Body Surfing

gently. “There is nothing more disgusting than life. Nothing save for a new life. Another purposeless existence, born in ignorance, living in squalor, dying in fear. But trust me, sestra , there are far worse fates, and today we have saved you from it. When you are moldering in your grave I will remember you, and think how I spared you my fate.”
    Ileana had no idea what the sergeant was talking about. He spoke as if he thought he was doing her a kindness. With tender fingers he peeled the shreds of her dress away, used the sheet to wipe blood and semen from her body. He stroked her arms.
    “I will give you strength to punish your enemies.”
    Ran his palms up and down each leg.
    “Speed to hunt them down.”
    Traced a finger over each eye, around her ears.
    “Senses to spy them where they hide.”
    He was unbuttoning his shirt, his pale flaccid stomach spilling over his belt like an overcooked potato.
    “Who knows, perhaps it will be this body you punish first.”
    She was too sore to feel him enter her—to distinguish the pain of his entry, at any rate, from the general ache that filled her loins. In truth the tenderness of his actions hurt more than the rape itself. He thrust slowly, delicately, as if he were the first man ever to slide into her and wanted her deflowering to be as painless as possible. It was almost like he wanted her to enjoy it.
    “Join me, Ileana. Show me what you’re made of. What you can do.”
    She tried to fight, physically, mentally, but his eyes and voice andpenis all held her. She felt the burning in her loins change ever so slightly, as pain morphed into a kind of pleasure a thousand times more loathsome.
    “No. Please, no.”
    But it was on her in a way she could’ve never imagined. Her eyes closed, her mouth opened. Her knees clutched at the sergeant’s body as it dove in and out of her.
    “No!” she screamed, but it was useless. An orgasm flooded her body, heaving through her in alternating waves of senselessness and self-loathing. It seemed to go on forever, but when it was gone she missed it, because she was still there, the sergeant still atop her, thrusting more violently now, a strangled groaning rising from the back of his throat. The light swirled in the depths of his eyes, and then, with a shudder, it flickered out.
    All at once everything changed.
    It was subtle at first. Less a flooding than a seeping, like slipping a dry sponge into a sinkful of hot water and feeling it soften in your grip. But the water was too hot. Not hot like hot water, but hot like acid. Something utterly foreign was soaking into her, burning her away.
    And then it awakened inside her. She felt as if she’d been pushed down a deep well, as if she was staring up the long narrow shaft at an opening that was getting farther and farther away. And then a voice whispered from inside her own head.
    Now, Iljana! Take your vengeance!
    At first it was the voice Ileana was trying to escape, not the sergeant who still lay atop her, panting, prone. She jerked her arms at the clothesline that bound them. The cord held but the bedposts broke, snapping and swinging through the air. The sergeant looked up just in time to catch one in his face. The blow glanced off his forehead, and he blinked more in confusion than in pain.
    “Sestra?” He stared at the naked girl conjoined to his body. “Who—who are you?”
    “Who am I?” Ileana screamed. It was hard to tell what was her and what was the strange force inside her. Her fury was hers, yet ithad never burned so pure. And this strength! She grabbed the sergeant by the throat and lifted him in the air as though he were an infant.
    “Who am I, you piece of Serbian shit? Who am I?” She shook him crazily, his limbs and head flailing about, a choked moan coming from his throat. “How dare you!”
    “Sergeant?”
    Corporal Zelimir had reappeared in the doorway. He stood frozen at the sight before him: the naked Croatian girl swinging the fat sergeant by the throat. He reached for his pistol and Ileana threw the sergeant across the room, knocking both soldiers to the ground. In a single leap she was on them, one man in each hand, pounding their skulls together with a sound like rocks wrapped in cloth. She was beyond speech, just screaming as she beat the life from each man with the other’s body.
    Shouts from the ground floor, footsteps on the stairs. Ileana dropped the lifeless men and sprang for the window. Her body was rigid as a spear as she dove