Her parents had died three days ago. Some weeks ago they'd both fallen ill with a terrible disease, as their only surviving child she'd taken care of them as good as she could; every day praying that they would survive. It hadn't helped. They'd died and hardly had they been put into the ground before the man from whom they'd rented their humble shack had kicked her out.
She begged him to let her stay. She would work for him, anything; carrying heavy loads of water all the way from the well, cleaning out in the pig-yard. She would even sleep amongst the pigs at night, with nothing but the oldest and most worn out blanket to keep her warm. She cried and begged him to show mercy. Didn't he understand? She had no other relatives in the city, no friends of her parents, no one she could go to. Fourteen was too young an age to be living alone. He simply laughed and had her violently thrown out of his big house, leaving her not only grieving over her lost parents but homeless as well. She had nothing but the rags she was wearing.
For two days now she'd been huddling her way through the city of Sodom, begging or stealing for food, when her legs no longer would carry her she found the nearest corner and cuddled down. Crying herself to sleep.
Her name was Adina, and it was a fitting name, for slender and delicate she was; having been born into the ultimate poverty her parents had seen it as no short of a miracle that she'd survived to adolescence.
Early in the morning the third day after her parents' dead she was awoken by loud yelling voices. Jumping to her feet she ran down the alley from where the voices had sounded; a young boy was being beaten by a group of men looking like they where in their thirties. Anger and rage filled Adina and she hurried forward, yelling at the men to leave the poor boy alone. Somehow she managed to make the men stop and the boy, looking no older than six or seven, fled the scene. The men looked at Adina in an odd an unnerving way.
Before she could follow the boy's example and flee as well one of the men seized her and threw her hard to the ground, violently removing her ragged clothing.
Pain. It felt like she was being split in two.
She knew what sex was, having grown up in a one-room home it was hard not to, but never in her wildest dreams, or her darkest nightmares, had she imagined this would be her first experience with it, her first sexual intercourse; being raped violently by a group of grown men.
She screamed, on top of her lungs, yet no one came, no one hurried to the scene to help her as she had to help the boy. At one point she was even sure she heard one of the men holding her yell to a by passer to "come and take part in the fun." What could she do? She was only fourteen, weak after days, weeks of starvation. They where grown men, judging by their clothing nowhere near as poor as her.
The torture went on the entire day. When one had been satisfied the next would come, an endless circle of pain only briefly pausing when one rose from her broken body and another threw himself onto her; violently forcing his erect member inside her. Occasionally one would turn her around as the rag-doll she was fast becoming; taking her from behind.
New men arrived while some of those who'd been there from the beginning began to leave, through the haze of pain Adina was sure she saw the man who'd started it all accept a handful of coins; so this was what she was becoming; their whore for the day.
Finally the last one seemed to be satisfied and those present ended the humiliation by reliving their bladders on her.
Shaking she pulled her torn clothes around her and began to weep. Blood was running down her legs from the repeated raping and she was covered in urine from the last humiliating act of the men. She was too weak to stand, too tired to care.
It was still dark when she managed to get up and limp away from the place. Each step sent needles of pain through her body. She couldn't remember how she got out of the city. It didn't matter; all that mattered for her was to come as far away from the dreaded place as possible.
She was stumbling down a small path when she suddenly saw someone in front of her; someone male. Giving of a short shriek she left the road and ran as fast as she could.
Branches swiped at her face, thorns cut through her flesh, making more blood run down her already bleeding body. All she could think of was getting away. Behind her she could hear the person pursuing her. He was yelling something; she had no intentions of stopping to hear what it was.
She tripped over a root, her head hit something, and everything went black.