Whistle over the waves. {BXB} [COMPLETED]

3. Sakshi

Sakshi

The real rape begins after it ends.

I realised, this morning.
When I opened my eyes, my body began it's established route.
My work. My boss. My coffee. It is late I need to get moving. I need to bathe. I smell like disinfectant.
Then the ribbon snaps and hits my face on it's way back.
I won't go to work today. I'm on leave.
Because I managed to get raped and thrown on to the road like some bag of waste.

I'm no longer a Busy Woman. No, Sakshi, you're a broken remnant.
My normalcy dims and breaks down before 9 am.

And that hurts more than when the doctor broke it to me.

This break in normalcy, this sense that everything is different now, and will be indefinitely, is what gets me.

I sit on my bed.
I want to cry. I so badly want to but I have lost that too.
I roam my apartment thinking about ways to stop myself from thinking.

My mind tears away at me from all sides, wolves, so many of them camouflaged as thoughts, are jumping from the corners of my 26 year life. The time when a neighbor had let his hand graze a little too up my thigh, because I was such a darling little girl, my sweet sixteen sweetheart who kissed me with his hands trapping my back because it was time for us to finally, really, really be boyfriend-girlfriend, that interviewer who wanted to understand the true depth of my ambition in his "workplace", the biker with the long hands and tearing speed.
But none of them got their bite.
But now, here exists this phantom, who has finally beat all of them.
The one who got his teeth in. Had his taste? Was I even good for him, if yes then why throw me out?

I want to hope that I can remember his name, his face, his car.
That I can trace back every second, every movement that made this happen, that I can find him and ask him,
Why?

But I know, I remember nothing. I was black out boozed.
Somewhere inside, a wolf howls, it sounds too much like ThenYouDeservedIt.

These wolves, these voices in my head have lived too long, they talk too loud and I hear too much...
Another one shouts...

Maybe,
Just maybe, it was a hookup, a rough one, you like that don't you, a wolf yells, you like it put into you like wet revenge, you dirty little whore, you love a little tearing, you asked him, with your slut dress, you slurred Fuck Me Fuck Me and he did.
He did.
And you liked it.
You liked every second of that stranger taking you raw and filthy.
Isn't your first time being a slut, is it?
Then he must have realised what a little spit licking whore you are and he threw you out.
So
Stop
Whining.

Yes, I'll stop.
I'll stop whining.

Then I feel terrible again.
I feel terrible because I'm letting these voices in.

Throughout the day I find out.
Pain is not the explosion itself, no, it is aftermath, the radiation, the burning cloud of toxic fumes, the blade edged dust flying out. It isn't all at once, it's a series, a tide that hits and hits and hits and hits.

I can feel myself sinking inside myself. I don't want to hit the riverbed of my lies.
You're not a respected young Journalist Miss Das.
Remember where you came from, that's your truth.

The dirt, I say. The wolves in my head nod.
The girl came from the dust, and a man rightly put her back into it.

Wow you really hate yourself don't you, after all that your mother did, still? Shame. I'm sinking. Mom, help me, mom find me again, I can't breathe, mom please come help me.

Then it stops. I know it'll begin soon. But it stops too.
Waves of relief hit me. It's dark outside, my roommate will soon be home. I'll smile at her. Hi Neeti. No, today was ok. The wolves will laugh but it'll be fine. It has to be.

I'll cook dinner, I'll talk politics, I'll sit legs wide and laugh.
Or I'll try to.

For now, I am too tired to be hurt, for now what happened is a shadow.
Just that. A shadow.