This is an excerpt from my novel Rag & Muffin. It is currently on an editor’s desk, but since I am getting ignored rather than rejections, I may move to self-publication in the near future. Anyway, this has to include a language warning since it’s more explicit than what I normally post on the blog.
In the dark, on her grass mat, Miss Alice sat in the Padmasana—Lotus Posture—one of the basic positions of Yoga. She had heard that if she practiced Yoga, she could make her Sammohana stronger.
She wanted to make it stronger.
It was the only thing she had.
She tried to focus on her breathing, but it was hard: She kept thinking about the men, about the chair, about the buzzing whine of the drill and the horrible pain it made when it went into her head. The back of her neck hurt. Her brain throbbed with a monotonous ache that made it difficult to think, and she still felt vestiges of the sickness and chills she got the last time they dug into her skull.
She didn’t understand why they were doing this to her. She didn’t even hate them. But she felt stark terror every time the door opened because it meant more agony, more screaming, more sickness. It meant their greasy hands and bad smells. It meant being hit and slapped and tied down. It meant searing pain.
She heard steps outside. She heard a hand rattling the knob. She heard the knob turn with a groan and a click.
The metal door opened with the ear-splitting creak of rusty hinges. Once again, she used her only weapon.
As he came through the door, she looked into his eyes. With a stab of pain, she felt her ravaged Heaven Seed gland squeeze down, and a pleasant ripple ran across her body. She began to speak, to order him to release her—but he simply walked over and slapped her on the mouth.
“Don’t you ever try that on me, you little cunt. And stop wasting your juice.”
It was the man they called Harman. The really bad one, meaner than the others.
Sammohana never worked on him.
