Page 8 of Traces of Her
“He’s lying!” I raise my voice, trying to jerk free from her hold.
“Oh, Phillip.” She ignores me and looks at him with sorrow. “We will take care of this. The dirty slut needs to be cleansed of her wrongdoings.”
Phil nods at her in agreement. “Take her up and I’ll get everything we need.”
Cleansed? What the fuck? For the first time in a long time, I feel nothing but fear. Fear of the unknown, because I have no idea what the fuck these crazy people are about to do to me.
“Let’s go,” Janet says in a harsh tone and begins dragging me to the bathroom upstairs. When we reach the bathtub, she releases me, giving me a little shove forward. “Take off all your clothes and get in.”
“Fuck no,” I bark at her, wrapping my arms around my body. There is no way in hell this is happening.
“You don’t get to talk to me like that, little girl,” Janet says, cutting her eyes at me. “Be careful or we’ll have to wash your mouth out too.”
Just as she finishes her sentence, Phil walks in with a pair of rubber gloves, a scrub brush and a big bottle of Clorox. He stops in the doorway. “Why isn’t she ready?” he asks Janet.
Janet throws her hands up. “She’s refusing to get in! I can’t get her in there by myself!” she yells.
They both start to walk toward me and I quickly back up until I reach the far wall, completely cornered. I start shaking my head, opening up my mouth to speak when suddenly his hand is covering my mouth. “I told you to never make a fucking sound,” he growls at me. “Janet, get her clothes off now while I hold her down.”
Janet rushes over and starts stripping me of my panties and my dress. My body thrashes around in an effort to stop her and move her away. My bra is the last thing to go; it floats to the floor leaving me fully exposed.
I scream into the palm of his hand as he lifts me off the ground and begin kicking my legs around in a rapid fashion. My feet hit the wall and the side of the bathtub as he lowers me into it. As soon as I hit the tub, I try to scramble to my hands and knees to crawl out, but Phil moves faster than I do. He grabs hold of my hair and slams my head down onto the side of the tub. My body goes limp as my head begins to pound. I’m still conscious, but the blow to my head prevents me from doing anything.
I can’t focus on what is going on around me until I feel the hard cold bristles of the scrub brush against my skin. Janet starts to scrub, the bleach lighting my skin on fire, while singing a song about purging the devil. I lay in the cold porcelain tub, paralyzed and silent, while my body is cleansed of all the lies I never told.
She sings and she scrubs, and I lay and I wait.
No amount of singing or scrubbing can cleanse me now.