by Cerys du Lys
Yeah, I saw a whole fucking lot. Fuck. I can’t even fucking believe it. Even knowing what I know now and having done what I’ve done, I can’t fucking believe it.
How the fuck could someone do that to someone else? What the fuck ever happened to being kind to others?
My entire fucking life changed.
*** Angeline
Noah was my savior, and yet he is more than that, too. I do not know exactly what Noah is to me, but he is very special and important.
A long time ago, my parents died. I should have died. I was meant to be dead. A priest took me in after that. That is what HE told me. When they discovered I had no relatives who could care for me in the absence of my parents, they forced me to become a ward of the church. I did not understand that, but I did not understand many things at the time.
I was old enough to go out on my own, but what did I have? My parents were not rich and we did not own much. We had a house and enough food to feed ourselves, along with a car and a few other necessities. On the day of their death, we were returning from a trip into one of the bigger towns an hour or two away from the village. I do not remember the name of my home town from back then, and I do not ever want to remember it again. It is lost to me, gone and forgotten. The person I used to be was born there and lived there, but I am not that person anymore. The person I am now was born the day I connected with Noah.
My mother and father wanted more. Not for themselves, but for me. They told me this as we drove. I was of an age to move out on my own, but where should I go? There were not many jobs where we lived. If we moved, we could find something. Maybe I could attend a university and get a better education? It would be hard, but they would try. Even if we must live in a large van in order to scrounge up enough money to pay for my books, that is what they wanted to do. Our current home was not much better than a van, anyway, so this sounded exciting to me.
Then they died. I died, too. I should have. That is what he told me.
You are already dead.
I believed him
I used to know happiness, but I did not after that. It is difficult to know what happiness is when you are left alone in the world. I thought I could lose myself in religion and become someone important to the community. No, that would not provide me with anything more than shelter and food, but if I did not do that, I would have nothing, not even those most basic of necessities. Where would I live and what would I eat?
If I had lived in the forest and sustained myself on berries and fish that I caught in the lake, I likely would have been better off. I did not know that then, but I know this now. It is too late. What does it matter, anyway? I was not among the living. I was a ghost of a person. I was invisible and unimportant.
I knew happiness before, but after everything that happened all I knew was sadness. I knew sadness for a long time, but then one day something happened. I do not know what it was, but I was not sad anymore. I did not remember what sadness was, nor how to explain it. I was nothing, like he said. Emotions confused me. I became blank and empty.
He called me Angel. It was not intended as a nice name, nor was it in any way similar to my real name. It was a name to remind me that I did not belong here. It sounds pleasant and it contains hints of divinity and heavenly association in it, but he did not define it in that way.
You must suffer, he told me. You are to blame for your parents death. You told me they were attempting to act selflessly for you, and yet by accepting their kindness you were selfish. Because of your selfish nature, you were placed back on this mortal coil in order to repent. This is what you were meant to do.
You must deal with the consequences of your own actions. He told me that he would be the one to make certain that I followed my newly ordained fate. He would punish me because I could not be trusted to punish myself or to understand why I needed punishment.
I suffered. I ate only scraps. He forced me to cleanse my body and my soul in some mockery of baptism. He held my head in a marble tub filled with water while I thrashed and flailed, unable to breathe. He brought me to the brink of death again, waiting until my body settled into a lifeless calm because of a lack of oxygen, then he pulled my head from the bath, flung me to the floor, and forced life back into my body with his wicked hands and sinful lips. I choked up water and sputtered back to life eventually, but more often than not I wished that I wouldn’t.
Please, I begged. Please let me die?
I did not. He tortured me. He raped me and he let my peers rape me, as well. These were boys that I used to know and socialize with. I attended school with them when they were younger, and now they treated me like a empty hole to be used for their pleasure. I did not understand. Please, why are you doing this? Please stop? Please help me?
They did not help me. They forced themselves on me. They hurt me. I clawed and scratched, fighting against them. They began coming two at a time, or sometimes three, and one of them would hold my arms down, while another spread my legs, and the last abused me. They took turns like this, one, then another, and finally the third.
They hurt me.
I tried to kill myself. I did not feel anymore, I did not know sadness or happiness, but I tried to kill myself. I do not know if that is the only reason why I tried. There were many reasons. I was given little food and water, as well. More often than not I found myself passing out from starvation. I shoved spare scraps of sermon bread down my throat every Sunday when no one was looking, and I scavenged for food whenever I could, but it was not enough. One time I discovered that as he was drowning me, I could gulp down water and satisfy my unending thirst if only for a little while, and I began to do that.
None of that was enough, though. I knew this. I needed more. I wanted to eat an actual meal. I wanted to be able to go to the lake and drink my fill, but I was rarely allowed out of the church without supervision. Even when I was allowed to go outside on my own, I was not alone. Someone was watching me. I do not know who, but that is what I was told and that is what I believed. Perhaps it was a lie. Perhaps I could have escaped and I didn’t.
I scratched at my arms and legs until I bled, hoping to die. I did not die. I continued to do it. When he saw me like that, he stopped me. He took me into his bedroom and he stripped me of my clothes and he ripped out all of my nails one by one. He knew what he was doing. The device he used is similar to the one I have now. He placed my fingernails in a box, laughing as he did so, telling me that I did not deserve them.
I was not pretty. Girls who are not pretty do not need fingernails. Even if I had them, I did not have money to buy polish to paint them. Blood suited me better. Blood is penance. I must bleed for my sins and for my selfish behavior. Trying to kill myself before I had paid penance for my crimes was also selfish, he said.
While the beds of my fingernails flared in agony and blood dripped down my fingers, he ripped off his clothes and then threw me on the bed. He laughed at me as he took me by force. He laughed when I tried to fight him off and scratched and begged and pleaded one final time, but all I could do was smear blood across his naked body and feel pain shooting through my hands and into my arms and finally to my heart.
I knew happiness before, and then I knew sadness. I thought I knew nothing after that, but I did not. I knew desperation and fear for a little while. Those are powerful emotions, too. Once my fingernails were gone and I owned nothing, not even myself, I finally understood what it is like to know nothing. It is not a feeling I can describe; it is a feeling borne of the absence of all other feelings.
They did not need to hold my hands down any longer. I did not fight them off. I lay there, still, while they forced themselves on me. On occasion, through no effort or want of my own, I felt the tremors of orgasm, but this did not pleasure me. It was a thing that occurred to my body during the natural progression of the sexual activities forced onto me. I did not want to have an orgasm, but it is difficult not to when man after man after man takes his pleasure from you, supposedly ridding himself of sin in the p
rocess, and by the time they are through, the first wishes to begin again.
My body hurt. I would lay in the church basement, feeling cold stone against my naked skin. He used to chain me there at night, but I did not need chains any longer. I needed nothing. Why should I leave? Where would I go? I owned nothing, had nowhere to go, knew no one who would help me. I did not even own myself. I was his, and when he wished, he would kill me, and then I would be dead like I should be. He did not say this to me, but that is what I thought he would eventually do.
Noah arrived, though. He came and he requested to be alone with me. This was when they thought he would find pleasure in my body like they did. They had done it for a long time now and did not feel the need for privacy during the act, but Noah was different. He was not called Noah, then. He was someone else, but to me he will always be Noah.
He saved me. I thought he would take me that day, but he did not. I lay on the floor, waiting, naked, but he only watched me from afar. He stood in the room as far away from me as he could, and he remained silent. He offered me nothing but respite and peace.
I loved him. I fell in love with him that day. I know that it seems sudden, but when your existence consists of pain and torment during every single hour of the day, and someone gives you the gift of thirty minutes of peace--one-thousand-and-eight-hundred seconds--it is not hard to love them.
The next day when he came, he spoke to me softly. He asked me if I was hurt. What do you say to that? I did not know. I did not speak to him. I lay there, basking in nothingness, listening to Noah’s sweet words, relishing the sound of his voice. He did not speak often, though; only a little. When he would speak, I counted the seconds in my mind, hoping that the next time he spoke he would speak for a little longer.
Days passed and I cherished my time with Noah. I counted every moment with him in my mind. I knew exactly how long we were together. We were alone. They allowed us this. He never touched me or forced himself on me. I stopped laying on the floor and waiting for him to rape me. Instead I sat against the wall opposite him and looked at him. We watched each other. He spoke and talked about what he did during the day. I listened and tried to remember doing those same things. Noah and I did not do the same things, though. Even before this, I do not remember ever having done what Noah did. He spoke of the woods and the lake and how he once spent a week in a cave and survived by eating fish and whatever edible foliage he could find.
I lived in a cave, too. It was not a wild cave, but a civilized one. I thought I would have preferred a wild cave. It sounded much better. Noah told me how during that week he woke up whenever he wanted, rising with the sun or staying in a little later, and how he spent his entire day wandering through the woods, only to return once night fell so he could fall asleep beneath the stars. When I fell asleep, I could see nothing but the darkness of the ceiling. I wanted to fall asleep beneath the stars with Noah. I wanted to wake when the sun rose, or stay in a little late, and then wander the woods, free from everything.
Noah brought me food and drink, too. He smuggled it in secretly, because they would not like it. I devoured it. He gave it to me. He gave me everything he had. I knew Noah did not have a lot of money to purchase such things, but he did it anyway. He went without breakfast in order to bring me his jam-covered toast. By the time he brought it to me, it was cold and soggy, having remained wrapped in a napkin in his coat pocket for the entire day, but it tasted so wonderfully.
We talked a little. I talked to him now. He knew my name. I knew him, too. We had not talked much before this. Noah did not say it, but I thought he was shy. Perhaps not traditionally shy, but he did not like to talk much. We talked a lot now, though. He spent his afternoons with me when he could. We spent them together. Most of the time we were not alone, and more often than not it involved him watching me be tortured, abused, and nearly killed by the others, but we did spend some time alone. I cherished my time with Noah.
Once, he took me to his home. It was in the middle of the night. This was when I no longer needed chains to keep me in place. Where would I go? I was nothing. I was Angel. He snuck into the church and found me in the basement, though. We absconded into the night and arrived at Noah’s home. He brought me into it and we gorged on food he bought and saved just for this occasion. We spent hours together, sitting in the near-dark in his room, only seeing each other by the light of the moon and a flashlight he’d borrowed.
I lay beneath blankets and we cuddled together. I felt warm and soft. I do not know how or why, but I laughed. I remembered. I felt happy again. How did this happen? What happened to me to make me feel that way?
I looked at Noah and he looked at me while we hid beneath his blankets with his flashlight. I saw his face in the yellowish glow and he smiled at me. I smiled back at him.
“Can...” he started to say, but he paused. I touched his hand, the one holding the flashlight, and it bolstered his confidence. “Can I kiss you?” he finally asked.
I did not answer him with words. He tried to take back his question. He stuttered and stammered and begged me to forgive him. He said he should not have asked that. It was wrong. It was bad. He did not mean to do it.
I kissed him.
I did not mean to and I do not think Noah meant to, either, but we soon found ourselves naked that night. He entered me, but not before begging and pleading with me to say that I would like it. He said he would not do it if I did not actually want to. He did not want to do it for himself, he said. He wanted to do it for me. He wanted me to feel special.
It is funny, because I did not want to have sex with Noah for myself that night, either. I wanted to do it for us. I said yes. I kissed him. He still did not enter me. I needed to pull his hips forward forcefully before he would allow his erection inside me.
That was the first time he ever had sex. It was the first time I had ever made love. It ended in a couple of seconds, and I laughed. He stumbled and stuttered and apologized and tried to pull himself out of me, but he felt so nice and warm and I loved the feeling of him on top of me, so I held him there.
“No,” I said. “Please? Stay?”
He stayed. He became hard again soon. We tried another time. This time was very good. I did not orgasm, but I felt so soft and warm and glowing that it did not matter. Noah had never left me, stayed in me and with me the entire time, and then he came inside of me again.
“No!” I begged him, while I laughed and buried my face into his neck. “Stay?”
“Don’t leave,” he said suddenly. “Stay here with me. You can stay here and you never have to go back.”
“That is a nice thought,” I said. “It will not work, though.”
“Why?” he asked.
He looked hurt. I did not want him to be hurt, so I kissed him gently.
“He will come,” I said. “He will hurt you.”
I did not tell Noah that this was not entirely the truth. I did not tell him that I would hurt him. I did not want to hurt him, but that is what would happen. Being with me would hurt him, because I should not exist. I should not be with anyone. I should be dead. I should die. I needed to deal with the consequences of my actions. Noah was not going to punish me, and he could never punish me. I did not want him to punish me, either. If he did not, he would be wrong, though. He would then need to deal with the consequences of his actions, and I did not want him to be put in the same situation as me. I did not want them to hurt Noah. I did not want them to rape him. I did not want them to starve him and refuse him water and shove his head into a marble tub filled with water until he drowned, only to revive him and repeat the process a week or two later.
Noah looked at me, fierce. His cock began to swell. He looked angry. Not angry at me, but at life and the world. He pulled out of me slightly and I thought he would leave me. I grabbed his hips, begging him with my hands. He thrust back into me hard. I... what was that?
Sparks. Delicious, wonderful, erotic sparks.
We rutted in his bed like wild animals, except
that makes it sound poor and wrong. Animals who mate with one another do not hate each other. They are kind. They want to create children together. The male dog may snap his teeth around the females neck while he mates with her, but he does not do this to torture or hurt her, he does it because it is his instinctive need and because in some small way I think he loves her. He is kind in his roughness. He loves her so much and he does not want her to leave him.
That is what Noah and I did. He was rough, and yet he did not hurt me. No, the opposite. I felt very good. Noah never left me. This was the third time we made love that night, and it was also the longest. He gave up his first time to me in a matter of moments, and he made the second time very comfortable and soft. The third time was rough and exciting and erotic.
I came while he pounded into my tortured and wicked body. My body clenched against him, hands squeezing his sides, inner walls clenching against his cock. He was not done, though. He continued, more. He spoke to me the entire time, although I do not know if his words made complete sense. He promised me he would never hurt me. He promised me that he would save me. He would do something. He would help me.
Noah, I wanted to tell him, you already have. I am saved. You are helping me. What more can you do? I do not think you can fight against everyone? They will come for you, Noah. They will hurt you. You cannot stop them.
He came inside of me two times before that, and I came more times than I could count on his third attempt. I did not know I could feel like this. I did not know it was possible. We panted and groped and shoved our bodies against one another in ecstatic glee. Noah began roughly, but he found a certain sense of confidence and power in his stride after that. I laughed and giggled and smiled and kissed him because I felt so happy with him right now. I did not believe I knew how to be happy before, but I now realized I did.
