41. Nell
“Swallow it.”
The command lands like a stone in my chest. The little white tablet in his hand isn’t medicine—it’s a weapon. A promise of what’s to come. A threat wrapped in chalky bitterness.
He doesn’t raise his voice. He doesn’t need to. The memory of last night does the work for him.
The girl I share the room with watches from her bed, her arms wrapped tightly around her knees. She doesn’t speak. Doesn’t move. He’s not making her take anything—just me. And that says enough.
I clamp my mouth shut, shaking my head slowly, defiantly. I stare at him, trying to find something—anything—human in his eyes.
There’s nothing.
Just vacancy.
Just rot.
“Stupid fucking bitch,”
he mutters, and then he’s on me—rough hands pinching my cheeks until my jaw cracks open. I claw at his arms, but it’s useless. The tablet is shoved past my tongue, followed by a splash of water that floods my throat and nose. I choke, sputter, but I swallow. I always do. That’s the point.
He steps back, wiping his hands like I’m something dirty he touched by accident.
“The clients will be up soon,”
he says, already turning away.
“So be ready.”
The door slams.
And the spinning starts.
It’s slow at first—a gentle tilt of the floor, a soft blur at the edges of my vision. But it builds fast. My limbs go loose, my thoughts scatter like leaves in wind. I’m sinking, and there’s no bottom.
The girl is beside me now, guiding me to the bed with hands that tremble just like mine. She doesn’t say much. She doesn’t have to. The look in her eyes tells me everything.
She’s just as trapped.
Just as broken.
Just as disposable.
“Just stay still,”
she whispers, her voice barely reaching me.
“And don’t speak.”
Her lips move slower than her words. Her face is already slipping out of focus, like a dream I’m forgetting in real time.
I’m naked.
Exposed.
My skin prickles against the cold air, but I can’t move to cover myself. My muscles have turned to liquid, useless and unresponsive—like my body’s no longer mine. All I can do is lie here, waiting. Dreading. Hating the fact that my body has betrayed me.
The silence stretches until low, male voices drift in from the hallway.
The girl beside me startles. Without a word, she scrambles back to her own bed, curling into herself like she was never here. Like she never helped me. Like we’re strangers again.
I try to sit up. I want to. I need to. But my head is too heavy, my limbs too slow. I manage a twitch, a shallow breath, but that’s all. My body lolls uselessly, my eyes rolling back before I force them open again.
The ceiling swims above me. My eyelids droop, weighted like lead. I’m trapped in this half-conscious state—aware enough to feel the fear, too far gone to fight it.
“What’s your name?”
I attempt.
The words form in my mind, clear and desperate, but what comes out is a garbled mess—slurred syllables that melt into each other, too broken to understand. Even I can’t make sense of them.
“Shhh!”
the girl hisses from across the room. She’s lying flat on her back, trembling, her eyes squeezed shut. Her lips move in a frantic whisper, over and over—too fast to catch. A prayer, maybe. Or a mantra to keep herself from falling apart.
The door swings open with a heavy groan that slices through the silence.
I can’t see from this angle. My head won’t turn. The room is spinning now in wide, lazy circles that make my stomach lurch. The ceiling tilts, the walls breathe. Everything is wrong.
“You want either of these?”
a voice asks, casual, like someone offering a drink at a bar.
“Fuck me, that one’s out of it,”
another voice jeers, closer now. I feel it more than hear it—his presence, the weight of his gaze crawling over my skin.
“Payment first,”
a third voice cuts in—colder, more controlled. Businesslike.
I try to move. Try to lift my legs, roll away, do something. But my body won’t respond. My thighs twitch, useless. My arms are lead. I can’t even lift my head.
The door clicks shut, and for a heartbeat, I let myself believe they’ve gone. My body slackens, just slightly—an instinctive flicker of hope filling me, thinking this nightmare might be over before it’s even begun.
Then I hear it.
Laughter.
Low, amused and cruel, and my heart plummets.
Two shadows bleed into my periphery—blurred outlines of men. One veers toward the other girl’s bed. The other stays. Lingers. Hovers over me like a storm cloud, faceless and looming. I blink hard, trying to focus, but my eyelids are sandbags and the world keeps tilting.
“Mate, I want some of what she’s had,”
he chuckles, like I’m not even here. Like I’m a joke, nothing more than a prop.
In my mind, I’m fighting him.
I’m clawing, kicking, screaming.
I’m breaking his nose, his ribs, his goddamn spine.
But in reality, I’m sinking.
Sinking into the mattress, lost to the drug, falling through hell.
Across the room, the girl lets out a sharp, stifled sound—half gasp, half sob. The bedsprings beneath her groan in a rhythm that makes my stomach turn. I don’t need to see it. I already know.
The man beside me shifts. One of my thighs are angled into place like I’m a doll he’s positioning.
I want to scream.
I want to move.
But my body won’t listen.
And then something worse happens.
The fear begins to fade.
Not because it’s over—because the drug is pulling me under again, deeper this time. Wrapping me in a numb, painless fog. My mind starts to float, detaching from the weight of my body, from the room, from him.
I don’t want to feel this.
But I don’t want to feel nothing, either.
He’s so close I can smell him—cheap cologne, sweat and something sour that will haunt me for the rest of my life.
I know, with a sick certainty, that I’ll never forget the scent of the first man who rapes me.
A groan slips from my throat—part protest, part plea—but it’s quickly smothered by his hand.
“Shh, shh… take it like a good girl,”
he whispers, his voice thick with mockery. His hands roam over me like I’m something he’s bought and paid for. Like he has the right.
I’m so numb I can barely feel him. My body is distant and disconnected, like it belongs to someone else. The mattress digs into my back, but even that feels far away. His breath is hot against my skin, but it barely registers.
I try to escape the only way I can—inside my mind.
I reach for a memory. Not a sexual one. A safe one.
Cameron’s laugh. The way he used to look at me like I was the only person in the world. A moment we shared at the dinner table together.
I miss you, I tell him in mind. Please help me.
He’s grunting now—low, guttural sounds that echo off the walls, mingling with the sickening rhythm of movement, skin slapping skin, and breath. It’s the only sound in the room.
And it’s haunting.
“Wanna swap?”
the other man asks casually, like they’re trading seats at a poker table.
There’s a shift of weight. A pause. Then new hands. Rougher. Colder. I’m dragged to the edge of the mattress, my body folded in on itself, limbs bent like I’m nothing more than a thing to be positioned.
But I’m not a doll, I’m a human-fucking-being!
His grip bruises. His breath burns.
But I tell myself it’s not real.
It’s just a dream.
A nightmare I’ll wake from if I can just hold on.
“Stay still, whore!”
The slap comes fast—a sharp crack across my face that snaps my head sideways and stills my instinct to move. My skin stings, my ears ring, but I don’t cry out. I won’t give him that.
I try to speak, to curse him, to spit something back—but all that escapes is a broken sound. A groan. A ghost of the fight still flickering inside me.
There’s nothing kind in this place. No tenderness. No hesitation.
To them, we’re not people—we’re just bodies. Just holes to be used and discarded.
Playthings.
Replaceable.
Forgettable.
It goes on too long. Time stretches, until it eventually loses meaning all together. But there’s no pain—not really. The drugs have dulled everything, wrapped my nerves in cottonwool. I can feel the weight, the motion, but it’s distant. Like it’s happening to someone else.
So I stare at the ceiling.
I count the damp patches—one, two, three—like they’re stars in some ruined sky. I trace the cracks in the plaster, follow the water stains like constellations. Anything to keep my mind away from what’s happening. Anything to hold onto the last thread of myself.
I just want it to end.
I just want them to leave.
The next time I blink he pulls out and comes on my bared torso, his face twisted like something out of a horror film. Then another blink and they’re gone, laughing their way back down the hall.
Three more men enter the room, one after the other, like it’s a routine. Like we’re part of some sick itinerary.
They follow the same process—no words, no hesitation. Just hands and weight and expectation. They don’t see us. Not as people. Not as girls. Just vessels. A piece of flesh they can use at their will with no consequence.
There’s no difference between them.
No mercy.
No humanity.
Each one as hollow and cruel as the last.
They laugh as they touch me—joking with each other, trading comments like they’re at a bar, not standing over a girl who can barely lift her head.
Their hands grab at me, pull at me, like I’m some kind of exhibit.
A thing to be passed around.
And that’s when it happens.
A single tear slips down my cheek.
Just one.
But it’s enough.
My mind is almost gone—fogged, drugged, drifting somewhere far from here.
But even through the haze, even with my body numbed to the last nerve, the humiliation slices through.
Sharp.
Clean.
Unavoidable.
If I were conscious—if I had control over my body, my voice, anything—I’d tell them exactly what they are.
That the only reason they do this is because no woman with a shred of sanity or freedom would ever choose them and their tiny dicks.
That their power is a lie, built on fear and force, and I hope they rot in whatever hell waits for men like them.
I’d spit in their face and put up a fight that would probably get me killed.
But I can’t.
So, I lie here, in the fabricated silence and submission these bastards have subjected me to.