I STILL HAD HER.

𝘊𝘰𝘭𝘥.

The feeling forced my puffy eyes to open, and I took in the scene. My room is saturated in violet haze from the slowly mounting dawn. I am naked on my bed, legs wide open, together with the door of my cell. I stared at it, acknowledged it with shock, yet still had to take a moment to close it.

When I had gotten up from the bed, I felt a sharp kick in my stomach. And when I tried walking towards the door, an excruciating, burning pain in between my legs prevented me from moving.

"Ouch!" I yelped, immediate tears flooding my sore eyes.

I couldn't walk. My swollen body shivered with fever and rocked to and fro from dizziness and weakness. I clutched at the railing of the bed so not to collapse.

When my eyes fell on the blood-soaked bedsheets, nausea billowed right up to my head and I puked, violently, uncontrollably. I looked down helplessly at the greenish substance spreading on the floor, some of it caught sliding down my immovable legs. "Oh…no."

It took a minute of deep meditative breathing to become more clear-headed, awake and aware of my horrific, butt-naked situation. A fear of being discovered in such a disgraced state forced my limbs towards the exit.

I inched on tiny sliding steps, afraid another jolt of pain would hit my pelvis. When I had finally shut the door and locked it, my spent, filthy body slid down the freezing wall onto the freezing ground, and I sobbed, jaw rattling from how tremendously cold I felt, not even due to my chilly surroundings but from the block of ice in my chest.

I squeezed my eyes shut and the first thing that appeared was Roman's sweaty body on top of mine, his fingers gripping my neck as he thrusts into me fiercely. My eyes instantly snapped open, as wide as they genetically could, but the picture remained bright and vivid.

He ogles my exposed modesty, then his glowing eyes slide up and burn into mine. Terrified, I avert my gaze, but he slaps my cheek and yanks me by the jaw back to face him, growling, "Look at me, whore."

"No…no…no. I'm not. A whore." I rocked side to side, head in hands, fingers pulling at the knots in my hair.

My granny's voice echoed: 𝘢 𝘣𝘪𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘯 𝘧𝘳𝘶𝘪𝘵 𝘳𝘰𝘵𝘴 𝘧𝘢𝘴𝘵. "No. I'm not rotten." Came out of me, a squeak of a sick kitten. 𝘋𝘦𝘷𝘪𝘭 𝘢𝘪𝘮𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘵! "I am not tainted!" I roared at empty space before burying my head back into my knees and arms. "Not rotten…not…"

There was no possibility of me getting up from that floor. I was a wailing, miserable mess. I honestly just wanted to grow roots and never move from the spot, or, better yet, for the ground to swallow me right to hell where I belonged. 𝘈 𝘸𝘩𝘰𝘳𝘦. 𝘐 𝘢𝘮 𝘢 𝘸𝘩𝘰𝘳𝘦…I wished to dissolve into thin air, erase the memory of this nightmare together with myself from the face of the earth–

𝘋𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘋𝘪𝘯𝘨! There goes Lauds.

†††

Yes, I still showed up to pray on that appalling morning, but I was very late. I waited patiently for the women's voices to start singing. Only then did I creep out of my cell and into the balneary.

I turned the shower knob all the way to hot, lathered my body head-to-toe with tar soap and scrubbed so hard my skin glowed red. I looked like a boiled lobster with bruises all around when I was finished. I didn't want to finish. I wanted to continue and 𝘴𝘤𝘳𝘶𝘣-𝘴𝘤𝘳𝘶𝘣-𝘴𝘤𝘳𝘶𝘣 my skin to blood like granny scrubbed it long ago. I felt empty, used, dirty, even dirtier than before I had started to wash myself.

𝘈 𝘸𝘩𝘰𝘳𝘦.

What I dealt with back then was none other than a consuming mental dirt, but only years later would I figure out how to purify it. But for now…

For the next seven days I lived in a mental fog and ceaseless fear. I grew paranoid, afraid of anything that seemed out of place. A shadow on the wrong wall, a sound in the wrong tune, a person in the wrong place, the slightest change in temperature, all screamed — 𝘈𝘴𝘮𝘰𝘥𝘦𝘶𝘴!

I felt unsafe in my own cell, and the monastery which was my home became foreign, a place where I was a stranger. I seldom slept in my room, spending most of the time in a vacant cell we used for storage.

I did not eat, and not because some demon had commanded me to fast but simply because every time I took a bite of anything, I imagined the apple crunching in my mouth.

The fruit might have had been the sweetest at the moment, but now I associated its sickening taste with the sin I had committed and the pain that followed. Everything I'd put into my mouth tasted bitter. So I forced myself to eat just to not get any skinnier and sicker, for I looked worse than the sickos Sarah, Elisabeth and Nancy, who were actually recovering quite well then.

I shut down, withdrew myself from others. Even from the worried Rosalyn Jackson who tried to speak to me whenever I was in her field of sight. Even from Valeria. 𝘌𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘤𝘪𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 from Valeria.

How could I look her in the eye after I had lied to her and then apparently willingly lost my virginity to her boyfriend? The guilt ate me inside, but it gnawed at me the most when I actually looked into her eyes. So I avoided her, all of them, spoke little and worked to full exhaustion to keep my mind busy and body tired so to not have the time and energy to think of my whoerness and pass out as soon as I'd reach my room.

A few times, in my dreamless sleep, I'd hear the door being opened and closed. And when I'd wake up the next morning, I'd find Val's contraband on the concrete bench, some cold-cuts and pastries, which were most likely given to her by Ronan. Obviously I would not even touch them. I'd throw them into a trash-bin and thank Valeria later on.

"Always boo, I'm glad you're eating," she'd say to me, looking happier than on the day Ronan had ditched her…for me.

"He called me. You were right," she said when we were grooming the new cattle in the repaired barn.

My hand froze in the coat of a sheep I was tending to. Both the animal and I goggled at Val expectedly. "And?" I rasped, each organ bracing itself for an impact like before war. I hated that feeling.

"He finally got me a heater!" She exclaimed.

I heaved so hard that Valeria and her sheep goggled back at me quizzically.

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing. I just—was so worried about you guys—"

She frowned. "Jeez, Eve. Worried? Why?"

"I mean…you were so upset with his absence," I mumbled.

"Yeah but, it's no big deal. He called so—we're cool. Don't take things so seriously, woman!"

I squeezed out a smile. At least Ronan did not tell her about us, or had no memory of us. I was fine with either way. Val looked clueless, which meant she wasn't faking. She was not a rotten liar like me, never played pretend. I still had my best friend. I still had her.