11: The Past (2)
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The air in the alley was thick with the stench of spoiled refuse and stale sweat, a humid, cloying mixture that clung to the back of Rosaria's throat. She had ventured into this shadowed corner of the marketplace, driven by the gnawing hunger of her older sister, a desperate search for discarded scraps or a pitying glance from a vendor.
But the alley was not empty. A man blocked her path, a figure carved from rough, uneven flesh. The people called men like him Ugly, a derogatory term for the brute strength and inherent malice that seemed to permeate their kind.The Ugly man came near Rosaria. His approach was not a walk, but a lumbering advance, his mass swallowing the light and space around her.
He smelled of unwashed wool and sour tobacco, a scent that prickled the fine hairs on her neck and sent a sharp, involuntary chill down her spine. His features were heavy, misshapen—a wide, flat nose, thick, scarred lips, and eyes that held the glazed, calculating vacancy of a beast weighing its prey. He stopped, crowding her space entirely, and then bowed down a little, a gesture of grotesque mockery.
The motion brought his face, rough and oily, down to her level. His ugly face was just a half a foot apart from of Rosaria's. She could feel the hot, fetid blast of his breath against her cheek, laden with the metallic scent of old blood and something sickeningly sweet. Her entire body locked, her small frame braced to recoil from the sheer physical intrusion."Heheh, Are you lost girl?" Said the man, his voice a low, gravelly rumble that seemed to vibrate in her teeth.
It was an insincere question, laced with the predatory intent that she, though young, instantly recognized. His tounge was out, he licked his upper lips, a slow, deliberate movement that was not about moisture but about anticipation, a gesture of consumption.The sight was sickening. Rosaria's throat tightened, the words catching like sharp shards in her windpipe.
She tried to step back, but the wall was at her spine, leaving nowhere to retreat. The only movement she could manage was a slight displacement of her head. Tilting her head sideways, she said with a shy and disgusted voice, the shyness born of her nature, the disgust born of his overwhelming proximity."Um, No, I just wanted some food for my sis—ack!" Her plea, her simple, innocent purpose, was sliced violently in two.
The man moved with unexpected, terrifying speed. Before the final syllable could escape, his hand shot out like a grappling hook, not reaching, but seizing.He grabbed her arm tightly—her left arm. The grip was absolute, an iron vise that immediately cut off circulation. It was not the casual hold of a reprimand; it was the possessive, brutal clamp of a trap sprung shut.
Rosaria cried and pleaded, the shock of the raw pain momentarily overriding her fear."Umm, Can you stop, It hurts…" she cried, the sound small and thin in the vast, echoing cavity of the alley.
Her small body, built for scurrying and scavenging, was no match for his sheer weight and density. She trembled and fell, her knees buckling instantly as the sudden, overwhelming pressure in her arm dragged her off her feet and onto the cold, damp cobblestones.
Her fall was ragged, a defeated collapse, but the man didn't drop her. He held her suspended by the arm, her shoulder socket screaming in protest, her tiny wrists straining.The man look her as he was holding one of her hands. He did not look concerned, or even amused. He looked satisfied, the hunger in his eyes intensifying now that the physical confrontation had begun and the dominance established.
His nostrils flared, visibly distending as he inhaled her fear, the scent of her terror, which must have been sharp and clear to his brutal senses. He smiled with his deep Yellow teeths, a wide, cavernous expression that showed the rot and decay within his mouth.
His eyes were enjoying this sight, drinking in the pitiful spectacle of her helplessness, his gaze running over her crumpled form with lewd, unhurried ownership."Ohh, Lady, you should see how you move?" he taunted, the words dripping with contempt for her vulnerability.
Rosaria, unable to bear the searing intensity of his gaze, unable to even look at the horror of his mouth, wrenched her face to a side. Her eyes trembled, reflecting the wavering, fragmented light filtering down from above. She bit her teeths till they bled, not to hurt him, but to redirect the agony, to ground herself in a pain she could control, a desperate, futile attempt to contain the overwhelming terror that threatened to turn her insides to liquid.
The pressure on her arm intensified. It was beyond mere pain now; it was a deep, crushing ache that seemed to be traveling inward, toward the very bone marrow. And then, she noticed the impossible, the horrifying physical consequence of his touch: her arm started to turn black. Not bruised, not merely blue, but a deep, sickly, purplish black, as if the life force itself was being leeched out of the limb by the very grip of his flesh. The fear of this strange, paralyzing venom was even greater than the fear of the man himself.
He leaned closer, forcing her attention back to him. "Well, How old are you? You don't look more that 10 to me." And then the man laughed. The sound was harsh, guttural, a scraping, phlegm-ridden burst that violated the already heavy silence of the alley, mocking the pathetic state of her small body.
Behind him, she had noticed others, eight or nine indistinct figures huddled in the deeper shadows—his companions, his audience. The men in the black tried to stop him once, a brief, mumbled protest that sounded more like a half-hearted warning than a demand for decency.
Perhaps they had some low-level concern for witnesses, or perhaps they simply feared their leader's escalating aggression. But the Ugly man's response was swift and absolute: he glared back at them, a flash of pure, unrestrained menace in his eyes. And they all stopped. The fragile sound of conscience was instantly snuffed out. They retreated further into the gloom, becoming complicit shadows.
Rosaria cried, her initial, high-pitched pleas dissolving into the helpless, rasping sound of sobs. The tears blurred the repulsive image of the man above her, but did nothing to diminish the terrifying reality of the pressure on her arm, which was now completely, unnervingly black.
She forced the words out, a desperate attempt to use the only currency she had left—age, status, the last shreds of her childhood. "I-I-I am turning 15 next month, I just look small you know." The words were shaky, tripping over her tongue, yet they held a kernel of self-assertion, a tiny flickering candle of denial against the storm of the moment.
The man registered her words, processing them through his own warped lens of desire. He then smiled, the ugly, yellow-toothed expression widening, and moved his another arm towards her. His arm was massive, like a slab of raw meat, the coarse hair on his skin bristling."Ohh,You are 15 next month?" The inflection was oily, suggestive, twisting her statement of self-worth into a confirmation of his imminent act.
Rosaria, in a catastrophic lapse of judgment born from sheer panic and the instinctual human need for rescue, tried to hold his arm. She grasped at the brute hand, thinking that he was about to help her, perhaps lift her, perhaps release her. But instead, his second hand closed not on her wrist, but on the thin, scavenged fabric of her dress, right across her chest.
A dreadful sound followed: Krrrrr
The sound was the tearing of cheap cloth, sharp and definitive, like paper ripping under extreme pressure. He tore it in half. The dress split instantly from the collar down to her waist, the sudden, violent exposure stealing the breath from her lungs. She was laid bare, the meager protection of her clothing now useless strips of hanging fabric."Then I suppose you are perfectly ripe then…" the man said with ugly smiled on his face, his eyes squinted up, arched in crecent, the repulsive shape of absolute, triumphant evil.
Rosaria's eyes widen. It was the moment the last veil dropped, the innocence shorn away not by knowledge, but by brutal, physical force. She tried to move out, to scramble, to twist her torso away from his gaze, but she couldn't. The blackness had spread up her arm and into her shoulder, a physical paralysis that locked her muscles, leaving her weak and unresponsive beneath his weight.
The internal dam broke. Her paralysis gave way to a surge of pure, desperate adrenaline, the flight mechanism screaming for activation. She struggled, twisting her hips, her legs kicking out uselessly against the stone floor, and shouted, the volume incredible considering her size."PLEASE STOP IT, LET ME GO! SOMEBODY HELP!!" Her voice was raw, a desperate sound of a creature cornered, aimed at the empty sky and the closed windows of the surrounding buildings.But no-one replied.
The world was deaf. She looked behind at the men in the shadows, her eyes wide with a final, desperate expectation for someone to help her. Any single one of them—to find a shred of decency, a flash of shared humanity—but instead they were all smiling, heart to heart, Ear to Ear. Their faces were unified in the same expression of cruel, anticipatory amusement. They were not merely watching; they were spectators to her demise.
Rosaria saw them, and at that moment, she lost all the hope. The fear did not lessen, but it changed. It calcified into a cold, hard stone of realization. All expectation of external salvation, all belief in the social contract, collapsed entirely. Hope towards Government. Hope toward law, toward the inherent goodness of men—it all dissolved into the rank, putrid air of the alley.
The Ugly man, oblivious to the seismic shift in her soul, focused only on the exposed flesh. "Hehe. These Boobs doesn't looks like of a 15 year old…" The words were a low, satisfied growl. He bent his head, ready to close the final distance, his foul breath rushing over her.
But at that moment, Rosaria found her core. The energy that had been wasted on fear and pleading ignited into pure, volcanic rage. The girl who had begged for food was gone. In her place was an animal, cornered, broken, but determined to sell its last moments dearly. The paralysis in her arm was forgotten, overwhelmed by the savage imperative to survive.
She jumped at him, arching her body upward with a final, searing burst of strength, wrenching her head forward through the minimal space between his face and hers, and,
CRUNCHHH
The sound was wet, abrupt, and sickeningly loud—the noise of cartilage and fine bone giving way under extreme pressure. She hadn't aimed for the soft flesh of his cheek; she had gone for the bone. She bit his nose off, a sudden, brutal amputation that left a hot, raw hole on his face. The impact was instant, sending a jolt of metallic heat and bone-grinding resistance through her jaw.
The man left Rosaria, his grip dissolving as the pain, unexpected and absolute, ripped through his brain. He dropped her body onto the stone floor and threw both hands to his face, a clumsy attempt to staunch the fountain of blood that immediately erupted. He cried in pain, a high-pitched, inhuman shriek that cracked the silence that had protected him moments before.
"AHHHHH!!!HHHHH!!!!!!!!!" He shouted in angony, his voice a distorted, gurgling mess as blood mixed with his cry.
Rosaria took the benefit of that moment and started to run. She didn't look back. She didn't check the direction. She spited at nose and blood—the grisly, warm mass she still held in her mouth—and started to run, driving her legs with a desperation born of pure adrenaline.
The Man, staggering back from the blow, was momentarily defeated by the sheer, blinding shock of the pain. But his rage, fueled by the humiliation and the sudden loss of his predatory composure, instantly returned, magnified tenfold.
Pressing his hands uselessly against his spurting face, he screamed a command to his men in a voice thick with blood and fury."SHOOT HER!! MAKE HER LIMBLESS BUT DON'T KILL HER, I WILL KILL HER!!!"
The command was absolute, stripped of all humanity, a declaration of intent to torment and prolong suffering. The men in the back, galvanized by the scream and the sight of their leader's grotesque injury, obeyed instantly, their smirks replaced by hardened, cruel focus.The rest of the men got ready with their Guns, AK-103. The familiar, heavy clicks of the charging handles were terrifyingly clear. And then, the air shattered.
Dhis-boom-dhoo,the sounds of the rifles echoing deafeningly in the narrow alley.
Numbers of Bullets ran through the space she had just occupied, tearing chunks out of the damp brick, chewing up the stone, kicking up dust and debris. Rosaria ran and ran, not because of hope, but because the order given was not to kill her.
This was not a mercy; it was a curse. They were aiming for incapacitation, for crippling her flight, ensuring her return to their master's terrible mercy.The bullets didn't went through her vital points, but the sheer volume of fire made escape impossible.
She felt the close misses—the sting of rock fragments against her legs, the heat of the air displaced by the high-velocity rounds screaming past her ears.Then, one of bullets found its mark.
Boom.
It was a dull, wet sound, a heavy thud of metal meeting flesh and bone, devastatingly final. The round crossed her arm, which was already turned black, striking the pre-damaged limb with the force of a hammer. Her arm was half torn away, a brutal severing made easier by the strange, venomous paralysis that had already ravaged the tissue.
She felt the impact more as a catastrophic loss of structure than a pain—a sudden, absolute emptiness where the solid bone and muscle had been, followed by a geyser of warm blood.The momentum of her run, combined with the catastrophic injury, was too much. Her feet tangled, her legs gave out, and she fell on the ground, hitting the stones with a final, desperate, gasping breath. She lay crumpled, her black, mangled arm bleeding profusely onto the cold, filth-ridden ground, the world spinning in dizzying circles.
The Same Ugly man came near, his ragged, choking sobs of pain now quieted, replaced by a terrible, focused rage. He was pressing a Handkerchief—now soaked and uselessly dark—on his mangled nose. He glared on her with a Ugly look, his remaining features contorted by fury and the pulsing pain of his exposed face.
He loomed over her, a monstrous figure against the darkening sky, and said, his voice low, shaking with the intensity of his hatred and violated pride.
"I will fuck you till you are torn apart bitch!"