I have a story that has been rolling around in my head for years, parts of it associated yet not associated. On a whim, I wrote a part of it down the other night. We'll see where this goes.

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The two thugs held Enwar’s arms back and immobile. Who could outmuscle a whole man with one arm? The third brigand leaned down and picked up the larger part of the broken staff and with rage approached the restrained man.

“He thinks he’s something special, this one!”, he seethed at no one and everyone. “I’m gonna beat you till you can’t beg for death. And then Imma make you watch as each man here takes a turn at your slut! Each! And! Every! HOLE!”, punctuated by a strike, stab or jab with the wooden length. The two men let him go and he collapsed to the floor, his face a bleeding mass of torn and dripping flesh, bone bits and muck trailing from his mouth and nose. All was dullness and out of focus. He struggled off of his face, dirt and dust from the floor now caked on his cheeks and hair.

After all his life, struggles, victories, he felt in fact fortunate that his end, nigh as it was here, was at least predictable. He could die in fine fashion, at least buggering the eye from the skull of one of these men. What mothers, his thoughts mused. What mothers must have felt their hearts slowly implode as the years rendered their babies into these men.
“GET down and lick the floor, little girl!” the ringleader mocked, making the point. A heavy leather clad boot heeled his shoulder blades. He did get down, not able to withstand the force, but he wouldn’t lick the floor. If there were some way that self-depreciation would save her, he would, certainly. But it wouldn’t here. These men wanted him to die in pain inside and out, her to suffer in terror, and his death ultimately when her agony ended.

XXX

Such a fine thing, well-cured and prepared leather. The strength and spirit of it was like nothing else she could think of. Fine boots, hats, coverings for important objects, like swords, knives, and even drums. Its use covered just about everything that was important to her. But what silly thoughts at a time of duress. She felt she would surely die soon, and that horribly. Rape, disrespect, abuse, and then a slow death. She might outlive him. The poor part was that the longer she lived, the longer they would prolong his torment. Her release meant his release.
There’s something fine, enlivening about pain, her thoughts drifted. Regardless of how she might try, she’d never be able to break free of the fine leather. But the more she tried, the more there was that enlivening.

Suddenly she felt a primal recoil, a shock, as she realized one of the intruders, the one nearest to her with the shaggy brown hair and blue eyes, had torn away her blouse tunic and had cupped his mouth over her right breast. Yanked back into the terrible moment, she felt his tongue roughly press against her nipple as the man laughed and drooled on his quarry. His friends found it sporting! Her stomach turned at this intrusion by this thing. He did not have his permission to take her. It made her angry.

“AhhH!”, she screeched and violently kipped her body away as best she could, entangled as she was. “Submit, *****!”, the man growled and savagely snapped back with his teeth born and grabbed her sensitive breast-flesh and bit through--- hard. His mouth filled with blood and he ripped away and spat blood, drool, and a disembodied nipple into her face .

She shrieked a pain she had not felt since she was just young, in the home of her adoptive family. Evading and hiding from the pain and hurt she’d endured with those who she should have best trusted, only to find the same human evil and darkness clutching her in her last hours. Would to any god that she could simply just die. Die to feeling, to memory, to ever having been. It was the first time, she realized, that she wished and hoped that there was no life after this one. This pain could not be erased. She was lower than **** and meat on a table here, helpless and savaged, with the man she loved and wanted to feel his love back so badly. Broken, bleeding, and still trying to save her as he had always done. And she had caused all this.

XXX

Hearing the pain of the girl brought his senses back, It’s doable to allow the self to suffer. But to watch and not act when one you love is suffering? It wasn’t in him. The biting of the tit was surprising to everyone. Even the thugs turned their attention to the bleeding, half naked, and shrieking woman. Things were escalating more and more quickly due to the bite, but the rest of the animals would meet the intensity and increase it. Up on one elbow, he rolled himself onto his back and kicked the knee inwards of the blond, young criminal within his range.

The sick crunch was followed instantly by a howl of pain known only to those who’ve had a socket turn inside out. “Rat bastard!”, the ringleader shouted as he swung the stick overhead and landed it in Enwar’s low chest, where ribs meet breastbone. “I’m gonna rip your **** out!”
XXX

“Eh-yeah! Rip is ****,” the breast biter said. “I’ve got a **** for her now!” He ran his hand down her skirt and found an opening. Ripping in nearly off, revealing her womanhood to the room, he ran his hands up her inner thigh, then furiously rammed his dirty, chipped nailed thumb into her vagina.

She’d felt as though she were past fear, past shouting, into a place where she could accept what was happening and not make a scene, not embarrass herself or him. She felt her whole life had been a failure- one where others had had to watch out for her, protect her, defend her mistakes and love her despite it all. She felt so ashamed that she were not smarter, not more nimble and witty, not more prescient when it came to the evil things of the world.

But that intrusion. That dirty thumb jammed inside her with less than care, with hate and disdain. Who was this man that he could disdain her? Enwar never disdained her. He’d always held her up, even when he thought she was not meeting her own potential. She could abide him intruding on her feelings because it felt like care, like love in a way. But this man here disdained her and didn’t know her more than an hour. Everything she ever was, or could have been equated for this man into no more than a thing to rape and humiliate?

As the pieces of the whole situation came and placed themselves together for her, she felt it again, that old power she used to feel was a part of her, but went away when she was a young girl: she felt the locked place in her soul crack and break open.

She was not sure one could feel light. Of course, she thought, one can feel the sun, but that’s it’s warmth. But inside her from that dark place she felt a crack and a light, a light that broke out from where it must have always been. Then she felt heat.
XXX

At the ringleader’s threat, the man whose knee was not broken came down on Enwar with a knife and cut away the waistline of his britches, removing with it chunks of flesh. Enwar grimaced audibly and thought how commendable it must be that these criminals do not live on empty threats. The boss was in all fact going to rip off his genitals with his bare-hands. Could that be counted as a form of integrity? A man who can make things happen. In another life, this man could have been something, perhaps. If Enwar had ever had a son, he would have had him be a man who could set his mind to something and do it. Raised right, that’s a near unstoppable man, indeed!

“You’re wee stones are mine, deadman!” the chief growled as he reached down and grabbed a handful of Enwar’s testicles.
XXX

The heat emanated from somewhere in her chest and gut. She felt it radiate thru her. This must be death coming on. But she’d always thought death to be cold. It felt like life, upon reflection. And it was rage. Anger. Fury. She knew in an instant that she would kill this man who bite her flesh and raped her body with his hands. She couldn’t imagine how, but something had come alive in her that had been deadened.

As she was in her thoughts, the brown haired man leered up, violently ****ing her with his terrible thumb, and licked her cheek.
And then she broke her straps.

“FUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!!”, she growled and groaned, a deep, almost demonic sound that came from the heat.

Cracking and breaking as easily as crushing egg shells bleached in the sun, she raked her freed hands down through his clavicle bones and felt his ribs come apart under her strength. The man was only able to sound off in pain for a second before her hands, fingers, and nails, had deflated his lungs and popped his heart like sun-rotting melon. The croaking, choking sound of a throat that has no air stopped as the remainder of the man fell to the floor. Amidst all the gore, his still engorged member still stood, a testament to his intent. She stomped the reminder thru the wooden floor.

Every eye in the room suddenly veered towards here in silence and disbelief as she grabbed her arms full of the hot intestines of what had been her attacker and threw them like wet ropes at the center mass of their violators. Surprise, she thought. I am here.

Now pursuer, she leapt at the man closest to her, in so doing, tripping over the the body parts of the one she had just killed. Not trained to fight, she did not know what to do with her hands or feet, nor was she agile. But she didn’t care about that. She reached out with a fearsomeness she had never felt before, but somehow always felt was there. She was predator and the whole world was her prey.

She wanted to latch onto the foot or ankle of the man struggling to create space between himself and her. She didn’t know what she would do with it, she just knew she could hurt him. It was time to hurt them.

The ankle bones splintered and cracked like weak shale under a horse in her grip. The man shrieked out and she was quickly on her knees and punched --- as near as she knew how--- his upper thigh. Surprising her, his leg came off, but it felt light as a kite string to her. She swung it like a child swings a sword, pretending to be a knight and the limb crushed the torso of the man, skin and flesh sloughing off in her grip. She would have to find something harder.
The ringleader and man with one good knee were feverishly backing away, but she’d have none of that. She wished of a sudden that she had a **** the size of a giant elm and tear these animals in half with it, right through their buttocks. Fair play and play about, she thought.

Absent a giant timber betwixt her thoughts, she hurled herself over Enwar and landed both fists and elbows on the one kneed man. She felt his body give way and bone break thru his shoulders and chest.. It felt good to her. Doing this to them was good.

As she struck him and he gave way, she also felt the wooden floor beneath them break apart. No use further ruining a perfectly fine floor, she thought to herself, calm and serene as she worked death about the room. Instead, she grabbed his jaw and eye socket with her two hands and pulled his skull apart, like a paper doll the festival makers create, with toys and candies inside for children. The blood and a strange grey mound popped apart with a satisfying “pop”. She never knew what was inside a head and had never really wondered. Now she wondered and then knew, all at once. The man twitched like a stringed puppet. That too was satisfactory.

Turning her attention to the ringleader, struggling to pull the heavy table from the door, she stood up, naked, glorious, and covered in every color a human body can produce, she breathed out menacingly.
“You…”
“What are you, you devil *****!?”, he screamed, terror and tears running down his face.
“You…” she breathed again, a white hot mist coming from her mouth. “You used my hospitality to hurt me. You used my goodness of heart to harm what I
love”, inhaling the mist back in, “Now I will harm you.”

The enemy flesh on her body had begun to sizzle like meat in a fire, but she did not feel hot or even warm. She could see a white glow emanating Suddenly her feet fell through the wooden floor, burned through. Her feet hit dirt, leaving her encased in wood to her knees, but then the wood caught fire. She felt unencumbered, even though the wood was thick. So soon as she touched it, it became ash and cinder.

“AHHHHH!!!!”, the man shrieked out as he picked up an iron digging bar and swung it at her. Her falling made the swinging bar come into contact with the side of her head, rather than her mid torso as the panicked man had designed. She did not feel it, but she did see globs of it continue its path as though she was not there, spackling the opposite wall with white hot iron, catching fire in several places in the room.

As the unmelted remainder of the bar swung past, she reached up to grab at it, but it sprayed apart like a rod of water in her hand. The force of her lashing out caused the white hot iron to spray back in the face and upper body of the man. He fell to the floor in loud torment.

The inability to lay hold on the bar enraged the girl, because that was to be her elm. Whatever these powers were, did they too have to rob her of what she wanted? She trudged thru the wood floor, it catching fire and crumbling and, realizing that the touch of her hands would burn the man to ash, carefully brushed his shin bone as she got near enough to the fetal staged man. She did not feel the leg, but saw it come open like a flaming sword had cut it, flesh sizzling and bone darkened.

“Now is the day of my power. There is no one here to hurt me,” she said to the now pleading, slobbering man, “or make afraid!”
“No!”, the humbled man cried. “I’ll give ye an’thing! I got gold!”
“I want,” she purred in her white hot rage, “You.”

XXX

He didn’t know how long he had been walking or where he was supposed to go. But the birds sounded so sweet. The breeze thru the trees felt and smelled good. He decided he would walk until he found what was looking for or it found him. And that’s how he felt: he was supposed to find something important.
He puzzled for a long while and continued to walk. He felt confused and it was humbling. He’d always had such a good sense for purpose. He was not drunk, but he could not remember for the life of him what he was supposed to be doing. He smelled a slight smell of smoke and thought a campfire might be nearby. The nature of the users might jog his memory.

But the smell of the fire was more dank than a regular fire. Too potent for a fire that he couldn’t see. It was dirty. And there was flesh in the smoke. But with all this clarity of these senses, certainly he should be able to see smoke or the tell-tell signs of used ground. This felt like madness, like hearing a voice with no body.

He continued walking but stopped as he heard something strange, something he’d heard before. It sounded like muffled coughing. But who did it sound like? A woman, a girl, rather. But who was she and what had happened to her? He thought he remembered her, dark-haired, bright of spirit, and kind. But hapless in a way. What ever happened to her? He felt he’d loved her as well as he could, as well as he knew how. He felt sad that she was gone and regretted that he didn’t know what had happened to her.

He sat up with a start, coughing horribly as the thick smoke wafted over him in clouds. What the hell? He’d been dreaming, clearly, but where was he now? He looked around and saw his house ablaze, well, the last remnants of a blaze. It was about late-morning, the sun not yet at its zenith. He struggled to his feet, body screaming in protest, joints feeling askew. As he rose up, a wave of pain raced over his body and seemed to try and burst out of his skull, he raised his hand to his face and felt that it was mangled and swelled.

Stumbling backwards and falling down, he rested on his back, deciding whether he wanted to give it another try. Eyes closed, he rolled his head to one side and after breathing back in his strength, opened his eyes. And a stone’s throw away lay the brown-haired girl, naked and asleep.