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5
Ruth had poured her life into the work, and now the work was undoing it all.
Every day she logged on, wrote, received hate mail, wrote some more and then logged off. Her windows gave no light now that they were barred. Her door was reinforced steel. It was the same five rooms she had made her goddess domain, now her prison.
She hated to credit Bluenorth, but they had done it all so well. There was no escape. Even if she was willing to kill herself and see an end to it, they had everything on her. They would destroy her memory just as efficiently as they had destroyed her life, and they made sure to remind her of that any time she objected to some new misogynistic post she had written for her, to publish in her own name. She was as close to property as it was possible to be, and as close to wishing she had never written a word in the name of equality as she ever wished she would be.
Ruth sat naked at the desk, one leg folded over the other tightly. She did that now, not because the cameras were on her at all times, but because the endless, endless misogyny had really started to wear her down. She was ashamed, and ashamed to know that she was ashamed, of being a woman.
They would watch her cry, whoever it was on the other end of those little black cameras, and let her lie there, so long as it was before or after the hours in which she had to write. They let her sob in solitude, let her stand in the shower for three hours staring into nothingness, but if she ever picked up a sharp object, got too near a window or dared to turn on the TV, the door would explode and six men would round on her, pin her down and… torture her.
Oh God, the torture… it was beyond anything she knew was possible. How her body still functioned, moved, and still bore almost no evidence of abuse seemed impossible to her. They knew how to cause a woman unimaginable agony with no scars outside her mind.
She finished typing her last sentence of the day, a long wax about how she had apparently read up on sexual dimorphism, and submitted. She closed the laptops, already hearing the cries of outrage. She wondered when they would simply lose interest in her, stop messaging. Maybe the forums would drop her blog. She reminded herself they, too, were probably run by Bluenorth.
She rose, breathed out and made for the bedroom. There were only three cameras in there, so she made it her home, hoping that at least once a day only one man would be looking at her naked body while the other two went for coffee. A single tear streaked her face every time she had the thought.
At the sound of locks sliding back in the door she jumped, backed into the wall and held her hands above her head. What? What had she done? What was it now?!
Three men entered, one of them the last man on earth she ever wished to see. Her jailer, the man who put her into this mess, and the one who she would take with her whenever they decided to finally end her.
‘You look good, Ruth,’ he smiled warmly at her, chest swollen with the satisfaction of seeing just how low they had brought her. In truth, she probably did look good to him, ‘I’ve been enjoying your work these last few weeks. A serious improvement.’
‘Yeah,’ she sniffed up the tears and made herself stand straight, ‘I guess a guy like you just loves reading his own writing. You’re that guy.’
Wilkes sighed and gestured toward her. His two henchmen took her by the arms and escorted her into what had once been her most prized possession, her walk-in closet, now a fully kitted-out torture chamber complete with strapped-up half-upright restraining table. She tried to struggle just like every time, but they were too quick, too used to doing this. Her wrists and ankles were chafing on the thick leather straps before she could get her eyes in focus to hit them.
Wilkes stepped towards her, taking a metal object from his pocket. It was shaped like a bulb with a screw at the base, and as he turned the screw it bloomed into four savage petals.
‘We have a new policy for our girls,’ he explained casually, ‘just a little reminder, every day, what the situation is.’
Ruth needed no more explanation. Sweat gathered around her tears. She shook her head furiously.
‘No, no God no please, PLEASE!’
One of the others grabbed her thighs and shoved them apart while she screamed. The other brought up a car battery and yanked down on each of her labia in turn. The pinch of the clips on her flesh was agony enough, but when he turned the key and the voltage hit she felt her skin catch fire. It was ten seconds of eternal pain later when her body slumped, her breath thrown from her body.
Please, please let me die. Do it too much. Shock me too hard. Kill me.
Between her legs it burned the most. She became aware of an ache there, like being aroused but with none of the excitement or appetite. It was a perverse thing, as if she was giving birth to a phantom.
Through tearful eyes she saw Wilkes crouching before her. Just as she had willed herself to die she put all her energy into wishing the same of him. She wished her eyes could bore a hole through his chest, stop that heart so full of hate from beating. Then she felt the cold steel, the sharp edges raking into her womanhood and all other thoughts vanished; it was beyond agony. It didn’t fit. IT DIDN’T FIT.
The battery hit her again. Her mind went blind, her bowels contracted, and when she came back it slid further into her. The horror of it consumed her mind, knowing what they were doing to her body, to her woman’s body… and that they could do it. They just did it. She never had a chance.
Shock. Push. Expand. Shock. Push. Expand. Soon enough she could see her chest rising and falling, hear her voice letting out a constant scream, but now she was outside herself, watching it acted out on another wretch. Inside herself she hated everything, even the woman on the table, that stupid, stupid girl who thought words on a screen made her powerful. The idiotic little bitch who really believed all the image, pose and propaganda. She, like all the rest, had danced for them, and she had danced outside the lines and got to see what life really was.
Ruth Esther-Narrow never returned to that body. When they took the straps off and those feet hit the ground, feeling the metal now fused between her legs that pushed against her insides like four swords in her belly whenever she moved, the girl that felt it was something else. Something new. Something they would not want to hurt any more.
‘How do you feel, Ruth?’ said Wilkes.
She coiled her feet inwards and held her hands at her sides in little fists, staring at the floor.
‘Thank you, Superior’ she said.