Rachel stirred from a dream in which she was walking by a river. The sun dropped in blobs from the trees, dappling the riverbank with cleansing sunlight. The river gurgled and foamed along the rocks as it passed her by, and she smiled, felt safe. She sat by the bank and put her hand in the water. It was cold, but not unpleasant, making her fingers tingle. A noise startled her, and she turned. There, in the darkness of the woods, she could see a flurry of movement, a snorting of breath, squeals of pain. She approached cautiously, seeing nothing at first, but then sunlight glinted off the eyes of an animal and she looked down into the undergrowth. A badger, about the size of a small dog, was standing over the ravaged body of a squirrel, blood over its entire face. She had disturbed it as it devoured the living organs of the smaller animal, but it did not go away. It simply looked at her. She tried to shoo it, but it stood its ground, indeed, it looked away from her and went back to its meal. The squirrel’s squeals had all but disappeared. The rooting snout of the badger shook the smaller animal’s limbs and head, giving it the appearance of life. Rachel stood transfixed, watching.  

And then she woke, slowly, born into agony. There was no part of her that didn’t hurt. The entire left side of her face was molten, stitched with needles of hot pain, and her mouth tasted of blood. It only took seconds for the memories to come swarming back to prove that the nightmare still had to run its course. She was still sitting upright in the chair opposite the battered old desk where the man had beaten her into unconsciousness. Behind her back, the handcuffs still bit into her wrists so much there was little feeling in her fingers. She shifted in the chair and there was an awful feeling of damage inside, where he’d raped her earlier. She sat still for long seconds, fearing that even the slightest of moves would tear her open. So, she chose to die like a cow then? Dumbly led to inevitable slaughter? There was almost no fight remaining in her, but she could not do that. Even standing up would seem a victory. Her young mind focused away from the pain, shook off the dust of fear that had settled on it. Where was she? Think, Rachel! He’d taken them to a church, but they were not in the church, they were in the offices. There were two of them, adjoining, at the end of a short hallway. Yes. It was a start. Because her left eye was swollen shut, she hadn’t noticed the open doorway until her newly focused attention heard the soft, low, animalistic breathing from the room next door. 

She paused, her breath stopping dead in her lungs. She knew what was in that room: The man, and Jenny. He was doing something to her, but she was silent. Rachel pressed herself against the wall outside the doorway, listening. The other door was less than five feet away, but in order to reach it she needed to pass the open door. The grunting was louder, now that she was closer. Words were mixed with the sounds too, but they made no sense to her; foreign words spoken in an ugly tongue. She found that she couldn’t move. The doorway might as well have been the moon. No matter how she moved, it would remain unreachable. And it was standing like that, in the shadows of the orange streetlight, that she knew she was about to die. Nobody knew where she was, she or Jenny. Her parents would be sitting up, fretting, wondering where she was, silently fearing the worst, but hoping for the best. The terror began to fade, but as it ebbed from her, it was replaced with sadness. Sadness for her parents on their loss, for she was a beloved and only child who did well in school and never caused them any trouble, but sadness for herself, and for the things she would never now do in life. She could not move. But she must move.  

More grunts, strained, like someone struggling against something. Jenny? Had the man left them, and Jenny was in the next room, struggling to get free? Rachel cautiously peered around the side of the door, into the room. The same orange light from outside saturated everything, but it was still dim. She could see the back of the man as he leaned over, pushing or pulling at something and her heart sank. The revolting smell of feces hung in the air, stale, and she retched. The door opposite her beckoned. It was closed, so she would have to somehow open it with her handcuffed hands, quietly, so that he wouldn’t hear her. It was impossible. Her stomach was burning, her organs felt battered and damaged, begging her not to move.  

She moved toward the other door, one faltering step at a time, passing by the open door where the man was doing something to Jenny, a girl that she used to know. It took her minutes that felt like hours, but she was there, and as she turned her back to the door so that her numb fingers could grasp the doorhandle, she was fully exposed, in plain view of anyone who should emerge from that stinking room. 

The handle moved easily, the door opened slowly. She eased up on the handle, careful not to let her fingers slip or it would spring back to its position loudly. She stepped to the side, opening the door inch by inch, until there was enough room for her to creep silently through.  

Dark as it was, the room was bigger, cavernous. She could feel the difference coming from the small office. The floor was cold on the soles of her feet, freezing cold. It felt like a small victory, until she put too much weight on her foot as it took the next step, not seeing the three stairs directly in front of her, and she fell, hard. Her head thudded against the floor and she yelped painfully. 

Within seconds he was upon her, yanking her up by her hair. “Fucking little cunt,” he rasped. His voice was ragged. “You’re going to get it worse than your friend for that.” He dragged her into the office, then pushed her into the other room. A click, then painful light. Rachel blinked, and his hand slapped her swollen face so hard she almost passed out from the fresh pain. “Look at this,” he said.  

He stood before her. His member erect and engorged, thrusting urgently from his matted pubic hair, as it had before when he’d forced them to do unspeakable things. “Go ahead, take a look,” he said. She looked at him. He was trembling with exertion, or excitement, or both. His naked body, a tapestry of inks, was saturated in dried and drying blood, but his face was blank, expressionless. No hatred, no lust, just emptiness.  

Rachel’s head seemed suddenly too heavy. It sank, and in doing so, she saw large maggots in the sticky puddle of blood on the carpet. He jerked her head up by the hair again and pulled her forward, and then she saw his handiwork. 

Jenny was lying on a small couch, ruined. Her stomach ripped open and empty, her lips and nose torn off, her eyes gouged and burst within their sockets. Her skin was a mass of yellowing bruised tissue. The maggots in the blood, she saw, were actually fingers, cut off at the first knuckle.  

Not for the first time that night, did she begin to cry, but these were not tears of pain or terror – they were instead a pathetic, lost, and defeated sound, and even as they came forth from her, she felt ashamed of them, of herself. Sixteen years of life distilled into this one moment, at the point where everything had now been taken from her, and what was leaving her body was not life, but her remaining humanity, reducing her to livestock. 

It happened quickly after that. Too quick for her to even comprehend until it was all over, actually. A crash, louder than a bomb, then the roars and yells of men; an explosion of violence in the doorway and furniture being knocked over, and then hands on her shoulders, something being placed over her. Darkness claiming her once more. 

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The harsh beep of the alarm awakened her. She sat up quickly and reached out to shut it off. The small electric fan on the dresser hummed as it blew air around the room. Bella shifted her weight at the bottom of the bed. When Rachel turned on the bedside lamp, the old cat looked at her, yawned widely showing her remaining teeth, then went back to sleep again. Rachel swung her feet onto the floor and pulled herself into the thin robe that lay on the clothes hamper and trudged out of the bedroom. 

Sun was already flooding in through the living room window as she turned on the TV. A man was playing fetch with his dog in the park across the street. She watched them, blankly, for a few seconds then went to the bathroom. 

The bottle of pills was exactly where she’d put them last night, neatly arranged on the sink counter next to a bottle of vodka and a packet of utility knife blades. She sat of the edge of the bathtub and looked at them, just as she had last night. They were just objects now. The sudden rush last night had briefly transformed them collectively into a glowing, brilliant revelation, the discovery of the answers to all her problems. But now that she’d slept on it, they had no more power over her. She put the pills back in the medicine cabinet and brushed her teeth, barely recognizing the plain, frail woman who looked back at her. 

Later, she stood on the balcony of her small apartment with a mug of coffee, watching other people with dogs in the small park across the street. When she first moved here, five years ago, she had briefly considered getting a dog, but Bella would have protested at the intrusion. It wouldn’t have been fair to her to have to share an already tiny living space with another animal. It was barely big enough for the both of them, as it was. But it was fun to watch other people with their dogs, at least. The apartment was good for that. 

Mechanically, she went to the dining table that separated the kitchen from the living room and cleared it off. She powered up the laptop and closed the notepad she had spent hours with the night before, writing and rewriting her final note, until it became clear that she just didn’t have the right words to say. Not then. Another time, when she was truly ready. The last thing she wanted was for her last words to be ambiguous.  

Bella meowed loudly in the bedroom and thumped heavily to the floor. The old cat limped up to her and bumped against her shin. Of course it wasn’t time yet. Who would take care of Bella if she wasn’t around. She picked up the cat and cradled it in her arms, scratching behind the ears and making her purr. “You’re all I have,” Rachel said. 

The telephone rang, making her jump. It had been so long that her landline was used that she kept meaning to cancel it. She felt suddenly anxious. Her circle of people kept shrinking, but there was none of them she wanted to talk to, especially at 8:30 in the morning. She suddenly thought of Erica, the daughter she’d seen only briefly in the last few years. It rang a few more times, then stopped. Then rang again, deciding for her.  

“Hello?” she said. 

“Hello,” said a woman’s voice on the other end. Neither Erica, nor her father, then. “Is this Rachel Porter?” The woman sounded flustered. 

“Speaking,” Rachel said. “Who is this?” 

“You don’t know me – my name’s Julie Haskell.” 

Rachel paused for thought. She twisted a lock of red hair around her fingers. “What do you want?” she asked. 

“I’m a writer, and I –“ 

Rachel hung up. She didn’t answer when it rang again. She lowered Bella to the floor and headed off to the bathroom to clean up for the day.