A/N: So, I'm a doofus. I totally thought my posting schedule was Monday/Wednesday, until one of y'all pointed out it's Monday/Thursday. So technically the last update was already the early one, but what the hell, I mentioned an early update and that's what you're getting. Also, I'm thoroughly enjoying the theories and conjecture I've seen popping up in the comments. Without giving anything away, I can tell you that a couple of you hit the nail on the head, while others are way off (some interesting concepts, though!), lol. As always, thanks for reading and reviewing. Chapter Trigger Warning: graphic aftermath of an assault.

And I know it's true that visions are seldom all they seem
But if I know you, I know what you'll do
You'll love me at once, the way you did once . . .

- "Once Upon a Dream," Sleeping Beauty

Chapter 16.

Once Upon a Dream

. . .

Time came and went, just as the men had. She was only aware of its passage because the sounds of construction stopped and started again (second break, or a shift change?), then halted altogether. A day's work done. She could see the weary, lucky construction workers in their hard hats, eagerly tramping to their cars so they could get home for dinner with their families. But it was all inside her head, of course; there were no windows in this place, this box.

This tomb.

She must have lain there for hours, her cheek against the rusty metal desktop. For a time she had drifted off. It seemed like only seconds, but it had been long enough for her to dream she was lying on the dinner table at home, about to be carved like Easter ham and served to Amanda, their children, and the dogs, who licked their chops in anticipation. She'd flinched awake and almost rolled off the desk just as the electric knife buzzed to life—the hands that held it belonged to Lewis and every other man who had raped her—inches away from cutting groin to sternum.

When she tried to lift her head, it was too heavy and she let it thump back down on the desk. Even that little bit of effort was exhausting, and Olivia allowed herself to drift for a few moments or a few hours—there really was no difference here in The Box, where time meant nothing. Where she meant nothing.

She woke again, desperately wanting three things: to be clothed, a drink of water, and her wife. The latter, she couldn't think of without weeping, though it hurt her throat badly to cry. How she longed for Amanda to wrap her in a warm, safe embrace; to take away the pain not just in her flaming throat but in every square inch of her body. Amanda always knew how to stop the hurting, whether it was mental or physical. Amanda would come for her, would help her to heal, just as she always did . . .

"Manda," Olivia whispered, sliding back into unconsciousness before the full name had left her lips.

Manda, where are you? she asked in her dream. But there was no answer, only bright, endless space above which she floated, looking down on various scenes from throughout her life, like a scrolling timeline. Like the funhouse rides at Coney Island that conveyed you past odd and whimsical sights along a winding track.

Some of the scenes were incredible: finding Noah in the dresser drawer of that fleabag motel, and knowing he was hers from the very moment she picked him up; kissing Amanda for the first time, and finally understanding what it was to be home; her three precious little girls who brought her joy and laughter every single day, and more than made up for her own lost childhood.

But the worst moments were there as well. She saw Serena doing things that shocked and horrified her, mostly because she had forgotten they happened. Somehow, she saw her father and, though it was impossible, she recognized his scent, his smile, as if she'd actually known him all along. Lowell Harris and Calvin were there, forcing themselves into her mouth, between her breasts.

And Lewis . . . she saw everything he had done to her with stark clarity, as if it were acted out beneath a surgical light. Not just the things she had let herself remember, or the lies she'd told herself—and everyone else—because they were what she could live with, but the whole ugly truth. He had been inside much more than just her head. It should have been a life-shattering revelation, but after what she'd been through inside The Box, it felt like little more than a practice run. Lewis couldn't even keep it up long enough to leave a mark.

Then he put the revolver to his temple, said it would be the last thing she thought about before she died, and pulled the trigger.

That was when Olivia knew she must be dying. Of all the memories that had filtered by, the one of Lewis blowing his brains out was the most vivid. She felt his blood, warm on her cheek, copper in her mouth. Smelled his bowels let loose. Felt her legs start to go, then lock at the knee because
(her body still did what he wanted it to do, even when he was dead)
of the duct tape. His come dripped out of her, nauseatingly sticky.

Except that last part had never happened, at least not with Lewis. And though her legs were terribly numb and stiff beneath her, they weren't taped to table legs like she'd thought; they seemed to be dangling off the edge of something. The stink of excrement and the taste of blood were real, and as Olivia came to, she raised her head as high as she could, remembering.

A desk—no, the desk she'd been repeatedly raped on—was the thing her legs dangled from. At some point she had crawled onto it after they left her there, bent over the metal frame like she was in a pillory. The stench was from the slop bucket she had seen (and smelled) upon arrival to The Box, and the blood she tasted was her own. As for the come, there were five possible donors, although by now the wetness she felt was probably just more of her own blood seeping out of her.

It was that thought which made her want to drift away again, but fearing she wouldn't return next time—This is the last thing you're gonna think about before you die—she forced her eyes wide. They had left one of the tripod lights on, and she winced back from the brightness as if it were a sharp, glancing blade. Everything hurt, including her eyes, which were raw and irritated from so much crying. Oh God, and her throat. She thought they might have taken a cheese grater to it. When they weren't using it on her privates.

"Ow," she whimpered and croaked, crashing to her elbow when the arm she propped up on gave out. The pain came not from her arm, although that felt as weak and breakable as a toothpick, but from the daggers in her side. She tried to estimate how many ribs were broken, and could only conclude that it surpassed the amount of fractures and pain from the first Lewis attack.

By the time she turned from her stomach onto her side, she was too winded to continue. Just the idea of sitting up was an impossible, insurmountable task that made her want to lie back on the desk and stay there until they—be it the men or Amanda and the rest of her squad—came for her. But she wouldn't offer herself up like that to those monsters, and she couldn't bear for Amanda or any of her fellow officers to find her that way.

Steeling herself and huffing each breath, Olivia threw her weight forward and used the same momentum to sit upright. Her guts wrenched and she half expected to hear metal grinding on metal, like scrap cars being crushed flat by a compactor. That's how her insides felt each time she moved. It tore the air from her lungs and a soft whining from her throat that she didn't bother to silence, though she despised the sound.

What did it matter, with no one else around to hear it?

"Fu- fuck ow." She had made it to a seated position at the edge of the desk, but the final push to stand was as daunting as a skydiving leap from an airplane. If her legs didn't hold, she would end up on her hands and knees, a place she had already been far too many times today. Even with no one there to see, she refused to crawl naked and bleeding across the filthy floor like some pathetic, dying creature.

"Get up," she rasped, willing herself to lower both feet to the ground. Get up. Get up. Get up. Her hands were the problem though, refusing to release the steadying ledge behind her when she was almost ambulatory. She changed the order to, "Let go," and repeated it until she would have been screaming—if she'd had the voice to do it. Why cling to something she had been horribly violated on top of? Why wouldn't her body listen?

In her anger and frustration, she managed to pry her hands free and found herself wavering on her feet, arms out for balance, like a toddler taking its first steps. Astonishingly, her legs didn't buckle beneath her, though they were wobbly and weak. If not for the occasional jog through the park with Amanda, she wouldn't have had that much strength left in them.

"Jesus," she gasped, clutching her side with every hobbling step she took. It didn't occur to her that she was looking for something until she felt some kind of cloth underfoot. Her heart sank to find it was the youth-size cat shirt the Kid had shoved into her face earlier. Back when she still thought she'd make it out of here without being raped.

She flicked the shirt aside with her foot, as far as she dared, and cast around for her own. They had taken some of her clothes—the Kid was twirling her yoga pants in the air like a cowboy with a lasso on his way out the door, and Little Brother followed close behind, imitating him with Olivia's bra—but they hadn't bothered with the shirt. "Leave it, got as much jizz on it as she does," one of them had commented to the other.

It did have jizz on it, and quite a bit of blood, both of which had dried to a stiff crust. Olivia just barely made it upright with the shirt in hand, after bending her knees enough to stretch an arm down and grab it. She cringed putting it on, as much from the stains as from the pain that went into pulling the shirt onto her head and stuffing her arms through the holes. "Oh fuck," she whispered, her left shoulder twanging at the motion. She felt its reverberation throughout her entire body.

But at least the bite marks and rashlike redness on her aching breasts were covered. The shirt hem exposed part of her ass and enough of her genitals that she had the urge to tug it down in the front like the sheepish girl on the poster of an Eighties' sex comedy. Her pubic hair was matted with blood and more semen. The pain between her legs was raw, consuming fire.

Putting on the shirt had exhausted her and she longed to sit, if for no other reason than to stop the continuous trickle of blood that ran down the insides of her thighs. Just when she thought she might give up and crumple to the floor like the rest of the trash, she spotted the black wad a few feet away. It might as well have been a few miles, but she limped in that direction, getting there in twice the time it normally would have taken.

The memory of Driver tearing off her underwear was so vivid and so visceral that, at first, Olivia couldn't make herself pick up the tattered bottoms. They might not even be wearable if she did manage to pluck them off the floor, instead of snatching her hand back like she'd almost touched a dead rodent. After several attempts, she finally gritted her teeth, seized the star-spangled fabric, yelped in pain, and staggered against the nearest wall for support.

Stepping into the ragged panties was harder than picking them up, and Olivia nearly pitched over several times, until she managed to thread a leg through one hole and stretch the waistband enough to hook the other leg. The Driver had ripped out most of one side seam, but the elastic around the leg opening was still intact and, except for a loose flap of material that exposed her hip, the underwear stayed in place.

She tried not to think about the injuries that made even the soft cotton gusset feel abrasive and constricting to her ravaged privates. Nevertheless, the diagnoses floated up from the back of her mind on their own: vaginal and anal tears, bruised clitoris, bruised cervix, a potentially nasty infection from switching orifices, any number of potentially nasty STDs, because the men hadn't worn condoms.

She desperately wanted to relieve her bladder, partly in hopes that the urine would kill off some of the bacteria she was undoubtedly crawling in, but she wasn't going near that goddamned bucket. Not yet. That was her excuse, anyway—willfulness, dignity, strength. To be honest, she feared the searing pain that was inevitable with genital injuries. Wiping seemed unimaginable. She thought of all the women she'd discouraged from urinating until after they had received a rape kit, and she despised herself for it.

Of course, she probably had enough DNA evidence on her skin and inside her mouth to make the same IDs that vaginal and anal swabs would yield. The taste of bile mixed with her blood made Olivia fear she would vomit again, an ordeal her body—or at least her ribs—surely could not withstand. But the feeling passed quickly and without incident. She didn't have anything left to expel. Even her tears felt dried up for good. All she had was the blood that slithered out of her, soiling her panties as if she were menstruating again.

Perhaps if she were, she might have been able to take the vitamin supplements to help her breastfeed Samantha naturally. She might have even been able to carry her youngest daughter and spare Amanda the trauma of being ripped apart and stitched back together. The husband stitch was a real thing Olivia had read about while doing research for an undergrad essay, and years ago she had testified against a doctor who gave several unwitting new mothers the extra vaginal suture after childbirth to "tighten them up" for their hubbies. How many stitches would it take to tighten her back up, Olivia wondered.

After a minute or two of standing there in a daze, contemplating everything from the memory of Sammie crowning to why Serena hadn't delivered Olivia on her own and smothered the newborn baby girl when she had the chance, Olivia realized she might have a head injury. She hadn't taken a hard enough blow to do serious damage, probably just a mild concussion. But she hated the way her brain skipped from one line of thought to the next, like she was mentally channel surfing. It made planning difficult.

"Come on, pussycat," she murmured, only half aware that she was speaking out loud, and even less aware she had quoted one of her rapists. Something about that nickname struck her as odd, but it was probably just the immense terror she was in while hearing it. Her own name had sounded monstrous coming from the lips of those awful men. "Move your ass."

That got her going, though she didn't know where to, until she was pushing and pulling at the wall the men had exited through. Not finding a door of any kind, she began to wonder if she truly had lost her mind, but a seam down the center of the wall reminded her that both sides opened outward by an exterior latch. She dug her fingernails into the crack and pried with every bit of strength she could muster, her heart throwing out a wild kick when she felt something start to give.

It turned out to be her fingernails, three of them snapping off close to the quick. She hissed and instinctively stuck the fingers in her mouth, then gagged at the feeling of flesh on her tongue. "Oh, God," she moaned wetly, hunching forward to let the hot gush of saliva spill from her mouth. It dripped in ropey tendrils from her lips, like the wavering fronds of a willow tree. Nothing else accompanied it, and she spat forcefully to be rid of the strings that clung, cobweb-sticky.

Olivia wasn't getting out. The Box only had one exit, and it was sealed tight against her. If she had the strength to ram it with her shoulder, she might get it open, or if they hadn't taken her shoes (they had; she'd watched the Crier launch the Nikes into the lot outside with two expert kicks, like a soccer player scoring a double goal), she might be able to kick her way out. But barefoot and barely able to rotate either shoulder, let alone use them as battering rams, it was hopeless.

She slumped her back against the wall, bent her knees, and shoved as hard as she could, walking backwards like she was pushing a boulder. All it produced was a weak grunt and more splinters in the bottom of her feet from sliding across the wood floor. Infuriated, exhausted, and afraid of never leaving the hell pit where she had already died a thousand times, she rounded her back and slammed it against the wall, over and over, until she thought her bones might crack.

There were baboons that, trapped and petrified, would heave themselves against the inside of their cages, essentially bashing their own brains in attempting to escape. As Olivia threw herself into the wall, a silent enraged scream on her lips, she knew how those desperate primates must feel, preferring death to whatever Man had in store for them. "Let me out, you fucking bastards," she tried to shout, her voice crackling and popping like a scratchy old record. She turned and pounded on the nonexistent door, her fists and her mind gone numb with the effort.

How long she stood there raging at an invisible enemy, she couldn't say. When she finally came back to herself, she had sagged to the floor in a broken, sobbing heap and she stayed like that for a good, long while, too emotionally and physically spent to resume her search for a way out. It was a waste of energy, anyway. She needed to conserve her strength for whatever came next. Whatever Man had in store.

"But I just wanna go home," she whispered, gazing at her surroundings as if she were the shell-shocked survivor of a bomb blast. Her eyes fell upon the wall opposite the desk and she felt a wave of revulsion so strong, she almost doubled up with it. That was where the Kid's imaginary studio audience resided, and he had spoken to them so convincingly throughout the rape, Olivia had begun to think someone actually was watching the whole thing.

Maybe there were more of the traffickers watching from a peephole she couldn't make out or, more likely, another location, which meant a hidden camera. Maybe her buyer wanted video beforehand to be certain of what he was purchasing, like a horse being sold across seas. The thought was too awful to entertain—she would rather be dead than know that some asshole watched her being raped, and probably got off on it—and she pushed it away.

Sitting up and taking a guarded breath that still made her wince, Olivia instinctively reached to smooth back her hair, a habit she had acquired young because her heavy locks got in the way of most serious undertakings. She gasped and jerked her hand back when she felt how much of the hair was gone. Since that offhand remark of Amanda's that made her decide to grow out her shoulder-length mane three years ago, she had only gotten the ends trimmed every few months to keep it looking sleek and healthy.

The now missing braid was the longest her hair had ever been, and it was one of the few physical aspects of herself that Olivia had felt true confidence in. She'd thought that was gone forever after Lewis, when the hair was just a reminder of him grabbing it, dousing it, rubbing himself off in it. But Amanda had loved it so much, touching it with an almost reverence in those early months of their relationship—and often still did, especially after treating it less than gently that awful New Year's Eve the year before last—that it became healing. Amanda had healed so many of Olivia's hurts, and not just the ones from Lewis.

Fighting back tears at the loss of something so meaningful, to her and to her wife, she raked her fingers through the strands that were now well above her shoulders and dragged herself to her knees. It took several long, arduous moments and several painful and unsuccessful attempts, but she eventually made it onto her feet. She hadn't a clue where she was going until her feet were taking her there.

The Sandman had cut her braid with his vorpal little knife going snicker-snack, that she recalled with absolute clarity. Perhaps the men had gotten sloppy, left behind one of the other implements they had used on her, or threatened to. (Other than the cattle prod that got shoved into her mouth, there had been no foreign object penetration, at least she could say that much.) She wouldn't hold out hope for the knife—Gus didn't forget things—but maybe the prod or the pliers . . . . She could do some damage with either of those, should the men return.

(They would most certainly return.)

There was nothing. Not even the damn spoon she'd watched the Kid use to crush up their drugs. The most lethal-looking item she saw among the plentiful garbage she nudged aside with her feet was a plastic fork with the middle tines broken, so that it resembled vampire fangs. She couldn't bring herself to search the desk drawers, or even get very close to the metallic carcass itself. She gave it a wide berth, as if she were skirting a sleeping lion.

Nice kitty, she thought, and wondered why such a thing should come to her right then. Just another example of her brain not working properly for the time being, she supposed. Ignoring the strange but familiar phrase, she shuffled over to her last resort—the stained and tattered mattress partially covered in fast-food wrappers and mildewed newspapers. It looked as though black mold had formed on some of the pages, and Olivia tried to guide them aside with her foot without touching the toxic fungus.

The process was slow, and she had to pause and catch her breath every few seconds, but eventually she cleared off the pitiful bed. When she gazed down at it, counting the brown spots (some overlapped, creating an ombré effect) that looked like coffee spills, although they were certainly not from coffee, she couldn't figure out for the life of her why it had seemed like such an important task just seconds before.

Perhaps she had meant to dissect the mattress for one of its springs, the closest thing to a deadly weapon at her disposal. But in spite of its shoddy exterior, the pad was fairly intact and she would have to tear the thing apart with her bare hands to get inside. Then find a way to pry a piece of steel from its frame, not to mention straighten it out so it could be wielded properly. Just thinking about each step left Olivia weary and overwhelmed. Her legs were on the verge of giving out, anyway.

That's when she realized she had cleaned off the bed with the intention of lying down on it. God help her, she was so exhausted that even the mystery crud that darkened the seams in the padding didn't deter her. Lice, bedbugs, fleas, she warned herself, and that didn't dissuade her, either. She was covered in human bite marks, what harm would a few bug bites do?

Before the question had fully formed in her brain, and as she was kneeling on the pad, tugging at one of the threadbare blankets from the bundle she'd kicked aside, half a dozen large cockroaches scurried from their disrupted home. Olivia shrank back from the outpouring, her cry of disgust little more than a whistle in her throat. She heaved the blanket edge away from her, retreated to the farthest corner of the bed, and huddled there, watching for the insects as if they might regroup, turn, and attack.

Bugs weren't a particular fear of hers—she didn't like them, but wasn't phobic—but the sight of those skittering brown bodies filled her with revulsion and paranoia that she felt them crawling all over her mostly exposed skin. Her first solo apartment outside of the Siena dorms had been one step above hovel and infested with cockroaches. She'd kept shoes by her bed specifically for hurling at the ugly little fuckers, and after the third or fourth time of waking up to one trundling across her pillow, she had finally complained over the phone to her mother.

"Well, you're not moving back in here, so I suggest you deal with it," Serena had replied bluntly. She never did pull punches where her only daughter was concerned. "You're a grownup now, Olivia. You can't just depend on Mommy to take care of things for you anymore."

When have I ever depended on you for anything? Olivia wanted to shout. She had stared at the handset in disbelief, thought about slamming it down on the cradle and never speaking to the boozy, slurring old bitch again. Instead, she'd forced a tight smile and replied, "I know, Mom. Just thought I should tell you in case a few of the really big ones carry me away in the night."

Yeah, like five of them. And oh, the things they will do to me, Mommy. You can't even imagine. They make Joe Hollister look like the Good Humor man. Isn't that what you always wanted for me? The reason you hurt me, let all those men hurt me—so I would know how it felt? You took away my childhood, my innocence, because he took away your sense of safety, your freedom. Did it satisfy you, I wonder, to get one over on Hollister by abusing his little girl? Does this satisfy you now, Mom, seeing me like this? Is this what it takes to finally give you peace?

"Is it?" Olivia asked aloud, and started at the sound of her own voice.

The roaches were gone, scattered to the four corners of the earth (or maybe just The Box, it was hard for her to distinguish between the two right then), or escaped through some crevice too small to see in the shadows outside the lone tripod light. There must be several cracks, actually; all at once, she could feel the chilly night air seeping into the storage container, grasping at her scratches, burns, and bruises with icy fingers. It had been a mild May, that was true, but it was still springtime in New York. Nights were cold, especially with a breeze coming off the water.

No sooner had she noticed the change in temperature inside the container than she realized she was already shivering uncontrollably. Some of it was the shock of being assaulted and sustaining God only knew what kind of internal damage, but that didn't account for the goose flesh creeping along her bare thighs, snaking up her bare arms. A deep, bone-rattling, teeth-chattering quake went through her, and she knew she was in trouble. Even when she and Amanda had been running for their lives in the snow-limed woods of the Catskills, she hadn't felt the cold so profoundly.

They couldn't mean to leave her there to freeze all night, could they? Just as the thought crossed her mind, her eyes fell on the bucket and the insidious dark stains where the wood had rotted around it; she looked at the desk with its lame legs that put it slightly off kilter; she looked at her own legs, the thighs streaked with blood and forming dark, finger-shaped bruises, the crotch of her bedraggled panties wet-black with a smattering of crimson stars.

Of course they meant it. Some of the threats might have gone unfulfilled, but for the most part, they had kept their word about what they planned to do. What frightened her most about that was the threats to her wife and children. Amanda would take every precaution to keep their children safe, the men would not get to them (would they?). But Amanda herself . . .

Pained by all the awful possibilities that came to mind, Olivia couldn't finish the scenario. She would rather spend the rest of her life here, passing each day in the same manner as this one, than have Amanda go through any of the tortures she had experienced over the past few hours. But God, the thought of being trapped inside The Box for another hour, let alone days, was too much to bear.

She told herself to get up and move, to keep warm by searching for a way out—battering the goddamn doors down with one of the heavy-looking tripod lights, if nothing else—and when she found it, to run. To never stop running until she was back with her family, back in Amanda's arms.

Then she saw Amanda up ahead, laughing with the kids, capering with the dogs, and waving for Olivia to join them. She was wearing a dress Olivia had never seen before, long and flowing like her unfettered blond hair. The strands shone gold in the sunlight, and as Olivia drifted to sleep on a filthy mattress on the floor of a large metal box, her hand slid into Amanda's inside the dream, fitting like a glove.

Together, they strolled home in the endless spring sunshine.

. . .