She ducked into an adjacent corridor and I hauled at the heavy steel door. Before it budged an inch, it stuck.
From inside, Laney said, “Ren?”
Shit. “Yeah. Let me in.”
“Hold on.”
Pause, and the door screeched open. She looked up at me with that small elfin face. Thick eyeliner and ashen eye shadow, a little smutty, Lolita-ish. A girl caught between innocence and ruin. Other people’s ruin.
“What’s up?” she said.
“Need to get something.”
“What do you need?”
Of course. This was Laney. She’d wring out every detail. “My gun.”
No expression, but a thought spun in her eyes, a spiderweb woven from light. “I’ll get it.”
Against all instincts my hand shot out, catching her as she turned.
I had never laid a hand on Delaney Keating. And she had never looked at me with apprehension.
I said, “Let me.”
“Why?”
“Because you clearly don’t want me in that room. And now I need to see what’s in there.”
“Ren—”
My friends truly believed I’d never touch a girl with force, never make her do something against her will. Even Laney believed it. So when she blocked the doorway and I picked her up, she didn’t fight. Just stared.
“Do not go in there,” she said as I set her down.
Too late.
A man sprawled in the armchair where I’d sat months ago, scheming to tackle Crito. Without seeing him in full I could rattle off his stats: six feet, one-seventy, brown hair, brown eyes. Tattoo on left shoulder: the Lannister lion crest from Game of Thrones. For his favorite character, Tyrion Lannister, which should have told me something—a dwarf smarter than all others around him, but tragically seen as a “half man.” Someone life constantly deprived and fucked over. Someone who deserved more. We’d both related to Tyrion, but I’d never told him the reason I did. At the commotion behind him he stood.
Here’s the face of a rapist:
He looks just like any other man. Nothing distinguishes him from men who don’t hurt women.
Evil, we’re taught—by cartoons, fairy tales—marks you. Drags its claws down your skin, inscribes you with your sins. The visibility of evil is so convincing even monsters believe it about themselves.
I could have anyone. I’ve got money, brains. I don’t need to force girls.
That’s sick, Sofie. It was just rough sex.
Stop crying.
Please stop crying.
He looked at me. He looked at Laney. In an ordinary man’s voice, he said, “Who’s this?”
Ingrid and I had scoured the Internet till we found someone equally desperate. We drove out to a house in the woods, drove back into the city with the Beretta. Sleek black, woodgrain grip. Lighter than I expected and still the heaviest thing in the world. I kept touching it the whole ride home, and Inge said, That is one big surrogate dick. Can’t wait to watch you fuck him with it.
The Beretta lay in a locker across the room, behind the monster.
In my fantasies I savaged him. Turned his body into meat, same as he’d done with mine. Beat him till no inch of skin was visible, only blood and mucus, human smears. Smashed him as small as I could. As small as he’d made me.
In reality I just stood there, my hands shaking, my body hollow, vacant. I was not inside of it but tethered loosely to the spinal cord, receiving faint neural impulses.
I couldn’t move.
“Ren,” Laney said, touching me.
The monster and I stared at each other. A shadow scudded through his eyes.
His mouth opened.
“If you talk,” I rasped, “I will rip your throat out.”
The shadow in his eyes flared, caught fire. “Oh my god. It can’t be.”
Now I was moving. “I’m going to kill you. I’m going to fucking kill you.”
Hands on me, holding. Laney then Ingrid then Tamsin, too, all of them calling my name, my living name, not the dead one, but all I really heard was Adam saying, “Sofiya, is that you?”
Something guttural and canine echoed in the stone chamber. A roar, so raw the air seemed to seep like a wound after. I didn’t recognize my own scream—never heard myself scream like this in my new voice.
Reality got glitchy then.
One second I saw my hand clawing, raking his face, then I was on my knees in the hall outside, retching. Crimson curled under my fingernails. I smiled, tasting acid. In the background Tam screamed—I’d never heard her scream either—I’m done. I won’t be your lapdog anymore. Can’t you see how much it’s hurting him? Seemingly in the next heartbeat I sat on a bench with a cup of water, the night air a cool balm on my fevered skin. Then the city blurred across the windows of a train, red and white lights streaking past, ribbons of blood and bone. Then I was home, bent over the bathroom sink, scrubbing my nails till the red ran pink and still scrubbing harder, harder, till fresh red ran in the basin. Getting all traces of him out of me. Just like before. At some point I stopped seeing the now and only saw the then. Blood dripping between my thighs into toilet water, spreading like a poisoned rose. It kept bleeding. Just kept fucking bleeding out every last bit of girl that was left in me.