A/N: I am so pissed at this site right now, I can't even tell you. I was going to drop this chapter early yesterday as a surprise, because I don't like leaving it on a cliffhanger at such a crucial, tragic, horrifying moment. I'm not about building tension that way. I truly did want to give you guys a breather between this and the previous chapter, though. 'Cause... it's a lot. Unfortunately, my schedule didn't allow for an update yesterday, and then today... I've had the chapter ready to post since early this morning, but the site has been down All. Friggin. Day. I'm sick of waiting for them to get their shit together, so I'm posting on AO3 and then I'll update here as soon as I can.
Also, I'm sorry if I was a little salty about the (so-called) lack of reviews for chapter 8. I wasn't getting any notifications when someone commented, nor was the review count working for me, so all I heard after that chapter was radio silence. :/ Thank you to everyone who continues to review, despite the website fuckery, and a special thanks to girleffect for taking the time to PM me to make sure I got your message!
And to the anon who said the trigger warning on chapter 9 was insufficient. If you were upset by the content, that's understandable, but I'm not offering an apology. I've consistently put very clear trigger warnings on the story since chapter 1 (and before that, when it was still just a WIP), including giving away pivotal plot points, because I would never intentionally want to trigger someone. Unless you dropped into the chapter with absolutely no previous knowledge of the plot or my writing style, then anything you chose to read is on you. And even then I have to question why you just took up reading the story from there, unless of course, it was to deliberately call me out for something you did all on your own... Hmmmmmmmmmm.
Speaking of multiple, serious AF Trigger Warnings: This chapter contains graphic and explicit depictions of gang rape and sexual violence. Brief mention of bulimia as well.
P.S. I've seen a lot of you commenting that you don't know how Liv will ever come back from this, and believe me, it was a major concern of mine when I was developing the plot. I didn't think it would be possible. But I was compelled to write it, even if it did scare me and I wasn't sure I could do it. I'm not saying there's any kind of fix for what's happening to her, but I hope y'all trust me enough to handle it. Let's just say—I'm satisfied with the direction it takes, and I think it's realistic and lives up to the rest of the story. I hope you guys will feel the same way when we get to that point.
(In a sick and twisted turn of events, ffdotnet just decided to work as I was about to post this, so I rewrote a big chunk of this note for nothing, lol. OY.)
Chapter 10.
The Weight of the Soul
. . .
"This is hell, baby. And you better get used to it. You and me are gonna be here a long, long time."
This was hell, on that much they agreed. Hell was being raped by one man and knowing you still had four more to go (not to mention what would happen when they got their second wind). Hell was having your tits squeezed from behind by a sadistic scumbag, and still reassuring yourself that at least it wasn't Him—wasn't Lewis. And hell was being bent over a desk again, the long side this time, unable to see what your next rapist was about to do to you.
Don't worry, you'll feel it, she thought. And if she needed a visual, the Kid was directly in front of her. He had recovered from the jab to his belly, which seemed to have had little, if any, effect on his arousal. The sextasy was doing its job and ensuring Olivia would have to do hers, too. One of these days she should start charging for her services, at least then she would get something out of these encounters. It was astounding how many men still went ahead and paid the prostitute they had just raped.
She wanted to tell the kidnappers she forfeited, that they had succeeded in getting her to think like a hooker—which was usually the goal of seasoning in the first place—and there was no need to condition her any further. But all she got out was a breathless, anemic, "Stop . . . " before she clamped her mouth shut at the sight of the Kid freeing himself from his boxers. She could already taste him, the musty, briny flavor that had flooded her palate when Lowell Harris orally sodomized her instantly at her tongue, like a long-forgotten name. No other men had been in her mouth since then, but if you tasted one, you'd tasted them all.
(Not entirely true. Young and fit, Daniel had had a much more robust, tangy essence that Olivia associated with blowjobs until well into her sophomore year of college. Made sense—he was the guy who had taught her how to give head, after all. He taught her a whole lot of things by the time they were through.)
"You know what, I'm feeling generous," said the Crier. He smacked Olivia on the ass hard enough to leave a handprint, evoking a small, girlish squeal that shamed her deeply. Any sound he drew from her was just another thing taken without her permission. She was already naked in front of him, he didn't get to expose any more of her. "You take this end first, junior. I wanna have a word with this mouthy cunt, 'cause she still seems to think she's the boss."
Olivia shook her head furiously, or as furiously as she dared while her brain throbbed inside her skull like an ear-splintering bass. And that was tame compared with the pain radiating from her rib cage. Now, more than ever, it hurt to take a breath, a deep stitch in her side preventing her lungs from filling to capacity. "No. I-I don't think th-that," she said, between each gasp and subsequent wince.
She tried to track the men's movement as they switched places, trading heads for tails as if she were a bad coin toss, but the tripod lights were blinding (she didn't even remember seeing them while the Driver raped her) and blotted out their faces. The Kid's arms were longer and he kept a hand on her back, pressing her flat to the desk as he rounded on one side, Crier on the other. If not for the shortness of breath and the pain in her torso, like she'd just met with the business end of a taxicab, she might have been able to push up from the desktop, knock him aside. But right then, she doubted her ability to stand up straight, let alone rely on her shaking limbs.
Instead, she tried her shaking voice. "You're in con-control here. I'll— I'll cooperate, if you'll please just stop this, please. You s-said there's a b-buyer. Do you want money? I can g-get you money."
NYPD wasn't in the business of paying ransom demands, and Olivia doubted she had enough in her savings to tide these men over for very long, but she would say anything to get away at this point. Do anything, besides just lie there and take it. She could worry about the follow through of her promises later, when she wasn't moments away from being raped a second time by two assailants. (God, please.)
"Still thinks she can talk her way outta this," the Crier said to no one in particular, least of all Olivia, though he stood before her and looked down as dispassionately as if he were observing a slug inching along the sidewalk. And like most cruel, unfeeling boys, he was more interested in dousing the slug with salt than helping it. "Still thinks she can hand out ultimatums." He clucked his tongue and bent forward to be at her level, the angle between them too steep for her to maintain eye contact otherwise.
When he got closer he grabbed the back of Olivia's hair, fingers sifting in deep, and snapped her head back viciously. She gave an involuntary cry, tears springing to her eyes as the heat spread again through her tender scalp. He wrenched her head side to side—no rhyme or reason, just because he could—before addressing her in a low tone, as if he didn't want the others to overhear. "Since you've got this all figured out, tell me, bitch. You think you can afford one mill? That's how much your bitch-cop ass is worth to someone. I've sold girls for less than ten grand, so what makes you so fucking special? You just look like some pig captain who eats pussy to me."
The whole time the Crier was speaking, the Kid was behind Olivia, rubbing the head of his penis against her labia, the shaft gliding between her buttocks. When he spread both cheeks with his hands, fingers dangerously close to her anus, she tried to buck him away, but succeeded only at making him titter and jerk her tucked-in ass back against his pelvis.
"No!" she said to him, and to the Crier, who shook her roughly by the hair for not answering his questions. "No, please. I'm— I'm not special. I'm nothing. I'm not worth tha— ouch! P-please don't, not there."
The last part was directed at the Kid as he went on prodding with his dick, grinding into her perineum and teasing at the opening beyond it. Every time he got close to pushing inside, he pulled away and started over; and every time, Olivia gasped and struggled fruitlessly beneath his hands and the Crier's.
She'd had anal sex before, with her first fiancé Daniel—who else? Just another thing he had taught her to do with her body. She hated it more than oral. It took weeks of cajoling pillow-talk for her to agree, Daniel snuggling her so tightly, so securely, as he murmured about how sexy it would be, how all the college girls did it that way, and didn't she want to make him happy? Didn't she love him? The first time, she hurt and bled for days after; and every time after that, Daniel held her while she cried, telling her how good she was at it, and he just couldn't help himself, he wanted her so much.
"I know it hurts, honey," he said once, dropping kisses onto the top of her head, something that still made her feel safe and content after sex. "But it's worth a little pain, to heighten the pleasure, right?"
Olivia had learned at an even younger age than sixteen how fine the line between pleasure and pain really was, thanks to her mother's tendency to slap (or choke) first, then offer the affection Olivia desperately craved. Sometimes you did have to push through the bad to get to the good. But she'd never learned to do that with Daniel and his frequent sexual requests, and she had never let another man touch her the way—and the places—that he had. Not willingly, anyway.
The Kid laughed outright at her plea not to be sodomized. "She must not be a fan of backdoor surprises," he said, as if she weren't there, listening to every word. Feeling every movement behind her. He reached into a drawer that rattled open near her knee, which he knocked aside with his own, and withdrew something that he stamped down on the desktop. It sounded plastic, but that was the only feature Olivia could discern. "Maybe this'll help grease the wheels."
"Stick to the front door, little man," said the Crier, his fingers slackening as he focused on something besides Olivia's eyes and, with unmistakable hunger, her mouth. (Bet yours is real pretty, just like your mouth. You wanna suck—) "I got dibs on the back."
"Dude, this isn't Skee-Ball. It's a free country and every hole is up for grabs." The Kid drummed on Olivia's buttocks until both sides were hot and numb, not just where the Crier had slapped her. Other than playful swats from Amanda, she'd never been spanked before—not even by her mother, who, ironically, hadn't believed in corporal punishment—and it was every bit as degrading as she had always suspected. "But fine, I'll keep it kosher for now. I know how much you must miss your prison wives. Don't wanna ruin your walk down memory lane."
"Eat me," growled the Crier.
"That's her job. Hey, bro, get over here and watch this. Come on, buddy, I'm gonna show you what to do when it's your turn." The Kid gave a piercing whistle that went through Olivia like a jolt from the long-forgotten cattle prod. She tried to cringe from it, but the men jerked her back into place every time she deviated even an inch one way or the other.
"Go on, son," said Gus, patting his younger son on the back and urging him to join his brother like he was being sent onto the field during a Little League game. Make your old man proud.
Hesitantly, the boy donned his hat, so twisted out of shape it barely fit his head, and stepped forward, his eyes locked on Olivia as he edged past her at a wide berth. She wanted to cry for help again, but he was useless to her. If his father and brother weren't present, she probably could have appealed to him. But with them in control, treating her less than human, he would never see her as anything other than what his brother had reduced her to—a series of holes waiting to be filled.
She detached then, listening at a distance while the Kid explained inserting dicks into pussies, his thumbs spreading her labia for a better view, and how the Vaseline he'd taken from the drawer made for a smoother, more enjoyable fuck. He slopped a large, slimy glob of the stuff onto her vulva, greasing her from front to back, like a skillet for frying, and kicked her feet apart when she tried to close her legs.
"If she pulls any shit, just shove it in harder and she'll settle down," he said sagely. "Then just keep doing that until you shoot your load, know what I mean? Here, I'll show you. Go ahead and touch her if you want."
A hand skimmed the dip of Olivia's spine, and a moment later, the Kid pushed into her, keeping his promise to enter her vaginally. Just some good old-fashioned penis-in-vagina rape, like an All-American Boy. (Or dick-in-pussy, she supposed, in his case.) He had been right about the petroleum jelly, it did help smooth things out a little, along with her blood and the Driver's semen. Thank God for small favors.
"No, p-please. I— I—" She what? She had nothing to finish with, and couldn't stand the sound of her voice hitching as she was jostled from behind, so she fell silent, like she had the first time.
Olivia had ultimately been silent for all her rapes.
In front of her, the Crier released her hair and took her roughly by the chin, forcing it up until she was looking him in the eye again. The other hand went to his penis, the erection still going strong, and brought it towards her mouth.
That sight—so familiar it felt like déjà vu—triggered in her such a visceral response, she didn't realize she was screaming and thrashing until Crier ordered someone to, "Get your thumb outta your ass and hold her down," and a third pair of hands joined his and the Kid's, which encircled her waist. These hands, big and paw-like, pinned her arms behind her back, easily holding them in place by the wrists. "Ow, ow," she cried in a childish timbre, when he pushed up, stretching her awkwardly twisted limbs beyond their limits. Too much higher, something was bound to snap.
"Use this." The Crier grabbed Olivia's long, tattered side braid and passed it back to the Driver, the only man present whose hands were that beefy and strong. "Keep her head still. And facing that way."
One-handed, the other still clasping her wrists, the Driver looped the braid around his fist like a boxer wrapping his knuckles, pulling it taut near the top, so close to the scalp Olivia couldn't turn her head one way or the other. It would have brought tears to her eyes, if they weren't already streaming down her cheeks.
Then just like that, the Crier disappeared from her shimmering vision. She tried to follow him with her eyes, but he was beyond peripheral range—and oh God, the Kid was hurting her. He didn't have Driver's girth, but like the rest of him, his penis had considerable reach, especially when used as a battering ram.
She had, on occasion, enjoyed deep penetration with her sexual partners, men and Amanda alike. Some might even call it rough sex (Olivia preferred the term "vigorous"). Vaginal orgasms weren't quite as pleasurable to her as clitoral ones, and yet, there was something primal and intensely erotic about a deep, relentless fucking. Even when it hurt, she still got off. Sometimes she got off because it hurt.
Once again, it was a predilection she could trace back to Daniel McNab. Oh, he was gentle at first—even that initial assault had seemed tender at the time—but his desire for rough sex gradually came to light the longer they were together. At sixteen, Olivia hadn't known any better. She was used to hearing (and sometimes seeing) her mother fuck strange men, loudly and vigorously. It had seemed to her the thing to do, and so she'd told herself she liked it, until she eventually believed it. Until it became true.
Lewis had seen it in her, that dirty little secret she'd been hiding since eleventh grade. The hypocrisy of it was astounding—a sex crime detective, an advocate for survivors of the worst kinds of violence and assault, and she still liked it rough. Women wept as they disclosed to her the details of being savagely penetrated, meanwhile she got to go home and do it for fun.
It had finally caught up with her. She could feel the Kid pummeling her cervix and knew the damage it would cause: bruising, at the very least, a common injury among rape victims, especially the ones who were positioned—like Olivia was—for deeper penetration during the attack; maybe even some tearing, although small tears of the cervix were usually left to heal on their own. Like broken ribs. She would be expected to heal after this, too, but how?
She hurt so much.
"Switching to granny pussy after this," the Kid grunted, the slap of his hips against her ass punctuating every word. "More lived in. Like a nice, homey cottage."
One thought she was too tight, the other thought she was "lived in." She guessed they would know; her body belonged to them now. She had slowly started to untether from herself, as effortless as a kite string unraveling from its spool, the pain and humiliation too great to bear. (Little Brother stroked her thigh while his brother violated her. "Is she gonna cry when I do that?" he asked.)
What was the quote about slipping the surly bonds of earth? Olivia was about to slip the surly bonds of this hell on earth when one of the desk drawers clattered open, startling her back into the body that was no longer hers. Metal scraped metal, the Kid made a noise like a leaking steam valve, and a moment later, the Crier reappeared before her.
Without a word, he grabbed her chin again and jerked downward, jamming something long and hard into her open mouth, cracking her trick jaw wide. At first, wildly, she thought of the metal bar that she'd used to beat Lewis, but this was thicker and pronged at the end. She gagged as it met resistance, and only when she felt the fanglike tips pressing into the tender meat of her throat did she realize it was the cattle prod.
Please, Jesus.
"It's this or me, bitch," the Crier snarled, his hand on the pump-style trigger. "And you better choose me, otherwise I'll make Junior back there shove this up your ass next, and you'll still have to blow me. Take your pick."
Olivia wanted to tell him to go fuck himself; that she would rather die than pick him. She wanted to grab his ugly, soot-colored cock and rip out the idiotic fucking Prince Albert piercing with her teeth, maybe bite the head off while she was at it. Spit it at him. Watch him scream and bleed and die. Instead, she cast a pleading look at his penis, choosing it over the prod. At least it wouldn't break her teeth or destroy her ability to talk or swallow. It wouldn't scorch the back of her throat like lit cigarettes against flesh.
It would just make her wish she were dead, rather than actually kill her.
Without her hands free to gesture, her head free to nod, or her mouth free to speak, she could only convey an answer with her eyes, flicking them up to the Crier's hard, tattooed face and back down to his hard, barbelled penis. She repeated the signal until he eased up on the prod and slid it out of her mouth. Tentatively, she shifted her lower jaw side to side, afraid it had locked in place. It clicked a few times, but she was able to close it. For now.
"Good girl," said the Crier. (God, why did they always have to say that?) He let the torture device—the electric one, at least—slide onto the desktop, Olivia starting violently at the racket it made, and scooped up something else that gave a familiar screech of metal on metal. "Now, you see these?"
He waved the pliers in front of her face, too close for her to bring them into focus at first. She flinched instinctively, getting nowhere. The Kid thumped her from behind, rocking her forward in an energetic and unrelenting rhythm. Her stomach clenched convulsively with each thrust.
"If you bite me, I'll rip every last tooth out of your pretty little head with these and cram 'em down your fucking throat. You'll be shitting teeth for a week." The Crier clacked the pliers loudly on the edge of the desk, jolting Olivia again. (The Kid reciprocated the jolt at the other end.) He chattered the tools at her like a pair of wind-up teeth, and she wondered if the dark rust spots in the creases were actually dried blood. "Got me?"
Olivia tried to nod, forgetting she couldn't. She had recently watched a documentary on snakes with the kids, who were particularly fascinated by the wranglers whose job it was to milk venom from the deadlier serpents. She supposed the Driver was her wrangler now—and she? She was the black mamba, about to have her mouth forced open, her power stolen in a way that, unlike the snakes, she could never get back.
"Y-yes," she said, her voice so hoarse she hardly recognized it. Her throat was sore from screaming and being jabbed by the prongs of the cattle prod. And her thirst was unimaginable.
Some of it was real, but some of it was in her head, she knew that; ever since Lewis had withheld water from her until her tongue felt as rubbery and shriveled as a piece of beef jerky, she'd been experiencing terrible dry mouth in dangerous or frightening situations. Or sometimes for no reason at all.
She shuddered to think how her thirst would be quenched this time. Clearing her throat, she attempted to speak up, hoping to disguise her parched voice. These men didn't get to know she needed anything from them. "I underst—"
The Crier rapped Olivia's forehead with the jawed end of the pliers ("Hey," Gus said sharply, as if scolding a bad dog), making her cry out more from surprise than pain. Not to say it didn't hurt. There would probably be a notch in her forehead to match the one his ring had left in her cheek. "Gotta teach her somehow," he called over his shoulder to the man who stood in the wings. And to Olivia, a hand under her chin, ruthlessly squeezing her cheeks against her closed teeth, he said, "Tell me you want it. Say, 'I can't wait to suck your big, yummy cock, Angel.'"
So he had a name, or at least a nickname. She would never call him by it. He was no angel.
Her lips wouldn't form the other words, either, no matter how hard
(he fucked her from behind)
she tried to push them out. She told herself it was fear—that freeze response again—but truth be told, it was stupid, stubborn pride. What she had left of it, anyway. Never had she spoken that way to any man in her life, not even in jest, and she'd be damned if this prick would be the first.
Despite the nasty yank of her braid, despite the vicious thrusts from behind, Olivia held out for as long as she could. A matter of seconds, perhaps. Time was so hard to keep track of here, while this was happening. Whatever the length of her silence, it was too long for the Crier. "Say it, slut." He brought the pliers down on the edge of the desk again, but refrained from hitting her in the face, she noted. He was itching to, though. It practically oozed off of him, how much he wanted to hurt her. "Fucking say it, or I'll use these to gouge out your goddamn eyeballs."
That was a lie. She believed him about sodomizing her with the prod and pulling out her teeth with the pliers—a few missing molars would likely go unnoticed by anyone looking to "purchase" her—but eyeless prostitutes were not in high demand. Olivia finally had something over on him, and it almost felt good for a split-second, until the Driver jerked up on her pinned wrists, pushing them to the middle of her back. The Kid bore into her like a drill motor in drywall. Inexplicably, it made her want to cough.
She whimpered instead, hating herself for it. Such a pathetic, weak sound, and one she associated with her previous assaults, because those were the only times she ever made that noise or anything like it. As an adult, she had never whined, until those four days with Lewis. Then, it was because of a desperate need to pee, a desperate need for water, a desperate need not to be raped. What would these men do that would finally make her whine in desperation?
"Okay, have it your way," said the Crier, with an indifferent shrug. He picked up the cattle prod and brandished it over her head at the Kid. "Give it to her good."
"W-wait. Wait!" Olivia shouted the second time, but it came out rusty and ineffectual, like an old sink knob that screeched in protest when turned. "Wait, I'll say it. I— I—"
The Crier gazed down dispassionately at her, and just when it seemed he would ignore the plea and proceed with the sodomy, front and back, he lowered the cattle prod onto the desk. "'I can't wait . . .'" he coached, as if he were feeding lines to a child with stage fright.
"I c-can't wait to—" Olivia cringed. At the words, at the soft porcine grunts from the Kid. She'd hoped his youth meant he would be an early arriver, but he was not that inexperienced. "—to suck your cock."
"Nope. Start over. 'I can't wait to suck your big, yummy cock, Angel.' Say it all, like a good kitty."
The kitty bullshit made her want to puke. The cock bullshit made her want to puke even more. It was just a fucking power play, another way to prove he had control over her. And the bitch of it all? He was right. Penetration with a foreign object was common in gang rapes, almost expected, and whatever Olivia must do to avoid it, to only have penises shoved inside her, she would do.
God help her, she would.
"I can't— I can't wait to—" Olivia licked her lips, but couldn't moisten them. Couldn't stop her own small grunts and groans every time the Kid bucked forward. "I can't wait to suck your— your big, yummy . . . cock, A—"
He saved her from the blasphemy of using that name by catching her lower jaw, forcing it wide, and gliding in his big, yummy cock. An interesting fact Olivia had learned from the snake documentary was that snakes didn't unhinge their jaws to consume large prey, as many people believed; the reptiles' mandibles weren't fused like a humans, therefore they had nothing to dislocate and, because of stretchy ligaments, could open their mouths unbelievably wide—a mechanism known as gaping.
Olivia had no such luxury. Her misaligned jaw cracked dangerously the farther he yanked it down, and her first instincts were to clamp shut, but the old, improperly healed injury—whatever it stemmed from, she still didn't know—kept her mouth locked open. Gaping. Just right for raping. (Hey, I'm a poet and didn't—) Once again, her body was working against her, in favor of her attacker.
Reflexively she tried to jerk back, but the Driver hadn't loosened his grip on her braid, and the Crier rested a firm hand at the back of her head. He pushed her forward, using what little leeway she'd gained to meet his thrust and slide himself to the hilt. Deep-throating was the popular term among porn producers and high schoolers alike, and Olivia had been avoiding it since the age of ten, when she saw her mother do it to a perfect stranger. Even with Daniel and the two other boyfriends she'd—very badly—fellated, it hadn't gone this far. Even with Harris.
He tasted like he smelled, oily and alkaline. Car battery, she thought, right before all thinking abruptly ceased. Choking. She wasn't thinking, she was choking. If he'd lied about being nine inches, he hadn't embellished by much, and most of that was lodged against the back of her throat. Her esophagus contracted, trying to expel the foreign body and unraveling a ribbon of fire that went deep into her belly. It mingled with the upsurge of pain from her groin, from the Kid's punishing strokes, until it was impossible to tell where the hurt was coming from. It was everywhere, all over her, just like their hands.
Please, God, make it stop.
"Heard you were real good at giving head, pussycat," the Crier said, sounding as though he had just released a long-held stream of urine. His zipper clacked against the desk every time he jerked his hips towards Olivia, but the rest of the world above was muffled, as if she were wearing headphones. "You definitely got a big enough mouth for it. Most of these bitches can't handle all of me. You'd be real popular with some of the donkey dicks we sell to."
As soon as he slid back enough for Olivia to cough and splutter, he plunged in fully again, blocking out everything—the ability to gag, swallow, breathe, think. It must be what drowning felt like, first breaking the surface, then sinking back under, over and over again, until finally your lungs filled with
(big, yummy cock)
water, and you died.
The Prince Albert piercing rippled across her palate, soft to hard and back again—over and over and over—like a xylophone mallet dragged along the slats. That's all she was now, an instrument to be played, to be plucked (you mean fucked) and pounded and used for the entertainment of others.
Obviously not a woodwind or a brass, though, since she was the one doing the blowing. If you could call having your mouth reamed, while you struggled not to asphyxiate, a blowjob. There weren't any cases of death by deep-throating that she recalled. Women did this all the time and survived, and she was no good to these men dead (I'll do you cold, Lewis had said, but she doubted even the Crier was into necrophilia). He would let her breathe soon. He would . . .
He would . . .
"Trade with me, man," the Kid panted, slowing his vicious tree-sawing to a halfhearted sandpaper-sweep against the grain. "This end's starting to chafe. Thought she'd be wetter by now."
The Driver's voice sounded overhead, the volume and randy inflection suited to a locker room after a big win. "She got plenty wet for me. Muy mojada. Maybe she doesn't like skinny white boy cock?"
"Shut the fuck up. She's just old. They dry out faster or something. Anyway, I felt her come a second ago. That was all me, muchacho." The Kid slammed his hips into Olivia's backside, jolting her forward, her nose pressing into the Crier's scrub of black pubic hair. It cut off what little air she was siphoning in through her nostrils when the Crier's dick wasn't suctioned to the roof of her mouth, preventing her from inhaling at all.
Which one brought her back to reality—lack of oxygen or the
(motherfucking liar, I did not)
lie about her experiencing an orgasm—she couldn't say. Both made her struggle to worm away from one man or the other, but she was skewered like a goddamn pig on a spit whichever direction she went. Between a cock and a hard place, you might say.
"Uh-oh, we have movement," the Kid announced, imitating police radio chatter, complete with cut-off static.
Christ, this was all just a fucking game. Would she live to see who won?
" . . . serious, dude. I wanna try this golden throat everyone keeps raving about. Don't get me wrong, these lips are good, but those . . ."
The Crier let out an enraged roar that was almost primal, and jerked himself out of Olivia's mouth so abruptly she gagged more than she had when he went in. For several moments, all she could do was cough and wheeze, tears flowing down her cheeks and blinding her to the men surrounding her on all sides. (Fine, take her mouth, the Crier was yelling. Just shut the fuck up, for Christ's sake. You're whinier than she is.) She longed to cover her ears, to block out the loud voices and just exist inside the dimmed, muted world where everything hurt but at least she could breathe.
Her arms ached too badly to move. Hot, weighted bands encircled each joint, the muscles in her shoulders clenching painfully, and she winced back from lifting either limb. Only then did she realize the Driver had let go of her wrists and braid, though she could still feel the ghost of his hands wrapped around her.
She felt the ghost of the Kid too. He had pulled out, leaving behind a hollowness that immediately flooded with pain—sharp in her gut, a rashlike burning inside her vagina, paper-cut stings at the entrance. He'd definitely torn something, somewhere. That was to be expected during a violent assault, even more so for a woman her age. Tissue became thinner and less elastic after menopause; it was why SVU saw more vaginal trauma in older victims than in young women, excluding the very young, whose reproductive systems hadn't fully developed. Children and old ladies got the worst of it.
But in spite of the terrible cramping, the weakness in her trembling legs, the gashed-open feeling between them, the throbbing in her head, neck, chest, back, arms, hips, pelvis—in spite of it all, she felt a moment of sweet, blessed relief. No one had his hands on her body; no one had his penis inside her. There was air in her lungs. As far as she knew, the men weren't even looking at her right then.
It was the most freedom she had felt since those bleary, half-waking moments with Lewis, when he was out of the room and she convinced herself the whole thing had been some horrible dream—and it was just as much of a lie now as back then. It was just as short lived.
"Turn her that way some more," said one of the men. The Crier, she thought, or maybe Gus. She was too spent to seek out the source, and probably couldn't have raised her head, even if she wanted to. Too heavy. The most she could manage right then was turning it away from the voice and letting her cheek rest on the corroded desktop. At least the metal was cool.
"Aw, Christ, she moved her head. Fix it. And clean up her face, she looks like shit." Same voice as before, but this time Olivia was certain it belonged to the Crier. It had come from directly behind her, where he stood rubbing his dick between her buttocks. His intentions were clear, each stroke taking him in the opposite direction Olivia hoped for, prayed for.
Years from now, if she lived that long, and if someone asked her what moment had finally broken her, out of all the unspeakable and dehumanizing experiences she'd had—during this and every other assault—she would say this one. Asking God to let her only be raped, not sodomized. God, please, please, not there.
"Plea—" she tried out loud, but made it no further, before something smashed against her face, smothering her. She gasped (Oh God, I don't want to die here!), sucking in a mouthful of soft fabric that tasted like acrid underarm sweat. Her t-shirt, she realized, gagging and coughing on the material, despite its gauzy weave. Her sweat, pungent with terror.
Only, she wasn't being smothered. The hand that held her t-shirt scrubbed it vigorously across her eyes, the other hand holding up her head beneath the chin. When the shirt was drawn away, she squinted her stinging eyelids, bringing the Kid into focus. He grinned and wiped delicately at the corners of her eyes, like an attentive mother drying her child's tears.
"Anybody ever tell you you cry pretty?" he asked rhetorically, pinching snot from her nose with his makeshift tissue. He licked a thumb and used it to smooth her brows, then raked back the nest of bedraggled hair that had escaped from her braid with his fingers. "There. Good as new."
"Can we stop?" Olivia asked, not caring how pitiful and naïve it sounded. The Crier was moving against her more forcefully, waiting for some cue she couldn't determine before pushing his way in. He was like a bull snorting at the gate, eager to charge. He butted it once, making Olivia's voice spike sharply as she gazed sideways at Gus and said, "Please— oh God, ow, please I just need a minute."
The Kid quivered his bottom lip, pretending to well up at her plight. He whined like a puppy in search of its mother's teat. "Aww. She needs a break, guys. It's hard work spreading your legs, huh, Captain? Gives you a whole new respect for the working girls you lock up, doesn't it?"
You mean the working girls you, your scumbag father, and your punk-ass friends brutalize, then turn out for profit, you son of a bitch? The words were on her lips, but she couldn't produce them. That was Captain Benson talking, and Olivia didn't know if that woman existed anymore. She certainly didn't exist in this place, with these men. Whoever Olivia had woken as that morning, she'd shed that skin the minute she stepped into the storage container. God only knew what she would emerge as this time.
"Think we should let her have what she wants?" the Kid asked, looking around as if expecting a show of hands. He still held Olivia's chin propped in his hand, and he turned her face toward the tripod lights against the nearest length of wall. "Let's poll the audience and—"
Olivia gave a small, strangled cry when the Crier grabbed the back of her hair, jerking her head away from the Kid like he was uprooting some especially stubborn weeds—or pulling a deeply wedged clog from a drainpipe—and slammed the side of her face down on the desk. He pressed his palm against the opposite side, pinning her cheek flat to the tarnished metal.
"You don't get to say stop, you stupid cunt," he sneered, his free hand snaking around her hip to clamp cruelly at her sex. He squeezed as if he were juicing a tough-skinned piece of fruit, his long, uneven fingernails digging into the soft and intimate pulp of her. He made a ruthless scrubbing gesture until she hissed and nearly used the forbidden plea: stop. "When you gonna get that through this thick skull?" He rapped his knuckles briskly against her temple, igniting sparks behind her eyes.
You don't get to say no anymore, Lewis had informed her at some point during their four days in hell. She couldn't place when exactly; much of that time was a blur to her, even more so after the nightmares and flashbacks distorted what had actually happened and what hadn't . . .
Not true. In Olivia's heart of hearts she knew he had done more than put a finger inside of her, that the soreness between her legs after the first day—all that unaccounted for time spent together in her bedroom—wasn't just from having her service weapon jammed into her crotch. Why was she still denying it, even now, stripped of her clothes, her right to say no—or stop, her humanity? Lewis had raped her. Maybe with an implement other than his penis, but it was rape all the same.
You don't get to say no anymore. What did it matter when he told her? In one way or another, someone had been taking that choice away from Olivia throughout her entire life. She'd fooled herself into believing she was past it. That her family—her beautiful wife and their sweet, perfect babies—had finally broken the curse, like a fairytale kiss. She got complacent, dropped her guard, and now this. The ultimate reminder:
Olivia Benson didn't get to say no.
"Guess I'll just have to keep fucking it out of you until you catch on," said the Crier, releasing her clitoris from a savage pinch of his thumb and forefinger. She barely felt it—though she heard herself gasp—and she thought perhaps the numbness had finally spread from her mind to her lower body.
It must have skipped her breasts, which were crushed against the dirty desktop, slivers of pain piercing the tissue like glass shards. She thought of Sammie, whose tough little gums created a similar sharp twinge when they latched onto her nipple improperly. Then she pushed the thought away hard, not wanting her baby girl anywhere near these animals or their horrific violence, even just in her head.
Then came another push, this one from behind Olivia, swift and merciless, and the pain was unlike anything she had ever felt before. No amount of numbness or dissociation could have separated her from it. No amount of the Crier rooting between her buttocks with his
(big, yummy)
cock could have prepared her to be penetrated there so suddenly, so roughly. He said he'd do her dry, and he was a man of his word. The unused tub of petroleum jelly was still somewhere to her left, where she couldn't see it because her head was pinned to the desk and she was being sodomized by a man whose cock piercing felt like marbles in her rectum. The rest of him was a goddamn redwood.
She managed a single, wounded scream that sounded more like an animal being tortured than a human. It cut short abruptly, as if the poor creature's head had been lopped off in one fell swoop, but the pain went on and on, too all-encompassing for screaming. The most Olivia could do was clench her teeth against it, and she did so with such force, something crumbled in the back of her mouth. The sensation was similar to crunching ice chips with her molars, but that usually wasn't accompanied by searing gums and the tang of blood. Shattered tooth, most likely. Maybe the Crier would extract it with the pliers if she asked nicely.
Gritting her teeth in spite of the pain it caused, as bright and pulsating as a star
(wish I may, wish I might)
she tried to remind herself to relax her muscles. The worst thing you could do during anal penetration was tense up; she had known that since she was sixteen. Back then, she'd used the breathing techniques she knew from competitive swimming to get through it. Try to push me out a little, Daniel had coached, stimulating her with his fingers in front, gradually inching deeper in back as she whimpered and puffed. It relaxes the right stuff. Mm, you feel so good.
But there was nothing gradual about what the Crier was doing to her. At least Daniel had taken his time and used plenty of lube, for his own sake as much as hers. The Crier didn't mind the discomfort. It only seemed to turn him on more, and he plunged ahead at a jerky, unrelenting pace. Olivia's body remained rigid, her breath snatched away by each jounce. Now she knew how raw meat felt when it was tenderized, she thought. Now she knew how the men she'd sent to prison, with warnings that they would be sodomized by their fellow inmates, must have felt the first time they were facedown in their bunks.
She desperately wanted something to bite down on, and started to lift her hand to her mouth, not caring if she broke skin—the rest of her was already ripped open. But the Crier grabbed her wrist and pinned it behind her, the same way she did to perps when she handcuffed them. He leaned forward until the weight of his upper body rested on her back, his hips still working behind hers, and blew the hair away from her ear to murmur into it.
"I'll be nice and use the jelly when I do your girls like this," he said, no noticeable difference in his voice as he thrusted. He could have been taking a leisurely stroll, for all the effort he evinced. "Not the boy, though. He might as well get used to it early. Most guys who fuck below ten like tearing up the kid's asshole. How's it feel knowing your son's gonna be in this same position soon? You wanna see that, puss?"
Olivia opened her mouth to release a scream of sheer hatred, of a rage so profound it felt as though a demon had been unleashed in her soul, but all that came out was a low, mournful cry that dwindled into an infantile whine. That finally did it. Lewis had reduced her to a helpless, whining captive with booze, pills, bathroom control, and his boundless rage; this man did it with sodomy and threats against her children. She wanted to believe it was a lie—just a way of bringing her to heel—but until the Driver had shoved his dick inside her, she never would have believed she was going to be gang raped, either. And they had pictures of her babies. Oh, Jesus. Oh, sweet Jesus.
"No," someone sobbed brokenly, and Olivia longed to tell her to shut up. No, like stop, was a forbidden word here, and it would get them hurt even worse, if the stupid bitch kept on wailing it like that. "No, please— no, not my—" Only when the Crier clamped his hand over her mouth, muffling the devastated sounds, did Olivia realize she was the stupid bitch. She was the one pleading with him not to harm her children. And she was the one he reamed even harder, the more she cried.
"Remember when I told you I'm a biter?" he asked, and clacked his teeth together beside her ear, as if he meant to chomp down on the lobe. Instead, he drew back and sank his teeth deeply into her shoulder, the way vampires always seemed to bite—wide, voracious—in movies and television shows. He didn't tear out the hunk of flesh and spit it aside, like in the movies, but he might as well have, with the heat that blossomed in her shoulder, a furious, fiery orchid. "From now on, you say no to me anymore, you're getting one of those."
He snagged her earlobe in his teeth this time, and if he had bitten down with the same force he'd just applied to her shoulder, he surely would have snipped the lobe clean. "Understand?" he asked, and gave the morsel in his mouth a greedy suck.
Olivia failed to stifle a groan of revulsion and total despair, but she nodded faintly. She was lying, of course—if her kids came up again, if he or the others put anymore of those horrendous images in her mind (she would die before she'd let her son go through something like this, and her sweet, tiny girls who didn't even know such evil existed in the world . . .), she would no more be able to hold back a reaction than she could hold back the Crier himself.
As if reading her thoughts, he tested out her truthfulness, murmuring in an almost tender voice while he reached down to stroke her clitoris, "Good pussy. You like that? Your little girls are gonna love it. I'll teach them to come just like their mommy. That redhead's gonna be great on camera, too. Maybe I'll send you a copy of her audition, if your new daddy lets you off your knees long enough to watch it . . . "
Olivia sensed a rending deep inside, not of body tissue or anything tangible—though she felt plenty of that, as well—but of reality and her place in it. Her mind wanted desperately to separate from her current circumstances. It was like being the character in a book who was about to be plucked from the pages by a giant authorial hand. And the only thing she could do was cling to the desk as if it were a life raft. She had to stay and fight for her kids. It might be over for her, but if there was even the smallest chance she could prevent this from happening to those babies, she would hold on to the bitter end.
"You're not touching my kids," she said, so shaky and breathless it barely qualified as a whisper. Part of it was muted and cracked, but she made her point clear. "They'll have a protective detail. My wife will kill you before you get near them."
The Crier gave a sharp laugh, an even sharper jerk of his hips. He rubbed at Olivia's raw, aching clitoris until she hissed and tried to shift away from his touch. Suddenly, his other hand shot forward and gripped her chin, lifting it from underneath to display her face to the blinding studio lights. The few times Olivia had been on stage in college, the footlights were similarly overpowering, casting a dark pall over the audience.
"Not if I kill her first," he whispered in Olivia's ear, then raised his voice for the others to hear, making her shrink from the loud sound. "Your bitch wife didn't do shit to protect you. We walked right up and took you from her, and she did nothing. Where is she now, pussycat? I don't see her coming to your rescue."
"You—" Olivia cried out. He went at her even harder, with his hands, with his cock, the pain so breathtaking she could barely speak. "Am-ambushed . . . us. She— she— God. Oh God, Manda . . . " She gave in and sobbed her wife's name then, unable to restrain the flood of tears that followed hearing it out loud. She wanted Amanda to wake her from this nightmare, as the detective had done so many times before, and hold her until the tears, the trembling, and the terror abated. To stroke her hair and murmur that it was just a bad dream, and she would still be there when Olivia woke in the morning.
Please, Amanda, she prayed. Please, love, I need you so.
Lewis had told her that, before he finished with her, she would cry the name of the person she wanted most. They all did, he said. And she'd known it was true—the little ones always cried for their mommies, sometimes the big ones too; wives, for their husbands, or in some cases, their children; cops, if they lived for the job, often cried a partner's name. But whichever name was called, be it parent, spouse, lover, or friend, the victim was always asking for the same thing: the person who made them feel safest. The person they were certain could take away all the pain, no matter how severe.
There had been no one like that for Olivia back then. For most of her life, there had been no one. Now, she had Amanda, but would there be anything left of Olivia for her wife to get back when this was over? Jesus God, why couldn't it just be over?
"Okay, you had your fifteen minutes," said the Kid, leaning over to peer at Olivia, the backlighting making him appear as if he were gazing down upon her in a well. If only. She could curl up and hide in a place like that; she could be far, far away from here. "Give her to me. Mouth, at least. Let him do something to her, he hasn't had a chance yet. Get in there, bro."
"She's all bloody," came the slow, childish voice of Little Brother, who was still somewhere out of Olivia's view. (His father leaned against the wall, directly in her sightline, watching everything with a calm, cool eye. He looked as if he were contemplating a chess board.) "And there's other stuff. I don't like how it looks."
"Yeah, and I ain't holding his dick for . . . for him while he figures out where to poke her at," the Crier growled, breathing a little heavier than before. He ought to be, as strenuously as he was thumping into her. He had released her chin and abandoned the clit-fondling, in favor of grasping her hips and yanking her back to meet him. Olivia couldn't imagine Gus's knife hurting any worse. "I'm not his— mm, buttfuck coach."
"You don't have to touch his dick, man. Just show him how to finger her or something." The Kid scooped up Olivia's chin a moment after the Crier let it go, tilting her face back for a look. "Aw, fuck, she split her lip. Got a whole Queen Amidala thing going on now. That one's not on us, for the record. Did it to herself."
He was right, she realized, her tongue grazing her bottom lip. She'd been tasting blood, but couldn't identify the source with her gums and the insides of her cheeks seeping as well. It felt like slime in the back of her throat and burned like acid going down. The cut opened wider when the Kid tugged on her chin, shoving his dick into her mouth. He used a bit more finesse than Crier, not as impervious to pain as his tattooed counterpart, but by no means gentle, either.
The next several moments were a blur of hands and cocks and come. Olivia focused on breathing through the oral sodomy, a constant chant of don't bite, don't bite, don't bite running through her mind. With the Kid's fingers digging into her jaws on both sides, she probably couldn't have closed them, even if she tried. Her fear that she would reflexively clamp down during one of the more violent thrusts from behind were eased when the Crier pulled out—her entire body deflated in relief—but he inserted himself into her vagina just as abruptly and began pumping with renewed vigor. He spread her buttocks with his hands, and a tentative finger circled her anus, then pushed inside.
"See how many you can fit. Move 'em like this," the Crier instructed. "She'll love it. That's what it's there for."
Little Brother obeyed, testing out his new plaything like a curious kid inspecting the inner mechanisms of a new toy. He quickly got over his aversion to blood and the other stuff, and soon, he was hurting Olivia almost as much as the other men. She supposed her feeble moans could be mistaken for pleasure by someone inexperienced, who had probably heard girls in porn videos making similar sounds.
(Let's poll the audience.)
(That redhead's gonna be great on camera, too.)
Great on camera, too . . .
"Fuck. Fuck," said the Kid, and gripped the sides of Olivia's head tightly. He bucked two more times and then stiffened, the way corpses sometimes kept twitching when death was instantaneous but the body hadn't figured it out yet. Happened frequently in decapitations.
His ejaculate was warm and salty, and it filled the back of her throat like a thick broth, triggering the swallow reflex as she struggled not to choke. Almost as if the men were operating on a timer, the Crier grunted and dispersed his seed at the other end, digging his jagged fingernails deep into her backside. That usually got her off when Amanda did it, while wearing the strap-on. (Please, Amanda . . .) Now she barely felt it, barely felt anything, as she gagged and tried to sick up the semen she'd consumed.
The Kid's penis blocked her efforts and the most Olivia could do was cough like a croupy baby, mouth wide open, interchangeably gasping and sobbing, moisture streaming from her eyes. The only thing worse than asphyxiating during oral would be choking to death on the fluids. But moments after the thought occurred to her, the Kid removed himself from her mouth and she sucked in a whooping breath.
"Jesus, bet you could suck a golf ball through a garden hose with lungs like that," he said over the sound of her rattling, retching hacks.
All at once, the unpleasant fullness she had felt with the three men inside of her was replaced by lightness—an empty, aired-out feeling, like the windows had been left open in a desolate room—and for a second, she wondered if her soul had slipped out. Supposedly the body lost twenty-one grams, upon death. Some people believed that was the weight of the soul departing.
But she wasn't dead, and she wasn't outside herself, looking down at a battered and broken woman bent over a rusted-out desk. They had simply finished with her, their hands and bodies no longer fused to hers, plugs in a socket. She felt the Crier dripping down the inside of her thigh—or perhaps that was blood—but she made no move to stop the flow.
It was the semen on the way to her stomach that concerned her more. There was no greater risk in ingesting the stuff than in having it ooze from between your legs; nevertheless, she wanted it out of her. The taste alone made her mouth dampen, her stomach roiling dangerously, but she couldn't bring it back up without some manual assistance.
One of her most shameful moments as a so-called courageous and honorable captain, mother, and fiancée was going on her knees in the bathroom to purge herself of the wine she'd overindulged in a couple of New Year's Eves ago. She had felt like a self-loathing, bulimic teenager—or a pathetic drunk, like her mother—kneeling in front of the toilet, with her fingers jammed down her throat. The thought of anyone ever seeing her that way, so weak and messy (so stupid), had haunted her long after, and she'd cut back on the drinking, vowing never to let herself get that low again. Never to put her body or her psyche through another purge. She didn't even want Amanda to know she'd done something that stupid.
Now, she didn't care that the men were watching and would see the humiliating act, her nudity only exacerbating the shame. She hung her head over the side of the desk, crammed two fingers into the back of her tender throat, and gave up a mouthful of stringy, coffee-scented fluid that burned like Tabasco. It was much easier this time than it had been all those months ago. She could probably get used to it, if it became a regular practice.
Dragging the back of her hand limply across her painful, wet lips, Olivia blocked out the sound of the men laughing that she had "horked up" the Kid's spunk ("Dude, that shit is rank, what the hell you been eating—besides pussy?" "It's her, not me. It's all that rug she's been munching. Throws off the pH balance in my boys"), and tried to cross her arms beneath her, shielding her bare breasts. She yearned to huddle up in a ball, hide her head, and block out everything else: the blinding light, the potpourri of multiple bodily fluids, the terrible weight of their eyes upon her. But her ribs hurt too badly for climbing onto the desk, and she wouldn't put herself on all fours in front of a pack of wild, rutting dogs, not even for a second.
They had other plans for her, anyway. As she struggled to stand up, unable to accomplish even that small task with her rickety limbs—she felt as though someone had unscrewed all her hinges—the Kid took her by the side of either arm and said, "Help me flip her. Lay her out this way." Crier complied, and with a hand from Driver, who joined the Kid at her other shoulder, they turned and lifted her, mummylike and lengthwise, onto the desk. She knew then what it was like to be a corpse, flat on a slab in the morgue.
At least the dead got the courtesy of a sheet.
"Okay, bro. Hop on up." The Kid cuffed Olivia on the thigh as if he had just saddled her for his younger brother to ride. He waved the boy closer, wearing an encouraging smile. "She's all yours. Don't worry, we'll hold her for you."
The meaning of the words didn't register with Olivia until Little Brother stepped forward, twisting his stupid fucking cap in the hands he'd used to violate her, so impersonally and revoltingly, moments ago. She had thought it was over, at least for the time being. Couldn't they give her a minute—to breathe, to suffer and take inventory, to die a little bit more? Just one goddamn minute.
"No," she mewled, past the point of caring what sounds she made and how they might be perceived. Three of these men had already fucked her; propriety and dignity were no longer a concern. And Badass Benson wasn't getting her out of this one. "No more. Please, no more. I wanna go home. T-tell me why you're d-doing this. I'll . . . I'll tell Amanda anything you want. I'll tell her ev-everything you did to me, and she'll— she'll fix whatever it is that started this."
"Oh, Captain," said the Kid, in the voice you used on an incorrigible child who just couldn't help herself. Olivia often used that tone on Jesse, her bright shining star, her little beastie. She hated scolding the kids, and it was especially difficult with her second eldest, who talked big but got easily upset if Olivia was truly cross with her. (My little love, Olivia thought, heart aching as palpably as the rest of her. Will I ever see you again?) "You still haven't caught on, huh? The only way you're going home is in whatever pieces we cut off of this luscious, stacked body of yours."
His fingers glided along her collarbone as he spoke, idly at first, then becoming more intent as he forced her hand aside and outlined the scars from Lewis' cigarettes. Finally, he reached his destination and wrenched heartlessly at her uncovered breast while delivering the threat. He didn't let up until she gasped sharply and started to writhe, and even then, it was only to make sure he had her full attention when he added, "But it's cute, the way you think that blond bitch of yours will still rescue you. News flash, honey: she can't fix this. And she already knows exactly what we're doing—"
"Get on with it," Gus barked in a tone so commanding, his son's jaw snapped shut as if it had been propped open by a stick that was suddenly snatched away.
The Kid stared down at Olivia coldly, like she had gotten him into trouble on purpose. But he was all smiles as he ushered Little Brother forward, giving him encouraging slaps on the back and showing him the footholds to climb onto the desk—and Olivia. The expression widened when he leaned in and confided, "Be nice to him, he's my kid brother and he's slow. Show him a good time, and I'll make sure your kids stay in the US. Believe me, you don't want 'em sent to other countries. Those people are sick."
The sad part was he probably wasn't too far from the truth. Not because other countries were more barbaric than the United States—in fact, just the opposite—but trafficking was such a lucrative business in the states, at least many of the victims went to wealthy investors. That meant food, clothes, shelter, doctor visits. White children fared best of all, usually going for higher rates and getting better care.
Fair-skinned and blue-eyed, Jesse and Tilly would fetch the most money and likely get preferential treatment; Noah's best chance was to be sold for private use, because the Crier was right—men who liked boys that age did terrible, terrible things to them; and that left baby Sammie. Mixed race, but passing, she might stand the same chance as her sisters, although infants were somewhat of a rare delicacy that only a select few had the taste for. And those few tended to be the sickest of all. Sammie should go to a couple that wasn't above buying a baby, hopefully because they wanted a child so badly, not for any nefarious purposes.
Leaving her to divvy up her children like they were kittens in a box by the side of the road, the Kid stood to his full height, grinning wider than ever, his wandering eye slightly misaligned with the other. It gave him a deranged appearance that made Olivia shudder. She still tasted him in her mouth, and it turned her stomach, but Little Brother was straddling her hips, the other men were taking up their posts—one at each of her arms, the Crier in charge of her feet, as if it were a crucifixion—and she knew then that the Kid was right.
She would never be going home. The most she could hope for was to make it out of here in pieces, because once they were done with her (God, would they ever be done with her?) she would never be whole again.
. . .
