Forced to Change

The Commandant lifted me from the pillow, but only to my knees. He used my hair like a leash and dragged me to the edge of the platform. I scrambled to my feet and sprawled on the floor as he went down the stairs.

He brought me to the man I recognized as the one who shot Paul. His was a face I'd know forever, even in my altered state from the bowl of wine. The man undid his belt and dropped his pants. His partially erect penis hung in my face inches from my lips.

"No," I screamed. "Not him. Anyone but him. No!"

The Commandant's hand in my hair gave me little choice as he pushed me against Paul's murderer. I opened my mouth and then I snapped my teeth at him. I growled. If he dared to put his dick in my mouth I'd bite it off. I was not sucking his cock.

The Commandant continued to push me towards the man and I opened my mouth to scream again. Before the Commandant could do more than laugh at my blatant refusal Lana raced into the dining hall with the man who'd had the pictures.

I was forgotten as she stepped between us. She spoke quickly, but from what I could tell she was talking about what happened when we'd been taken. I heard Paul's name a few times and then the Commandant suddenly struck Paul's murderer, bringing him to his knees with one punch. The man stared at me as the Commandant kicked him in his exposed groin, then he continued to beat the man almost to death.

Over the next six months my thoughts often narrowed in on Paul's killer when he found out how much Paul was worth. He managed to convey with just his eyes a hatred that matched my own. His eyes haunted me. I had no idea at the time what his wrath could be. I only knew then I wanted no part of it. It took two full months for him to heal from that beating. The Commandant had demoted him and ridiculed him.

During that two months I lost my humanity. I was treated like a dog. I lost count of the number of times I was forced to masturbate for an entire hall of men and women's enjoyment. Over and over I was manually manipulated until I wanted what I didn't want. I was kept in a state of sexual frenzy without an outlet, and the cruelest part, the joke was I was left to suffer, wanting, panting and waiting for relief that never came and wouldn't cool. It was then and only then that the rapes seemed like blessings. I was lost, hopeless, and angry-and that's what I considered the good days. Bad days meant Noel, Paul's killer.

His punishment didn't save me from a fate worse than death, because when he worked his way back into the Commandant's good graces he came after me. It took over a month of torture before I even knew his name was Noel.

Noel enjoyed it most when he tied me up, immobilized me. He beat me for spite. Even though I didn't resist him, he forced himself and his will on me. I tried so hard to please everyone there. I followed every rule, especially with Noel. It seemed the only way to survive.

Nothing I did could please Noel. The more I tried, the worse his punishments. I hated him in a way that I knew was wrong. But some emotions can burn only so long before you become numb to them.

I did what I was supposed to do and other than Noel, no one felt the need to tie me up. That's why when he did it, it was that much worse for me. I never fought, or ran, or talked, or yelled, or screamed. I was nothing and I did nothing to suggest my disdain for him. His anger wasn't something to be sated and as it grew I knew he'd kill me soon. A part of me wished for it, to have my life finally ended.

Noel approached me one day, almost six months after I'd arrived in Cantana. After six months of living as an animal, my self-image was as low as it could get. I'd spent half a year as a sex slave. My body was used up and abused daily, yet the worst degradations came from Noel alone.

Noel's death was a simple matter of two things: right place, right time. First, Rosa, the older woman with quick hands and a straight razor from my first night in Cantana, had just shaved me. For some reason she left the razor lying on the blanket. I'll never know if she did it on purpose.

Second, it was the one and only time Noel didn't restrain me in some way. The razor was there and Noel hadn't restrained me. Nothing in that moment felt real, yet it seemed the only thing I could do. It was as if I was supposed to do it.

No one else was around to stop him from killing me. I seized the razor as he opened his pants and I slashed his groin, turning him into a eunuch with one cut. His blood splattered on my fingers, hands, arms, breasts, still hot with his body heat. As it turned out, no one was around to stop me from killing him.

If he'd tied me up as he usually did, I wouldn't have grabbed the razor and castrated him. If Rosa had taken the razor with her, as she usually did, it wouldn't have been there to cut him.

As true as it was, I still couldn't believe what I'd done. I would have turned the razor on myself if not for Rosa's return for her forgotten blade. She was silent as she took the blade from my hand and the horror of my actions settled in my mind.

When the Commandant found out what I'd done, he came up with a cruel way to punish me, worse than my own demise. I finally learned what Paco meant by the Chamber.

Chamber Pot was the actual name of the room. He threw me away in that room. His anger was a tangible force. The Commandant tied me up himself. That I'd made him so angry, my Commandant, I knew I deserved it. I only accepted my fate when he ignored my pleas. I felt so guilty that I'd disappointed the Commandant, that I'd caused the look of pain on his face, I accepted the punishment.

I was his discarded piece of trash and I felt as if I were less than nothing when he left me there underneath a wooden toilet bench for days. I knew I would die. I wanted to die as the hours increased into days. The guilt of killing a man aside, I hated myself too much to care about my life any longer. When Paco came into the room to check on me or when the door opened for small moments as people came and urinated and/or defecated on me I had my only respite from the ungodly stench. When all hope was a faded memory, when I was sure I was about to die from dehydration and starvation in that place reeking of human waste, while I prayed for death to a God I was sure had forgotten me, I was saved.

I was so out of my mind by the time I was rescued that I didn't even realize that's what was happening. I begged the man who cut me free to let me die. I saw green eyes as I slipped into unconsciousness.

***

The smell from the Chamber came back to me as vividly as if I were still there. I could taste it. My eyes burned and I gasped for air, choking on the noxious stench that filled my nose. My spine prickled as fingers of ice raced up and down it. It felt as if I couldn't escape my past no matter what I did. I was embarrassed, humiliated, falling into who I'd been all those years ago. My mind began to put together some of the puzzle of how Jared knew me before tonight.

The thought of Darkie's blood on the floor sent my head pounding with camera-like flashes through my mind, triggering the past. Each event vivid and detailed like bullets through my mind and body. Click. Each of the beatings, the torture, the rapes. Click. The crimson tide of Noel's blood on my hands and body. Click! The Chamber, that awful, foul, nauseating cell. Click! Boom!

"Please, please..." I whispered as I rocked back and forth in the passenger seat. "Please. Please, I'm going to be sick."

Suddenly I saw Jared, not now but in my past. His face was the face of a man I should have remembered forever. He'd carried me away from that hell, Cantana, my nightmare. He was the man that saved my life. My stomach churned with a wave of nausea I could barely contain.

Jared caught me as I fell off the seat. I tried to stand but my legs buckled. At the same time he released the belt tying my hands together. I was still spiraling in and out of my past as I twisted away from the door. My stomach emptied and my head spun as I landed on my hands and knees beside him.

I couldn't stop feeling it, over and over, each violation, each penetration, each degradation, mixed with visuals of hairy, smelly men and women touching me, fucking me. The memories racked my body, bowed my back, and made me want to scream. I couldn't scream, though. No yell, no scream, no fight. Paco's warnings rang out in my head.

My mind replayed the words that had comforted me, 'this isn't happening to me,' even though I knew it had happened again. It was happening to me. My life was not my own once again. I was a victim, the ultimate victim. My body convulsed as I writhed on the ground. My muscles turned to liquid, my body out of control. Nothing was in my control. Had it ever been?

The man who'd made the worst experience of my life stop was here, making it happen again. I'd been so grateful to him then, but now...What could he possibly want from me now?

I prayed. I wanted to believe that God was kind, not cruel. But I couldn't understand why God would want me to suffer so much in one life.

"Let me die," I whispered. Not again, I thought as tears streamed down my face. The wind turned them to ice instantly. "Please, God. Let me die."