Mid-Week Flash Challenge - Week 89

This week's prompt photo I found online, probably through Twitter, but I can't find any results on its origins online on any searches.

And this picture can only bring one thing for a primarily Horror writer, like myself. A dark tale, and one that might CONTAIN TRIGGERS. So be aware that you might be disturbed by this one .

The General Guidelines can be found here.

How to create a clickable link in Blogger comments can be found on lasts week's post here.

There is also a Facebook group for Mid-Week Flash, if you fancy getting the prompt there.

Scarred

She ran her fingers over them feeling the bumps and dips. Her legs were scarred for life, and so was she.

People didn’t get that; people thought that as it was over and no longer happening, she was fine. Because she could function, go about her day to day chores, nothing was wrong – all’s well that ends well.

But they weren’t inside her head; they didn’t see the things she did: the knife tip against her skin, how it quivered while he did things, trying to hold it and her where he wanted them. They didn’t recall the smells: the unwashed body odour that made her stomach churn, the stink of beer-breath heating up her ear as he moved up and down, and the blood – that had its own indescribable smell. They didn’t hear the sounds that were triggered by other sounds: a door hinge creaking like the door to her cell opening, people whispering bringing back the filthy words he’d utter while doing those awful things to her, and the sound of anyone urinating like he’d do in the corner after.

She had no words to explain the sickness and dread they brought, that she’d lived with the entire 16 weeks of her imprisonment. She was no longer able to form any. He’d made sure of that when he’d finished with her, grown bored of her supplication, her lack of fight and thrown her out onto the street where someone had found her, still bound in the ropes she’d been kept in, which had become embedded in her skin and scabbed over. Even now she could still feel the sensation of the knife slicing her tongue, even though she couldn’t feel anything else inside her mouth.

But it wasn’t visible like the scars on her legs. And they weren’t visible when she wore trousers, which she did most days. So all was fine and all was normal. 

She wished she’d died in that cell. She wished he’d killed her.