Return of the Singer -by newtypeshadow (kai)-

first written: 10-12-02 last revised: 05-18-03

I had never felt agony before that moment. Their fists in my stomach and hands holding me down had been nothing to the pain of their leader inside me, violating me, ripping me open. I thrashed on the ground like a fish out of water and screamed through the hand that clamped down over my mouth. Another hand was pressed against my throat. "Shut up," one of them grunted in my ear. And I did.

But I didn't stop crying into the dark of the evening. "Mother," I screamed in my mind, "someone help me! God...someone help me..." Where was the inner darkness I was supposed to receive to help me in my pains? Where was the welcome unconsciousness that would shield me from the liquid I could feel him leaving in the most sacred part of me, him someone who cared nothing for me? The weight on my body left me, as did the worm of a thing it carried.

It was replaced almost immediately by another, and the brutal slamming began again.

"Help me," I whispered, voice hoarse and unheard by the teenage boy grunting over my face.

Do you Yield? I heard the strange voice inside my head, and at first believed it to be my imagination. I do hear voices at times like this: times when the pain of living, physical or mental, is almost too much, but darkness will not come. I never let these voices win. I know they will drag me down.

"No," I whispered back in my mind. "I will never Yield." Oh God, somebody help me. My dad will worry about me. I should never have used this street. I never use this street. Why did I have to use it today? My mind was wandering away from me, and I was content to let it...

Please. I can help you, I heard the soothing voice say, drawing me back. I won't let them hurt you, I promise. But you must Yield to Accept me.

I could hear the capitals on the words the voice spoke. They made me hesitant, even in my desperate situation. The strangeness of the voice, unlike anything else I had ever created to keep me from the real world, was a red light in my mind.

The boy on top of me was suddenly gone, and the hands on my arms were roughly pulling me to my feet. The hands shoved me into the grimy brick wall at the back of the alley, and my legs buckled. I slid down into a pile of garbage. My running nose kept me from smelling all but the worst of what my weight crushed beneath my torn school uniform and shredded underwear. I felt dirtier than the filth around me. And it was because of a few boys who had nothing better to do with their time than assault girls like me.

I was vaguely aware of their conversation, the wild gestures of first one, then another, the growing anger in my rapists. I could barely see through my tears the moment when the tall one punched the blond one and swiped the gun from his pocket, then swung around and pointed it at me.

But I could hear his words. "She's seen our faces, you idiot, she'll call the cops and have our asses in jail for this! I don't know about you guys, but I won't be some hairy fuck's ass-bitch." He glared at me, and I could see him clearly for the instant before the gun went off.

My hands instinctively reached up to shield my head, and I shrieked and closed my eyes, huddling into myself in a blind panic. A bullet lodged itself in the brick beside my head, sending red, chalky shards slicing toward me.

"I Yield ohmygodsomebodyhelpme, please, please..." I sobbed.

The gun went off again. I opened my eyes to it and screamed.

It was in that moment that something in me broke wide open. Time itself slowed before my voice. The bullet stopped a foot in front of my face, and everything around me stilled, waiting. The panic I had felt was suddenly gone from me as, oddly detached, I came into myself and realized my body contained a presence more powerful and confident than anything I had ever encountered, and that presence was me. Through my heady new discovery, I was vaguely aware that my scream had been concentrated to a single, controlled note of pain and desperation. The bullet wobbled and fell in the darkness, and I smiled, humor lacing the pain in my voice, desperation fading to something even more dangerous to the three boys standing, immobile, in the darkness.

Their faces showed horrified shock, visible even in their near frozen states. They knew I had a power. Even if I couldn't understand how I controlled it, the Presence that aided me did, and my emotions, my aching thighs and back, all of me, screamed the need for vengeance for their crime against my body. I wanted them to feel pain as I had felt it - their insides ripping, their faces swelling, the weight of being crushed. I wanted them to feel desperation as I had felt it at their hands. I had the power to do it. And I did, without hesitation.

The note from my lips became a low, animal growl. The three faces before me contorted in pain, and their mouths opened wide in screams that had no sound. I could see inside their bodies the damage I wanted them to feel: their veins severing, the blood falling undirected inside them to pool inside their feet; claws of rage shredding their organs and muscles and shattering bones from inside their perfect skin; their hearts and brains smashed and mashed into a mush of tissue and blood and matter.

Finally my breath was spent, and the note of anger fell into a decrescendo that ended in a whisper. I didn't breathe for a couple of seconds after it ended. I just stared at their bodies, collapsed into themselves on the ground, flat sacks of soupy insides that undulated in the aftermath of my song. Each flaccid penis had been violently ripped out by the roots, torn apart, and scattered in bloody chunks throughout the alley. From beneath matted scalps, three pairs of eyes bulged in three deflated heads, the only part of them I had left intact.

The presence of my other self left me, and I breathed. I looked at the remains of the three teenage boys, comprehending my actions for the first time. And I was repulsed. I threw up in the piles of trash behind me, then dry-heaved and gulped in the putrid air that now smelled too much like copper and violence. I peeled my ruined underwear off my legs with shaking hands, and walked somewhat unsteadily back home.

My dad was asleep on the couch when I arrived. I was pleased with this. I didn't want him to see me in the fearful, battered, and grime-covered state I was in. I took a long shower, and imagined that night was dripping down the pipes and into the sewer along with the blood between my legs and the garbage in my hair. The urge to sing away my pain was almost overwhelming, but I was afraid. What if I sang myself another life, and left the bathroom to find it so? Would it be so bad? But what if I sang, and I destroyed something I couldn't bring back?

How did I control it?

How could something I have always done with thoughtless joy become a weapon so destructive?

I cried bitterly and curled up on the floor of the bathtub, letting the water from the showerhead fall on my back like warm rain, numbing me. I lamented the loss of my virginity. My violation. My brutal retaliation, even if I still couldn't understand how I had done it.

But most of all, I lamented the loss of my voice.