I cower away from it.
He surges with anger, yanking me back. “Stop being a bitch and take it!” He leaves his hand clamped around my thigh, fingers digging into the soft flesh. He squeezes so hard that I can see the corded muscles in his forearms strain with the force.
“Ah!” I cry out, back arching in my attempt to break free, but it just makes him squeeze harder, a soft noise emerging from his throat.
Maniac helps by holding my other leg open, spurring his friend on. “Yeah, man, come on. Squirt all over this pretty pussy. Little slut like this? She deserves it, doesn’t she?”
He makes a short gasp, nudging nearer. “Close…”
“When was the last time you got some, anyway?” Maniac asks, looking every bit the devil on his shoulder. “I’ve never seen you with a chick. Imagine what it’d be like to cram your dick into that hole. Imagine how tight it’d be.” Lower, he urges, “Imagine how loud she’d scream.”
Lurker lurches up, cock in his fist, and shoves it right up against me before he comes. His shoulders heave as he empties himself into my folds, a growl ripping from his chest. “Get the phone, get the phone.” Apparently not one for the afterglow, he pulls back, allowing the other two to spread me wide, phone pointed right between my legs.
A block of dread drops in my stomach at the realization that nothing the Kings had in mind for me could possibly be as humiliating, as dehumanizing, as fucking undignified as this: The three of them huddled around my vagina, recording the image of their spunk and blood dripping to the mattress.
“Got it,” Lurker says, still a touch breathless as he springs from the bed. He marches to the dresser and picks something up—a black, leather bag—and throws it to Maniac, adding, “Do your thing and let’s roll.”
“Careful,” Maniac snipes, setting the bag on the bed. “I need a sterile environment, you fucker. Sterile. Titanium fucking white.” He mutters nonsensically as he rifles through the bag.
I look between them, feeling sick with embarrassment and useless anger. “What now?”
Creep just flips me over and every nerve in my body tenses when he says, “Don’t move.”
Maniac straddles my backside, sweeping my hair away from the skin of my back. But it’s a long moment before anything happens. The other two move around, acting when he demands something. “Wet cloth.” And then, “Find an outlet. Plug this in.” And then, “Hold this still.”
There’s a click, and then the sharp, acrid smell of alcohol, a shock of cold against my shoulder blade.
And then, there’s the sudden buzz I’d know anywhere.
Tattoo gun.
“It’s loud!” Lurker hisses, standing close.
But Maniac doesn’t care. I can feel him hunching over me, and suddenly all that frantic energy that’s been radiating off his body disappears. He goes so still, so focused, that it lulls me into the coming numbness.
The first touch of the needle against my skin doesn’t even make me flinch. I think somewhere, buried deep in my brain, is the urge to resist. To fight. To throw him off and run away. But him and Creep are holding me down, and anyway, there’s nowhere to go. I lose the motivation to do much more than stare unseeingly at the soiled bed sheets.
I can’t make out what he draws, too numb to follow the sharp, hot sensation of the needle piercing my skin, but I know that he’s methodical, taking his time as he leans over me, putting his mark into me. I know that it’s small, maybe two or three inches in diameter.
It could be ten minutes later that the buzzing stops, or it could be hours.
“See? I said I’d leave a mark,” Maniac says, lips brushing the shell of my ear.
His weight leaves. I hear him and the others packing the supplies back into that bag, ignoring me like discarded trash. I sense them walking toward the dresser and using it to lever themselves out the narrow egress window. I watch them, that broken window being the only part of the room in my line of sight, and I don’t bother rolling over or getting up. Some part of me is firm in the belief that if I stay here—if I stay as still as possible—that none of this will have happened. Moving will mean that I’ll feel it. Between my legs. In my jaw. Around my ankle. In the permanence of the ink on my shoulder blade.
Creep is the last to climb the dresser to the window. He lingers beside my bed, and it’s just like when I first woke up. A pillar of shadow. A part of the foundation. He stares at my used body, defeated and defaced, and then pulls something from his pocket, setting it carefully onto the nightstand.