She burst suddenly into tears, and collapsed onto the floor. She tore her blouse open to show her breasts and pulled up her skirt to reveal her untidy vagina. “I’ve met others far more perverse than me. I allowed them to abuse me. While standing on the streets selling my body to the most disgusting men. I began injecting myself to keep up my drug habit. Look at the scars on my arms and down here,” she indicated a ragged mass of sores around her crotch. “And then I found that I was ill. I had pus swelling out of my cunt, my whole body erupted in shivers and I just couldn’t stop spewing up. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t stay awake. I needed drugs. And the only way I could get them was by selling my body. And most of what I made from that was for my drug dealers. And when I didn’t make enough I was beaten. My nose was broken. My arse was brutally penetrated. And I erupted in these horrid boils. I lost everything. I had no clothes, I had no dignity, and now I’m not sure that I could ever … ever …”
Chastity sobbed uncontrollably. And then compulsively ripped all her clothes off, so she lay naked and helpless on the floor. “I need help!” she cried. “I need drugs. But I can’t afford them. All I can do to get drugs is have sex. And now I’m so sore and ill, it just hurts me. And I don’t enjoy it anymore. It just disgusts me. I force myself to have sex, and because I look so ill … and thin … and wretched … Because I look like the kind of junkie I am, I get the worst and poorest clients. I hate what they do to me. And I think they only have sex with me because they hate me … and Innocence… I didn’t want to come back … and can you. Can you. Ever. Forgive me?”
Chastity slumped to the floor in a foetal position. Innocence gazed at her wretched misery. She glanced at Twelve, who she could see was weeping. She found that she too was weeping. Her sister was truly emaciated. Her cheeks were sunken, her breasts had lost almost all their body, and her stomach was far too tight to be in any sense healthy. What could she do?
“Do you mean you no longer enjoy sex?”
Chastity sniffed. “It’s love I need now. Not sex. Oh! Innocence. Please forgive me. Forgive me for all the times I took advantage of you. Forgive me for the many others who I …”
“But as soon as you’re well, you’ll be just like before. You’ll bring people back and fuck them. And piss and shit on them. And beat them. I know you. You could never change.”
Chastity sniffed, and burst into more sobs. The sobs erupted into a full-throated cry. And then she lay flat on the ground, tears streaming down a face made ugly by misery. She tried pulling herself up on one hand, but failed and slumped back on the ground, her ragged torn clothes about her. Innocence noticed with a wince that some of Chastity’s sores were pustulating and that she had nasty red and brown bruises on her back. And wasn’t that the faint sign of a welt just above her buttocks?
Despite the sores and despite the revulsion she felt for them and her embarrassment and the degree of her sister’s humiliation, she bent down to the floor and lifted her sister up into her arms. She held Chastity close to her bosom.
“You are my sister. I love you. I shall always love you. I don’t care whether I ever make love to you again, but I can express my love by helping you. I know that I’m blessed. I have everything I could possibly want. I may be a freak but I no longer care. In fact, I actually quite like it.” She brushed a tear from her cheek, and tenderly placed a kiss on her sister’s cheek, aware for the first time just how crooked her nose now was. “I’ll look after you. I’ll help you. After all, in some way, for which I should really be grateful, it’s partly you who’s made me what I am now. And without you, maybe I would never have learnt to express myself. But now it’s my opportunity to forgive you and help you towards recovery. And maybe one day you can share the happiness of which I now have so much.”
Innocence Lost Page 41
