His hands clawed at my clothes, pulling them off with the hooks of his fingers. He pinned my arms with his knees and took off his pants. I begged him to stop. I told him I was a virgin, but he didn’t care.
He forced himself into me, and that’s when I stopped feeling what was happening. I willed myself far away so it was almost like sleeping.
He couldn’t stay hard, so he slapped me and called me a slut and said that he should have known what I was. Not a girl he could love but a slut like the others. Then he tried again but he couldn’t stay inside, so he yelled at me again, then he came on my leg.
He lay on top of me for a long time before he pushed himself off.
“Get up,” he said, but I couldn’t move. I lay there with the snow falling on my face, looking up to the sky.
“Get up!” he yelled. He saw the blood on his hands and started to cry. “You made me do this. I never wanted to hurt you! Oh, no! Oh, no!”
He kept saying he was so sorry, that he could tell I was a good girl after all and that he would help me. He said he’d come right back, but that he couldn’t trust me, so he dragged me to a tree and tied my arms behind my back with plastic ties. They cut into my wrists. I was too weak to stand. When I fell, the bark scraped my skin. My bad knee twisted and I heard the ligament tear. It sounded like fabric when you rip it in half.
I heard him run through the snow and his car start. Wind whooshed through the trees but couldn’t lift my hair because it was starting to freeze. Each breath seemed to open the wound in my side a little bit more. I was so cold, I decided to die. It was easy. Like stepping out of your clothes when they fall to the floor.
I hovered over my body, watching the snow fall on my neck, studying the horrible bend in my knee.
Then the dead girls spoke to me.
Don’t look, said one.
Turn away, said another.
Come over here, said the third.
Their bodies were trapped in their trees. I saw faces under the bark.
It’s almost over . . . , said the one keeping watch. Now.
She closed her eyes and began to cry. Snow turned to sleet and covered the branches in ice.
Off in the distance I died.