at eighteen i hadn’t had that much experience with prescription painkillers but i was young, dumb, and reckless so when he offered me the two white tablets of vicodin, i tossed them towards my throat and chased it down with a few swallows of shitty white zinfandel.

and so the night began.

honestly, i don’t remember the details with much clarity but stark fragments come and go... walking to his dorm room after those pills, long hallways stretching out in the distance, lined in endless rows of sickly fluorescent lights... short scenes with ropes being wrapped all around me, catching me in his deviance, tying me down. i remember feeling the rough fibers licking hotly at the delicate skin on my wrists, my ankles, my neck... those ropes holding me tight - topless and helpless, my arms and legs forced into angles against my will. the drugs and alcohol had already got a hold of me and i was like liquid in his hands. my muscles rippled underneath my skin as he touched me everywhere, a relentless pressure that wouldn’t let up, leaving fresh blooms of bruises in a wake of destruction.

and then i remember him plugging in the soldering iron and running his fingers all over my body, touching me and whispering terrible things in my ear, things i don’t think i ever want to remember. and then there was that awful fire that licked at my skin, the heat kissing up and down my arms, tracing circles of white hottt pain around my stomach, running along the inner arch of my foot... he had drugged me enough to dull the pain, but nowhere near enough to stop it. i’ve never hurt like that before and i haven’t ever since.