Under a full moon she wondered up through the narrow gorges and canyons, everything luminous but for the black shadowy places.
Beaten, yet un-raped. Alive, yet unwanted. Naked, feet hurting as she walked on sand and gravel, growing thirsty, and high as a kite, she got completely lost. And her glasses were dirty, too.
Uncle Pilo. Why had Tom had to remind her of him? She was thirteen when it happened. But it wasn't his fault! The man had never touched her until she let him. Until she flirted. Until she touched him first. Until boys at school started forcing themselves on her.
Ana struggled with it in her mind. Taking the blame, then a hot rage burning against her uncle. He was supposed to say no! He fucked her more than once. Her guilt and shame in liking it so much and spurring him on was what was eating her alive. Whether she had liked it or not, it had been wrong!
"The world is a vampire," she sang as the sun came up.
She had turned around to at least get her backpack and water. But she must have gone down the wrong canyon, and got even more lost.
"It was both our faults."
Pilo clearly had perverted thoughts for young girls. She had known it. He had never acted on it, but she had grown up seeing how he stared guiltily at girls.
She wanted to lose her virginity to a real man, not boys in the school bathroom, and see what sex was really like, and knew she could count on the much older man to show her, and never, ever tell a soul.
Silly girl, many girls think such thoughts. Early maturity of body, but no maturity of mind. Your uncle was entirely at fault, not you. A child knows not their feelings or sexuality.
Ana had blamed herself because Pilo withdrew into depression then took his own life.
Coyotes yipped and reminded her of mortality. Let them come and rip her apart! They came closer. A pack. She was terrified and wanted to turn back. Designs on rocks illuminated by the moon appeared. Native American glyphs were everywhere. All around her. She was dizzy and fell. The air was cold, but the rocks still warm.
"It is my fault! I knew what I was doing! I killed him!"
"Free will is a bitch. You know it is his fault. You are just using him to justify your own lack of dignity. Now you are behaving as he did. Will you take your own life, too?"
Ana looked around the early morning brightness. The hot sun on her skin. Who had spoken? Was she going loco? She moaned from a fierce headache. Her stomach hurt. Her feet bled.
"Over a century of psychology and we don't know a fucking thing about sexuality and the mind. No, we actually know less than our ancestors."
She wandered the desert to die under the hot sun. Hardy had summoned the demon that possessed her. The glyphs on the rocks moved and danced, and the world of the Natives came alive. Feathered headdresses, eerie music, ritual dancing around fires.
Young girls stared at her. Generations of women going back thousands of years. Grow up, become a bride, have babies, grow old. You thought you were ready. You tried too soon. Men, rapists? No such concept existed to the Natives.
"Fuck you," Ana shouted back.
It's a gringo trick. Oh, you're body gets used and you get all weepy. Gringo victim mentality. Gringo logic. They make weak women and weaker men. You were a woman at thirteen, and you know it!
Driven by thirst and madness, she kept hiking downward until she found the river again. The icy cold Colorado. Falling to her stomach she drank in the pure river water to sate her thirst.
She vomited, and her mind cleared. Then she drank more and kept it down. Hunger came, but she could do nothing for it. The wash she was in was a dead end. No way to travel along the river and seek help. Too rocky.
Rinsing off in the water, cleaning up, she then left it behind. She was dry again in only a few minutes in such desert heat.
"I don't want to be saved," and she walked back into the desert.
Keeping to the shadows along the way, she kept herself from burning. Alone, naked, afraid, she had only her memories and demons.
Back and forth she argued with herself.
--
A naked soldier appeared, pushed her face against a rock wall, and began fucking her dry pussy. But it felt good, and her juices started flowing, and she grunted from the hard, needful thrusts into her.
"Is this Hardy's idea of psychotherapy?"
He said nothing as he fucked her, his hand holding her hair and head pressed against a rock wall. She took it like slaves and wives have taken it for thousands of years, with resigned pleasure.
The feel of cock stretching her pussy, sliding in and out, pumping hard and fast, raw dominating power. Her eyes rolled back as she came. Then cum exploded inside her and slid down her inner thighs.
"Fuck yeah, cabron. Give it all to me. Get yours!"
She found herself alone and rubbing her clit, feeling the soft folds of her intimate flesh, masturbating in the shade, hot and dry. One last orgasm before she perished from this hell.
Then Ana turned and put her back against the cool rock, and shouted put into the canyons. "Where the fuck are you, Hardy? I did it! Not my stupid weak uncle! I destroyed him! On purpose!"
A lie, of course. Once unleashed, Pilo fucked her. She had not been ready. He had used her flirting and willingness to experiment as an excuse to fulfil his own dark desires. What she had really needed was her uncle spanking the shit out of her, and telling her to save herself for a boy she would marry and have children with.
So she tried to bury it by exploring her sexuality. How the fuck was Tom any different than her Uncle Pilo? He also took advantage of her. Had he known all along that Pilo had done something? What the fuck was his motives?
Ass on hard ground, legs bent and spread, leaning back against the wall, she looked around her.
"No mas," she said. "It is finished."
And just like that she was done with her pity party. Pilo was dead, and good riddance. He was God's problem, not hers. He had destroyed himself letting himself be tempted by an underage teenager. It was time to stop blaming herself when she still needed adults to guide her and teach her. No teen is ready for sex, not at any age. Not even legal adult teens.
She had faced her own demons, and here she was. She looked back on her slutty memories, and she simply had to accept now she loved it all. Yes, it had been an unhealthy way to deal with her pain, with Pilo. A bad way to deal with insecurities.
Gudit, Brenda, and Lucy ... now she understood them. A woman could face her demons many ways. Some never enjoy sex again. Others refuse to let those bastard men in their lives steal their joy. Some just healed, found God, or rediscovered Him, and live normal happy lives.
Some never get over it, and self-destruct or try to destroy other lives with them. She almost went down that path.
"No mas," she said again.
Looking around the noon day world that blazed with incredible heat by the, and the sun now touched her feet, she decided it would be nice to live. Soon she would lose her shade. Her mouth was parched. Her body weak.
"Shit, I'm in trouble. I might actually fucking die out here."
She found a crack in the wall to crawl and and sleep. Trying to move during the heat of the day was certain death. And she slept deeper than she perhaps ever had in her whole life.
--
She dreamed of a bruja in the desert, old and gray, half naked and burned by the sun, dancing and grinning a toothless grin. Then she dreamed of snakes.
When she awoke, it was her instincts warning her, for a real snake had come for her. It hovered over her face, ready to strike. The rattler and the dusky light both made her mind go into the primal.
