The Ballad of Verdene Molloy Ch. 05

But then there was a loud knock on the door.

"What?" she said, annoyed.

"Mind if I take a shower?" came a male voice.

"Yeah," she said. "I do."

"Oh, come on," he said. "Don't be uptight."

"Can't you just wait?" she said. Her fucking clothes and towel were on the other side of the room. She had nothing to cover herself with.

"I'll be real quick!" came the voice. It had the happy confidence of a young guy who expected people to do

what he wanted. "I swear I won't look at you!"

"I'll just be a couple more minutes," said Verde, who was aching to finish her orgasm.

"Oh, come on," said the voice, chuckling, and the door opened.

"Don't come in!" Verde screamed, hastily covering herself as best she could with her hands, but he came in, tall, broad-shouldered, a real hunk, handsome, just to be cheeky. And he looked at her, and he stopped, his cheeky smile frozen.

"Please get out," said Verde desperately.

"Is that an invitation?" he said, reading the words on her forehead.

"It is not," she said. "Get out. Or I'll scream."

No, no, no, not this, not now, I don't need this . . .

"Hey," he said, staring at her in that odd, distracted way, "no need to freak out."

He came into the shower and started to undress distractedly.

"The fuck are you doing!" Verde barked. "Get out!"

She knew, she could feel it in her bones -- if he got over to her, if he touched her, she was going to feel the desire, she was going to want it, and she didn't want to want it. She wanted to be able to say no. It was her fucking right.

He was in sports gear and he was soon down to his briefs. It didn't help at all that he was so good-looking.

"I just gotta see you," he muttered, walking up to her, sliding his briefs down, revealing his long, slender cock. Verde cowered in the corner.

"I'm begging you," she said, feeling her voice break. No, don't cry, be strong, get him the fuck out. "Please, get out, don't do this."

"I'm just looking at you," he said reasonably, and he had come right up to her, and he reached down and took her wrists in his strong hands.

And it hit her. The desire. The fear and anger stayed, but the desire just got worse. Verde sobbed in helpless dismay as he pulled her arms away from her, uncovering her naked body.

"P-please," she sobbed, "no . . ."

"Oh wow," he muttered, and he took her in his arms and kissed her, and Verde responded with a low,

helpless moan, deep in his throat, as he pressed her wet naked body to his.

"MmmmFFFF!" she squealed into his mouth, and he stopped kissing her. Verde grimaced.

"Oh, you total fucking shithead!" she gasped. "You asshole! Don't do this to me!" But she was parting her legs, and he was directing his cock up there. She felt it. She yearned for it. To feel him in her. This was stronger than ever before. She could feel her will being stolen, and a part of her was screaming with rage.

He eased his cock inside her.

"Ohhhhh, gods . . ." she gasped.

"That's good," he grunted.

"Yeah," she breathed, scowling but breathless, "yeah . . . all right, just fucking finish, okay . . ."

Then there were more hands. His friends, three of them. Two guys and a girl. They were all encircling Verde and peeling off their clothes and almost blindly pawing at her.

No, no, she'd gone far enough, this wasn't fair.

"Fuck off!" she grated. "I don't want this! Ooohhhhhh . . ."

The girl grabbed Verde's face and kissed her, pushing her tongue into Verde's mouth, and her youth and sexiness made Verde dizzy. She made a muffled squeal. But then she could feel someone kneeling behind her, putting his tongue between her ass cheeks. This always turned her on, even without the damn tats.

"Please, no, not all of you," she panted, tearing her mouth from the girl's. "Not all of you, fuck! Please!"

But they were dragging her to the floor, and her limbs hadn't the strength to fight them off, even if her voice had the strength to beg them to stop. It was no good. She was on her back on the floor, the first one was on top of her, fucking her, and the girl was kneeling over Verde and kissing her, and then she sat with her thighs either side of Verde's head and lowered her pussy onto Verde's face and Verde licked and tongued her, gasping and squealing with outrage even as the first guy was cumming in her and making her cum, too.

The guy got off her, the girl leaned over Verde's wet pussy and buried her own face in it and Verde submitted to being 69'd, her fingernails clawing at the girl's tight ass, her scratches seemingly only turning the girl on more because she was moaning hard, and the vibrations of her moan were going straight through Verde's pussy to the base of her spine and making her cum once again. Then the girl crawled off, dazed, and Verde was picked up limply and rolled on top of one guy, who entered her from beneath, and as she whimpered in protest he kissed her and clutched her tight round ass.

"Please," she gasped, "please, come on, I asked you, please, stop, please, please . . ."

Then she felt the last one, a really big guy, mounting her from the rear, and because the other one was in her cunt, she was in no doubt as to what he intended to do. Sure enough, he was rubbing a greasy finger around her sore asshole.

"No," she sobbed, "please! Not in there! I've had a lot of people in there lately! Please, don't do it! I'm gonna get fucking hurt! STOP IT!"

Her voice rose to a squeal as she felt him pushing at her poor abused anus, and she shut her eyes tight and went "AAAGGHHH!" in a tight, strangled moan as he penetrated her. Fuck, it hurt. She was not ready. He would have needed a ton more lube than he had bothered to use. The pleasure that was stimulated in her just wasn't enough to override the pain of his cock in her bruised asshole.

This is not me, I am not just meat, I am not just their fucking toy, come on, this is not fair . . .

"What's going on?" said a nervous voice outside.

"Get lost," shouted one of the men.

"What are you doing in there?"

"None of your business!"

Verde was concentrating on the climax that was being torn from her unwilling body, but she opened her eyes briefly and saw the whey-faced economics chick putting her head around the door, widening her eyes in shock and withdrawing again.

Then they were coming in her, and she was panting out her own disgusted climax, and her moans were getting louder and louder, and she couldn't hold it back, the combination of anger and arousal was so strong that as she came she started to scream "AAAAAAGGHHH!!" so loudly that one of them had to clamp his hand over her mouth to muffle her. And then she felt cum splashing into her face, and almost as soon as they had started, they were pulling out of her and leaving her limp and naked and bruised and stinging, and profoundly humiliated, on the floor of the shower.

She lay there, prone, her face in the running water. There was silence in the room apart from their panting, and Verde's whimpering.

Finally she raised her head slightly.

"Fuck," she gasped. "Oh, gods. Fuck. Fuck you."

"Okay," said one of the guys. "This is officially weird."

"You think I don't know that," Verde grated. She raised her face and looked up at them, the three handsome young guys and one gorgeous girl, all standing there wet and naked, looking down at her. Two of the guys looked faintly embarrassed. The girl looked tight-lipped. The biggest guy had a stone face.

"We don't do this," said the guy who had spoken. He wasn't the first guy, who was the other embarrassed-looking one. "We don't just do that to people."

"You just did that to me," said Verde, breathless, her chest heaving, her white body flushed deep pink with shame and with orgasm.

"What do you think we did to you?" said the guy.

Verde gingerly raised herself to a sitting position and wrapped her arms around her own knees, protecting her nudity from them.

"What do you think you did to me?" she said coldly. They glanced at each other.

"I think we just had a five-way," said the first guy who'd come in.

"You think?" said Verde. "After I repeatedly asked you not to come in here, and not to touch me?"

"Yeah," said the guy, "but . . ."

The other embarrassed guy, no longer looking so embarrassed, clapped his palm to his face in exasperation.

"Adam!" he hissed. "You don't admit that!"


"Don't call me by my fucking name, dude!" said Adam.

"Sorry, fine," said Facepalm, and turned back to Verde.

"What part of 'no means no' don't you understand?" she said.

"We thought you were flirting," said Facepalm. "Can I just point out that you're, like, covered in tattoos inviting the onlooker to have sex with you? What part of 'non-consent' do you not understand?"

"Can't you fucking read?" Verde hissed, pointing to the RAPE ME in bold letters on her forehead. "You think I got these for fun? These were inflicted on me! I didn't want them! Nobody asks to be raped! Rape is when you have sex without your consent! If you give your consent, it ain't rape, shit-for-brains!"

There was a tense silence. She glared at them.

"If you had asked nicely," she said sarcastically, "maybe, just maybe, I might have had sex with him," she said, pointing to Adam. "Or her," she added, pointing to the girl. "But not you, or Captain Steroid here. You're not my fucking type. And when I say no, I expect people to pay attention."

"Wait a minute," said the girl. "I know who you are."

"Oh yeah?" said Verde. "Who am I?"

The girl looked at Verde in triumph and contempt.

"You're that Proxie con artist who got raped in prison, and when you took them to trial, the warden went nuts and let a gun off. I remember. I used you as an example in a paper I was writing about prisoner's rights."

"Wait a moment," said Verde, looking at them all in turn. "You're all law students?"

They nodded. All except the big guy, who stared at Verde thoughtfully.

"Oh shit," Verde said. "I'm screwed."

"You're an ex-con," said Facepalm.

"Yes," said Verde.

"That's gonna considerably invalidate your credibility," he said.

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

Verde lowered her head to her knees and exhaled.

It was hopeless.

"I guess it will, yeah," she said quietly.

"Especially in Alg 4," said Adam, "where this would go to trial. But there's not gonna be a trial. Cause you don't wanna press charges against us, do you."

Verde looked up at them, as she sat wet and naked and aching on the floor.

"No," she muttered.

"Good," said Adam.

"Hey, guys," said Facepalm. "Maybe we can keep her as, like, a pet."

"Oh yeah!" said the girl. "I mean, she looks weird but she's got a great body."

"What do you say to that, Proxie," said Facepalm. "You willing to be our pet for the rest of the trip? If we wanna get a little frisky, you're not gonna complain, are you? Gonna roll over and say yes sir, like the good little Proxie you are?"

"What," she said, "like your poodle out there?" She indicated the door where the other girl had looked in.

"What, that girl?" said Adam. "No fucking way. I dunno who she is, some freshman from Greengrove. She's not with us."

He hunkered down in front of her, grinning, his cock pointing at the floor of the shower room.

"So, answer," he said. "You gonna put out, when we want?"

Verde stared at him, brimming with loathing.

"Yeah," she said, mentally calculating how long it would take her to figure out how to bring them down. Maybe forty-eight hours. "Sure."

"Good," said Facepalm. "Keep yourself clean."

He stood up, and he, Adam and the girl looked down at her with contempt, before turning around and sauntering out. The big guy stood staring at her for a moment. She glowered.

Another fucking humiliation.

"Can I finish my shower now," she said.

"One thing," he rumbled. "Don't even think about trying something. I know people in Family Affairs. I see you have a Jimney. I don't know why it's not working, but if you lift a finger against any one of us, I will get them to turn that thing on and boost it till you bite your own fucking veins out."

Verde felt cold.

He spat at her, very accurately. It hit her in the face and he leaned over and rubbed it in. She coughed and grimaced and he shoved her down on her face. Then he walked out of the room.

Verde washed her face and sat for a while, hugging herself.

Then she thought, Look at me, I'm sitting in a shower being miserable after I've been raped. How fucking original.

She wiped her eyes, cleared her throat and stood up, feeling angry and helpless. She washed herself off and left the shower.

The students had gone, except for the pasty-face girl, who was still sitting on her bed, hiding behind her textbook.

Thanks a load, you little bitch, Verde thought bitterly. Thanks for helping me. In fairness, it was hard to see what anyone could have done save hit them on the head and give her a towel. But the girl had heard what was going on, and had done nothing. Even now she offered Verde nothing; not so much as a glance of sympathy.

Verde climbed into bed and turned to face the wall, and felt cold and alone.

After a while, she slept.

***

She woke hours later. The ship was dark, except for safety lights. The students were back in their bunks, fast asleep, snoring gently; from the smell of booze in the room, they had had a great night. The pasty-faced girl was nowhere to be seen.

Verde lay on her side, watching them.

It's not my fault. But every time it happens, I feel like . . . I'm worth a little bit less. And every time, the desire gets stronger.

It wants to turn me into a sex addict. A raging nympho with a big case of self-hatred. I have to do something. I can't survive if I'm this weak. I have to learn to control it, somehow.

Verde was awoken from her reverie by someone entering the dorm.

A slim figure, dressed in darkish clothes. Verde watched, dully. Probably the economics student, back from a fun run. The figure was wearing some sort of hood, though, and had a backpack on, and was curiously hard to see, as if its clothes were the same colour as the background no matter where it stood.

Weird, thought Verde.

The slim figure paused in the doorway, long enough for Verde to recognise it as female. Whoever the girl was, she reached into her backpack and pulled out something.

Verde realised that it was a handgun.

Holy shit, she thought, her eyes widening.

What happened next, happened very fast.

The hooded girl went straight over to the first sleeping figure, Facepalm, picking up a pillow from a chair on the way. On reaching his bunk, she put the pillow over the kid's face and fired the gun through it. There was a dull clunk. The boy's body jerked, once. He would have known nothing.

Fuck!

Then the killer took the smoking pillow to the next sleeper, the big guy.

Same thing. Pillow on face. Clunk. Jerk. Without waiting, the killer went to the third one, Adam.

Pillow. Clunk. Jerk. This time, in the dim light, Verde saw a splash of blood squirt erupt over the end of the bunk on the other side of Adam's head.

Verde wanted to cry stop, or something, but she was too scared to move.

By the time the killer picked the now tattered pillow off Adam's face, the girl student was stirring. Sleepily she raised her head and said "Hey, what's --"

The killer moved swiftly but unhurriedly over to her and planked the pillow down on the girl's face. The girl made a muffled cry and her arms flailed.

The killer took her own hand off the pillow and in the same motion fired the gun into it, and the girl's arms dropped.

Then the killer picked up the mutilated, bloodstained pillow and came over to Verde.

Verde was on the point of pissing herself with fear, but she knew better than to play at being asleep. That way lay a bullet in the head. She threw back her bedclothes, sat up and held up her hands, palms out.

"Please," she gasped, "don't."

The killer stopped, and looked at her. Verde realised that her upper body tats were on full display. RAPE ME. I AM A PROX CUNT. THIEF. CRIMINAL.

The killed stared at her for a long moment, then tilted her head slightly, then upright again, took a deep breath and let out the air in a gasp.

"How do you do that," it said in a young woman's voice, but curiously flat, emptied of all emotion.

"What?" said Verde.

"The tattoos," said the young woman. "They . . . work on people. How does that happen."

"They're Draconian tattoos," said Verde quickly. "I was raped in prison and they did this to me. They control your mind. Please don't kill me."

"I don't want to kill you," said the killer.

Verde blinked.

"You killed them."

"They raped you."

Verde gaped at the hooded figure.

"That's why you killed them?"

"They raped you."

"Doesn't mean they deserved to die!"

"In my book, it does," said the killer.

"Did I fucking ask you to do that?" said Verde. "Do I have to have them on my conscience?"

"I haven't got time to argue," said the killer.

"I don't give a fuck," said Verde. "Did I ask you to kill them?"

"No, you did not," said the killer. "Tell me about the tattoos. Quickly."

"I . . . what? I don't know," said Verde, scared but also increasingly confused. "How come they don't work on you?"


"They do work on me," said the young woman. "That's what's weird. Who are you. Quickly."

"Verdene Molloy," said Verde. "I'm a grifter. I'm a Prox. Who the fuck are you?"

"Never mind that," said the young woman, and glanced at her watch and then back at Verde. The hood completely covered her head. Verde had no idea how she could see through it, but she clearly could.

"What are you doing with a gun?" said Verde. "I thought you were an economics student."


"I'm not," said the young woman. "Shut up." The gun was still immobile and pointed in Verde's face. She was silent.

"All right, Verdene Molloy," said the young woman after a pause. "You have a choice. You can take your chances with everybody else, or you can come with me."

"What?" said Verde. "Why would I want to come with you? And what do you mean, take my chances with everybody else?"

"This ship," said the hooded young woman, "is currently spinning out of control. It's still within the Algenib 4 gravity well. Left to its own devices it will enter the asteroid belt in about four hours, at which point it will be gradually but systematically pulverised into dust from multiple asteroid impacts. The general alarm will go off in seven minutes, giving the junior officers plenty of time to organise an Abandon Ship."

"How do you know this?" said Verde. "And why is it out of control? Who's on the bridge?"

"The entire third watch is on the bridge," said the young woman, "but they're all dead."

"Oh my gods," said Verde. "What happened to them?"

"I happened to them," said the young woman. "So is the fourth watch and fifth and first and second. I've assassinated the entire upper-echelon command of this ship. There's nobody left to fly her. We all have to get off. You can go in a lifeboat with the others or you can come with me."

"What the fuck?" said Verde, gaping.

"Oh, look," said the young woman, still in the same chillingly flat voice, "at least get your shit together," and she grabbed Verde and pulled her out of the bunk. Verde dropped, naked, to the floor.

"Why don't you kill me?" said Verde, shivering with cold and fear.

"You're a potential asset," said the young woman. "I won't kill you and I definitely won't do what they did to you. If you want to come with me, get your stuff. Now."

"Wait," said Verde, "I'm -- I need to think . . ."

"We don't have time," said the young woman. "The alarm is going off in six minutes. In that time, we can get a good way towards my ship in Bay 12 before every single corridor on this thing is full of panicking people. Get your stuff."