This is the most graphic the story gets. While it is still pretty much all implied, the implications are really horrid. In fact, I was creeped out when this popped into my head out of nowhere.

The moment that the family had walked out the door, she felt something strange form in her stomach. If she trusted her gut feeling more, she would have recognized the emotion that screams, "GET OUT, NOW!" and is right a good deal of the time. However, priding herself in her rationality over her gut feeling, she ignored it.

Her mistake.

It took him no time to find her sitting in her room, doing something completely appropriate and responsible. She was frightened to look up to see him standing there in her doorway with that confounded look in his eyes. Except, this time, it was darker and more chill-inducing.

After her body produced the above-named reaction, she bravely, foolishly asked, "What do you want?"

And then all Hell was loosed in the calm, suburban home.

The first time he used her, it hurt. And it hurt much more than she expected. But if she had been given time—even a little—to recover, she believed she could have gotten over it rather well, considering the situation (she would have, indeed).

But he was not feeling very merciful, it seemed, today.

The next few times, she became desensitized to it, jaded and bitter. This just might have bided her time until the weekend was over, when she could get therapy and get over it, eventually. It would have been a good defense mechanism (it would have worked!), but for one thing.

He noticed it.

After that came the violence that battered her already soiled self to a breaking point from which she did not think she could recover (but she might have, if she had just been given the chance!). At this point, she was just wishing he would hit her too hard, just once, so she would pass out and would not have to be there to experience it.

Apparently, he had no soft side left to even do that small thing for her.

He had finally fallen asleep (at last!). She was now taking a shower, trying to rid herself of the feeling of him all over her body, trying to lessen the mental and physical scars and bruises all over herself. She had been in there so long that the hot water had run out and heated back up again. She had been keeping her mind occupied with escape plans to avoid thinking about what had actually happened; all the while salty tears streamed down her face and mingled with the dirty water. But she was so engrossed in her planning, her denial was working so well, that she did not hear him wake up. She did not hear him get up, open his door and close it, walk across the hall and into the bathroom.

She was so preoccupied with not thinking about it, in fact, that she did not hear him until she saw him pulling back the shower curtain.

The brink of disaster had officially been reached, surpassed, and left behind with a swirl of dust. This time, there were no words in her mind to describe the horrific things he was doing. (It must have been bad if she was speechless. She always had something to say.) All of her emotions were ambivalent, and could not decide amongst themselves which would gain dominance over the others, and assert itself; she did not even have the liberty to say, "I feel so ___________. What can I do about it?"

She just wanted it all to end.

It did end. But unfortunately, not in the way she had hoped. For it ended not with his satiation, nor did it end with her escape.

It ended with a knife drawn across skin, precious blood spilling onto the floor. It ended with messy consequences. But what other kind of consequences are there when sin is involved? (Surely you did not expect otherwise?) There was no just punishment for crime, no words spoken meant to heal. There was only one of the two left alive, if you could even call what was left a living. This was like the ending of a real fairy tale, like the ones where the Little Mermaid is turned to foam and the one where the Little Match Girl dies. There was no happy ending where the Knight in shining armor slays the Dragon and rescues the the fair Maiden.

No, today the Dragon has won. The Knight himself has been slain and the Dragon has devoured the Maid and had his fill.

(What happens tomorrow?)

Like all of the dark fairy tales used as scare tactics to keep young children in line, this, too, has a moral.

Make sure your Obsessions are fixed on the right Thing, or rather, the right Someone. Otherwise, humanity makes a ruddy mess of itself, does it not?

(If you do keep your eyes fixed upon the Knight rather than the Dragon, then you slay the Dragon with the help of the Knight, free the Maid—who, you discover, is you yourself—and right the world once again. But you cannot do it alone.)