Rags Ch. 01

She fidgeted with the hotel key card, scraping the dirt from underneath her fingernails, continuing the process of getting clean. She had the money for the pizza in her pocket, and she was just ready to call it a night. All she wanted to do was eat, try to make it up to Layla for yelling at her, then go to sleep in the first bed she had laid down on in almost a year and a half. What Anne did not know was that she would get at least one of those wishes, but not the others. Her plans for the evening were suddenly interrupted by a large shadow moving quickly into her peripheral vision before she felt a stinging sensation on her face. Her knees buckled at the force of the impact and she hit the ground hard. She cried out in pain as her face smacked onto the concrete walkway.

Another blow landed on her stomach, driving the air out of her lungs. She could barely make out a leg as it drew back for another kick. The blow landed again on her stomach, the force lifting her up bodily from the concrete, gravity bringing her back down with a forceful thud. Her head hit the concrete hard and she could feel something wet trickling down her forehead. She tried to bring her breathing under control and wiped away at the sticky liquid that trickled down her face. She gagged when she noticed it was blood.

"Well, bitch. Looks like you didn't heed my warning. I told you to remember." The disembodied voice cackled. Mike.

"You bastard! You can't treat a woman this way!" Anne yelled.

"Bastard? No, no, no," Mike laughed with cruelty in his tone," I know my father. He was a good man to my mother. Too bad he had to beat on me instead. No worries, though, I fixed that problem really quick. As for a woman? You? You're a whore. Your job is to spread your pretty little legs as wide as they can and take all of the cock you are given to take because people pay for it and they expect it."

Anne was enraged and tried to rise from the ground, but she was knocked down by a forceful kick to her ribs and a fist to her face that smacked her head back down onto the concrete. Her head was feeling awkward and light, and she could barely keep focus. She felt an overwhelming urge to vomit, instead only blood came out.

"Is she here?" a voice called out from the darkness.

"Yeah she is, just like I said she would be." Mike replied.

"What is taking so long?" another voice asked, clearly worried in tone.

"Taking care of business before we get to the pleasure." Mike said in a leering voice.

Anne felt a hand caress her breast and she brought a hand around to strike Mike in the face as hard as she was able to.

"Bitch!" Mike screamed. Anne felt a fist slam squarely into her right breast followed by blows to her stomach, face and ribs. She heard a high-pitched sound that she could not place and balled up as best as she could to ward off the blows that continued to fall. Her entire body felt like it was beginning to swell and the pain was excruciating. She was yanked up and Anne looked in horror as she realized the high-pitched sound was that of her daughter screaming through the opened curtain of the hotel room window. Her shouts of 'Mommy! Mommy!' were muffled through the glass, and Anne heard a voice come up from behind her.

"Good. Now your daughter can watch as we teach you a lesson, bitch. I own her now like I own you. When she gets old enough to take some cock, she is going to take it just like you're going to take it. She is going to learn tonight there is nowhere you can hide from Mike and get away with telling me no." He turned to the men who accompanied him. "Get over here. You wanted some pussy? You got some sweet tenderized pussy right here."

Anne whimpered in horror as she watched her daughter through the window. One of the other two men walked up behind her and she screamed in embarrassment and horror as her shirt was ripped off of her body. She had not bothered with a bra, so she was now standing topless in front of her daughter for the first time ever.

Anne acted out of self-preservation. She kicked blindly to the rear, and felt the impact into soft flesh. She heard a muffled 'oomph' and knew she had knocked the air out of one of her would-be attackers.

"Run Mommy! Run!" her daughter urged through the window, and Anne wasted no time in delay. She turned as quickly as she could and made for the parking lot. She was stopped almost immediately. It felt like she had run into a brick wall. A massive giant of a man towered over her as she was knocked by the force of the impact onto her back. She heard running feet, and her already battered body was subject to a flurry of kicks from three men. She started to scream, but it was cut off by a hand clasped firmly around her throat, cutting off her air. They dragged her back towards the opened window where Layla was screaming at them to stop hurting her. Anne's eyes were hazed with tears as she heard a zipper being pulled and her shorts and panties yanked down forcefully to her ankles. She tried to cover herself in front of her daughter, trying to preserve some modesty in the situation but the men were having other ideas. Anne once more tried to fight her way out of the situation, but was answered with hard punches to her back and sides that drove her hard into the wall of the hotel.

"Hide!" Anne yelled to her daughter. She watched as Layla ran into the bathroom.

"Aw. That is too bad. Don't worry, we will deal with her when we are done." Mike cackled from behind her before sending a kick to her groin that sent her falling to the ground.

Anne was yanked back up to a standing position by her hair. She felt a large clump rip off of her scalp in the process. After more blows landed, she was shoved forcefully against the glass several times. With each impact, the barrier between these men and her daughter cracked a little more. They were using her body as a battering ram to get into the hotel room! She lashed out again, feet and fists flailing in a pointless effort to prevent the inevitable. She felt only a sensation of sudden light-weightedness as she was thrown through the glass window.

The pane collapsed all around her, and she landed onto the ledge where a few glass shards remained from what had shattered. The glass penetrated deep into her abdomen. She was picked up again and thrown once more through the gaping hole where a window had once been to fall onto the many pieces of glass that littered the floor by the window. The force of the impact caused hundreds of glass shards to embed themselves into her skin as she cried out in agony. The blood was pouring out of the now dozens of small wounds that pockmarked her body.

She heard a bunch of cackling from outside before the men climbed in through the window and she felt herself being picked up and thrown onto the bed face first. The glass shards were driven deeper into her body, and the wound in her abdomen was ripped wider from the impact.

"Hurry before she dies. I don't wanna fuck no corpse." One of the two strangers said from behind her.

Her hands were being held far to each side of her body to where she could not move her upper body at all. One of the men stepped up behind her, and she once more heard a zipper being drawn down. She screamed as loud as she could, kicking in a frenzy to prevent what was coming. The man behind her was quick to penetrate her. The entry was rough and forceful, the pain intense and Anne moaned out loud despite herself.

"You see?" Mike cackled beside her. "The bitch likes it rough, what did I tell you guys?"

The man behind her continued his thrusts, forcing himself into her.

"Damn this bitch is tight. And she had a child?"

"Probably some street orphan or neighborhood girl she kidnapped to pass off as a mother. Who gives a fuck?" the other man said. "Hurry up, I still have to have my turn."

The man inside her did not seem to care at all about the misery she was being put through to satisfy his animal urges. She could smell alcohol on the man's breath as he rammed into her as hard as he could. The sickly smell mingled with the stench of sweat and body odor as the man put every ounce of effort into his thrusts.

She screamed out loud in agony and humiliation. She yelled in terror for her daughter locked in the bathroom mere feet away from where she was being raped by three men. Suddenly, she felt the pressure on her right arm ease and the bed move beside her as her head was jerked up violently by the hair. She was looking up at Mike's pockmarked face, and then she noticed he had his cock out.

"You will take this bitch, and you will love it." Mike said as he forced her mouth open and shoved it inside. He shoved it in as deeply as he could, making her gag. He started ramming himself deep into her mouth, the thrusts were hard enough that every time his groin smacked against her face, her head was thrown back violently. She fought to breathe, fought to focus, but the pain was overwhelming. She tried to fight once more, in a last-ditch effort borne of pure desperation she bit down hard on the cock in her mouth.

She heard Mike scream in pain, and the thud of his body hitting the floor hard as he reeled backwards to far to maintain balance on the edge of the bed. The thrusts into her sore body stopped and an intense beating ensued. Between the three men in the room, there was not an inch of her body that was spared punishment.

They even tried to get creative, choking her with the phone wire as they pummeled her body relentlessly. The contents of one of the plastic bags was dumped rather unceremoniously onto the floor. She could hear the dull thud of clothes hitting the ground before the bag was placed over her head. She thrashed around violently, the pain in her abdomen was intensifying with every effort put into just trying to live. Her breaths came ever deeper as her lungs fought desperately to draw air into them. She felt light-headed very quickly, her breaths ragged as the thrusts resumed. It was all her body could do to protect itself from the multiple severe shocks it was receiving. Anne blacked out completely.

There was a faint light, distant and horrible to her overloaded senses. Pain. Unimaginable pain coursed through her body with any attempt at movement. Her body was being moved for her. She could hear the moans, the grunts. A voice sounded faint, hoarse from somewhere above her.

"She's fucking bleeding all over my cock!" it said.

She felt dull, coarse pain on her breasts, arms and face as she gained further consciousness. She could only assume she was being beaten again, but the blows seemed faint, detached somehow.

"Quit fucking bleeding on me or I'll kill you!" the man shouted as he continued thrusting in and out of her.

The curses directed at her, the threats of what they were going to do to her daughter. She heard it all. She could do nothing about it. Her limbs were unable to move. She felt vaguely a bunch of sticky fluid running out of her body and onto the sheets beneath her. She could not open her eyes to see anything around her. She panicked as she heard her daughter screaming hoarsely to stop hurting mommy, her voice muffled. She tried to open her mouth to scream, but nothing came out. Her throat burned and would have been intensely parched were it not for the blood that poured freely from it.

She had a hard time breathing, but struggled to put up a fight, any fight whatsoever. Each attempt was met by clubbing blows all over her body. Before Anne blacked out once more, Anne uttered a few words barely audible to the derisive laughter from the three men in the room.

"Layla, mommy loves you."

**************

Stephen was about to give up. He hated the GPS his boss gave him because it was never updated, and frequently led him astray. He was 30 minutes late for delivery and he was sure the pizza was getting cold even inside the delivery bag that was supposed to help keep the food warm. This was not his night. He had been stood up for tips by multiple customers already, and he was going into a part of town at night that everybody knew was dangerous. If he kept cruising around like he was he would either be mistaken for someone's rival gang member, or get stopped by the police for some reason.

As soon as he got back, he was quitting this job. The pay was lousy and the work boring. He cursed himself for not taking the dishwasher position he had been offered months earlier, but this job had called first and he needed the money to help pay bills for his dorm room. College was just too expensive to not be working in some capacity or the other to offset the costs.

He had decided to turn around when he finally spied the sign for the Motel 6 just a few blocks away. He gunned the engine of his old Volvo as much as he dared so he could get this delivery over with and tell his asshole boss that he was through when he returned. He would probably get stiffed again for a tip. That was just how his luck always ran. When it rained, it poured and then poured some more.

He pulled into the parking lot and walked into the office to ask for the location of room 138. Of course, it had to be in the back where there was no real lighting. He cursed his job mentally once more as he climbed into the Volvo and pulled up to where the man indicated the room was. It was strange. Even in this part of town, the hotels are usually occupied. This one was almost completely deserted.

He pulled up next to the room and his face paled. Through the shattered window of the hotel room he could see a woman lying naked upon the bed, completely exposed for the world to see and not moving an inch to indicate she had noticed the car lights. He got out of the car, cautiously glancing around for any sign of trouble. This was beyond his experience, and his legs began to tremble. The closer he drew to the window the more he saw, and the more frightened he became. He saw a small pool of blood on the concrete just outside of the window. Blood was also all over the remnants of the glass that clung stubbornly to the window frame even as the rest had shattered.

He arrived at the window and saw that the woman was not Hispanic or black at all. In the few areas that were not covered in blood or bruises he could make out naked patches of white. He threw up instantly, unable to quell the rising nausea. He ran to his car as quickly as he could and dialed 911.

***************

Oscar was driving along the main road. He had only a few moments before his shift was up and he could go home. The night had not been bad at all. He had a number of decent customers, and they were fairly generous with tips. He had made nearly a hundred dollars, almost beating his record for tips earned on a shift thanks to that Anne woman.

It was strange how his thoughts had kept returning to Anne and her lovely daughter all evening long. The little girl, Layla, reminded him somewhat of his daughter when she had been that age. The lovely naivete of youth even amidst the daily struggle of people trying to make it through the world in some of the most terrible circumstances imaginable was truly a wondrous thing. Layla had been open minded and playful, and Anne was a lovely woman who was caught in a bad position. He had seen these things too many times before where young women were forced into desperate acts in order to make it through. He knew Anne was homeless, and he had an idea about how she had come by the money to buy all of those bags of stuff he helped carry into the hotel. He had not felt such sincere concern for another person in such a long time, yet he felt it when he left them there at the room. He offered the best advice an old man could because he was certainly not capable of doing any more than that.

In the middle of these thoughts he suddenly realized he was driving along the street that would take him by the hotel where Anne and Layla had been left for the evening. He felt a stirring of curiosity as to whether or not Anne had heeded his advice. Attacks on people in this area had gone up sharply ever since a new bunch of gangsters and criminals had found it an ideal place to set up shop. It always happened at night, and in the darkness. Darkness, that he realized was penetrated rather sharply by the tell-tale flashing lights that indicated emergency vehicles were nearby- a lot of them.

Oscar felt his heart drop immediately when he finally became aware of where the lights were coming from. He gunned the engine and darted across the street after he turned off the light on top of the cab. He narrowly avoided being hit by an oncoming pickup truck whose horn was blaring angrily behind him. He barely even noticed it as he felt his worst fears for the two ladies had come true. Police and other emergency vehicles were clustered all around the area of the hotel where their room was. He pulled the cab to a stop and put it in park before climbing out and heading towards the scene. The closer he got, the more he became aware. He got close enough to see the bloody shards of window stubbornly clinging onto the window frame. He caught a glimpse of a small pool of blood on the ground. His whole body shook with violent heaves as emotions he had not realized he was clinging to had begun to manifest themselves physically.

"Sir, I need you to step back." A voice came from somewhere nearby. Otis jumped, startled by the sudden intrusion into his worried mind.

"What happened here?" Oscar asked the police officer.

"That is not your concern, I need you to step back and keep clear of this area."

"What happened here!?" the old man bellowed, causing several police and other first responders to turn their heads towards the commotion.

"All right, sir. I need you to leave- now." The officer ordered, his hand reaching for his taser.

Oscar noticed the movement, but was undaunted.

"Officer, I need to know. Please." The old man begged, tears welling out of his eyes.

"Come over this way, and we can talk." The officer said to him, pointing the way towards a police cruiser.

Oscar hobbled along, trying to keep up with the officer's rapid movements. On his way towards the police car he saw a stretcher being wheeled toward a waiting ambulance. The officer had his back turned, and Oscar wasted no time. He hobbled as quickly as possible towards the stretcher and he howled in terror as he saw the naked form of what had once been a beautiful woman. The paramedics tried to push him away and the police officer was pulling him back, cursing Oscar's stubbornness. Suddenly the form spoke, and the effort she put into talking was obvious.

"Oscar?"

"Yes, Miss Anne?" Oscar replied, his voice emotional.

A bloodied hand reached out for him and he took it.

"Layla?" she asked, growing weaker by the second.

Oscar looked at the officer, his alarm increasing a thousandfold.

"A little girl, where is she? She's her daughter, where is she?"

"Do you two know each other?" the officer asked suspiciously.

"Yes." Anne replied weakly.

"Where... Layla?" Anne asked Oscar again. Oscar looked at the officer in alarm, Anne's eyes were not open. The officer shook his head. Layla was not there when they had arrived.

"Layla?" Anne repeated. "Oscar... take care of... my baby. Tell her mommy loves..." Anne fell unconscious and the paramedics started working feverishly to revive her. Her hand went completely limp in his and Oscar looked on in utter terror as he already knew what the paramedic confirmed but a minute later with a solemn shake of his head toward the emotionally distraught old man. Anne was dead. Oscar watched with wide, tear-filled eyes as a thin, blood-soaked sheet was pulled over Anne's face. He felt a hand grip his shoulder and he followed along silently.

"Sir, I am going to have to ask you a few questions before I let you go. Would you mind?" the officer asked gently, taking careful note of the obvious pain the old man was in. Oscar ambled away, his face never leaving the stretcher until it was loaded into the ambulance and out of sight. When he finally paid attention to his surroundings he was at the police cruiser and the officer was pulling a notepad from his car. Oscar remained patient with the officer through the questions and left a phone number with the officer to contact him if the little girl was ever found. He gave a description and Layla's name and then was told he was free to go.