In this Vast Empty Place

"You're not going to move now, are you? You're going to stay nice and still and quiet for me, and you're not going to get scratched up. We would both hate for that to happen, wouldn't we?"

The edge of the knife was pressed uncomfortably tightly against Cora's throat, and she didn't trust herself to nod without getting cut. Nor could she find her voice to speak until the knife was pressed in just a little closer, at which point she managed to breathe out a soft "Yes."

"I thought you might say that." The man with the smug voice still stood behind her, but he pressed his face beside hers, nuzzling her cheek with scratchy stubble. His free hand snaked around her waist, pulling her back against his body. Cora fought hard to control her breathing and keep from shaking, but it was a losing battle.

"Now," came the man's voice (a voice that hinted at a Virginia drawl, faded from its respectable origins by time and decay,) "in a moment, I'm going to let you turn around so I can get a good look at you. You're not going to get any brave ideas about running or fighting. You can scream all you like, though. Nobody around to hear you out here."

His grip around her loosened.

"I said, turn around. Darling."

Taking tiny steps, Cora shifted about until she was facing the man who grabbed her. Her first impression was of staggeringly cold blue eyes staring out from a weather-beaten face; it was hard to judge how much older he was than her, but a few rough lines and creases across his visage were starting to show. Long brown-gold hair framed his face, and her impression was of a man who might have been handsome if he'd been given a shave and some clean clothes- and if he could keep that leer out of his eyes.

He looked her over slowly and smiled. It was somehow more frightening than if he'd worn a murderous glare.

"Aren't you a pretty thing," he said slowly. "What's a sweet little redhead doing all alone so far from anyone to take care of her?"

"I'm- I'm here to marry Mr. Harper."

The strange man laughed at that, shaking his head with an awful gleam in his eye.

"Oh, isn't that a pitiful shame! If Mr. Harper is the man I found when I came to hide out in this house in the middle of nowhere, he's lying in a grave I dug out back. Screamed awfully loud when I stabbed him, but like I said, there's nobody around to hear."

Cora's breath caught in her throat. Her eyes darted to the doorway where she had come in, and the stranger shook his head at the sight.

"Not a good idea. Of course, if you think you're fast enough, you could always try..."

Before she had taken three steps, he'd seized her by her hair and pressed the knife to her cheek.

"Silly girl. Doesn't matter much to me. You'd look just as pretty with a few scratches here and there."

"Please..." Cora closed her eyes. "Please don't kill me."

"The thought hadn't even crossed my mind."

And then suddenly the stranger pushed his rough lips up to her cheek and kissed her, fiercely, never letting go of the knife against her throat. She finally screamed, no matter that it was useless, until he cut off her scream with another kiss, this one pressed against her mouth. Cora bit down on his lip and he slapped her, knocking her down onto the ground.

When she looked up, blinking away tears, she saw him kneeling down beside her with his predatory smile back again.

"Wanna try that again?" he asked her, before pulling her upwards into another kiss. His hand was on the back of her neck, holding her head still when she tried to turn away. Cora gasped for breath when he released her, and her mind raced desperately to think of something, anything she might do or say to make him stop touching her.

"I won't tell it was you," she said feebly, "I'll say I never saw the killer, I just found an empty house-"

"Say whatever you want," he replied carelessly. "They can only hang me once. And now that I mention it, might as well add a few more charges for them to read out at the gallows. You see my line of thinking?"

He climbed on top of Cora and straddled her, one knee on each side of her body, and the knife was in his hand again. One hand grabbed hold of the neckline of her dress, the other brought the knife down and sawed through the sturdy fabric. Cora feared to struggle in case it jerked the knife into her flesh, but she couldn't stop her own shivering.

The stranger looked appreciatively at her bare breasts once he'd cut away everything covering them.

"My, my. What a sight you've been hiding!"

"Don't you dare-" she started, but there was nothing she could do to stop him from grabbing a handful and digging in his nails.

"Let's get one thing straight," he said with a shake of his head. "You're not telling me what I can't do. Understand?"

The sight of his smiling face was so infuriating that Cora lashed out, almost without thinking, and tried to strike him on the side of his neck. The stranger swiftly knocked her arm back with a movement that was almost a shrug.

"Oh, honey," he said, "if you're looking to turn me off of you, you picked the wrong way."

He pulled her hand down and forced it on top of the bulge in his pants.

"You feel that? That's what you're doing to me. Feel free to keep doing it."

Cora attempted to jerk her hand away. She knew she must be blushing, and she hated it. Why should a monster be able to make her feel ashamed, when she wasn't even sure what she was supposed to be ashamed of? What had she done to him? What had she done besides walk into a home where she was expected, and fall into the hands of a murdering fiend?

She'd done everything she was supposed to. She'd agreed to marry a man she didn't know, much less love, so her parents would no longer have to support her. She'd been modest and obedient and never spoken out of turn. There was no reason for this outlaw to accuse her of encouraging him, and certainly no reason to feel so ashamed she could almost cry.

When her attacker finally released Cora's hand, she threw a punch at his face. It was the wrong move to make- pain wracked through her hand when it connected, and rather than being knocked back, he retaliated by wrapping his own hands around her throat. The world went off-kilter, and Cora's head swam as she tried to gasp. I'm dying, I'm dying was all Cora had the ability to think. At last the man's hands eased off and Cora could breathe, but those words kept floating through her head. She didn't want to die. Whatever torture he was going to put her through, she didn't want to die.

"Ready to be a good girl?" the stranger asked, and Cora couldn't bring herself to respond. Luckily, he didn't take this as another sign of defiance. His hands weren't hurting her right now, only undoing his own buttons, and when she saw what they contained, Cora's eyes grew wide.

No. No, no, this couldn't possibly be happening. She couldn't be seeing this.

She wasn't entirely ignorant. She knew how animals mated. She knew that bad things happened to girls taken hostage by bandits, or entering the homes of married men, or walking down dark streets near saloons. Bad things were always happening to girls- it seemed that to be a girl was to be constantly on guard, even if you weren't certain what the danger was. But she had never, in either her dreams of marriage or her fears of abduction, ever thought about the reality of how a man's body and hers would fit together.

It was enough to know that it would be degrading. But to actually see that instrument of degradation before her very eyes and know it was about to be used on her was something out of a nightmare.

"Get on your knees," the stranger said, standing up. When Cora stayed still, frozen in terror, he seized her by the back of the hair and roughly dragged her upright. She looked up at him, eyes wide, trying very hard to look at his face and not at the thing that was in front of her.

Suddenly, the stranger struck her across the face, slamming her back onto the ground. Cora's head ached where it struck the floor, and she looked back up at him through bleary vision. Why? What had she done except follow his orders?

"Any harder than that," he said, "and you wouldn't have gotten back up. I want you to remember that. Because now you're going to sit back up and you're going to open your mouth, and if I feel any teeth I'll knock them out of your pretty head. Just so we're clear."

Cora had to use all her strength to pull herself back to her knees, and her mouth hung open not as a sign of obedience but simply one of exhaustion. It was good enough for her attacker; before she entirely understood what was happening, he had shoved her face down and thrust himself in between her lips with one violent motion.

If Cora could have screamed, she would have done so. Instead her mouth and throat were full and her stomach was heaving. With each motion he made, she was closer to being sick and choking on her own bile. She had just enough presence of mind to keep from smashing her teeth together, but the temptation to do so and let him beat her to death was at the forefront of her mind. Her tongue tasted salt and sweat as he pushed himself in and out of her mouth, and if that hadn't been enough to make her gag, then the way he kept just missing the back of her throat would have done it.

Tears streamed down her face as he continued to thrust, hitting the corner of her mouth as they fell. Her attacker groaned and wove his fingers into her hair, pulling her even further down onto him. Cora was sure she was going to pass out for lack of breath, and perhaps it was only the way he held her upright by the hair that kept her from falling down.

"Oh, honey," he moaned, "oh, you've got a sweet mouth..."

Cora pressed her eyes shut to stem her tears, but that only made her head throb even worse. Even with her eyes closed, she had grown quite dizzy, and when she could no longer find a second for breath, she let the darkness behind her eyelids overtake her. It was only for a moment, but when she managed to open her eyes again she was on the floor and the stranger was kneeling down with his face close to hers.

Cora turned over and coughed, her body heaving dryly, wracked with disgust through every muscle. Nothing would rid her mouth of his taste, nothing would drive away the horror of how he had used her, and she was only half-thinking when she wrapped her hand around a splinter of wood from the floor and brought her hand forward, trying to stab it through his eye.

The stranger caught her hand easily and twisted her wrist until she dropped her weapon. She snarled with fury and frustration before falling back into sobs as he pushed her back to the ground. He pushed her shoulder down so she was lying looking up, then knelt down above her again.

"You can't be thinking of stopping now," he said with a smile. "Not when we're just getting started."

"No more...please, no more..." Cora stammered, but her words had no effect on the stranger as he lifted her skirt. She didn't think there was anything left in her that could still feel shock, but she gasped when his hands reached between her thighs. She summoned her remaining energy to try and push her knee up at him, but he shoved it back down and pressed his hand into her even more intently. It slid in easily, his fingers slick inside her, and Cora bucked underneath him in sickness and fury. The stranger seemed somehow amused.

"Isn't this interesting?" he asked. "Looks like you've been having a good time here."

Cora looked at him blankly. He smiled and shook his head.

"Oh, honey. Don't worry about what you don't know. You'll learn."

He pulled his body down and pressed against her entrance. Even with what he had already done to her, her mind started swimming with horror, trying to process the thought that he would actually force himself inside her. As fighting hadn't saved her, she started to incoherently whisper pleas. Pleas for him to stop, pleas for him to let her go, for anything, just not this. All of that was turned to a cry as he finally thrusted into her with a grunt, and then her mind was experiencing a new sensation altogether.

It wasn't the discomfort that so wracked and ruined Cora from inside and out. It was the horror of feeling a part of herself stripped away. What was once completely hers could now be taken and possessed by someone else. He overpowered her inside and out, and there was nothing she could do to stop him having his way with her. She was as helpless as an animal caught by a hunter, held in place by a trap that she could not escape.

And just when she had thought her body could accommodate it all despite her mind's protest, there came another brutish thrust. Again and again she felt it, as she alternately cried out and fought for breath beneath her assailant. And just when she felt she could not be any more humiliated, he held her head in place and kissed her.

Cora tried to shift her head away from him, and his response was to bite down on her cheek hard enough to make her yelp. She whimpered, and he licked along the flesh where he had bitten. It only added to her impression of being a small creature devoured by a larger one, succumbing to the brutality of nature here in this vast empty place with no human kindness to be found.

The stranger gripped Cora's legs as he thrusted, and she could feel his fingernails biting into her skin. He was greedy for her body, and pulled at her thighs to better angle into her with each attack. Just when Cora thought she had finally become accustomed to the horrible feelings, the stranger would shift her body once more and she would feel his assault startle and sunder her anew.

"Stop...no more..." Cora moaned. She begged for the sake of her sore body and her sobbing eyes, pleading with a monster whom she knew had no pity to give. If he would just stop, it would be as if she opened her eyes from a nightmare. He might slit her throat, he might let her run, but either way she would be free. If she could feel that freedom, it would be enough.

The stranger kissed her again, and this time Cora didn't try to resist. It might be the last kiss she ever had, she thought with a distant sense of sorrow, if he murdered her. She'd been a good girl, Cora desperately thought, she'd always tried her best to be kind and obedient and giving, if everything ended here and now she could hope for heaven. But heaven seemed so far away from the suffering she was experiencing. It was hard to believe it was even real.

There was nothing Cora could do to dislodge her attacker, but as her body started to ache with use, the instinct to fight rose up in her for one more time. Not caring if he hurt or even killed her in response, she dug her own fingernails into his flesh and scraped them down his arms. There was blood beneath her nails when she was done, but the groans she elicited from the stranger did not sound like ones of pain. In the height of his pleasure, more physical sensation only seemed to spur him on. His thrusts grew even faster and more violent, and perhaps he was even more excited than he would have been if she'd caressed him.

"That's right," he groaned, "oh girl, you feel so good..."

Cora felt herself moving beneath the stranger, as if he was riding her like a horse. She couldn't buck him off, but her hips moved in time with his nevertheless. She could feel drops of sweat dripping down across her face. He wasn't only riding her like an unruly horse- he was breaking her like one. Putting her in her place, showing what use he had for her. And how could she prove him wrong when he had overpowered her so entirely?

The stranger's breathing atop her grew faster and faster, and his body shook as he thrusted. Another gasp, another attack, another jerk of his body on top of hers. She could no longer speak, but only hear the words he hissed in her ear as he drove himself onward.

"God damn it, look what you've done to me!"

And then with one final thrust he fell on top of her, breathing heavily but otherwise still. When he finally rolled off her, Cora rubbed herself compulsively, trying desperately to ease away some of the hurt he had caused her. She felt lightheaded when she tried to sit up, and so sank back down to the ground. Let the earth swallow her up now, she wouldn't fight it.

But the bastard still wasn't done with her.

"I didn't feel you come," he said. "Wasn't it good enough for you? I'm awfully sorry, darling. We'll have to fix that."

His arms wrapped around her and pushed her legs open once again. She thought he was about to mount her once more, but instead his hands pushed up to a place beyond her entrance and started rubbing. Cora didn't know what he was doing or why- it was some new way to torture her- but his fingers moved back and forth rapidly and she found herself reeling in an entirely new way. There was something that was almost pain building inside her, but pain couldn't possibly describe the tension pressing against her.

"Stop, stop," she breathed, but he kept tormenting her regardless. She licked her lips and dug her nails into the palms of her hands without knowing why. The strange feeling kept increasing, and by the time she was ready to scream, her body shook dreadfully and her mind began to fall apart. The feeling that came over her was like that of a wave crashing over her, a fog of sensation that was more terrible and more wonderful than anything she had ever felt. Her body shuddering and clenching, she screamed and curled in on herself. When her attacker let her collapse on the floor she continued to shake and shiver.

The stranger had more composure than she did as he pulled on his clothes. When he leaned over her, Cora thought he was about to finish his work and kill her, but he only kissed her one more time, then ran a hand through her now-undone hair.

"Now," he said, "what happens next is up to you. If you want, I'll leave you here when I go on the run in a week or so, and you can tell the law all about the shameful way I treated you. I go on to the next town where nobody knows my face, you get on the train and ride out to one where no one knows yours. The other thing that can happen is that I leave you here dead, and by the time they find you the animals will probably have had a go at your body first and not left much for them to identify. Which is it going to be? It all depends on how you decide to behave during my stay. You were going to play wife to a man you didn't even know; I'll bet you can do that for me."

It was a struggle for Cora to even think at the moment, but she tried to absorb his words nonetheless. Playing wife. Obeying him, giving him her body, like an animal he had tamed. But she would be alive and she would outlast him. Someday she would see his picture in the paper along with a notice that he had been captured and hanged, and she would be able to smile again. Just a little more time as his prisoner. Could she last that long?

Cora struggled onto her knees, every small movement of her body hurting.

"I'll...I'll..."

She couldn't say it. But he smiled at her anyway.

"I know you will, sweetheart. I know you will."