Chapter Text
Rain droplets dropped on her face, assaulting her cold skin. She lay there broken and battered, body aching. Her soul felt crushed and the ever-present light in her eyes dimmed.
Her broken fingernails scraped against the gravel, adding to the blood that pooled beneath her. She tried to move her feet again, tried to wiggle her toes with a desperate urgency but all she felt was mind-numbing pain.
He had crushed them with his bare hands.
He had towered over her, his fingers wrapping around her feet that looked tiny in his massive grip.
“Mercy. Mercy.”
She had begged him, voice broken and pleading through her cracked lips.
His eyes had narrowed, the amber color of them sharpening demonically as he looked down at her. Dark tendrils of hair had slipped free of the leather cord that bound the rest of it at the base of his skull. The loose strands fell across his face, over the sharp angle of his jaw, making him look even more terrifying.
Stubble shadowed the lower half of his face, dark as spilled ink, climbing his jaw and hollowing his cheeks until his whole face seemed made of edges and dusk. A scar bisected one eyebrow. Another dragged pale and thin from the corner of his mouth, so that even at rest he seemed to be almost smiling.
He cocked his head to the side, assessing her like a beast before it rips into its prey. His fingers tightened around her fragile bones and more tears trickled down her eyes.
She knew it was useless to beg him. After all, she had tried to do so the entire night. She had begged him to let her go as he had snatched her in the shadow of the night. She had screamed her pleas as he had ripped away her clothes, yanking her legs apart, making her completely vulnerable to him.
No amount of begging had stopped him from shoving deep inside of her, ripping away her virginity, and burying himself in her body. His fingers had twisted in her hair as he had yanked her head back, shark teeth embedding himself in the base of her throat as he had rutted against her like an uncontrollable beast.
The more she wailed in pain, the harder he got. Until, finally he spilled inside of her. She had pathetically thought it to be over then, only for him to put her on her knees and force himself inside her mouth, making her clean both of their fluids.
“Tell me where the necklace is and I will make death easy for you.”
He had said the same words no matter how many times she tried to tell him she didn’t know what he meant. She didn’t know what necklace he was talking about. She didn’t know where it was. She didn’t know what he wanted from her.
She just wanted to go home.
She just wanted to lay her head in her grammy’s lap and let the old woman sing her to sleep.
She just wanted to go to her beloved ballet studio and dance her worries away.
She just wanted this pain to stop.
But, it wouldn’t stop and neither would the giant of a man inflicting it on her.
So, she had learned well enough after hours of torture under his hands, that he wouldn’t listen to her pleas.
Yet, when she had seen his fingers wrap around her feet, she had decided to beg again.
Because she couldn’t let him break that part of her.
The only part that allowed her to dance. It was what she lived for. It made her feel closer to the ghost of the mother she never had. She had grown up dancing to her mother’s videos; a four year old falling to her knees and getting up to walk on her tip toes again and again as she watched her mother on the screen.
It was the most precious thing she had. Dance. It lived inside of her, made her find joy when she was lonely. It made her see colors where there were none. It made her love and laugh when the world told her she wasn’t allowed to.
Now, this demon from hell wanted to snatch it all away from her.
“Mercy,” She had rasped out the words, hoping once again to touch some part of him that had any humanity left.
He had leaned into her in response and she had flinched violently, her body shaking like a leaf.
“Do you still expect it of me, knowing you showed none to Olivia?”
He said the name with a trace of pain that made her once again reach out to the part of him that could still feel.
“Please,” she whispered. “I don’t know her. I don’t know anything about her. I don’t know anything about the necklace. I don’t even know you. I am innocent. Please don’t hurt my feet. I am a dancer. That's all I have.”
His lips had twisted and spread into an unholy smile; the scar stretching it until he looked like something unhuman.
“That’s the thing about you pretty little rich girls. You forget the ones you stepped on. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure you don’t forget this.”
Then he tightened his fingers around her feet, his grip tightening like a vise being cranked one turn at a time. Her breath had broken apart into a scream. Suddenly, there came a deep, wet crunch, then a series of smaller pops as the delicate bones of her foot surrendered under his hands.
She had thrashed hard enough to dislocate her shoulder from her socket and small whimpers came out of her mouth. She was at his feet keening like an animal, crying so hard, her breaths came in shuddering gasps.
“I have to give it to you,” he said, dusting his hands off. “You are harder to break than grown men. Maybe, you need some friends to help encourage you spill the truth.”
He had barely spoken the words that she felt something crawling on her. A whisper of legs against her ankle. Featherlight. She told herself it was a draft, a trickle of sweat, anything. But then it moved; climbing the slope of her shin with a patience that made her stomach drop through the floor.
Through tired painful eyes, she looked down at her body, and despite her raw throat, another hoarse scream left her as she saw them.
Spiders. Dozens of them.
It was then that she stopped being a person and became only skin.
Every nerve ending screamed as the dry tick of legs threaded through the fine hairs of her thigh, the obscene pause as one settled into the crook of her knee, the weight of them, so slight, so unbearable.
Don't move. Don't breathe.
But her pulse betrayed her, hammering under their feet, and when the sting came; white-hot, deep in the tender flesh above her ankle; more screams tore out before she could cage them.
The sound made them swarm, and the swarming made her scream even more, and somewhere in the black spiral of it she couldn't remember anymore why being alive mattered so much.
It had gone on for so long until she had started to forget who she was. The pain and fear and helplessness had mixed into a thick mixture of acid that poured through her veins, until it erased the person she had once been.
My name is Sophia. I am 18 years old.
She whispered over and over again.
Grandma raised me. Grandma loves me. I need to go back to her.
She tried to picture the soft white hair and the loving wrinkled face of the woman who was her only family; trying desperately to find comfort in something she knew.
I am a ballerina. I am preparing to audition for Julliard. I am a dancer. I am a dancer like my mother.
She said the words over and over again until they stopped making sense, until they buried themselves in her bones, there to stay even as the pain erased everything else away.
She was barely alive when she heard them again. Those dreaded footsteps. So confident and measured; steps she could only hear because the owner wanted her to.
Even in the depths of her delirium, they inspired raw terror within her.
He kneeled in front of her and once again, his shadow loomed over her curled figure.
“Sir, w-we have a problem.” A man’s shaky voice penetrated the air. “I think we got the wrong woman.”
The devil before her hadn’t spoken but she could feel his silent cold rage like it was a living, breathing thing.
“It’s just they- they look identical. But, how could one woman be here with us and another be on the t.v screen?”
The man’s shaking fingers brought a tablet in front of her tormenter. With blurry eyes, she saw his face go blank. His gold eyes dulled until they looked like hard coins.
“It was a m-mistake. Sir, we are so sorry. But it looks like there has been a mistake.”
She couldn’t make sense of the words; didn't understand what they meant. All she could focus on was the open jar in his hands. He tapped at it, holding it slightly elevated in the air and as if beckoned to his call, the creatures crawling over slowly left her body.
Little by little, she watched as they went into their prison, bodies stacked over each other, desperate to do their master’s bidding.
“What should we do about her, sir? Do you want me to take care of her?”
A part of her stiffened at the words even though she had already come to terms with the fact that she was going to die. Yet, having it spelled out in front of her, made it feel all too real.
She saw him take the gun out of his pocket and a tiny breath left her. More tears leaked down her temple mixing with her pitch black hair. No voice left her mouth.
She was almost glad it was going to be over. She was almost glad that the pain would stop.
She saw him lift it in slow motion and closed her eyes in acceptance; ready to meet her maker.
But, when the sound of the bullet came it wasn’t her body that shook. It wasn’t her blood that splattered her face. It was the man who held the tablet. Her eyes widened as she saw his slackened face, staring at her with vacant eyes. A clean bullet hole pierced his forehead and his blood crawled across the floor to meet her.
Then, she felt rough fingers on her jaw as her face was tilted to meet her nightmare.
There was a strange, unreadable glow in his eyes. They crawled on her face again and again, as if trying to read her from deep within.
She closed her eyes, not wanting to see him anymore, forcing her brain to forget him.
If she forgot him, she could forget what he did to her.
If he didn’t exist, all this pain would not either.
This didn’t happen. This didn’t happen. This didn’t happen.
The words replaced her previous ramblings; ringing over and over in her mind like a mantra.
She barely felt him lift her up, even though her whole body screamed in agony.
This didn’t happen. This didn’t happen. This didn’t happen.
She barely noticed as he lay her outside on the gravel in the rain.
This didn’t happen. This didn’t happen. This didn’t happen.
She couldn’t tell when he left her there on the street, his darkness receding from around her.
This didn’t happen. This didn’t happen. This didn’t happen.
Rain droplets dropped on her face, assaulting her cold skin. She lay there broken and battered, body aching. Her soul felt crushed and the ever-present light in her eyes dimmed.
And, the only thing that she could focus on was:
This didn’t happen. This didn’t happen. This didn’t happen.
Until, that became the only reality she knew.