I have no idea how long this lasts—maybe five minutes, maybe an hour. I face the brick wall, a stranger to myself, fearless, careless, incapable of feeling anything but a dark, idiotic love of the universe and everything in it. I'm so deeply drugged that I don't even really know where I am.
But then I hear something.
It's the guy's voice. Or, rather, the guy's moans. I can only imagine what he must be doing to one of the girls while I lay with my back to the basement in a stupor.
But suddenly I've remembered where I am. I've remembered who I am. I've remembered my sister among the girls on the mattresses. I have no idea which one of them he's abusing, but somewhere deep beneath the drug-induced euphoria flooding my consiousness, I find my rage. I hold onto it tightly like a gun. I'm determined never to lose it again.
My rage will save my life.
The wire wrapped around my wrists is too tight to pull free from, but I don't care. I pull and pull until my skin tears, and I pull again, and I don't stop pulling.
Finally, in a burst of drug-muted pain, my right hand rips free, tearing the flesh and exposing my knuckles' bones.
I rip the duct tape and tube from my nose.
But before I can stand, in the next moment I feel the guy's knees slam into my back, holding me down.
"Where do you think you're going?" Flecks of the guy's spittle fall onto my shoulder. "I haven't even got started with you yet."
I twist around, and now he's stradling me. For a moment our eyes meet, then his eyes go blank and he starts hitting me. His mutilated hands can hardly form fists, but he flings them like clubs. The blows I can't block land on my cheeks and lips, around my eyes. Now that the ketamine tube is out of my nose, my capacity to acutely feel pain starts to come back as he pounds at my face.
I scream for him to stop, but it's like he's in a trance. He just keeps hitting me and hitting me and hitting me.
