At the dorm they only had a glorified broom closet left for her. 'For now,' they said. She didn't care. Lying on the narrow field bed, her first tears came, and they wouldn't stop for a while. Of course, Carl was right; she had been raped. The signs were all over her body. Fragments of the night before didn't leave much to be guessed, did they? She recalled a whirlwind of sweaty bodies and many, many glasses of alcohol. She remembered the omnipresent hands. She must have fainted, but, considering the bruises, the soreness and the stench, that hadn't stopped them, had it? She chuckled through her tears; the goddamn irony of it all. At last, someone had deigned to poke his hard cock into her, and she hadn't even noticed. The ugly therapist had been right: boys don't care as long as there are holes, willing or not. New tears soaked her face, flushing away even the beginnings of logical thought.
She must have fallen asleep of sheer exhaustion. When she woke, her thoughts seemed clearer. Sitting on the wobbly edge of the bed, she knew she couldn't very well stay. She would keep bumping into people who saw her at the frat house dressed like that, getting drunk, kissing guys and doing things she couldn't remember. And then she would meet the guys who took her upstairs and, well... She wouldn't recognize them, but they would remember her. Maybe Robert Whatshisname had been one of them. They might blackmail her. And to top it off, there were Carl and Bimbo Cunt Marshmallow.
She shivered. How could she even go to college like this? No, fleeing was the only choice. At least she was great at that, wasn't she, having done it her whole life. Even coming here had been a flight, hadn't it? So many reasons to fly, but where to this time? Home? Oh, fucking please! To another town, another college? Where would she find the money? Or should she just get a bus and drive to a godforsaken place and be a waitress or whatever... Well, that only worked in movies.
She rocked back and forth, holding her face with both hands. Okay, if not flight...fight? It was an expression, wasn't it? Something about basic choices. Fight, as if that was even a choice. Fight how? Ariel chuckled, thinking of the little Swedish girl she saw on TV when she was a kid, the girl with the pigtails who could lift a horse. She used to say: 'I've never done that, so I must be good at it.' Maybe she was right? She was ugly enough to be like her. What kind of fight could it even be? It had to be something nobody expected. So very crazy that they'd all be flabbergasted, like not knowing what hit them. So far beyond expectations that she'd finally make them all shut their fucking mouths. She sighed. Yes, nice fantasy. At least it had lifted her gloom a little. Grinning, she collected her toilet things and went down the hall to the shared showers. She hated them, with their tufts of hair and unspeakable stains everywhere. But her gloomy expectations were contradicted: the shower was clean and there even had been hot water throughout her stay.
While drying her skin, the rough towel scratched a still angrily swollen nipple, making it tighten. It reminded her of a remark Carl made as they lay in bed after yet another drunken night. Carl had circled that same nipple before taking it into her mouth, suckling it. Pointing at the shining morsel, she'd asked: "If it bothers you so much, why don't you get a nice doctor to pump them up? I've heard of a good one."
"Ewww, no way!" Ariel remembered crying out, pushing the girl away. Now she cupped her microscopic left breast and wondered if it might be that simple. It would cost thousands of dollars, of course, money she didn't have. It would also mean surgery, knives, blood, hospitals. And all those possible complications: leaking implants, horrible mistakes, scars. Besides, was she really that shallow? Two bags of silicone and all her problems would be solved? She tightened the towel around her, picked up her stuff and plodded on her slippers across the hallway to her broom closet.
"Ari? Ariel?" Turning around, she saw Carl and a woman at the entrance to the hallway. Would the girl never give up?
"Go away!" she said as she opened the door to her room. Carl ran towards her.
"Please listen," she said, panting. "This is Debra, she's a nurse. She's great. You must let her look at you. They raped you, honey. My God, they raped you. You can't let that pass. Whatever you think of me, let her help you get the fuckers nailed." Debra stood smiling. She was a plump, brown, middle-aged woman, holding a case of some sort. Ariel wanted to say no, she even did so, adding that it was no use anyway, as she'd just showered, and yesterday too. But when she stepped into her tiny room, she left the door open.
The nurse filled out a form with all kinds of embarrassing questions. Ariel often had to answer that she didn't remember, that she'd been too drunk, that it was no use, but the nurse went on, never losing her smile. Nurse Debra also asked for the clothes she'd worn that night, but Ariel had thrown the soaked, torn-up rags away at Carl's place. Carl said she'd go look for them in her garbage can. Then the woman took Ariels hands and scraped dirt from under her nails, putting what she found into tiny plastic bags. Finally, she asked Ariel to lose the towel so she could check for bruises.
Sitting on her bed, she reluctantly unwrapped her upper body. There were purple and brownish marks everywhere, on her arms, up her throat, but mainly around her nipples; some looked like teeth marks. They gave her a bewildering mixture of feelings. There was shame, but why the fuck would she feel ashamed? There also was this other feeling; was it defiance, was it pride? At least they had tried to find her tits. The nurse took pictures of all the spots and bruises; she also penciled their exact locations into the outline of a woman's body on one of her forms. Ariel noted that the outline had wide hips and generous tits. Of course, the nurse wanted her to get naked and show the rest of her body. She stood and let the towel fall. Carl gasped.
"Please, lie down on this sheet and spread your legs," the nurse said. Ariel saw a big plastic sheet on the bed. She hesitated. Then she laid down, closing her eyes as she opened her legs. The plastic felt cold and slick. She knew why Carl had gasped. Her lower belly was black and blue, as was most of her upper thighs. Her cunt lips looked red and swollen, her anus too. She felt the probing fingers of the nurse, wincing when they reached her vagina. She never opened her eyes.
"I'm sorry, but I need to get a few more samples," the nurse said. "It may get, ehm, uncomfortable." It did.
When she finally opened her eyes again, Ariel saw the nurse filling her kit with all kinds of little bags and small bottles. Then she asked Ariel to get up and folded the plastic sheet carefully, shoving it into another plastic bag. Finally, she closed the kit and put it back into the case.
