Voluptuous

Eternally

Ravena pov~

"You're coming with me." A gruff voice spoke, an even rougher hand grabbing onto my arm and yanking me to my feet.

"What do you want?" I fought against them, my weak legs protesting movement as I'd sat idle for days.

"You're onto stage two of your punishment."

I scoffed and tried to tug away from their grip, my eyes burning at the mere introduction of a flashlight into my environment. "Go to hell."

He chuckled. "You've gotten so skinny. Isolation is one of the best punishments."

"I didn't even do anything!"

Without a response, he leaned close to my disgusted face, smoothing a finger over the smooth skin of my cheek. He inhaled deeply, almost moving his mouth towards my neck, but decided to train his fingers down, stopping just above my breasts. "If you don't cooperate, I'll be forced to punish you by," his hand found my breast and squeezed, "other means."

I almost gagged with my whole body, nevertheless I stopped fighting. I wasn't stupid enough to give anyone a reason to rape me.

He dragged me out of the room, and for the first time in six days, I saw my own skin. I looked pale, bruised, and weak. My skin was dry, my lips practically falling apart in desperation for water. My stomach had long since given up on demanding food, figuring around the third day all I had to do was drink water and sleep to survive the punishment. Then I got too weak to move for water.

I wasn't paying attention to where this man was taking me. A horrid feeling in my gut knew what was coming. I could hear the screams, the clanking of chains, and the dreadful ripping sounds of leather against flesh, against blood. I closed my eyes as tightly as they would go as he led me down more stairs, and into a dark room.

"Take off your shirt."

I stared. Do I look like I was born yesterday?

"I said take it off!" The tall man raised his voice, and a hand with it readying to hit me. The blow came as I was half wriggled out of the material, stinging exploding on my face. My eyes filled with tears but I did not cry. Such scum did not deserve to see a girl cry.

I turned away from him and he whistled, calm again. He ran a freezing hand down my back, feeling over the scars. "Now, this is beautiful." His nails dug into one of the most recent scars and I whimpered under my breath, feeling it as if it was the first sting there again. "How many times have you been whipped?"

"Why would I keep track of such a cruel thing?"

"Start counting for me today, I think we'll aim for twenty."

My skin crawled at the thought of the tough whip coming down, with vampires strength and speed, on my back twenty times. I braced, my arms against my head protecting my ears as I stretched my back out as much as I could. There was no point delaying this.

And then it came, the whip almost as loud as his cackle at my pain. "I told you to count."

"One."

He tutted. "I had to remind you, now we have to start over."

Crack.

"One."

Four cracks over and over.

"Five."

I was screaming by the tenth.

And then he just stopped, his cackling laughter dying away too, and for some sheer reason I thought he would take mercy on me, I thought he would feel bad about putting me in so much unnecessary pain. He came to face me and bent down so he could see my swollen eyes and my trembling lips.

"Does it hurt?"

I stayed quiet, my back stinging like hell, the smell of my own blood so strong on my nostrils I wanted to throw up.

He snarled. "I think we need to go back to zero again."

***

"This should be a good enough cast for a few days. And make sure you take one of these with every meal," she handed me a container filled with tiny white pills that made me sick to my stomach. "They're to help boost your mineral levels, which dropped dangerously low during your punishment. No more skipping meals for at least two weeks, either."

"Thankyou." I uttered to the nurse, scared to meet her red eyes. I moved to slowly get off the bed, my back screaming against the bandages she had encased it in. Turns out happy-go-whippy asshole damaged my back more than he's meant to, and for the first time since I was brought here, I had to receive medical attention. By a vampire, no less.

"Ravena, what did you.." Her voice trailed off as I met her eyes, looking at the girl I shared a bedroom with.

"I said I wasn't hungry, and I got punished."

Luciann stayed silent, seeing the red in my puffy eyes, the fear in my voice, and the stiffness of my posture. I've never felt this much pain before.

"And he whipped you how many times?"

"It doesn't matter." I whispered, curling into my bed with as little movement as possible, scared to sleep on anything but my stomach.

Luciann didn't have to ask me the same question, I could feel her burning gaze. I sighed. "Forty, or something like that, I don't know."

She jumped on her feet. "That's illegal! You can't even hurt one of us that badly! If you were bought, they'd-"

"I'm not going to get bought so what does it matter?" I snapped at her, glad I couldn't see her face from this angle. "Please just let it go. I want to sleep."

She sighed, throwing my blanket over me. "Stop thinking that. The outside world is better than here. Someone out there needs you."

Yeah right. The outside world is better?

The outside world is as bad as it is inside this building. We have no rights, no education, and no guarantee where we're going to end up. The amazing outside world is overrun with vampires. And here, in the very rooms next to me, lie hundreds of girls waiting to be sold off for endless purposes. Servants, sex slaves, bloodbags, the worst fate with a very high turnover rate.

I've never met a vampire that wasn't cruel to me in some way. I've been sitting in this hell hole for nine years. If I'm not sold by the time I'm an adult, which is a measly four days away, I'll be shipped out of here and in a giant freezer to be used as a living blood supply for the rest of my life, until I eventually die from it.

I don't know which fate I'd prefer.