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Chapter 7 -- Servitude (Can be read in isolation)
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Rose Redmond landed heavily on her hands and knees in the dark damp alleyway.
Facing her own reflection in a puddle from the light that spilled from the doorway behind her, her breath came quickly, physical exhaustion racked her body and a mental fatigue from the last two hours shattered her mind.
"You're fucking animals" she sneered lifting her self unsteadily to her feet, looking up at him from under the bangs of her auburn hair, before reiterating "...fucking animals."
"We've been called worse," the male offered sardonically from the doorway through which she'd just been roughly escorted.
Rose turned away from her tormentor, the chill of the cold night gripped her body, naked from the waist up her dishevelled black faux leather skirt and thigh length black suede boots covered her legs as she stumbled unsteadily on an uneven surface on high heels.
New boots purchased only hours earlier, a pick me up to herself ahead of heading out for the night to try to forget about her mounting issues. Issues that had now manifest and been exaggerated as her mind wrestled with the all too fresh memories of her body being ruthlessly abused
Tonight at the hands of two men in a bar, six months earlier it had been the taxi driver, the man supposedly there to offer her safe guidance home.
Her life had spiralled since the torturous attention at the unknown location. She had taken any opportunity to mask the truth and hide the sordid memories that scarred her mental wellbeing. She had forsaken close friends, lost control of her once prestigious job long before being exposed and humiliated by the literal exposure of a moment of insanity in her past which had fast become the contributing reason to her recently imposed unemployment.
Tonight had supposed to have been a release, a night to enjoy and subsequently forget her concerns. Heavy alcohol consumption had led them on a bar crawl that had ultimately ended up at the busy Irish Bar. She had found him attractive at first, the man now casting his shadow over her from the doorway. He had claimed to be the bar owner, he had coerced her away from her friends with his charm. She had fallen for that insistent charm and swept away in the moment off the back of his conversation and the genuine interest he had shown in her.
Rose had felt wanted, falling as it transpired into a familiar need, her small group of friends hadn't questioned or raised concerns on saying their goodbyes after she'd informed them of her decision to stay behind after the bar had closed. They knew her and her promiscuous reputation, it was regular for Rose, almost expected.
To his part he had played the accommodating host, keeping her glass of vodka lime and soda water topped up as she'd sat at the bar observing while he'd diligently gone about his duties once the bar had emptied of both clientele and employees alike.
"You forgetting something" her suitor offered from the doorway as she struggled through her addled mind to recall the name of the man who stood over her. The man who had just brutally abused the trust she had placed in him.
Turning back she saw him only briefly in the doorway, the bile in her gut rising as he passed her dark grey denim jacket to his brother. The brother whose name she did suddenly recall, Stevie.
Her jacket was passed between them only to be unceremoniously flung to her feet, she barely considered the further ignominy as she hurriedly crouched to pick the jacket up from the rain-soaked tarmac floor at her feet. Her sheer halter neck top she knew she would not see again, last seen cat to the floor of the bar as the feeble material had shredded as they had torn it from her. As she crouched to retrieve her jacket she noticed the thick black duct tape still stuck to the back of her new suede boots.
'Your incredible looking fuck me boots' as he, the nameless brother, had called them. Rose's mind lingering on her unoffended response to their description smirking seductively as she stood before him with her arms draped around his shoulders as she stood pressed to the bar as his hands pressed firmly down from the small of her back over her ass through the black leather effect skirt.
"Are you going to fuck me in them" she had wantonly enquired on a seductive tone into his ear.
Barely minutes later she had found herself struggling for all her worth. His brother appearing from seemingly nowhere adding his significant physical presence to assure she was overpowered in a swift unexpected and fateful change of circumstance. Manhandling her weak frame with ease before crudely restraining her as she begged and pleaded for their mercy within the darkened, empty and locked bar. Rose' hands held behind her back to be restrained in thick strong black tape as she struggled and lashed out as best she could.
The same black tape that was then just as effectively utilised to fasten her ankles to the legs of a long wooden table she had been dragged before. All but incapacitated she soon found herself forced face first across the table with same black tape used to gag her verbal protests
Sobbing and whimpering she had no explanation of her subsequent lack of fight and surrender to their brutality, as with her skirt hitched around her waist she surrendered and let herself be fucked harshly by each of them before enduring the final ignominy of being anally penetrated as she'd howled into the makeshift tape gag.
Wrapping her jacket around her body pulling up her collar and buttoning the garment to her neck Rose shivered as the rear door to the premises closed on her. Leaving her alone and broken she stood there staring at the closed door frozen in the emotion of the moment, hurting as much from the rejection as the ignominy of what had transpired over the course of the last hour.
Rose barely registered the heavy rain now lashing down around her that soaked both her auburn hair and her dishevelled clothing.
Stumbling away she sought shelter in a recessed doorway a little way along on the opposite side of the alley. Escaping the rain, she frantically searched her jacket pockets as she slid down the door behind her to sit on the hard cold concrete step. Taking little solace but great relief on discovering that her electronic vape her house keys and her phone were still in her pocket. Turning her phone over in her hand the Home Screen message let her know she had only ten percent battery remaining as well as a WhatsApp from an unknown number.
Ignoring the message on her screen as her mind faltered. Rose could not genuinely think who to call, who to turn to as tears filled her eyes but refused to fall.
She knew she should report what's played out just as she should have done when she'd been drugged and abducted by the Taxi Driver six months earlier.
Taking a long drag on the sweet 'strawberry ice' electronic cigarette Rose shuddered on exhaling a thick plums of vapour, the nicotine nowhere near calming her fractured mind as she took another deep lungful as her phone screen fell dark in her hand.
Alone, cold and soaked to the skin in the alley Rose could not comprehend how such vile circumstance and misfortune had befallen her twice as she idly peeled the thick tape away from the backs of her heeled boots, fixating on concerns the tape may have caused damage to the suede.
The last six months since her fateful demise had been sent her in to an emotionless free-fall, hurtling into increasing promiscuity, heavy drinking and casual drug taking. She had been naive back then she had been just as naive tonight. Trouble finds trouble she thought to herself
The thought running over and over in her head, tainted by the repetition of the abuse she had suffered, 'Is this what my existence has become?'
