Years of Night - Chapter One

 Years of Night - Chapter One

A/N: Warnings for sexual violence against minors and potentially triggering content. PG-16. Non-graphic. This is roughly editting. I take responsibility for all mistakes therein. Please read the prologue first.

The men had been had been following them for  three blocks. Somewhere in their mind they knew that was a bad sign and an obvious omen, but they were young and so invincible. Caution belonged to the wind for them. But they were paying attention to them. They looked over their shoulders periodically, giggling like schoolgirls. The first girl, Alana, leaned closer to her friend, Jaden, asking what she thought of the man farthest to the right. She responded with a comment not worthy of repeating. It made Alana blush, though the deep tone of her skin and the lighting of the night hid it well.

November ninth.

They turned a corner. It was breezy and cold and they were eager to be home after a late night. They ceased looking back, knowing in their naivety that they would not be followed, that the men would continue on the main path and never be seen again, save for in trivial memory. 

But cursed is the folly of youth.

Their approach could be sensed, like a dog can sense the shaking of the earth or an eagle can sense the brewing of a storm. Alana swore she could feel some malice creeping up her spine. That tiny voice she had so foolishly pushed aside was back with the intensity of a siren. She got a good look at them before they were on them. The two girls had not giggled in vain: all three of the men were handsome in their own rights, what with their windblown hair and their hard bodies that were visible even beneath their shirts. But no amount of outward appeal could mask the inner evil they radiated, especially when the Second Man’s hand came down on Alana’s shoulder. She shoved him off and whipped around, taking cautious steps backwards. Jaden was in her peripherals taking similar action. The men advanced as the girls retreated in horror.

She calculated the chances that they could make a run for it; the chances the men really had no ill-intent. Then there were the more likely odds: that the two young girls out past the curfew would walk away with more than a few wounds, or that they wouldn’t walk away from the impending ordeal at all. Their blind trek backwards continued as these thoughts proceeded to suffocate her mind, destroying every notion but fear.

It was late. They should not have been out. They shouldn’t have been there, with those men. None of it should

ever have happened. But it did, and they both paid dearly.

 “You’re beautiful,” the First Man said to either one of them. Usually Alana would have been humbled by the flattery but not this time. His tone, low and threatening, morphed a perfectly good compliment into a stinging insult, enhanced by the fact that he was running his eyes greedily over the parts of her that he deemed “beautiful”. Jaden was receiving that same treatment from the other men, though she looked slightly more at ease. She was used to such attentions whereas Alana was not.

But Jaden was the one who made the fatal mistake. She yelled, “Run!” and bolted through the maze of deserted streets that she thought to navigate swiftly enough to escape. Alana should have run; should have followed. But as it were, Alana remained rooted to the spot while Second and Third Man went after her best friend. That left her with but one offender.

First Man chuckled deeply and went for her arm. Only then did Alana spring into action, running in a different direction as Jaden had, hoping to keep the pack divided. Jaden had a long history of being faster and generally more coordinated than she. She tripped after about twenty feet in haste, cursing her natural clumsiness the whole way down. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. There was no chance she would have been able to outrun the man for long. His body declared the training of a professional athlete. Gravel dug into her soft palms at impact, leaving angry red imprints. A second later he was on her and they began the struggle for dominance, the one she was destined to lose.

Wishing to protect her face from the fate of her now stinging hands she rolled over before his full weight descended on her. His immediate response, other than grotesque language, was to pin she. Alana kneed him hard and he grunted in pain. His muscles went slack for a fraction of a second. It was her only opportunity and she took it, but the scramble was short-lived. He had her down a second time in the blink of an eye, this time slamming my head violently into the pavement. Stars danced in a starless sky. Her vision

blackened before focusing up again, though the edges remained blurry and shadowed.

Tears found their way to the surface. The odor of cheap alcohol on his breath was overpowering. When his lips took hers the taste of it was sickening. So much liquor and yet he wasn’t drunk. She may have been able to fight a drunk man. This one was very coherent and vicious. He kissed her to the point of suffocation before releasing her and granting her breath. He grinned wickedly, his degrading comments lost on her as she gulped in air like a fish out of water. She realized later, when her senses had returned, that her first kiss had been stolen.

She struggled and his fist came down, striking her so hard in the chest that a hollow sound resonated. Gasping won her no air. While she was paralyzed in her suffocation he went for the buttons to her blouse. She protested weakly, desperately, and he struck her again. The chill breeze was harsh on her breasts as he tore open the rest of the fabric with impatience.

A gunshot echoed through the night. It was difficult to tell where it had come from but somewhere in the pit of her stomach she knew that shot had been meant for Jaden, for her best friend. The grief would come later, as would the pain. All she had time for then was fear.

The man on top of her froze at the sharp bang and cursed, shoving himself upright so that he was fairly sitting on the girl’s torso, completely immobilizing her. Air was precious and struggling meant she would lose it, so made herself perfectly still.

“Good girl,” he sneered down at her as his accomplices came jogging back looking angry and disheveled. Their moods brightened considerably, though, when they saw they had one captive yet alive.

“Why didn’t you spare the other girl?” First Man said. Only then did she realize that he spoke with a thick

accent that she tried and failed to place. Third Man shook his head, eyes glued on her and her exposed flesh.

“It’s no matter,” Second Man replied. “She was generic. This one looks like a half-breed.”

First Man turned his attention back to his captive.

“Please don’t,” she coughed went he let up a bit of weight. “There’s twenty dollars in my pocket. I have nothing else, I swear.”

“Of course, beautiful, of course,” he crooned as he stroked my face where a tear have previously fallen. I flinched. “No, shush, shush, it’s alright. Don’t cry, beautiful.”

But she did cry because her head ached where it stuck the pavement, because the wind was torture against her bare skin, because the ground was hard beneath her, because she was utterly terrified, and because somewhere her friend was dead or dying. The man knew all that and mocked her still. He made circles on her chest with a calloused finger, amused by her displeasure.

“You’re a virgin,” he noted, leaving her baffled as to how he knew such a detail with just a touch. He was pleased. “Good.”

Third Man whipped out an outdated phone and proceeded to speak into it in a rough dialect that perfectly matched their mysterious accents, during which time First Man continued to explore her body. He sucked the base of her neck, holding her hands in an iron grip over her head. She attempted a scream but his lips stole it. He bit the flesh of her lower lip, flooding her tongue with the coppery flavor of blood. She trembled violently.

His face was clean shaven and smooth, practically flawless except for the circular birthmark just above the right side of his jaw. She told herself to focus on the little things to keep her mind occupied. There were seven clothes lines strung across the old building windows. Third Man was wearing black tennis shoes with slightly frayed laces; First Man’s shirt had exactly seventeen strips and a quarter-seized stain on his right breast. The small details kept her alive. They provided an escape that was otherwise nonexistent.

First Man took both of her hands in one of his and used the other to trail down her abdomen with butterfly touches that evoked warmth deep in her gut. She was flooded with shame.

“So beautiful,” he moaned into her ear. She gasped and gulped in disbelief. She wished she had shared in Jaden’s fate. Surely it would have been better than such extreme violation.

“Stop…” she whimpered like a scolded puppy when his fingers trailed even lower.

“God, help me,” Alana begged a deity she didn't believe in.

“Stop,” Second Man barked when he ended his phone call. First Man raised his head but his hands remained where they were. They had an argument she did not understand but by the way it sounded, Second Man won. First Man grumbled and removed his fingers from below her waistline and rose, rocking back on his ankles to balance before standing. All three of them stared down at her pitiful form. She curled into herself to avoid their gaze. She dry heaved and then waited for the shot that would end her life. It didn’t come.

They were conversing in hushed tones like they didn’t want her to hear even though she was incapable of comprehending. She began crawling, knowing that there was no hope of making it away and yet unable to keep herself from trying. They noticed, like she knew they would, but what she didn’t anticipate was the foot that slammed into her side. She fell hard into a puddle of filth, crying out weakly at what she knew were broken ribs.

“Don’t move,” First Man growled. She was instantly submissive. That pleased him.

Third Man scolded him, muttering something about damaged merchandise. She lie there wondering what she had done to deserve such treatment.

A black van pulled up at the mouth of the alley, giving new meaning to Second Man’s phone call. She went into full panic mode, thrashing almost insanely against their hands as they went to drag her. She wasn’t able to keep it up long enough. She was in too much pain from her ribs and her head still wasn’t clear from its initial impact with the ground.  But she fought even knowing she would fail. By that point she knew it wasn’t her life that they would take but her freedom. She knew which one she valued more.

Upon reaching the van she was practically paralyzed by agony. Pain shot through her body like lightning with every move. It was easy for them to shove her inside and climb in behind. The sound the doors made when they shut reminded her of a death knell.

Second Man shoved a cloth over her face and Third Man punched her stomach so that she’d be forced to breathe in whatever chemical they’d tainted it with. Her last coherent thought was that they would find Jaden’s body in an alley. She wondered where they would recover her own.

The ground beneath Alana’s knees was unpaved, formed with a crude cobblestone that acted violently against her soft skin. The sack cloth over her face was soaked through. It drooped around her mouth and nostrils and made it more than difficult to breath. Her head was reeling, actively fighting the drug the three abductors had roughly administered.

There were voices all around, barking out things that she didn’t hope to understand. She heard rustling to her left and struggling. A woman’s groan. Crying. A van engine. The torrential sounds of never-ending rain striking rock. These things her ears perceived. The cloth was torn away and these things her eyes saw:

The water fell in sheets, the dirty street was lit up by thin slivers of moonlight that fought to break through the blanket of clouds. There were men all around, covered in dark clothing that fit well with the scene. Women and girls, all bound and in the same manner as myself, were kneeling in rows both to my right and left, heads bowed, frightened, resigned. They did not make eye contact with each other. The ground was their most welcomed sight. Men approached. It became her most welcomed sight, too.

The ache in her ribs was dull when she sat still and sharp when she exhaled. There was a bandage around her torso that had previously escaped her notice. It was filthy and crude, barely holding her ribs in their proper places. Clearly her captives were not doctors, but they did, in part, care about the state of her.

A pair of mud-caked boots obscured her view of the ground and a mere moment later a hand was shoving her chin up. A man of subpar stature was observing her openly, eyes roaming her every feature, seeing before him an object and not a hurting human being. So, in miniscule retaliation, she observed him back. His vertical growth was stunted but he was thick and his hands were unthinkably rough. His broad shoulders were a key feature and further proclaimed his strength. He made a gruff sound akin to indifference, let her head fall, and moved on.

Before she was able to process what had happened, another man was stepping up to her and the process was repeated. His shape of his body was hidden by his enormous black coat. His face was shadowed by the hood. All she caught a glimpse of was the dark glint of his eyes; she shivered from the cold they held and from the stabbing chill of the rain. He, too, regarded her with little care and moved on.

Three women down to the right, the strong, stunted man howled some profanity and lashed out with a ring-adorned hand. The women yelped and collapsed on the stone, unmoving. The dwarf was cradling his fingers where she had quite viciously bitten him. Alana managed a weak grin, silently beaming with pride for this fighter.

But when a gun came out and ended that bold woman’s life, what blood was in Alana’s face drained and her heart forgot to beat. They dragged away the body and the rain washed away the blood until no trace of the horror remained.

Defiance, then, was not an option.

After that, when the men came to look at her, she avoided looking into their eyes. It seemed an eternity until a man was pleased with her. Whether that meant the conditions of her capture would change for the better, she did not know.

Money was exchanged—what looked like a handsome sum—and keys jingled behind her. Her chains were suddenly released from the links that bound us all together. They hauled her to her legs that refused to work, but they didn’t allow her to fall back down. The gag and the pounding rain muffled the pained cry she gave when her ribs were jostled.

   Another cloth, another drug, and the world faded again, the cascading, frigid water her only cover.