For a long time after she was raped, Lola Loud lay on a bed of soft grass and gazed sightlessly into the sky. Her body sang a chorus of aches and pains and her numb mind refused to process information; as long as it stayed absolutely motionless, taking nothing in, it wouldn't have to confront what had happened, and it wouldn't break under the terrible strain of revelation. A warm wind blew cold against her naked body, and she shivered. She stirred and tried to sit up, but a thunderclap of agony exploded in the center of her head and she moaned. Tears leaked from her bleary eyes and the memory of the knife against her throat punched her heart like an angry fist. Panic clutched her and little by little, recollection of what Chandler did came flooding back. She pushed herself up on her elbows, hissing at the burning sting between her legs, and cumbersomely rolled onto her stomach. Pain swelled in the middle of her skull and throbbing lightning bolts shot up from her depths, knocking whimpers from her lungs. She got to her hands and knees but couldn't go any farther, the pain was too much.
Voices drifted to her through the forest, and her stomach dropped. Her body froze and she held her breath.
Chandler.
He was coming back to kill her.
A sob welled in her throat and like a little girl afraid of monsters in her closet, she squeezed her eyes closed and held her breath.
The voices drew closer, two of them. "I'm gonna get'cha!" one yelled.
"Nuh-uh!" the other called back.
The pitter-patter of running feet passed on the other side of the rock, so close Lola imagined she could feel the ground vibrate. Her heart blasted into her ribs and she trembled.
"That's not fair!"
They were farther up the trail, faint, departing.
"Yes huh, I have a force field!"
Silence crashed down around her, and collapsing to her stomach, Lola broke down in tears.
Later, she got to her knees, braced her hands on the boulder, and got stiffly to her feet; her middle burned and pulled like it was going to rip in two, and she wept openly, snot mixing with the dirt, blood, and cum already crusting her face. She stopped, rested her forehead against the rock, and waited until the pain had passed.
Barefoot and limping, she picked her way down the trail, every step chafing the spot between her legs. Blood trickled down the inside of her thighs and dripped onto the path, leaving a morbid trail in her wake, and tears seeped from her eyes. She stopped several times to rest, and once, she fell against a tree trunk and shook violently, Chandler's words echoing through her mind. If you tell anyone about this, I'll do it to Lana and make you watch.
The trail filtered out onto a wide, grassy field bordering the park. Lola shuffled and lumbered across like a zombie, her mind going blank to protect itself from shattering under the strain of her violation. Somehow, she made it home without anyone stopping her to ask if she was okay. Sometimes, the self-centeredness of people pays off.
Vanzilla wasn't in the driveway and the front door was locked. Her key was in her bag, which she left in the woods along with her shoes and underwear; she fetched the spare from inside the potted plant flanking the door and left herself in.
The house was dark, silent, and for a moment she hesitated at the threshold. What if Chandler was inside..waiting?
Fear seized her and for a moment she considered waiting on the porch until everyone got back from wherever they'd gone, but she took a deep breath and forced herself in.
Climbing the stairs was hard. She crawled on her belly, hand over hand, then rested at the top in a panting heap. In the bathroom, she snapped the light on and looked at herself in the mirror. Her face was smeared with dirt, blood, and other things she didn't want to think about, swollen, crisscrossed with cuts and abrasions, and bruised in spots. Twigs and leaves stuck out from her matted hair and blood crusted her chin and lower lip. She met her own eyes and looked quickly away.
Slowly, stiffly, she pulled her dress over her head and tossed it away. It was ripped, stained, and she would never wear it again.
In the shower, she sat beneath the spray, hugged her knees to her chest, and fought back the urge to cry. Visions of Chandler's face flickered through her mind, and she could feel, feel, him inside of her, spreading her pelvis apart, ripping her walls, slamming her and sending excruciating pangs through her body.
She lost and wept bitterly.
When the storm passed, she pulled herself to her feet and washed slowly, wincing as the soap stung the shallow cuts across her chest and stomach. She squatted and carefully washed between her legs, but the pain was so great that she started to cry and gave up.
Done, she toweled off and limped into her room, where she sat at her vanity. Her reflection stared back at her from the looking glass, her eyes haunted and her skin a sickly shade of hospital gray. The swelling had gone down and, cleaned of blood, the cuts didn't look so bad.
Over the next half hour, she carefully applied make-up to her face to hide the wounds. When she was satisfied, she curled up under the blankets and clutched a stuffed bear to her chest. At some point, she cried herself to sleep and woke when the overhead light snapped on. Lana came in, grabbed her lucky plunger, and left again, whistling the whole time like she didn't have a care in the world. Lola hugged her bear, buried her face into the back of its plush head, and fought to keep from breaking down again.
Later, Lana came back to tell her dinner was ready. She said she was sick and didn't want any.
That wasn't a lie.
Mom came up shortly thereafter, sat on the edge of the bed, and pressed a tender hand to her forehead. "You're hot."
"Yeah," Lola muttered.
She was just starting to fall back asleep when the mattress dipped. She started awake and turned her head.
Lincoln sat there with a worried expression on his face. "Hey," he said.
Relaxing, she let out a deep breath. "Hey."
"You alright?"
"I don't feel good," she said simply.
He sighed. "Did you eat today?"
Eat? What did that have to do with anything? Her brow furrowed and her mind whirred as she tried to compute his question, then it dawned on her. Her disorder. Ha. Food and being fat were once the twin banes of her existence, now…
...now she didn't care.
For there are worse things than being fat.
"No," she said and lowered her eyes.
"Why?" he asked. There was a demanding edge in his voice that cut her deeply.
She opened her mouth to reply, but hot tears filled her eyes and she started to cry instead. Lincoln blinked in confusion, then a look of remorse flickered across his face. "Hey," he said softly, "I'm sorry, I -"
Lola threw herself at him and buried her face in his chest. He hesitated a shocked moment, then wrapped his arms protectively around her. "Hey," he said, "what's wrong?"
She clung to his shirt and gave into her tears. Her body shook and he muffled sobs sounded hurt and hysterical to her own ears, making her cry harder. Lincoln shushed her and brushed his fingers through her hair, his nails grazing her scalp.
Slowly, she calmed and her tears tapered off to sniffles. Lincoln held her at arms' length and fixed her with a look that was as pressing as it was sympathetic. "What's wrong? Why -?"
His words cut off, and Lola's heart jogged. He leaned in to see her face better, and that's when she knew that somehow he could see the wounds beneath her make up. "What's this? W-Why is there a cut on your face? And that bruise…?"
"It's nothing," she said quickly, "I just fell down, that's all."
He hooked his thumb under her chin and tried to lift her head, but she held steady, heart racing now. "No," she squealed, "I'm fine, it's nothing."
Lincoln didn't listen. He forced her head back to expose her neck and gasped at what he saw.
Purple bruises in the shape of fingerprints.
"What happened?" he demanded. There was a trace of alarm in his voice that she didn't notice over her own rising panic. If she told, Chandler would hurt Lana just like he hurt her, then he'd kill them. She just knew it. "Lola -"
"Nothing happened," she spat. She pulled away from him but he grabbed her arm and kept her from getting away. All of the horror, rage, and fear that had been building inside of her since that afternoon in the forest came out in a black torrent and she launched herself at Lincoln like a small, rabid mammal. He let out a shocked cry, but recovered quickly and grabbed her around the wrists, her name knocking from his mouth. She hooked her fingers into talons and tried to reach his face, to make him leave her alone so that she wouldn't tell, so that he wouldn't have to gaze upon her ugliness. He held her back, and all at once, she began to cry again.
Lincoln took her into his arms and pulled her to him. She fought at first, but the fight quickly drained out of her and she went slack. "What happened?"
She didn't reply. Couldn't reply.
"Lola...what happened?"
She didn't know she was going to speak until she heard the watery moan of her own voice. "C-Chandler raped me."
As soon as the words were out, she regretted them. She nuzzled into Lincoln's chest and held fast to the front of his shirt.
His body tensed in shock, and the air seemed to suck from the room with an almost audible sound. "What?" he asked.
The rest spilled from her in a winded rush. "He said he'd do it to Lana and kill us if I told." Tears burned in her eyes, lending the world a watery sheen. "Please don't tell anyone. Please. Not even Mom and Dad."
"He did what?" Lincoln asked dazedly.
Swallowing, she told him everything, beginning with leaving the house and ending with crawling into bed. By the end, she was sobbing and shaking. She buried her face in Lincoln's chest again, and for a long moment, he didn't move, as though trapped under the enormity of her account. Finally, he put one arm stffly around her.
Safe and warm in her brother's embrace, Lola eventually slept.
She did not see the mortified expression on his face...
...did not see the fire in his eyes.
That night, alone in bed and staring into the moonlit darkness of his closet bedroom, Lincoln Loud began to plot.