Tell Me I'm Worthless(47)

“The day will come,” Hannah said, quieter now, in a voice that was very far from hers. “The glad day will come and he will rise and this country will be cleansed by his waves. He was the first man in this land, and he will be the last.”

Liquid dripped from her mouth and down the front of her clothes. Her eyes looked down at them again. The redness had spilled through them, breaking the retinas, breaking the blood vessels. And yet, Alice was sure those eyes still saw them. The room was small but it suddenly felt like an impassable space. A whole country stretched between them and Hannah. A whole continent swirling with red. Piss soaked Hannah’s skirt, and she lost control of her bowels, too. She spoke again, this time in her own voice.

“It said I would be safe.”

The words came from far away, but she felt every moment of it. It would be a great betrayal.

Both Ila and Alice sobbed. The light blazed down, illuminating Hannah’s shattered body. Ila’s gut twisted inside her at the sight of the thing. Alice let her go, after holding her painfully hard during the mutilation, and now, free of her grasp, she stumbled a little away from Alice to throw up onto the wooden floor. The sick splattered. Alice looked away from it. Ila threw up what she thought was everything she had, but her legs were shaking, unstable. When she tried to walk back to Alice, her legs gave up completely, and Ila fell face first into her own sick. She tried to lift herself up, but her hands slipped on it and she fell back down into the sick again. So she just lay there. Beneath the reflecting red of the wall. The white from above settling on her body. She cried, harder and deeper than she ever had. Alice tried to kick open the door, but it wouldn’t move, however hard she kicked. It felt like there was nothing on the other side of the door – that it wasn’t a door at all, but the border to the world, and the inside of this room was the entire world. If you were to open the door you would find… what?

The world outside is dark and unknowable. In the room you are safe. You are subject to violence, abuse, mistreatment, hurt, pain, all of the above, but you are safe from what is outside the room and that is what matters, inside the room is the pain you know, outside the room is the pain you do not know, it’s not a hard choice to make in the end, to sit here ‘neath the burning sun of her body, her body once a symbol of peace and now look at it look at what they did to her look at how much pain she is in look see, she’s begging you, my heart beats around you, my stomach begins to dissolve you, yet I have no organs yet I have a body yet I have no head yet I am a body so far beneath the earth that nobody would ever think to find my bones here I am, reaching out to you, here you are, standing on top of me, they built a new world on me, they will build a new world on me…

Hannah saw what happened next. One instance with one eye, and one with the other. The room split in two as she looked on, helpless and trembling.

ILA

ALICE





In one eye, Hannah saw this: Whilst Ila lay there in the puddle of her vomit, Alice sat down close to her, anxious about her friend.

“Ila?” She reached out a hand to stroke her hair, but Ila didn’t respond at all. None of this is happening, Alice repeated to herself with every heartbeat. But the room felt real around her, and Hannah’s living corpse looked real, and Ila was there, she could feel her. She stroked her hair. It was a mess. Little balls of sick stuck to the strands.

They sat like this for eternity. They sat like this even as Hannah’s other eye saw Alice with the scalpel, and saw what she was going to do.

Hannah held on to this other, peaceful vision with everything she had. Alice would not hurt Ila. She couldn’t. And that was what she was telling herself, as Ila sprung, suddenly, from her vegetative state, and smashed the back of her right hand into Alice’s face, knocking her to the floor. Alice scrambled, trying to pull herself back up, but Ila stood up, as if she had never fallen, and kicked Alice over and over in the stomach. The first kick knocked all of the fight out of her. The second knocked the rest of her breath out. She was helpless, but Ila kicked until she could see bright stars on the ceiling above.

Alice’s torch was still there, by the door. Forgotten in the brightness of the room. Ila reached for it. Alice didn’t want to look. She shut her eyes and hoped that this truly wasn’t real, but it felt real. Those kicks had felt real. It felt real when Ila lifted her skirt up and pulled her underwear to the side.

“Please,” murmured Alice.

“Please what?”

“Please don’t.”

Ila seemed to think about this. Her eyes were red with blood and earth. She lifted up one of Alice’s legs, exposing her hormone-shrunken dick, hairless and pink, and there, the eye of her asshole. Ila used the other hand to jam the torch, hard, into it, pushing as far up into Alice’s guts as she could get, stretching it out.

Blood and shit dribbled out. Alice screamed, finding an energy which hadn’t been there before. She screamed, but her body was too weak to fight back. The torch was still on. One unblinking eye, shining up at Ila. Searing into her vision. Ila pulled the torch back out halfway, and the pain subsided for a second before she pushed it in again. Hannah wanted to scream and cry and embrace her friends close. She cursed the room, cursed the thoughts it had given her, cursed the words the House had put into her mouth, even as she knew they were as much her words as they were Albion’s. The House had simply let them free.