Faithless

Shannon lay still as Trent murmurred, breathless, in her ear, his breath hot against her face and neck. She could feel his large, clumsy fingers fumbling against her skin as his gangly body pressed into hers. She felt herself being pressed against the worn-out mattress on the concrete basement floor, the mattress too old for anyone to use anymore- anyone but her and Trent.

His body was awkward,clumsy, but he was larger than her, and Shannon never tried to do more than mumble her resistance. His touch, his scent, was so familiar that it stole away Shannon's voice, her will. She felt so mute around him that it almost seemed to her he had cut out her tongue- or at the very least, her voice box.

She smelled Trent's somewhat sweaty smell, so usual of fifteen-year-old boys, tasted the cigarette on his breath as he parted her lips with his. She lay there, waiting for him to finish.

With a final thrust, he went limp, heavy, breathing raspily, raggedly as he lay across Shannon's body. She held still, waiting.

At last Trent stood, pushing himself off of her. He began to walk toward the basement steps, then ascended them, leaving her alone.

Shannon lay there, nearly itching with her urge to tear after him, bolt into the shower and wash herself- wash and scrub until she didn't feel so dirty, so twisted. During, she felt nothing, but afterward she hurt, inside and out. She felt ripped, torn, as if her body had little holes all over.

She was shaking, still holding her breath... no matter how often it happened, how used to it she grew, Shannon could never learn to like it. But she would never tell him so, for Trent insisted that she did- insisted how hard she worked at turning him on, insisted how shamelessly she flaunted herself.

Shannon preferred instead to fade away, pretend to be someone else, somewhere else- anywhere but here, in the basement with her brother...

She made herself faceless, voiceless, nameless, all in hopes that she could erase who she was- a ten-year-old girl, abused. For although she did not know it, what Trent did to her was abuse, would scar her all her life.

Shannon wished instead that her brother would stop, to be able to be forgiven for what she perceived as her shame, her fault. She wished that she could become what she had once been, that she would no longer be the evil, twisted girl she saw herslf as.

She wished... but she had no faith that it would happen, for who should listen to a girl as bad and filthy as she was?