Selena Kitt - Hussy

He shook her, his face inches from hers, teeth clenched so tightly it was hard to understand him through the sneer. “You know just what you did, you teasing little whore!”

“It wasn’t me!” Lindsey shook her head, incredulous. “It was you! You! ”

“You asked for it.” He dropped his hands from her and went over to the bed and started throwing her journals into a box. He was going to burn them, as if he could rid himself of her and everything that had happened, sweep it away and pretend it never existed.

“Maybe I’ve deserved every horrible thing you’ve ever done to me.” Her voice shook as she watched him stacking the scarred and pained words of her adolescence into a cardboard box. “I just hope it was worth it. Did it make you feel like a man-fucking your twelve-year-old stepdaughter?”

He turned to her, his face red with anger at the words, but Lindsey didn’t stop. “Oh right, I’m not supposed to talk about it-and who would believe a little slut like me, anyway? Certainly not my own mother. Not after the stories you told about me.”

Lindsey paused to take a shaky breath, remembering the slow erosion that had happened between her and her mother over the years as he started to harp on Lindsey about her clothes, her developing body. “I wasn't a slut until you made me one… going on and on about all the boys I’d fucked at the ripe old age of twelve… when the truth was, the only one who ever touched me was you !”

“Shut up!” He came toward her, his posture threatening, but she couldn’t stop. Something had cracked open in her tonight. Maybe it had happened in the woods, when they tied her up, forced her down, worked her cunt as if that was all she was, holes to be filled, something to be used and tossed away. It had begun seeping out then, like the blood from her lip, but now it broke open, a flood.

Like the night the moon was in my window…

She remembered that in a flood, too, a deluge, and the memory tasted bitter, like copper on her tongue. Even that memory was unsafe. It came in a flood, like the blood between her legs had flowed when he forced himself on her, in her, and she couldn’t do anything but endure. The moon had floated in a square patch of window, and she had gone away then- I fell down, Daddy -all the way to the moon, just like she had earlier tonight.

“You knew I was a virgin!” Lindsey screamed, the ache in her chest bursting as she sobbed, not wanting to but remembering everything she’d been hiding, covering, holding back-everything she had poured into those journals. “And you left me… in all that blood… so much blood… ”

Her voice cracked and she spat the last at him. “I had to throw the sheets away and turn my mattress over so my own mother wouldn’t see what you’d done to me!”

Lindsey grabbed the edge of the bed and shoved it toward the wall, tipping the twin mattress up, revealing the darkened stain underneath as it slid off the box spring. She pointed to it, trembling, remembering how she had scrubbed and scrubbed, tears and snot mixing with the blood on the mattress, wishing she could just melt away, erase herself, until she became transparent.

“Get out!” He reached past her for the doorknob, his voice shaking. “I want you out of my house.”

“Oh, I have no intention of staying.” Lindsey turned to go, and they both saw her mother standing just outside the door, hand raised as if to knock, her face pale, eyes wide.

Lindsey just brushed past her, not saying a word. Her whole body ached as if it was on fire, beaten, broken, but somehow she felt lighter as she walked, barefoot, down the street, looking for the nearest pay phone where she would call Zach and ask him to come for her. Maybe, she whispered to the rising moon, just maybe, there was finally someone in the world who might believe her.

She wouldn’t have done it for anyone else, and her eyes sought Zach’s after every question. Yet she still found the words sticking in her throat as the officer scribbled on her pad, trying to look unbiased and nonjudgmental. Lindsey didn’t think she was doing a very good job, and she thought sending a woman was just cheap-as if she would feel more comfortable with a female? Not likely.

“So, did you know any of your assailants?”

Lindsey cleared her throat. “I… no.” It was the first time she’d lied, and the first time she didn’t lift her eyes to Zach’s.

“And you obviously resisted, fought back, told them no?”

“Yes.” She traced the top edge of the thin hospital sheet covering the hospital gown the nurse insisted she wear. Her voice was almost inaudible, but she couldn’t seem to make it any stronger. “But I always tell them no.”

“What?” The detective leaned in, tucking a stray blonde hair from her ponytail behind her ear. “What was that?”

“I always say no.” Lindsey still didn’t look up, feeling something burning in her throat, but she went on. “It’s a game. It’s a thing. I just… I like to say no, and have them, you know, do it anyway.”

She felt their eyes on her and didn’t want to look up and see their faces-especially Zach. She half-expected him to get up and go, right then. The silence seemed to stretch forever, and then, finally, the detective spoke again.

“How are they supposed to know the difference?”

“I don’t know.” Lindsey shrugged. “Does it matter?”

“Did you have an agreement with these men? Did they know that your ‘no’ meant yes?”

Lindsey thought of Brian-of all of them, he was the only one who really knew the game. Had he told the new ones, the others? She didn’t know, but figured he must have. His continuous apology, both verbal and non, told her that much. They knew the game, but when her “no” had turned insistent, when even Brian knew she didn’t want to play the game anymore, the others had gone on.

She remembered Smooth, the look in his eyes. He didn’t care about the game-he didn’t want her to like it, and most especially, he didn’t want her to be in control. Everything he did made it clear she was helpless, powerless before him. He’d known she didn’t want what they were dishing out, that her “no” had really meant “no.”

But there was no way to tell the detective that. How could she possibly defend herself? And if she told this woman there was some sort of agreement, she would have to admit knowing Brian, tell them about her encounters with him before, even though the rest of them had been strangers to her. She remembered the tears in Brian’s eyes, the apology there, and knew she couldn’t.

“No… ” Lindsey sighed. “It was just a game I played in my head.”

The detective, who had kept her distance the whole time, business-like, writing in her little note pad, took a step toward the bed. Lindsey flinched, only able to bring her eyes up to the level of the woman’s badge.

“That’s a dangerous game, Lindsey.”

She snorted, finally looking at the woman’s face through half-closed eyes-she couldn’t open them any further, and they were still crusted with blood. “Obviously.”

“We’ll have a sketch artist contact you and I want you to look through our mugshots.” The blonde-her name, officer Deborah Bills, was embroidered on her uniform pocket, and Lindsey wondered for a moment if the woman had done it herself-closed her notebook and tucked it away into that pocket for safekeeping. “If you can identify the suspects and there is enough evidence to charge them, you’ll be asked to testify.”

The thought made Lindsey’s stomach drop, but she just nodded. “Can I go home now?”

“You’ll have to talk to the doctor about that.” The officer took a card from a holder and put it on the adjustable hospital bedside table. “This has my number on it. If you’ve forgotten anything, or there’s something new you have to say, give me a call.”