“You’re going to pay for that, bitch!” the man with the bloody hand growled while the two of them dragged me back toward their vehicle.
I dug my feet into the ground, but it did little to slow their pace.
I screamed.
They continued unperturbed.
And I knew why. A block ago, someone would have heard me. Someone would have rushed out to help, or called the police…or done something. But here, there was a rundown park to one side of me and an abandoned apartment building on the other. My only hope was that someone would be passing by like I had been. Still, it was hope, and I latched on, screaming so loud it hurt my own ears, and whipping my head back and forth, searching for someone—anyone. Please, anyone!
There was no one.
Beside the van, Bloody-hand started to open the door, but he jerked his hand away. I must have bitten into something substantial. He howled in pain.
It gave me a brief moment’s satisfaction to know I’d done some serious damage, and it renewed my dwindling hope of escape. I’d hurt him once; I could do it again.
But my hope was short-lived. Both hands shoved me, and I fell forward, banging my forehead against the carpeted floor of the van.
“Dose her,” Bloody-hand snarled.
That didn’t sound good—rather ironic, though. I’d spent my entire teenagehood avoiding every street drug and stolen prescription drug that circulated my high school, and these two buffoons were going to drug me? It probably shouldn’t have been the first thought to occur to me, but it was almost surreal. Two minutes ago, I’d been hurrying home like any other normal day. And now…now I was desperately clinging to the fleeting hope I could escape these monsters.
In two minutes, I’d gone from normal to fighting for my life. And I was losing.
A weight pressed against my back—an elbow, maybe—and it stopped me from throwing my body backward, but I couldn’t stop fighting. I raised my feet off the ground and kicked out, again and again. My boots weren’t pretty—I didn’t wear pretty things—but they were sturdy. If I could just make contact, I knew it would buy me a second or two.
Something sharp jabbed my neck. It took me a second to realize what it was—a needle. When they’d said they were going to dose me, I envisioned one of them plugging my nose while the other forced me to swallow a bunch of pills. I hadn’t anticipated this. How could I have? My life had been normal two minutes ago.
I tried to kick out again, but my foot flopped limply back to the ground.
Again.
This time, I could barely make my leg move at all. My legs were so heavy. My whole body felt heavy actually, though I don’t know how that was possible since the rest of me was lying on the scratchy carpet. Could something seem heavy if you weren’t trying to lift it?
When my eyelids grew heavy, the panic I’d been holding at bay flooded my chest. I couldn’t keep it back any longer. Whatever they’d injected me with was doing this, and in a few seconds, I was going to be unconscious—I just knew it—and there wouldn’t be a damn thing I could do to stop them.
I screamed in my head, too weak to open my mouth to let the sound out. And then I was even too weak to do that, and I drifted into oblivion.
It was only in that last moment of consciousness the thought hit me; would I ever wake up again?
2
Scarlett
I came awake slowly, but right away I knew it wasn’t the first time I’d woken up since slipping into a drug-induced unconsciousness in the back of their van. The last time was cloudy, but it was there.
I remembered bits and pieces. I was on a bed, and I was struggling with them. Their hands had been everywhere, ripping and tearing at my clothes. Brutal grips as I was turned this way and that, pinched and squeezed.
I recalled pleading, but it had done nothing. And then, when they’d torn off my bra, I’d gone berserk, kicking and flailing and screaming.
And then nothing.
Had they jabbed me with another needle? Or knocked me unconscious? By the way my head was throbbing from a focal point in the back, I figured I could guess which one.
But then what? What had they done when I was no longer fighting them, no longer even conscious to make the weakest of protests?
Fear lodged in my throat when I thought about the most likely thing they’d done. They’d been stripping me—on a bed. What else could their intentions have been?
But mentally assessing myself, I didn’t feel any different. There was no soreness between my thighs to suggest they’d used me that way. I could feel everything else—my shoulder ached, my arms hurt where they’d first grabbed me. And I could feel every bump and bruise from their rough-handling of me. But not that.