The City of Rossford
Reader discretion is adviced, this story contain graphic content depicting violence which may not be suitable to all readers. This is a fictional story and do not portray real events or real persons.
Three
Shit Going in Shit
“GIVE HER SOMOTHIS! I bet she’s never had that before. Not a little innocent thing like you.”
“I’m not that innocent.”
“Lookadder, not that innocent. Hah!”
“Hey, I know what I’m doing. I’m not a little girl. If I was a little girl I wouldn’t be here.”
“Well, then have a sip.”
It burned her throat, but it made her feel better. Before she wasn’t sure how she felt, having her arm stroked over and over again, being squeezed by him, sitting in a circle of boys like a circle of wolves. Feeling beautiful, feeling dangerous, being away from everyone, really the place she shouldn’t be.
“That was good.”
“That’s my girl,” he said. She’d been his girl for a few weeks now. Once Meredith had said he wasn’t any good, but Meredith had a knack for getting on your nerves. She tended to think she knew everything. So, after a while, it just made sense to stop telling Meredith everything.
JD stood up and started singing, drunkenly:
Blood loss in a bathroom stall
Sounthern girl with a scarlet drawl
Wave goodbye to ma and pa 'cause
With the birds I'll share
With the birds I'll share
This lonely view
With the birds I'll share
This lonely view
“Shut the fuck up,” Morgan said. “You all are so white.”
They were all white, but Morgan didn’t know he was. That’s what Robin said.
“She burnt you! She roasted you.”
Her boyfriend clapped her on the shoulder while they laughed, and the world was a little hazy around the edges, but it was still a good place.
“Scalded, man…” one of them said, tittering.
“Man, I gotta go,” one said. But he didn’t mean he was leaving. They were in the parking lot and the moon was hidden, and inside the auditorium a game was going on. Just barely now, Robin, from where she sat with her boyfriend on the top of the car, saw a glittering and a running and heard a hissing and knew that the boy with the burning cigarette in his mouth was pissing on the blacktop while he murmured, drunkenly:
Ain’t yo mama pretty
She got meatballs on her titties
Ham and eggs
Between her legs
I took her to a party
She turned around and farted
I asked her why she did it
She turned around and shitted.
And then he farted.
“Dude, apologize,” said one who had high cheekbones and very blond, very gelled hair, who was what Meredith called—because she was from New York and thought she was so much better than everyone else—hillbilly hot. “We got a lady, here.”
“Damn, she ain’t no lady, else she wouldn’t be here.”
Her boyfriend hadn’t said anything.
“Dude, do she ever suck your dick?”
He hadn’t answered.
“I need my dick sucked,” said Wally, who was the one singing and pissing. “I can’t imagine you don’t have her sucking your dick.”
“I suck it when I feel like it,” Robin said, suddenly.
“Well, then suck it now,” Wally said.
She looked around, and they all had eager eyes. She looked at her boyfriend.
“Well?” he said.
Wally farted again, shaking out his leg, and suddenly Robin had the idea that her world was very different than she’d thought it was, that this place and these boys had suddenly become very different. Her boyfriend undid his pants and his dick came out, thick and pink and strange. She had never seen it before. Curls of blond hair came around its base, and one of the others said, “He’s got a big ole one, doesn’t he?”
“Well?” Wally said.
“Well?” her boyfriend echoed.
She felt the gravel under her knees and she took him into her mouth. He tasted funny, first like not much of anything at all, and then like urine, like he hadn’t cleaned, and she didn’t know what to do. But soon the others around them were instructing them both.
“Fuck ‘er mouth, dude.”
“Yeah, really do it to her.”
“Come on, bitch, make that tongue roll around it, swallow that dick. That’s right.”
There was some clapping and hooting and then one of them said, “That ain’t how you suck a dick. I’ll show you how to suck a dick.”
He turned her around and she made a little noise, but he said, lightly, “Now don’t yell, bitch.”
And she couldn’t yell, because next he had pulled her head fiercely, and he showed her exactly what to do. She tried to get away, but by then she knew it was too late, and his fingers were tangled in her hair. He was choking her, stretching her jaws and slamming into her throat. She had an idea of what was to come. Her mouth was filled with bitter saltiness. She coughed and then she did it again. She remembered doing it to three of them. She remembered being laid out on the grass near the parking lot. She remembered the laughter, the clapping. But it wasn’t happy laughter. It wasn’t happy clapping, and one of them was saying, “Stop it! Stop it. This ain’t right!” And she hoped it was the blond boy with the gelled hair and the blue eyes who was hillbilly hot. She knew that her boyfriend raped her. He was the first to do it. He did it with this look of fear in his eyes, like he was trying to tell her something. He did it quickly, not like Wally who never did anything by halves, who fucked her and fucked her not looking at her, but at the stars, and came deep inside of her groaning: “Awww fuck!”
Her thighs hurt after him.
She closed her eyes for the rest of it because what if it was the boy who was hillbilly hot? After all, Billy was there and he was scared and sorry the whole time he did it. Some of them were nice about it—if that made any sense—some savage as hell. Her tits were pinched, her face punched. Some must have had a couple of rounds at her. Wally hated her, she should have known that. There was blackness and pain, and then he sang as he kicked her. It was only Wally and the music and she, and he walked around singing in a lazy, drunken tone while he beat her:
Ya mom is so fat… how fat is she?
Ya mama is so big and fat that she can get busy
with twenty-two burritos,
but times are rough
I seen her in the back of Taco Bell
with handcuffs
The sad fact—what?—ya mama smokes crack
She got a burning yearning
and there's no turning back
Her knuckles drag down to the ground
when she walk
Spit comes out that bitch mouth
when she talk
(KICK)
Naked on a mountain top,
tootin on a flizoot
Ridin on a horse drinking whisky
out a bizoot
She's got the wings and teeth of an
African bat
Her middle name is Mudbone
and on top of all that:
Ya mama got a glass eye with
the fish in it!
In the end the only mercy was when someone, probably Wally, said, “Get up and carry her fat ass to the parking lot.”
It was her blond boy. As he grunted and lifted her, trying to make sure the soles of her bare feet didn’t touch the asphalt, she thought, numbly, “I should have gone on that diet. I am a little large. His back must hurt.” She thought how she had heard once that most rapes happened to women who were close to their attackers. She wasn’t really close to any of these guys at all. She thought, “I should have known better. I really should have.” She thought it was best to push away from any thoughts save the most clinical.
Above her the boy was sniffling and crying and he took off his jacket and laid her on it.
“I’m sorry,” he wailed. “I’ll get someone out here real soon.”
Robin Netteson thought, “Well, see, this proves he really is a nice boy. Most people are nice people.”
And yet here she was all beaten up and raped, yes, she had to begin to admit that this is what she was… And so apparently being nice just wasn’t good enough.