Page 107 of Existential
I’m going to die in a cornfield. A motherfucking cornfield.
Digits frowns as I break into raucous laughter, my sanity slipping away in the direness of it all. I hazard a glance at him as he stands perplexed, and the sight makes me laugh more.
“What the fuck is so funny?” he snaps, shoving me roughly against the pole.
“A fucking cornfield,” I splutter out as my laughter turns to tears. “Corn. I hate corn.”
He tucks his fingers into the top of my shirt, his gun pointed at my head with his other hand, and jerks down on the fabric. It rips a little, two more solid yanks getting it started properly. My shoulders hurt where the straps have dug in before the cotton gave way, yet I choose to stare at the sky and silently cry as he literally peels my clothes from my body.
I don’t have it in me to physically fight him anymore. I’ve tried and failed so many times, that I’m afraid if I fail again I won’t have any strength left in me to endure what he’s about to do.
“You’re a coward,” I leer at him as he yanks my boots off, gun firmly planted in my gut.
“Really?” He laughs, short and bitter. “So what does that make Hooch? Pretty sure the guy’s so soft he has a fuckin’ vagina.”
I shunt my knee toward Digits’ face, yet he reels to the left, avoiding contact. The gun slips down my stomach until he has the business end pointed at the apex of my thighs.
“Try that again, and I’ll have a much sloppier hole to play with.”
He continues to undress me, the overcast day providing some respite as the sun comes and goes in bursts. I stare up at the clouds, losing myself in their beauty, fantasizing what it would be like to walk among them … anything to take me away from reality.
“Turn around and hug the pole.”
I refuse—my final stand.
He manhandles me into position instead, the splintered wood stabbing painfully at my chest and stomach, and lancing my arms as he pulls them tightly together.
I don’t recall how I end up tied in place, how many times he wraps the nylon rope around my wrists and elbows, or what kind of knots he does. I block it all out and choose to watch the beetle that climbs the pole past my face instead, drawing patterns in my mind between the hues of its brown back.
I find solace in nature, and in the most ugly of experiences, I find she’s at her most beautiful.
The stalks of corn sway on the breeze that kicks up as Digits’ unwelcome hands rove over my body. I tune into their mesmerizing dance, feeling my own body gently lilt to the same rhythm as I block out the vulgar suggestions and empty threats falling from Digits’ mouth as he takes my body without permission.
The yellow tufts erupting from the ears change in hue as they move in and out of the sunlight, and in those golden shades I find myself lost in a memory. Golden sands; the first time I’d seen the ocean, a year after leaving home. I was struck by my insignificance in that moment, and it’s all I can do now to remind myself that these moments Digits takes from me, no matter how painful, will only be a fleeting flash of color against life’s backdrop.
I am me, who I am as a person, not what my body is in this moment.
He’ll never be able to take that.
My arms tire, and the splinters dig in as I sag without his brute force holding me up. He’s finished, but I get the feeling the game has just begun. A camera shutter sounds, and I lift my head enough to see him standing to the side with his phone held high to capture me in my freshly ravaged shame.
“Been nice knowin’ you, Dagne,” he announces cheerily as he packs his loose items back into the bag: a roll of tape, an unused length of rope. “I knew when I first laid eyes on you that you’d been put in my path for a reason.” His hard eyes hold mine, and I find nothing. No emotion. No regret. No recognition of what he’s done. “Now I know why.”
His boots crunch into the distance as the daylight fades to the warm hues of the afternoon. My clothes lay flat, within grasp if my hands were free, taunting me with their comfort and familiarity. The beetle returns, crawling over my arm as it makes it’s way back down to the earth below, and as I wince through the pain of a dozen new splinters, I sink down to join it.
Resigned.
Redundant.
Ruined.