He slides his hand through the slit in her robe and feels her suck the cold air into her lungs.
'Don't be scared.'
But the words are useless, they both know, because she is. She's wanted to be here for years and she has looked up to him since she can't remember when. But she didn't want to get here and she didn't think it would come to this.
He wraps his free hand around her throat and whispers. Words and threats and empty promises. He says that this will pass, but he doesn't say it won't happen again. It's a lie not even he can bear. Besides, it would be pointless, they both know it would.
And for many times, it will.
She closes her eyes as his hand slides further up on her naked skin and she thinks of all the hours they have spent together in the dark, of all the times she listened to him, and him to her, to all her darkest, deepest secrets. She trusted his words and his encouragement.
How many times she listened to his silent advice. Her dearest, most trusted friend, who's playing with the band of her underpants now.
'I've always loved this,' he whispers, in his young, gruff voice. And she can feel the excitement in him, the beads of sweat passing from his skin to her. 'I used to trace the shape of them over your ass, in my head, it always turned me on.'
If only he'd shut up. Sitting there, silent, unable to move and breathe, she had thought this was the worst, but now, she just wishes that he'd shut up. Listening to these filthy words come out of his mouth is worse, in a way, than what his hand is doing.
The girl flinches as the man's lips fix on her shoulder and he begins kissing her. She should not have done that, she realizes, but it's too late. She felt, in that broken kiss, the only attempt at kindness he was capable of. But she lost that and now he is angry and insulted and he pulls at her white robes, tearing them off and the girl lets out a muffled scream at the violence and the injustice.
'Shut up'.
She thinks, through muted streams of tears, of that one spring day, with Thomas. She sees, in front of her eyes his soft hand playing around his cup of coffee and later slipping into her nervous, sweaty palm as they walked. She remembers feeling that strange cluster of noise in her stomach as she looked up at Thomas.
She was so taken with him that she didn't realize where they were headed and when they got on that street, it was too late. He saw them, just like he saw everything. Funnily enough, it had made sense, at the time.
She'd thought it was God. God's will.
He'd stepped outside his church and into their path.
'Rosaline' he'd called her inside and she'd been forced to leave Thomas. She tried explaining to the priest that they'd done nothing wrong, but he cut her off.
'He's just a confused boy. What do you need with a boy like that?' he'd said and she wishes now she would've recognized the desire she mistook for anger in his eyes.
And she listened to him. She always listened to him, because her grandmother, who was old and frail now, always told the girl to listen to the voice of God. And to the priest, because he was a good man.
And he could be. Sometimes.
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But there was darkness, hiding in the young priest. There was madness and obsession, where the light of God didn't shine. Her eyes fix on the tall, wall-sized mirror. She's watched, reflected in the glass, as he arranged his cassock before a service. She used to feel so special that he saw her in his private quarters, before service. That he listened to her. That he showed her the way of the light.
And she struggles to keep her gaze on the same black robes that this violent man wears.
They're disarranged now.
Prompt word: robes, part of the 5 Minute Freewrite Challenge, although I must admit this one went over the 5 minute mark! Check out @mariannewest, for more prompts and more freewriting fun! Thank you for reading,
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