She didn’t know what was wrong with her. Why those thoughts assaulted her, day in, day out, never ceasing. She was broken, she knew that. Damaged goods, a ruined cunt of a woman, a mockery made flesh. At least that was how she felt most days. There were brief periods of normality, where that lie could be lived, if only for a moment that she would try to stretch to eternity. Only it would always come crashing down around her. The truth was that either awake or asleep, her mind told her one thing and one thing only. She deserved it.

She had deserved it when she was younger. When her first serious boyfriend had refused to accept the word no. It is a terrifying world that we live in, where one can simply disregard societal norms, take a declaration to stop, and ignore it. And he had. He needed her too much, he told her later, as she lay balled up beside him. That he loved her so much it made him crazy. That when she’d told him no, she was tired, it had felt like a rejection of his manhood and he’d lost control. He had kissed her forehead and stroked her hair as she cried, bloody cum leaking out of her ass. She understood what his words meant. He was apologizing but his words were clear. It was her fault it happened.

Later, it would happen again. Drunk, jealous, angry, there was always a different reason, a different explanation for his actions. But it didn’t matter, she knew. Ultimately, each time, it was her fault. It was her fault that she didn’t spread her legs, her fault that she made him horny, her fault for not helping him vent. She was the one who pushed him to do such things. Each time she would feel his cum leaking out of her bruised body and know that if she had been somehow better, this wouldn’t have happened. Thus, it wasn’t a surprise when she came home and caught him with a younger girl, likely more accepting of his rough affections, prettier, tighter. Better.

She had been depressed for weeks after that. She cried in bed, dreamed of him taking her, needing her so bad she had to hurt because of it. But every time she woke, wetter and wetter, the bed contained her alone. It gnawed at her, that emptiness, those dreams, the fucked-up desire to be hurt because her man was so lost that he couldn’t control himself. The ever-present whispers in her mind poked and prodded, and the dreams taunted what she could not have. She called and begged for him to take her back. He blocked her number, needing her no longer.

It was from there which lead her down the next step of her journey downward. A spiral that likely started the moment she was born. Some are born to shine, her mother had told her, some to exist, some to crash, and some to flicker out too soon. None of that mattered when she went to the nearby bar, got drunk, angry and alone. But under the haze of alcohol, a man gave her that needed drug, attention, and she latched onto it for dear life. He groped and kissed her, she barely knew his name, but she didn’t care. She was drowning from its absence. But when in his car, behind the bar, he got insistent, she told him no and asked to go to his apartment. He told her his wife was there, they were here, and it was happening. She struggled briefly until he backhanded her and flipped her over in the cramped backseat. Then he’d raped her, shoving her head against the fabric as he called her a whore.

She came during that assault and for that betrayal of her body, she never allowed herself to recover. The man quickly dumped his load, had laughed when she’d come, and said he’d known she was a whore. And he was right. If she had cum, had gotten wet, then her boyfriend was right, maybe she did deserve it. For a brief moment, she had mattered, and with him wiping his cock on her dress and kicking her out of the car, he drove off and she was alone again. She walked home, white clinging to her pale legs. When she got there, she touched herself, thinking of his need and perhaps hers as well, and came again before sleeping.