Feather Bound by Sarah Raughley

it.
    They’d drugged me.
    What did they give me? Why were they doing this to me?
    What were they going to do to me?
    The girl screamed. That was the shot I needed to finally pry my eyes apart. I saw the red nylon first. It was a rug. It was too dark. A wooden leg of a table. A set of car keys on the floor. A single leather pump.
    Rasping for air, I flopped onto my back. I could see them now, all three men. Young, like their voices. Well-built. Well-dressed too: a trio of spoiled bastards. One of them winked at me.
    â€œAll right, Joe, it’s my turn. Get back.”
    Two of them crowded around a girl who sat on a velvet couch as black as her underwear. Black panda eyes upturned to the ceiling, she blew strands of blonde hair off her face, wet from her saliva, with each scrape of breath she exhaled. Pale, thick fingers tangled themselves in the feathers draping her back.
    â€œNo, stop.” I’d slurred the words so badly, they came out nonsense. “Leave her alone.” Too weak, this time. They didn’t hear me. Or maybe they didn’t care.
    The girl was crying as she boosted herself onto her knees. She had lacerations all up her arms, shallow cuts, fresh wounds. And yet she still looked healthy enough to stand up, maybe even run. Why wasn’t she? Why did she simply sit there, haggard, bloody, but obedient?
    The tallest of the men, a redhead, sidled up to her and lifted her chin with a finger. The look she returned was not loving, not even civil. Just hollow. Ready. My stomach heaved.
    Oh God. Tears trickled down the side of my face and down my ears, sinking between the carpet fibers. Ade… Dad… Ericka…
    He draped her feather robe across his shoulder. She didn’t complain when he started kissing her, but I could see it on her face: a suffocating hollowness. It was etched into her body, her movements. The way she put a hand almost dutifully on his arm, the way her back arched almost as if it knew it should. It was a perfect mimicry of a girl kissing her lover, except the details were all wrong. Everything was wrong. She didn’t have a choice.
    I wouldn’t have a choice either.
    I turned away when his hands started to move down her stomach, but I needn’t have. One of the boys blocked them from my view. He knelt next to me.
    â€œDon’t worry, baby.” His dark, slicked-back hair was almost as greasy as the smile he gave me as he knelt. “She isn’t doing anything we haven’t paid her to do.” If only the sound of my heart thudding against my brain was loud enough to shut out the moaning. Slick Hair turned to the others. “I don’t get it though. Why her? She looks harmless enough.” He paused. “Payback?”
    â€œDude, who cares? When a piece of ass falls into your lap, you don’t whine about it, bro,” said one I couldn’t see. He was behind me. “Just do what you were paid to do.”
    Oh God . I raised my right arm, but it wasn’t mine anymore, not really. The drug was starting to wear off, but not fast enough. A sloppy, random swing drove my hand into the side of the table. Slick Hair grabbed it, crushing it as if it weren’t already searing in pain. He yanked me onto my stomach.
    â€œNo, no…” My tongue tasted the nylon carpet as I coughed out the words. I clenched everything, pressing my forehead against the floor, hoping the pain would dull everything. But I still felt my shirt sliding up my back, still screamed when the blade slid across it. It was a sharp, shallow cut, and apparently, for me, that was all it took. Feathers shifted just beneath the skin, unfolding and unraveling, before breaking through, slipping down from my shoulder blades, cascading down my back. They grew like weeds; thin, prickly. I didn’t smell blood this time, but it was no less excruciating. My feathers were out. The young man stroked them. I shuddered. I wriggled and writhed to get his fingers off me