You head home.

Feeling the weight about you, dragging and begging you stay upon the floor and the uncomfortable gravel bed, you resist, standing with no heroic edge. You hunch, arms about your middle as though clutching your stomach still, or hugging some dribble of strength back into you. Your unsteady legs begin their shaky step back toward the village and the clothes you abandoned, each gravel crunch slowly taking the mansion away and replacing it with other sights.

When you see the house, you slow, and slow, until the stone gateposts mark an invisible barrier to progression. It’s just a house -a building devoid of life and activity to your naked eye- but the sight of it scatters your gaze, until you have to turn away, putting your back to the stone pillar and sinking down to the ground.

It’s just a house. They’re gone. They’re not there. You’re breath shortens, coming in little gasps that strangle the sense out of you, and you cover your face with your hands, blocking all sight, yet sealing in the rabid feeling until it’s your only company. It’s just a house. Sweat floods your body, beading on you and running from your armpits. They’re gone. A tight feeling grows in your chest, stabbing at your heart, and small stars begin to float behind your eyelids, born, rushing, and dying faster than you can see. They’re…

Dizziness overwhelms you. Why won’t they…

Why didn’t they stop?

You sit, hunched like a fool, for some time. Not as long as you lay on the path, you think, and that was not long enough; the deranged **** on your senses ends with the sound of a distant voice.

“She runs to Roland and tells him we ran a one-cunt-parade on her and what? Everybody gets fucked!”

You recognise the voice. It sends shivers up your spine.

‘Which would you rather be? Pride? Or Falling?’

You look about the pillar with only half an eye, every muscle tense and ready to sprint no matter what you innumerable aches and soreness’s say. The man walks from the house, as though he a part of it, as though he never left. His words are directed to the man who follows him, the sight of which snaps your hand you your mouth, as it stuff your squeak back in.

“Trust me, she ain’t ‘runnin’ anywhere,” the gruff tone of the hook nosed man responds.

Your rear hole clenches, remembering his shape, his expression. Your arms tied above you, his hands lifting your hips, your legs, bringing you down to sit where he wanted. Move you as he wanted. He may not have been the last, but his was a first that shaped you permanently. He is why you limp the most. He…

Your stomach twitches again, fining nothing more to spill.

“Well she sure as fuck ain’t here. Damn fools!” The ruddy faced riddler throws his hands up in despair. “Where did they think she was gonna go!?”

In the silence that follows, you watch him slump to the porch frame, smearing his hand about his mouth in thought. Eventually, he points your way,

“She said she was going up there. You search that way. I’ll get some others together and head to the dock.” The hook-nosed man comes towards you, chased by the other man’s words. “And don’t kill her just yet; got to be smart about this.”

He comes for you. Comes right for you! Your heart slams in your chest. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, just the stone columns of the decrepit gatepost between you and him. You curl up, brining your knees under your chin and keeping your back to the post, listening to his feet and his grumbling as they approach.

Why him? Why did it have to be him? The bulbous faced man who was with him was first of the night and more than traumatising enough to see, but compared to the other, his was an impersonal bout of self-gratification. The hook nosed man had been the same the first time. The second time though, it hadn’t been about him. He had made it…intimate. **** it to be. He had made it last.

His footfalls come to your post, and you prepare for the worst, too weak and too terrified to fight back.

He walks right past you.

Hidden by the pillar, the darkness of night, and a bout of distraction, he walks past and you are treated once more to the sight of his back walking away from you. He continues down the path and around the wooded corner, quickly being lost in the trees and bushes, barely visible to your eyes. You begin to hear the gravel of the path further down crunch, his footfalls transitioning from dirt to stones, letting you hear where he stops. Where you stopped. You see his vague shape unmoving, looking at the sick you left.

You stand and move about the column, limping into the village. The house is there, and you fear, perhaps irrationally, that more of the men will suddenly spill from its open doorway, but its worst is behind you as you press forward. Your limping staggering steps, kept from running by the burn you heard boasted of, head for the other side of the street, where the narrow alley leads to your discarded clothes. You were to come here anyway.

You move down it with apprehension, shuffling to the corner and looking down the larger back alley it connects to. No one walks it, for now. You see the barrel where your bag is, clean clothes promised within, and before you move out to get it, you duck back, finding yourself face to face with the hook-nosed man.

“Hello princess.”

A sharp gasp is silenced by a hand about your throat. He pulls you, turning you and placing your body next to his so his front presses your back. Even if he wasn’t **** you, you doubt you could breathe. He drags you with him, moving quickly toward the back alley and into a dark building, out of sight of any unlikely passers-by. You know what’s coming. You go numb, limp, turning to the passive and pliable doll that doesn’t think and doesn’t feel. He pulls the top down and off you, the jacket button barely surviving the process, and his other hand pulls down the trousers it had taken such mental effort to find and climb into. He bears you down to the wooden floor, face first, climbing onto your back and laying upon it.

“You’re lucky twice in one night is my limit.”

His thick arm wraps about your throat, locking off your air as it pulls you back. You struggle, arms moving forward blindly and weakly, groping in the dark.

“When you see the gods, ugh, and your tryin for their blessin…here’s a word of advice.” His voice barely strains, waiting out your strangulation with an idle air. He leans close to your ear as the room gets darker, breathing heavily into it. He bites your lobe, nibbling and sucking it before whispering. “Your arse it tighter than your pussy.”

His free hand does something to you, but by some miserable mercy, you pass out before knowing what.

You cough yourself awake in the empty room. The same room, the same floor. You are alone, naked, and your throat is sore. You look about the dark room, groping for where you clothes were thrown in a way eerily familiar. He must have taken them. Why?

You sluggish thoughts churn before getting it; naked, you cannot walk down the street or reach ‘your crew’ without being seen as anything other than an over enthusiastic whore. You crawl to your hands and knees. There are two problems with his plan; the first is assuming you have someone to run too, and the second is that you have other clothes nearby. If you can just get to them.

You crawl to the door, still dizzy, feeling sick again.

The door opens. Not by you.

“Good job.” The red faced man looks pleased; as happy to see you as the first time.

The boot of the hook nosed man steps past and sweeps your hands, making you fall to the floor. Three others step in, two carrying lanterns which light your pitiable form and the decrepit room. The man who was first before, speaks again.

“Remember, keep it quiet. Take her out into the woods, dress her, and make her swing from a tree. Make it look like she did herself in.”

Of the three newcomers, their expressions don’t change. You recognise none of them; they weren’t there with the others. One is a young boy with dark hair, barely 18 summers or less, and another is a broad man with a bushy ginger beard. The third, a woman, responds.

“You got rope?” No hesitation, just a job to do.

“There’s some in that house. Davod can show you.”

“Pet, go help him.”

She addresses the dark haired boy, who leaves with the hook-nosed man, Davod. Davod; you’ll remember that name…but from the sound of things, not for long. He drops your clothes before leaving.

The woman looks at you when they’re gone. The light falls on her face oddly, hiding one eye, and after a moments ill feeling looking into the dark space, you realise she has no eye, just an empty socket on one side of her face. She’s older than you; greying, but before her time; her thin face and athletic muscles keeping signs of age mostly at bay, but not sighs of cruelty. She sneers at you.

“All this for a whore? We’ve done worse to-“

“Not a whore. One of Roland’s,” the man explains. “Some of the men figured they’d run a train on her to get their own back, you know. Not my idea.” He sniffs, brushing over the lie. “She can’t go back to The Falling Blade cuz she’ll blab, so now she’s gonna be some little bitch who couldn’t make it as a pirate and swung herself from a nearby tree. She ain’t gonna say nothing, understand?”

She nods, looking at you with curiosity, uncaring that if things had been different, it could be her on this floor being looked at by Roland’s men.

“How many this bitch get?”

“Enough. Get it done. I’ll tell Max… unless you want to?”

The woman kicks, a light push of the boot, turning you by the hip so you roll onto your back. She chuckles, sucking her teeth at the prospect of ‘Max’.

“I’ll stick with hanging the bitch.”

Instructions given, the man walks away, leaving you with the one-eyed woman and the ginger bearded man. She squats, looking between your legs, lifting you by the ankle and pulling them wide for a better look.

“Ooof.”

It’s all she says about it; all she needs to say. You don’t cover yourself. What would be the point? She turns to the other man, who holds the remaining lantern over you.

“Hey Hill, y’get some in there?”

He looks at you, not really paying attention to her.

“Get some what, in where?”

She rolls her eye before nodding in the direction of the inn and putting her tongue behind her bottom lip, gyrating it to make a familiar wet slapping sound. She nods knowingly at him, smiling.

“Well I was.”

“O’yeah? That a fact?” He doesn’t respond. “Who with?

He sniffs, eyes never leaving you, “Near got me some o that red head slut.”

“Which one?”

“Err, only one there was in the main room.”

“Right, right. Arrived late?”

“Yeah.”

She rocks on her feet, looking at him with a tricksters eye.

“Sooooooo… y’wanna give this bitch a last fuck or what?”

The man stops, despite not really doing anything before, switching his eyes from you to her, staring as though wondering if his mind had been read. He shrugs and looks to you, his hands going to his belt.

The door opens and they both jump, forgetting that they were probably supposed to watch out for any curious people from the opposing crew. They relax when the boy steps in, carrying ropes. ‘Davod’ is not with him. The woman halts the ginger man.

“Alright, no time for that now. Let’s get her out to the woods before anything.”

“Why not here?”

She hesitates at the question, eyes briefly glancing up for any likely points. There are none; you’ve been on your back long enough to notice.

“Cause we was told to do it from a tree for fucks sake. Come on.”

She grabs the lantern and your clothes before looking out the door, nodding to the other two to get on with it. They step forward, boy grabbing your feet and man grabbing your arms, hauling your unresisting form up to follow. For some reason, you cannot even summon up the energy to speak, let alone move. Both would likely have the same result anyway.

You pass the empty buildings of the empty alley, moving to a space a little further down from the one you used to move from trees to scant civilisation. Passing through another alley and over a long since overrun fence, your carriers begin to stomp through brittle branches and crunching old leaves. Forest: you remember this. Had you waited here, it wouldn’t have happened.

“This’ll do.” The woman looks around, turning with her whole body where her half sight proves inadequate.

The space is far enough in that the village is not even a glimmer. Its distant noise, which had lessened with time and the long night, was gone now, lingering as nothing more than an imagined distant murmur. You look up at a tree, a little taller than the stubby ones about it, with a branch not too far out of reach. It had grown to fill a space, a long dead fallen husk lying and slowly rotting below.

Your feet drop, the rope comes from the boy, and the woman tosses it over, catching it as it comes down the other side. The branch is not high, but high enough. You watch as the noose is tied.

Suddenly, as though a new day had dawned, you realise that you don’t want to die. You don’t want any of this! Not to die, not to go on, not to suffer any more; if you could erase the whole night, you would in a heartbeat. You shake your head as it comes for you, passing over and tightening about your neck. You raise your arms-

“Ugh. Grab em. Tied em with this.”

-only to find them pulled behind your back by the ginger bearded man and tied with the same cord they used before, the tight leather of your once thigh strap biting into you again.

“No- Herkkk!” She pulls the rope, her body falling, its weight heavier than yours and making you slip you from the bearded man’s hands as you’re drawn up to the branch. Air is cut off, your feet kicking as you dangle.

“Hey, not so high!”

The sight of the one eyed woman, smiling evilly as she hauls the rope and watches you die, slips away as you’re turned, spun like a sack tied to a post. It ends when you face him, his hands pulling your hips down until they’re level with his.

You had almost forgot.

“Hold up.”

He pauses by the woman’s instruction, dick out and in hand. Your feet drop until your toes touch the floor, letting you squeeze some air through your neck.

“What?” he asks, clearly frustrated. His hand grabs your naked buttocks, but you’re still too low down for him to complete what he wants to do.

“I ain’t havin my boy go the night without his reward.” The ginger begins to ask what difference it would make if the boy is second or first, and you agree, both would be last in a long line, but she cuts him off. “Because I aint got all night, so the both of yus are gonna do her same-time. I ain’t havin my boys peker shit tipped.”

The chest that fills your vision looks like it’s going to argue, but it soon shrugs its heavy shoulders. The rope creaks as you’re turned again.

The boy, a mop of dark hair on his head, could be good looking if he had a few more summers in him. He steps out of his trousers looking surprisingly unthrilled, a marked difference to all who came before, but he stands as ready as any of them.

Your hips are lifted, your back kept straight by the tension of the rope, and denied the ground, your feet kick, looking for purchase in the air as breath is once more taken from you. You feel a presence, and a push. Hips slap lightly on the cheeks of your rear.

As the boy ahead steps between your legs, he grabs them, wrapping them about his torso, for which you’re grateful. It leaves you open to him and he soon takes advantage, holding your thighs as he enters, but it lets you squeeze and push down on him, buying you more breaths through the noose.

The woman keeps your neck straight while the men hold you steady, their movements beginning in an inelegant manner that you find familiar. The last three men -the newcomers that had worked as a team- had done similar. The third had even had you breathing with difficulty then as well, albeit for a different reason than a noose. They begin to find a pace, sawing like woodcutters back and forth. The feel of the boy is no different to his contemporaries, while the Davod shaped hole drilled previously still echoed with its first founding. The strangling feel of the noose is far more pressing, even when some mishap has them push at once and meet dizzyingly in your middle. Its holder, spied over the shoulder of the dark haired boy, watches eagerly, one hand freed and questing down her front. Clearly, her suggestion to the man had not been altruistic; she watches you with a near deranged, ecstatic expression on her face, drinking in your suffering like some demon beast of yore. The boy hammering your beleaguered pussy, her boy, feels too meek to keep such evil in check, and even here, even in your darkest most miserable low, getting fucked front and back, you begin to feel some sympathy for him to be trapped and controlled by such a monster.

You squeeze him with your thighs again, the best hug you can give.

He moans and you feel his release.

“Oh I know that sound!”

The woman puts both hands back on the rope, keeping you level and off the ground while tying its end to the fallen rotting trunk lying beside her. She steps forward, pulling him off you and out of you.

“Did you just cum?” She asks it playfully, like a cat might to something trapped beneath its claws. The boy shakes his head, clearly frightened. “No? Then what’s all this?” She grabs him, hard from his flinch, stroking him by the soaked manhood. After squeezing him clean, she wipes her hand on him. “Just other peoples left overs?”

The boy looks paralysed, clearly regretting the sudden and instinctual lie brought about by the accusatory and sinister tone she had used. She pushes him into a nearby tree.

As for you, the lack of the boy had left your legs kicking again. The man drilling behind you and tenderising the already tender, gives little for your feet to push up on, leaving the rope to bite all the harder. You fight it, but not well; the stamina had been hammered out of you some time ago and the current activity does nothing to give you more. Oddly enough, after a long while of **** flailing and **** and the fading of your consciousness, you do find something underfoot. The ground.

Planting your reaching toes as far down as possible, you feel just enough to push upon, mere slivers of small stones amongst the dry grass. You look about, trying to see, trying to concentrate past the ongoing sodomy, to see further the reason why. The rope was tied about the trunk, but it must not be as heavy as it appears; the tied end floats ever so slightly, near invisible in the darkness, pulled up as a counterbalance that gives you just enough air to stave off unconsciousness and ****.

Such things -unconsciousness and **** and whatever comes after- still have there temptations, especially under the increasingly shuddering grunts from behind, but you deny them. The animal part of your mind had long since taken over, the need to survive, despite it all, burning strong within you. It’s bestial voice asks a single question, demands a single plan, wanting to know ‘what next?’

You play dead.

It’s a simple plan, but difficult to pull off. Spasms of movement shake through you involuntarily, pulling your bound arms, dancing on your tiptoes, flinching at the ****. Your sore throat and need to breathe more makes keeping your breath shallow difficult, and to make matters worse, every time his stroke seeks to hammer you harder, you’re lifted by it, pulled to and fro on the ropes end. Fortunately, the ginger bearded currently scratching your neck and the bastard it’s attached to have a solution for that.

“Uuuughhhh. Mmmmmmm. Fffffffffff.”

Hot, wet, seed. It spills into you, more identifiable than the boys for the lack of competition. You feel the familiar shudders run through the hard piercing length, sending little ginger bearded bastards to die upon infertile land, unable to even compete with those that came before.

The moment stretches, he holding your hips close and you near holding your breath. Eyes closed and head down, you only hear the noises of the boy makes, warring with the hatefully free breath breaking on your neck; the young man, mewls and gasps in pain, in a way that is too intimate to maintain his masculine persona. Curiosity becomes another growing twitch, but you keep your eyes and head down, accepting that you will never know what tortures could cause such noises. The man still hilted within your burning ring begins to kiss your neck, nuzzling it with itchy wirehaired lips as his hand hugs your lower belly. If you could stop your hearts thud in both places, you would, but you have to settle for hope, your old enemy.

“Come on corpse fucker, time to go.” The woman’s bark makes you jump, but fortunately, it also makes the man inside you jump, pushing forward and sending one last jolt through you. He pulls himself free, holding you still to stop your involuntary clench bringing you with him. “Boy, help him dress it, then…” the sound of lips on lips crackle, her breathy moan an unjust pleasure for one so evil, “find me on the ship; I want one more from yous before sleepin.” She slaps him before walking away, likely on the behind.

The man at your back tugs and pulls on the binding of your wrists, and you’re sure to let them swing limply when they come loose. People who commit suicide don’t do so naked and bound you suppose. Next comes the clothes, the bearded man threading your arms, with painful difficulty, through the holes of your sleeveless jacket, itself taken from the dead, while the boy takes up the trousers. He comes to your feet, toes still tense upon the ground.

He touches your feet and pauses.

You crack a closed eye to see his own looking up at you. He looks younger than you first thought, stripped of his pride in some way that, while different from your own humiliation, is of the same kin. He rolls up the shorts legs, carefully threating one foot through, and then another, keeping one on the ground at all times. He pulls them up and ties the front.

The other gets the jacket to hang upon your shoulders, straightening it and mumbling as he steps to the front button.

“Guess we all end up on the noose eventually.” He gives your bosom a good looking over. Perhaps he can see the nervous heart pounding below it. “Shame.”

The familiar feeling of furred lips appears about your nipple, fortunately you left and not over your heart, and you hold your breath while a serpent tongue comes out and rasps the dais and its nub point. Keeping your arms still at your side while he pulls a single painful suck is difficult, but short lived; he finishes, buttons you, and walks away with the boy in tow.

You want out of the noose, desperately, but you wait, listening through the blood pounding in your ears until the tromp of feet through bracken bush fades to nothing. Your toes hurt, burning as badly as the **** at your neck, and everything in-between, and when you finally reach up and undo the rope, you fall to your knees and the not so soft dirt of the forest floor.

Unlike before, with the path, you don’t want to stay. Visions of Davod coming, **** you, **** you, come to mind and whip your exhausted body into action. You look at the noose shaped in the dark, now hanging limp and spent, and begin to walk away, limping far enough through the blackness until you catch sight of the stars through the trees, pointing the way to the back of the island.

The waves lap at the broken stones below, a short fall down an easy slope. You sit at its edge, watching as the distant sun dares to rise its face to a new day. You know what that means; your guide said to meet him before sunrise; you’re too tired for that now though. You’ll chance it. Maybe he’ll wait and maybe he won’t, but you aren’t staying here for a moment longer than you have to.

You’re sick of this place.

Who you are (or who you were) is dead. It killed her. Whether she died on the noose or cocks, you don’t know. You feel…cold, empty, drained, and so very very tired. Coming here to slay some pirate captain seems such a joke now.

What next? You don’t want to be an Agent anymore; such dreams were for the girl who swam ashore, blade ready, thinking she could take on the world and win. That girl, you’re sure, had been fucked out of existence. You could join the temple proper? You look up at the gods fading in the growing light. No, you want nothing more to do with them, or justice, or any of that life anymore. A wife? A mother? A mother certainly, but who would take you and a bastard born? You stroke your belly, feeling a lead weight inside. A whore? Hopefully not.

You feel at the flaked and tender skin of your neck, bleeding slightly from ear to ear where rope had burned deeply. You recall those you had seen bearing similar scars and the instinctive judgement you had lain upon them. What honest soul bares the mark of a noose? What honest work could such a soul find?

They had done far more than ravage the honour out of you.

Yet you survived.

You swung from a noose and survived. You were the plaything for many men, yet you survived. Seeded and sodomised, choked on rope and cock, beaten and hammered and begging for ****, yet you survived.

You sigh, slowly sliding down the cliff to the sea.

Perhaps you’ll survive yet.