Heartache

They had her hands over her head, tethered from ropes and straps hooked into the walls in such a way that she could not pull them free. Each yank only further chafed and scraped raw her inner wrists, until Darlene could feel blood begin to trickle down her skin towards her elbows, soaking into the long sleeves of her dress. Her legs too were bound, in such a manner that her legs were spread wide apart whether or not she wanted them to be. She tried to push her thighs together, to pull her legs in as far as they would go, but her captors had arranged her chains in such a way that this was impossible, and they too were too strong for her to pull loose from.

And to add insult to injury, they had dressed her in a white flowing gown and braided flowers into her hair while she had been unconscious…like a virgin. Like a bride.

The rotund old man, his wife, and their two sons stood before her, smiling down at her. Pride and optimistic hope shone in the woman's eyes, savage lust alone in the men's, and Darlene swallowed hard as she stared up at them, feeling her breathing rasp unevenly from her lungs. The man was overweight and old, and the sons had the look of prep-school rich boys; ordinarily, the three of them she would dismiss with disdain as no threat to someone like her at all.

But she would have been wrong. She WAS wrong, and the results of this, in her current captivity, her state of powerlessness against them, was making this more than apparent to her now.

She had never been a victim. She had felt no compassion towards her own, viewing them with contempt and callous disregard for allowing themselves to fall prey to her in the first place. But now she herself was as vulnerable to these people as she had made others to herself, and the fear this provoked in her was unlike any she had ever before experienced.

Darlene's head still throbbed from the blow Mother Stuart had delivered early, and she felt faintly nauseous and dizzy still, finding it difficult to catch her breath. It was probable that she had a concussion, as it was hard for her to think as clearly as usual. But perhaps that was also influenced by the fact that the three men standing before her had every intention of raping her over and over, had clearly spelled out as much, and even now, were drawing closer, seeming to savor the moment, the distress that the impending certainty of their violation was causing her.

This could not be happening. This just could not be happening, not now, not ever, not to HER. She was Darlene Thompson, formerly Hamilton, any number of other surnames before then, none carrying any meaning beyond the implication of its uniting her in her title to her brothers. And that was what really mattered, who really defined her. She was part of her family, part of her brothers, and they as a whole, as a family, would never let this happen to them. They would never let anyone take them by surprise, never let anyone have the upper hand long enough to take their power, their control, away from them.

But this was exactly what had occurred. These people, this Stuart family, their own relatives, somewhere down the line, were stronger, more experienced, more practiced in their abilities, more brutal in their actions. They had at last met others who looked to be not only their match, but their superiors, and this was where it had lead them. Francis, missing, likely injured or dead. Wendell, on the verge of death the last that Darlene had seen him, too weak and injured to even raise his head.

And her, with these three men closing in, hands reaching out to stroke her face, then to slide down lower, as they took the hem of her dress and began to ease it upward.

Darlene's heart pulsed wildly, and she twisted her body as much as she was able to, heedless of the straps digging into her skin as she tried to kick out at them, to wrench herself from their grasp, all to no avail. They had her exactly where they wanted her. As her breath came faster and faster, each exhalation almost a sob, she screamed back at them defiantly, clinching her jaw and narrowing her eyes at them in an effort to stave off the panic rapidly building in her chest, on the verge of tumbling out in a manner she might not be able to control.

"YOU FUCKERS! FUCK YOU!"

But this only seemed to encourage them, to add to their excitement. Darlene could see her own reflection in Father Stuart's eyes, could see even in this small mirror her growing fear, and knew that he could see it too.

She didn't want him to see. She didn't want to scream or beg, and god knows she didn't want to cry. It would be better if she gave them no satisfaction, if she gave them absolutely nothing to further goad them on. It would be one small victory she could maintain not to play their victim even if they forced her to submit into being one.

But as they seized her legs, forcing them even further apart, and their clammy hands squeezed into her flesh, their glinting eyes locked on hers, Darlene found her thoughts flitting back to Wendell, his wet gasps for breath where they had left him bleeding on the floor. He were probably dead now, his last moments stricken with his horror at his knowledge of what his twin had been about to undergo and his own helplessness to save her. They had not seen Francis since their arrival, no doubt because he too had met an untimely end. David could not come to her, not with Lenny so close to death himself, and even if he did come, he would undoubtedly also be dispatched of immediately.

She would be here for the rest of her life, an undoubtedly short one, with no hope of escape, never seeing any of her brothers again. She would be raped multiple times a day until she died or they killed her, and any children she produced as a result would be taken from her and raised by the people who had repeatedly violated her. This would be her life, her identity- not as Darlene, as a predator, but as a victim, every day from now here on out.

And because she was here, unable to communicate with David, unable to accomplish what Francis had come here in the first place to achieve, they could not get the cure for Lenny they had hoped for. Lenny too was going to die.

It was this last thought that was the breaking point for Darlene, the point where any semblance of stoicism was shattered. Her youngest brother, the one she had almost raised as her own, the playful prankster who had lightened them all up and brought them together as a family, as a union, when it had seemed that nothing else ever could. He could be dying perhaps in this moment, as she herself could not escape to go to him. And it was this, almost as much as her own pain, that caused her tears to finally come, for her first screams to begin.