Michelle's Story
Disclaimer: This is fiction. Do not interpret it as anything else. This is a story with themes of non-consent, rape, reluctance, sexual manipulation and violence. The acts depicted in this story are criminal and are only acceptable in fantasy. If you are not interested in this type of story, please look elsewhere.
I found this challenging to write but just had to get it down. It has an emotional dimension that may trigger some, so please be warned. It was inspired by my ongoing collaboration with brokenwing and I need to recognise her impact on my writing of this story.
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It was clear what they intended. Stripping me and making me play with myself wasn’t just a casual distraction for the men who had invaded my home. It was the prelude…
They were going to rape me. It was inevitable and there was nothing I could do about it. That realisation made me want to vomit. I’d heard first-hand what it was like to be raped, from a friend… I knew a bit of what I could expect, had an idea of how it might feel, the impact it would have on me… and that frightened me more than anything else.
It was the previous year. The day after the final football match of the season. Our team had a winning year and won the district championship. I had watched the match and rolled my eyes at my best friend Janie’s antics on the side lines.
As deputy cheer captain, she was every bit the exhibitionist, flaunting and prancing through her routines, loving being the centre of attention. Secretly I wished I had just a little bit of her confidence, the self-assurance that she had in her own body.
But it was Janie’s sister who stole the show. Tall, lanky and athletic, the cheer captain that every team dreamed about. Michelle, beautiful, caring and approachable, the homecoming queen with the same genetics as Janie, and something more. The two sisters had been born eleven months apart and while they seemed like twins, it was clear who was older.
Things seemed to come easy to the two sisters. But I knew better. Janie had experienced the heartache of the younger sister trying to be seen, to get out from under her older sister’s shadow. Having to try that much harder to succeed, while Michelle seemed to breeze though everything.
At the tailgate party after the match, I had watched the two sisters with a bit of envy. The soul of the party, everyone fawning over them. In stark contrast to the losing side on the other side of the field. Particularly the four men who were sullenly barbequing at the edge of the field and glancing towards the winning team's joyful antics…
I went home early, leaving the party to the jocks and the cheerleaders, feeling tired and a little left out…
The day after the big match Janie had missed school. That was a red flag if ever there was one... She never missed a day of class and while the teachers put it down to a stomach bug, I knew better. I rushed over to my friend’s house once she was released from the endless tirade of tired teachers imparting useless knowledge to uninterested students.
Janie opened the door with red-rimmed eyes, obviously having been crying her heart out. I just hugged her, wanting to squeeze whatever pain she was feeling out of her young body, believing there was nothing so bad that a good hug couldn’t make it better…
“They raped her…” Janie broke down, sobbing in my arms. “Four of them… over and over… she couldn’t do anything… she tried, but they were too strong… too many…”
I stood there shellshocked, as if under enemy fire. Not able to comprehend the situation, not processing the information… saying nothing…
“Those fucking bastards raped her and they’re going to do nothing…” Janie screamed at me, trying to get me to respond, despite being frozen in shock and horror.
“What? No… where is she?” My cognitive cogs slowly moved into action. “Is she here?”
Janie had teased her older sister mercilessly as they grew up, about her obsession with diets and fashion, despite her tendency to eat too much and put on weight. I had joined in, like a jackal sniping at her heels while Janie took hefty chunks out of the older girl. But it was all in good spirit, and while she pretended to hate us, she gave as good as she got. But she was still Janie’s sister, and that meant something…
“Yes, she’s upstairs.” Janie replied in a hushed tone. “Mum and Dad are away, but she told them that she fell down the stadium stairs. It’s such a load of shit…”
Recollections of shadows in the night, those four men wandering around with no apparent reason. I had to ask, “Was it at the tailgate party?”
“Yes… why? D’you know something?” A spark of fury in Janie’s eyes.
“I don’t know. I saw…” I didn’t know what I’d seen, maybe something, maybe shadows, maybe nothing…
“You have to tell Mich. Whatever… Please…” A tone I’d never expected from my friend, desperate and despairing.
“Okay, but I don’t know…”
I’m not sure why, but we crept up the stairs as if not wanting to face where we were going, until we were outside Michelle’s room. We looked timidly at each other, and then Janie knocked gently and opened the door.
The room was dark, curtains drawn to allow a murky reflection of the bright sunlight outside. Michelle was lying under the covers, sheet and duvet drawn up to her neck as if to ward off any evil, despite the sultry heat.
“Hi Mich…” I ventured, not knowing what to say.
“What d’you want?” Michelle murmured, without opening her eyes. “I just want to be left alone…” She pulled the duvet up over her head.
“She thinks she saw something. She’s not sure, but… maybe hear her out.” Janie’s voice had taken on the most tender tenor I’d ever heard, desperate, pleading and vulnerable, all at the same time.
“What’s up, squirt?” The same-old hard-assed Michelle. For a moment I thought to exit, to just leave... I didn’t need this… it was too much stress… until the look in my friend’s eye made me pause, to see the situation for what it was. Three girls trying to make their way in a fucked-up world, each in their own way…
“There were four guys. Hanging out by the toilets.” I timidly recalled. “They looked at me weirdly and then went back to their truck. I remember the license number… you know my photographic memory and all…”
I heard a quiet sob from beneath the duvet, but nothing more… Janie had her hand on her sister’s shoulder, gently stroking it with her thumb. But her eyes bored into mine, without saying a word, willing me to stay, but too naïve and confused to know what to do.
“There were four of them…” Michelle’s quiet voice emerged from beneath the duvet, no face or eyes, just a disembodied voice. “I had a couple of beers and had a nice buzz on, so I needed the bathroom… left the party and went to the stadium changeroom.”
I was shocked that Michelle had drunk alcohol, since she was only a high-school senior, but I said nothing, particularly as Janie frowned at me with a meaningful look.
“When I was finishing… they were there, buffs pulled up over their faces… they barged into the stall while I was still sitting on the toilette… I realised they had tape… fat sticky tape quickly slapped over my mouth… and around my wrists behind my back… as if they had done this before… I tried to call out for help, but I couldn’t make a sound…
“They dragged me out of the locker room with my briefs and panties around my knees. I hated it, but they didn’t seem to care, or even notice… at least then.” I heard a quiet sob from under the covers at that last revelation. I wanted to run from this awful account, but Janie’s eyes locked on mine like a hypnotist, seeming to hold me and not let me free.
“I felt like a piece of meat, being pulled along… I tried to resist… I really did… I think I managed to kick one of them, but he hit me so hard in the side that I thought he’d burst my spleen or my kidneys…” there was a brief silence with a deep intake of air before the narrative resumed.
“They dragged me to a field, behind the stadium… two of them, one on each arm… I tried to walk or at least stumble, but they didn’t care… I felt like a feather being tossed around… I was nothing to them… just a bag of bones and flesh… and then they dropped me in the dirt, face down…
“The taste of dirt even through the tape over my mouth… I don’t know how, but it made me feel like an animal… which I guess I was to them… they called me all sorts of names, bitch, slut, whore, and more… none of that meant anything to me until one of them ripped my briefs and panties off… pulling my hips up to meet his and stuck himself into me…
“The crickets were chirping as if nothing was happening… I recall thinking that they usually stopped when there’s activity… but then maybe what was happening to me didn’t matter… that the threat was not to them… so they carried on oblivious to my pain…
“A bright light was stuck in my face… I didn’t know why until one of them gloated about the amazing video that he was capturing… for their ‘collection’… then I realised it was his phone camera… the thought that he was filming me made me feel much worse… if that’s even possible…
“He told me then that I wasn’t a Belvedere cheerleader anymore… that I was a Red Tiger slut, their cum dump… and this was revenge for the limp dick team that had stolen the championship from them… that was when I got really scared… I’d heard about team revenge rape and it never ended well… at least for the cheerleader…
“That first guy smashed my face into the dirt for ages… I don’t know for how long, but it hurt… everywhere… my shoulders were wrenched back and twisted by the tape on my wrists… he even used my arms as a lever to push in harder… he wasn’t as big as he claimed, but without lubrication it felt like he was taking a chainsaw to my innards…
“Just breathing was hard with my face full of grass and dirt, my nose embedded in the soft earth… I remember thinking that I was lucky that it was soft… that if it was hard, it would graze my cheeks and leave permanent scars…
“There was no respite after he came, because the second and the third and the fourth guy stuck themselves into me… I couldn’t stop them… I tried… I really did… kicking out and trying to scratch them with my hands… but they just laughed and hit me… it made no difference…
“Each of them stretching me and taking me in every possible position… thrusting in different ways and speeds, but all with the same result… at least the first guy’s cum made me slippery… but it didn’t make it easier… it just hurt so bad…
“I couldn’t even scream… everything bottled up inside like I would explode… no one even knew I was there… the tape made breathing hard… but they didn’t care… what I thought or felt didn’t matter to those monsters…
“The look of hate in their eyes… all that was visible above their masks… I’ll never forget it… cold and merciless, like I was nothing… no humanity… no pity… just raging lust… and loathing… like I had actually done something bad to them…
For the first time, Michelle looked out from under the bedsheets, her cheek bruised, and her lips split as if she had been in a boxing match. Such a look of sadness, like a lost little girl on a world that didn’t make sense. I wanted to burst into tears, right there. But I managed to be strong and stared back at her, hoping that my expression portrayed what I felt, that I really cared, that I was there for her and that no one should ever have to experience what she did… EVER.
“They told me that they wanted to destroy me… that I was what they despised… while they stuck themselves into me over and over… I can’t tell you how much it hurt… both their battering and their words, but I wanted to be strong for our team… to not let them break me…
She sighed as she continued, as if the weight of the world was on her shoulders. “After a long time, they pulled the tape off my mouth… it was really sore… I was too tired to scream by then… and there was no one around to hear me anyway… not on that side of campus… they told me to say awful things to the camera… I resisted for a while, telling them that they were fuckers and bastards and that they would rot in hell…
“I’m not sure what did it… if it was the second round that they raped me, making my vagina feel like it was being rubbed raw with sandpaper, aching so bad deep inside… or if it was the way they punched me in the stomach and back causing me to feel like I was bleeding from the inside… or whether it was the way they bent my legs and arms, like they wanted to break me… or if it was how they pinched and tore at my breasts as if they wanted to pull them off… or whether it was when they slapped my face so hard that I felt like the world had exploded and I lost consciousness… not long enough for any reprieve, but enough for them to be so angry that they started the cycle of abuse all over again…
“But eventually I gave in and told them what they wanted… looking into that bright light… that Belvedere were losers… and that I was a Red Tiger bitch… forever.” At that moment Michelle couldn’t hold back and the tears flooded out, deep wrenching sobs from her anguished heart. I didn’t know what to do, but Janie held onto her sister’s hand with a tight grip and tenderly brushed the hair off her sweating forehead.
“They wrote those words on my face and body before they left me in the dirt… telling me that they would post the video of me whoring myself to the opposition team if I mentioned anything… that no one would believe me… because I was such a slut and everyone knew…
“I listened to the crickets and stared up at the stars, asking them for justice or retribution or help… but none came until I crawled across the muddy field to the stadium… it felt so far… and I hurt so bad… there coach found me…”
Michelle stared into my eyes, as if seeking out something deep and meaningful, before concluding. “Coach made me shower and get dressed in a change of clothes before taking me home… telling me not to say anything, because the scandal would be too big for all of us… saying they would take care of it in their own way…”
I had no response, just an aching pain in my gut and an anxiety that I could never really shake. I left my friend’s house that afternoon, after jotting down the license number I’d seen and wondering about how the universe could let such a thing happen… and go unpunished…
A couple of weeks later I heard that four former students from our rival school had been mugged and put in hospital. While that seemed like partial justice, it didn’t bring the old Michelle back. She seemed to withdraw from everything, preferring to be by herself and paint pictures of the trees and squirrels in her garden. She graduated, but that fateful day was the last time she was a cheerleader.
I never got over the traumatic ordeal of hearing about Michelle’s rape, becoming increasingly fearful and cautious for myself.
But now here I was, facing a similar ordeal, not sure what would happen, nor whether these men would even receive the same retribution that Michelle’s assailants had.
I knew how awful rape really was. Not in a woman’s magazine or politicians’ speech sort of way, but in the visceral lifechanging way that raped women felt. Stripping them of their sense of self and their confidence. Making them eternally fearful and having to consciously overcome their fears, in order to live lives that others assumed were normal and took for granted.
And looking at the man in front of me, I realised I was about to become one of those women.
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I've entered this into the November competition for those who are interested.
