She can convince herself to flee

Cassie lies curled up under the stinking tarpaulin, every muscle tense, as if the door could open again at any moment. *("They're gone... but they'll be back...")* Her body is a single open wound.

The skin on her wrists is chafed, her thighs sticky with dried bodily fluids.

The smell of semen and urine hangs in her nose.

*("What have I done...")* The memories **** her like blows: How she held the bottle, how she peed in front of them, how she drank it.

How her body reacted against her will. The looks on the men's faces when she...

*("No! Don't think about it!")* But the images can't be shaken off.

The worst thing is not what she did - but that a part of her wanted it. That her body obeyed when her will had long been broken.

*("Am I really what they say I am?")*A cold gust of wind makes the tarp flutter.

Cassie shivers, squeezes her legs together. Somewhere in the distance, a dog howls.

*("I could go now...")* The thought terrifies her. She is not sure whether she can really leave or whether she should stay, as she has promised.

("But if I stay...") They will come back tomorrow. And the day after tomorrow. And they will always find new ways to break her. Until there is nothing left of her. Suddenly she sees herself from the outside: naked, trembling, with someone else's sperm between her legs.

A will-less doll. *("This isn't me. This can't be all I have left.")* Slowly, painfully, she sits up. The tarpaulin slips off her shoulders. The evening air is still warm.

("I have to go home") she thinks. She gets up and starts walking.

Her whole body aches.

slowly it gets dark and cold.

she walks and walks. she stops at a street corner, her bare feet on the cool asphalt. This area looks familiar to her... the peeling advertisement on the wall, the broken mailbox. *("Two more blocks.")* The thought of her home makes her heart beat faster. Her stepmother will scold her. Her sister will treat her as contemptuously as ever. But at least... *("At least I'm safe there. Or at least safer.")* She pulls the tarp tighter around her and walks on. The streetlights cast ghostly shadows on the ground. Then she sees it - the familiar house with the blue shutters. Her home.

Cassie stops in front of the door. No light is on. Good.

She slowly lifts the doormat. The cold metal key glistens in the moonlight. *("Just get in. Quickly. Quietly.")* Her fingers wrap around the key. The door opens silently.

The familiar smell - of cleaning products and her sister's perfume - hits her. She is just about to enter when a voice from the darkness startles her: "So, was it fun?"

Cassie freezes.

Her sister is leaning against the wall in the hallway, her arms crossed.

"I..." Cassie begins.

"You stink," her sister cuts her off.

"And you look like filth."

Cassie lowers her head.

"The key goes back under the door mat, where it belongs, in case you have visitors. And leave that disgusting tarpaulin outside too!" says Stacy, her sister.

Cassie obeys without resistance. The main thing is that Stacy doesn't **** her to leave the house after all. She puts the key under the mat, folds up the tarpaulin and leaves it outside.

Naked, she closes the door behind her and stands in the hallway.

"You look like you've had a lot of fun, you disgusting bitch! Now wash up and go to bed!" says Stacy and walks up the stairs in disgust. Cassie hears Stacy lock the door upstairs.Cassie knows she's doing this to keep any late-night visitors from coming upstairs, but the gesture makes her feel even more outcast and alone than she already is.

Cassie goes into the guest bathroom. Her bathroom? And washes herself with the cold water as best she can. It's not enough to get her even remotely clean, and the stench of other people's urine and sweat rises up her nose again. And with it the realization that she didn't want any of this! She shouldn't want any of this to happen! She doesn't understand how she could think of herself like that.

("It was an exceptional situation! I did it to survive!") she tells herself, and when she is halfway clean (as clean as she can get with cold water and a bar of soap), she looks at herself in the mirror, still with dirt in her hair and on her face. The words [I SUCK] on her lips are more than true today... She feels sick.

As she thinks about the best way to wash her hair with a bar of soap, she realizes that she doesn't even have a towel...But she has to get this piss off her! So the now already freezing young woman begins to wash her hair, and only when she has finished is she finally ready to leave the small bathroom.

Still wet and lacking a towel, Cassie goes to her bed in the living room, where the soft mattress is all she has left. She doesn't have her blanket or pillow either, and Cassie falls asleep shivering, hoping that no one will come to her that night.