EMMA

Time is a cruel bastard.

Although it is something that should be measurable and exact, time has a way of choosing how long every second actually lasts, every minute, every hour, every day. It doesn't simply tick along at regular intervals, like clockwork as many would say. It's more irregular than that, more fluid, at least in my perception, anyway.

Moments come and go in our lives, there for a brief burst before dying and attaching to your thoughts as a ghost of memory. You can't hold those moments, can't cling on to them, can't push them away if they were too terrifying for you to endure. They are there, whether you like it or not, and gone even when you hoped they could last for eternity. And that's where time comes in to cackle its evil laugh, choosing just how much of the moment it will grant you.

It's in happy moments that time chooses to speed forward, to rush along like a tiger having finally targeted and set off to catch its prey. What feels like a second is actually longer. You could be taking a much needed nap, celebrating a birthday, seeing a friend you haven't been able to talk to for a long time. It could be a moment where a man you've crushed on for many years of your life finally notices you and takes your hand. It could be after, when he leans over to kiss you for the first time. What felt like just a second is actually three thousand, six hundred seconds - or sixty minutes - an hour. Then the moment is gone, gunned down, killed off, and rolled over the cliff of the present into the memory of the past.

Not for moments like this one, however, where time drags, where it slow downs to the point of crawling so that I can study every small movement of the man walking away from me, descending the stairs, and taking his place among the cameras and production crew staring back while I sat numbly awaiting my fate. What should have been an hour was only a second, and time sat back, with its feet kicked up, raising an eyebrow in challenge. Take that.

Still sitting exactly where Ethan had left me, I flinched when the woman announced the title of this film, called out the scene and slapped down the top of the clapboard.

A door opened behind me. And in Ethan's voice I heard two words in my head: "Show time."

Time slowed more,  the footsteps approaching, stretching from one to the next so slowly that I could count every shallow inhalation of my breath, could feel the individual drops of sticky sweat drip down my temple towards my chin. I could hear the whir of the cameras, feel the warmth of the lights, could smell the faint scent of cologne left behind from where Ethan had been kneeling in front of me. I felt my burning throat fight to swallow down the acrid fear churning up from my gut. I could count the irregular beats in my pulse as my heart battled to keep pumping despite the marathon it was running.

One footstep, the list of sensations repeats, another footstep, and another. Yet, I sat frozen, as pretty as a doll, unable to scream or flee.

I turned my head slowly, movement apparent in my peripheral vision while my direct gaze focused on Ethan. His face was shadowed, his brows pulled together in thought, his mouth thinned and stretched into a taut line that screamed with concern and disapproval.

Shifting my eyes just slightly, I caught the small reflection of the stage in the lenses of the cameras. I could see myself sitting there as a tiny dot, could watch another dot approach me on steps that time had slowed to a crawling, threatening beat. I could feel the vibration of those steps, the initial slap against the stage and the crescendo of movement that exploded out in waves around them.

I watched that dot move closer, stiffened when it was within arm's reach, closed my eyes and blinked away tears when, instead of jumping at me from behind, it moved around the bed to stand in front of me.

His anxious breath was a discernible hiss of sound, replacing the beat of his shoes with that of his lungs. As he inhaled, held the breath and exhaled, my breath was caught, my lungs failing to release, my heart racing so hard I swore it would pop.

Opening my eyes didn't help, it only turned the knob, pushed the door of memory from its frame, and allowed the past to come rushing in to smother me. I recognized that face, the broadness of his shoulders, the leering eyes and twisted mouth - the body of a seventeen year old man that had already tasted me. He stared down at me with a snide sneer, his fingers clenching and relaxing in time with his breath, the promise of violation and violence rolling behind his gaze.

I was surprised he wasn't hooded like the men I'd seen in the films I'd had the poor luck to witness. Had that been an intentional change on Ethan's part, or was he so sure I'd kill the man to save myself that he didn't bother with the disguise? Did this kid know he was being used as a pawn? Or was he ecstatic for the chance to rape and kill women as a paid job?

His tongue peeked out to lick along his lips, his brown beady eyes searching me hungrily. Everything came back to me in that frozen moment in time when I looked up at a man who had every intention to kill me.

My walk down the sidewalk. The anger I was feeling at my date. The crisp fall air slapping my cheeks. The way I'd been jerked to the side, dragged into an alley, and given only a few rushing seconds to take a look at my abductor's face.

The slam of the van door, the crispy, crusty carpet, the feeling of his hand sliding up my leg while his voice was raised in argument. The pain of his entrance, the grunts from his mouth, the way his chest pressed against my body as his hips thrust forward and back.

The sticky slow drip of his orgasm down my leg, the cold that rushed in to brush my intimate parts when he was done taking what wasn't his...

Fuck this guy.

Fuck Ethan.

Fuck this entire twisted nightmare from which I couldn't wake.

Springing forward, he caught me off guard. I didn't even have time to recognize that the piercing scream filling the room had torn from my lungs. His hands were on me, calloused and rough, sliding down my arms as I attempted to move, to break away, to run.

He was too strong.

Even without the blindfold, gag and bindings he'd used on me in the van, he easily overpowered me. His hands clenched my wrists to pin them above my head, his body pressing down on me over the bed until he was everywhere at once. The whir of cameras was replaced by the sound of his rapid breathing, his hands shifting so he could hold my arms with one, freeing the other to travel down my body. Groping and petting, he explored down my arm, over my shoulder, tracing his fingers over my neck in a gentle threat. Lower still, his palm found my breast, his fingers squeezing until I cried out in pain and bucked up with my body to attempt to shake him free.

Hips pressing down harder, he showed me just how excited my struggle made him. Tears burst from my eyes, but not from sorrow - from fury. Teeth clenched, I tried again, my arms pinned and useless, so all I had were my hips. Bucking and turning, twisting and practically growling, I struggled to throw his weight from my body, to gain some kind of traction, find an advantage, get away. Despite my best effort, I was stuck in place, and he didn't waste the opportunity to grip the neckline of my negligee and tear it down the middle.

Pushing up, he held my arms in place, placing a knee over my stomach, and pressed down hard to hold me to the bed. Time was on his side, the pain and pressure keeping me still, his free hand pulling the silk apart to expose me fully.

As if his eyes taking me in with great greedy sweeps wasn't bad enough, a small camera was suddenly beside us, stealing the rest of my modesty. My attacker took his time enjoying the view, as did the camera, the man behind it, Ethan from his safe little space among the larger cameras. Meanwhile, I was made the helpless victim, the girl who allowed shock to help her forget how dire the situation was. The girl who took for granted the danger she was in.

How could that have slipped my mind? Why hadn't I screamed and wailed, fought and flailed, slapped Ethan across his smug face while I'd had the opportunity? Why couldn't I have just been shot like the crying woman in line? If we would all die regardless, her histrionics had saved her this violation, this pain, this horrendous agony. Why couldn't I have been as smart?

The camera moved back as my attacker leaned down and bared his teeth. Taking his time now that he had me pinned at the wrists and stomach, he opened his wide mouth, laughed in my face, and bent down to grip the nipple of my right breast between his teeth.

The scream that slipped from my lips was grating and unholy, tearing apart the tissue of my throat as it shot from my lungs, stretched my mouth and burst out.

"Fuck," the bastard said, his voice gritty and low, "I didn't think you could be so much fun the last time I had you."

Bile followed my scream, painting my tongue with its acrid flavor. My head fell back against the mattress, the anger crashing through me in such vicious waves that all I could do was sob.

It was impossible to watch what he was doing, impossible to ignore his hand pressing down on my chest between my breasts to slide down my body and around the knee still holding me in place. Once his rough, punishing fingers slipped further down between my legs, I couldn't stand to keep my eyes on the asshole as he explored between the skin, found the opening and shoved his fingers inside.

My chest beat with deep sobs, my teeth slamming together and clenching tight. I turned my head to keep from watching him violate my body. Pulling his hand away, he kept me pinned and I knew - I just knew - he was unbuttoning his pants, freeing his erection and readying himself for the first vicious assault against me.

Struggling again, I only hurt myself more by pushing up against his knee where it was jammed over my stomach and just beneath my ribs. The pain blistered through me, spreading out like a spider's web, fracturing and twisting until it consumed me. My eyes popped open, the tears dropping away, the hazy focus becoming clearer until my gaze locked and held on the director standing there staring back.

Time was a bastard again, speeding up, slowing down, volleying between one extreme and the other until I was dizzy and sick. The head of his cock pressed against me, rubbing up and down to work itself between the dry skin. Blood burst in my mouth as I bit the inside of my cheek. The metallic taste helped ease the flavor of bile.

Arms crossed over his broad chest, expression stern and feet planted on the ground at shoulder width, Ethan didn't move, didn't open his mouth, didn't bother meeting my accusatory gaze as my attacker forced himself inside me.

He pushed inside, each agonizing inch met with my whimper of pain, each whimper I was sure being picked up by a microphone so that Ethan's film would be real. I died a little inside, broke apart, watched my life being shredded into nothing, and as the bastard drove himself fully inside, he stilled before pulling out to drive in again. My eyes stayed on Ethan, begging for something he wouldn't give: help maybe, sympathy, acknowledgment of what he was allowing be done to me - anything. He gave me nothing, his eyes transfixed to the scene and not my face, his forefinger cupping his chin as a thumb rubbed over the stubble along his jaw.

When he finally moved from his studious perch, it was only to direct a camera to the other side of the stage, for the lights to be centered on my expression.

They burned against my retinas, but still I held my eyes open wide, my body moving over the mattress as my attacker was fucking me.

He grunted out his pleasure, calling me slut, dirty whore and cunt. His hand tightened over my wrist until I thought the bones would break, his knee no longer against my stomach, but that damage had already been done.

Catching the calf of my right leg in his free hand, he lifted my leg, bent the knee and spread me open. That's when the worst part came, the part Ethan had warned me about when I'd been too shocked to pay attention. My body responded as the man kept pumping, growing wet, finding pleasure.

That's what Ethan had meant by betrayal, the moment where nature takes over and your own body reacts to the forced mating like I was some kind of animal. A groan rolled over my lips, my eyes still wide and pleading, and as that sound left my mouth, as my muscles rippled over my rapist's cock, Ethan looked over with the steel focus of his emotionless eyes and locked them to mine. He smirked - the bastard SMIRKED - because he recognized the expression on my face, knew I was being forced toward an orgasm despite the screaming rage in my brain.

More fucked up than what was being done to me, the horrible degradation I was being made to suffer, was the stark, painful truth that Ethan watching me made me come harder.

It was an explosion inside me, a spark lighting a rolling inferno, and with my eyes locked to Ethan's, I opened my mouth on a guttural moan, the orgasm a tidal wave crashing until I couldn't keep my eyes open any longer.

How? How could my body betray me so thoroughly? Where could pleasure come from while being violated so completely.

"Oh, hell yes," the bastard inside me growled out, "fuck, baby, now I know you're liking this." His hips pumped harder, his breath beating faster, and as my orgasm slipped away into memory, tears trickled down my cheeks hot and hard.

I can't.

I can't live like this.

I can't go through this over and over.

But then I remembered what Ethan had told me before forcing me up those three rickety steps: I wasn't meant to walk away from this stage. My cold, dead body was intended to be carried.

Life or death. Pain and humiliation. I had a choice to make before my end finally came.

"Let's try this another way."

He ripped himself free of me, leaving me soaking and sore, and before I could react to the bit of freedom his movement had granted me, he flipped me over, bent me over the mattress and pressed the head of his cock to my ass.

My hands were now free, my fingers gripping into the blankets as he used his own to spread my cheeks, positioning his cock to force himself in.

"No," I attempted to speak, but my voice was lost to my tears, my anger, my fear and indecision. He couldn't hear me, didn't care, spit on his hand to lubricate my entrance. I didn't think for a second that was intended for my benefit, it just made it easier to slip the head past the muscles, to show me that what I thought was unbearable pain was just the beginning.

"No," I breathed out again as it felt like I was being raped from behind by a red hot spear, the skin stretching and ripping as the bastard forced himself deeper.

No. No, no, no, no, no.

My cheek was pressed to the mattress, my eyes clenched tight. Forcing them open despite the searing pain, I dragged my gaze to Ethan, found him standing with his hands in his pockets and anger rolling behind his eyes. His jaw ticked, his gaze meeting mine, and then he did something I never expected from him, he opened his mouth to silently remind me I was stronger than this.

Kill him, he mouthed. Stab him. Use the knife.

Another burst of pain, the bastard laughed behind me. "Take it bitch, take all of it, before I bust your teeth out and move on to your mouth."

Fuck him. Fuck this bastard. Fuck all the pain he was delivering and laughing while doing so. Fuck his excitement for wanting to take every part of me, beat me, and then leave me for dead.

No. I'm stronger than this. I won't just lie here and take it. Not with this fucker enjoying the torment. Not with him thinking he'll finish with me and move on to another.

Forcing my fingers to release the blankets they clenched, I slid my palm down the mattress, over the side and to the crease. Another burst of pain shot through me, hotter and more staggering than the first, the warm, wet kiss of blood dripping down my legs from where the bastard was tearing me.

No, I thought, I won't go out like this. I won't be made a victim of some seventeen year old fuck that thinks he has the right to do whatever he wants.

My fingers slipped beneath the mattress and knocked against the handle of the blade. It took two attempts to grip it, my body screaming through two more bursts of agonizing pain. I dragged it with my fingers, palmed the hilt and held on tight, and just as the bastard pulled his cock to the tip, readying himself for another deep plunge, I took advantage of his misguided belief that he no longer needed to hold on to me.

Despite the pain, the burning skin and muscles, I used the fury teeming inside me to move against the agony, push myself through the searing pain, and flip over to face him. His eyes widened, my hand struck out without thought, he screamed as the blade sunk into his stomach, and stumbled back before falling to the floor.

If I thought I'd lost my mind before, I'd been wrong to jump to conclusions. It was now, in this moment, that the final string holding me to sanity snapped. Forcing myself up, I pushed from the bed and fell down on top of him, and while straddling his abdomen, I raised the knife above my head, brought it down as I roared out my anger and plunged it into his heart.

Every horrible memory rolled through my head, every terrifying moment since I was stolen from the streets by this filthy monster, forced to endure torture, humiliation and slaughter. It all came out in the swing of my hand, in the flex of my bicep in the screams that tore from my lungs and filled the studio with the truth of my uncontrollable anger.

Over and over, I stabbed, driven wild and psychotic. I ignored his screams, the crunch of bone, the spray of blood that was quickly covering me.

Letting go to the killer inside, I shredded the bastard until he no longer was breathing. His eyes lost the light of life, his head lulled to the side. With blood dripping from my skin, and my chest beating with a racing heart and heavy, labored breath, I looked over at the cameras in time for Ethan to flash a beaming, proud smile and yell, "Cut!"