Slavegirl

Call me Hagar. Some years ago, never mind how long precisely, having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me at home, I thought I would accept an offer to attend a ceremony in a distant city.

--

I saw his face. I saw his face masking each one of them. As they climbed onto me. As they invaded me. As they did what they needed to. As they moved on to the next, and hopefully better, entertainment. As a new person took their place. Not daring to look into my dead eyes. Not daring to see a person, just a body. Each new face was his. And he knew. He had won. I had let him win. Maybe I had always wanted him to win. Maybe this was the sum total of my worth.

Doing to me what I had fought so hard to prevent. Fought through pain and blood and terror. Doing to me what had once seemed worth fighting to stop. Worth taking the punches. Worth the increasing pressure on my throat. Worth trying to hurt him back. Worth straining every sinew in resistance. That was then. But not now. Now I'd taken their thirty pieces of silver. Now I'd asked for this. Signed. Might as well have been in blood. Or spirit. Spirit for sale. Final reductions.

And it didn't matter that I'd changed my mind. That wasn't my prerogative. Not now. Now was too late. I'd been told that returning were as tedious as go o'er. Not by them. They didn't need to. By the others. Who whispered in scared tones about what happened to that girl. We policed ourselves.

--

Why?

I'd told myself I was good. Better. Over it. It had been fine with my regular crowd. Happy. Just like before. No problems. No flashbacks. They were separate things. I could tell the difference. Fun and attempted destruction. But he couldn't destroy me. I wouldn't let him. He didn't get that power over me.

He was free. Free to do that to someone else. But that wasn't my fault. I'd tried. Tried to make them understand. Tried and failed. Now? Now, I wasn't going to live in a cage because of it. I was better than that. I was indestructible. I was in control. I could take it. Take anything.

Until I knew, too late, that those were just lies. Lies told to myself with false bravado. Denial of the internal wounds. The deep ones. Mental wounds that hadn't faded like the bruises and abrasions. I was OK. I could handle it. Nothing I hadn't done before. I was a big girl. I was a bad girl. I was special. Different. I could deal. Stupid! Fucking! Liar!

So they did to me what I wouldn't let him do. Again. And again. And again. The physical disappeared. It wasn't my body. My nerves stopped signalling. My brain really didn't need to know. But his face. His face smiling in delayed, but still inevitable, triumph. He had me. He had me in the end. And we both knew it.

--

But it was more... it was her.

How we let petty insecurities conspire in our own downfall. What did I want? To step out of her shadow? To show her what I was made of? To do what she wouldn't? To fucking prove myself to her?

I pieced together the reality. Over years. Over long years. Because I wanted more. More than friendship. Because she was my world, and I hated her for it. For resurfacing unwanted feelings. Ones that experience had taught me only led to pain. For feelings I had said weren't for me. For feelings I had excised surgically. But you can never be sure you got all the tissue.

And I know the deeper truth. It was never her. It was me. Me being too scared. Me not being worthy of her love. Me saying no to what we both wanted. And she had told me. I pretended not to hear. And she had been there. Always. She'd shown me. Shown me even more than told me. But I still built my little alternative reality. Hagar's world. One in which my suicidal decisions made sense. One in which selling your very being was no big deal. It's just a ceremony, right?

--

It wasn't her. It wasn't him.

What was left?

Me.

And I hated me.

I hated me with every fiber of my being.

--