Survive. Scream.
Scream.
She was alone.
Somehow, someway, her brain had sent her that message through the fog of pain.
Amara sat in the chair, wrists free but limp, her whole body shaking like a leaf as her skin burned.
She was alone.
And the door was open.
She blinked, barely able to see past the water in her eyes. Everything hurt. Everything was pain.
But she had to survive. She had barely lived her life. She had singing lessons to attend in summer, school to graduate, books to read, places to visit, a boy to kiss, babies to have. Her mother couldn’t lose her. Vin couldn’t mourn her.
She was alive. That was all that mattered. They hadn’t broken her yet.
Gripping the sides of the chair with juddering arms, Amara somehow found the strength inside herself to push up. The burning in her wrist flared and she bit her lip hard to stifle any sound. She couldn’t alert any of them.
Amara stood up, her legs unsteady, the soles of her feet burning with every step she took, circulation agitating the assaulted skin there, leaving prints of blood on the floor. Her eyes went to the open door. They thought her scared enough or weak enough to not try anything. They didn’t know. Fear was sister to desperation. And she was desperate to escape this hell.
With soft steps, stifling every whimper, tears running down her cheeks, hair matted around her face, Amara edged towards the open door cautiously, getting out into some kind of corridor. Looking left, and then right, she headed to the latter, going down a set of stairs, every step feeling like a pit of fire. She breathed through it somehow, her need to escape greater than anything else, and came to an empty office room of some sort with an EXIT door. She heard the men who had abducted her somewhere, watching a game.
Her only goal was to escape.
Spying the door, Amara felt a burst of adrenaline shoot down her body, filling her with energy, and worse, hope. She limped towards the door, panting, and exited into a garage of some kind with shuttered doors. Unlocked shuttered doors.
Desperate to just get away, she made a beeline towards it, only to be suddenly yanked by her hair. Pain exploded in her scalp, a cry leaving her lips as the first man dragged her to the truck in the garage and shoved her over the hood.
“You still got fight in you, bitch?” he spat out against her ear, pressing into her from behind.
Bile rose up her throat, her skin crawling with revulsion.
Amara saw his companions come out into the garage.
“Please, no,” she begged. “Please.”
They laughed.
“Fucking slut,” the man held her down.
Her clothes went first.
And she screamed,
and screamed,
and screamed…
until she couldn’t anymore.
There was a little spider on the floor.
It was pretty too.
Amara lay on her side in the garage, her eyes watching the spider as it tried to climb up the wall. He fell down. It reminded her of that story ma used to tell her, of a king in a cave after a battle, watching the spider climb and fall a hundred times. Or was it a queen? Was it a hundred times, or fifty? This little spider had only climbed up twice, before moving on. Maybe, the stories were wrong.