushed out of the women’s dormitory into the hallway. It was daring of them to bring me out here, but I wondered where my final destination would be. They couldn’t take me anywhere where people would see them, otherwise someone would intervene.
Fuck, who was I kidding. The only people who would save me would be the school administration, Andrew, and his gang. That wasn’t very many people, and they weren’t likely to see me as I was hurried down the hallways of Ridgeview.
After a few minutes, the women stopped down a dark hall, swinging me violently until they let go. I flew through the air and landed with an uncomfortable commotion in a pile of plastic bags and bottles. The smell told me that I was in a large dumpster.
I heard laughter down the hall as the women walked off, leaving me in a pile of rancid trash. This dumpster must have belonged to the cafeteria, because only school slop could smell this offensive.
I clawed at the sides of the bin, but I was too weak from my beating to even pull myself up in a sitting position. I rested my head down on a plastic bag of trash and took a breath. Jesus, the stench alone was enough to make me want to puke.
Thankfully, that quickly gave me the energy to get myself up. If I stayed in the trash for too long, the wound on my stomach would probably get infected. I could imagine flies puzzling around me while I slept. No ma’am. Not today.
I pulled myself up with a hard tug on the sides of the metal bin. I looked around in the darkness to see that I was in a little nook in the hallway, still visible to anyone who happened to come down this way. Thankfully, it looked like a place nobody would come down until school started again on Monday. I was close to the cafeteria.
I took another deep breath, trying to ignore the stench that infiltrated my lungs as I inhaled. It was bad, but it gave me the energy to get myself out of the trash and onto solid ground again.
I landed with an echoing thud on the stone floor, having to steady myself as my body tried to keep itself upright. I was in bad shape, possibly the worst I had been in, but I was still alive. I could count my lucky stars tonight for this one.
Tomorrow, I would begin plotting my revenge. It had been alright until I had the word WHORE carved into my stomach with a knife while I was naked in the shower. That wasn’t okay, and Natasha had something else coming if she thought I would let this slide. Retaliation was inevitable.
So, Andrew wanted me to burn Laney’s bed? I was going to much worse, and he would have no other choice but to bring me into the gang as an official member. I was going to get my revenge and rise in status as a byproduct of my cruelty. There was nothing else I wanted.
I dragged my feet toward the end of the hall, not bothering to cover my nudity as I limped back toward the dormitory. I was going to take the secret way in so that I didn’t run into Natasha and her gang again. I wasn’t going to let Andrew know about this either. It was my business to get revenge, and he would think lesser of me for being so vulnerable.
It was fucked up to think that the man I was falling for would have no sympathy for my beating, but that was the abuse that I was used to after dating Lucas. He didn’t care what happened to me, and I doubted that Andrew did either. Maybe Daniel showed me some sympathy, but he could be just as cruel as the rest of them. If I was to earn a spot with the boys, I would have to outdo them. I would show no more weakness.
I had to use the wall to keep myself from falling over as I painfully traveled down the hallways to the abandoned classroom that I could use to gain access to the women’s dormitory without being seen. The only risk I took was if I exposed myself while on the ledge, with so many people down below partying. I doubted they would see me, though, because I would be hugging the wall for fear of losing balance and tumbling over the edge.
I reached the abandoned room and managed to get myself back into the dormitory with only a little trouble. It was a painful journey, but I was happy to be alive. I even wanted to go back to the party, but I thought better of it with the condition I was in.
I changed my clothes and returned to the abandoned classroom. There was a large desk at the front of the room, not unlike the one I had hidden under when I was chased by Andrew and his gang the night that I first met them. I would sleep under there and hope that nobody disturbed me. I was no longer safe in the dormitory.
So, I curled up on the dusty floor and closed my eyes, drifting into a deep sleep while my body began to heal. Tomorrow, I would get the supplies I needed from Daniel and do what I had been assigned to do. God help that stupid bitch, Laney.
Chapter 14
“Okay, there’s about 2 liters of gasoline in here that you can use. I really doubt you need all of it, but have fun,” Daniel said, handing a bright red container of gasoline to me. The spout had a yellow cap on the end of it, and I felt the gas sloshing around as I accepted it from him.
“I need matches too,” I said.
“Be patient,” he replied, taking a box of long matches from his back pocket. “You’re awfully eager to go through with this.”
“Just doing my job,” I replied cheerfully.
“Do it well, and we can all have a good time together,” Daniel said, his eyes shining with excitement.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he said, trying to backtrack. “I just mean that we’ll all be in the same gang. It’ll be good to have you.”
“I’m already a member,” I said, snatching the matches from his hand. “Just fucking watch.”
I began to walk away, but Daniel shouted, “Wait!”
I stopped and turned back to him, raising an eyebrow.
“The weapon you requested,” he said, pulling a knife from his pocket. It was the same one that Natasha had given Laney to cut my stomach with. The scabs were still fresh on my stomach.
“Where did you get that?” I asked, a bit worried that he had taken it from Natasha.
“The food preps have plenty of them in the kitchen. They won’t miss it.”
“Oh,” I said, relieved. That must have been where Natasha got hers too.
“Yeah, but don’t lose it. I can only snatch so many of them before the administration gets suspicious and puts a guard in the kitchen,” Daniel said, tapping his forehead. “You have to be clever.”
“I understand,” I said, taking the knife and stuffing it in the waistband of my skirt. “Thank you.”
“You’re very welcome. Have fun,” Daniel said, waving at me as I left.
Now, it was time for
me to do my worst. Laney was going to pay for the marks she had left in my stomach yesterday. You couldn’t get away with something like that. I didn’t know what she was thinking when she did that, as though she would be safe. Sure, she was just a pawn for Natasha, but she was a pawn who I didn’t like.
I pranced up the stairs to the women’s dormitory, not bothering to go through the secret route. I didn’t care who saw me pouring gasoline over Laney’s bed. I doubted that anyone would stop me anyway. Most people who weren’t part of the gangs tried to stay out of the commotion. If they wanted to join in, they would have joined a gang.
I hauled the heavy container of gas into the dormitory and looked around the first room. I knew that Laney didn’t sleep here because it was where I slept. I stepped into the next room, looking around. There were a few girls there, listening to music or jotting things down in their journals. Laney wasn’t here, but her bed might be.
“Hey, listen up!” I shouted, grabbing the attention of a few of the nearby girls. “Which one is Laney’s bed?” I asked.
They looked at me with wide eyes, clueless.
“Does she sleep in this room?” I asked.
“I don’t think so,” a blonde girl who looked too innocent to be at Ridgeview answered.
I squinted at her. “Which room is she in?”
“I don’t know.”
I rolled my eyes and walked past her into the next room, looking around again at the girls who were lounging around. “Listen up! Who knows where Laney’s bed is?” I asked loudly.
Two girls pointed to a bed that was in the corner of the room.
I smiled, walking over to it confidently, ignoring the pain of my bruises as I traveled. They would take a while to heal, but I was determined not to limp around like an injured lamb. Today, I was the wolf.
Laney’s bed was neatly made. The sheets were a brighter white than the ones on the beds around hers, and her pillow had her initials sewn into it with gold thread. Cute. It was going to be reduced to a pile of gray ashes in a moment.