(french original version recommended)
To H.
It is dark and the wind is rising. It is a time when men become wicked. She does not know it yet. She is trying to find her way, she doesn’t even know where she is. She texts M. to tell her that she should be there in five, hopefully. She glances at you, yes you walking a few meters ahead. You stop to look across the lake, where beams of light plunge into the sky as one would force his way through a barrier. She walks right by you without a care in the world: you don’t scare her.
And suddenly, she feels her pulse accelerating to the obstinate rhythm of your footsteps approaching. Your hand over her mouth and then comes the shock. In that moment she tells herself that it is all over, in that moment you stifle the thud of her own tocsin. Evidently, she screams, but you're stronger than her: she knows you could silence her forever. You grab her so violently that she feels herself losing her balance: she is sinking, and no one can hear her. She thinks she's about to die. She contemplates the lake as one would contemplate a coffin, since she believes that is where her body will be found. You press your hand over her mouth so vigorously, as if you were trying to stop a water leak, she can barely breathe. So, she stops fighting ; the armistice is better for her than death. She abandons the fight and surrenders her weapons. You contemplate the white flag she is showing you. You already know you'll stain it with her blood. She stops talking. Nobody is there to help her anyway. She has no allies in this battle. In these woods governed by the survival of the fittest, she stands no chance against you.
So, you start dragging for several meters this woman you have subdued. She knows she is powerless. She bows to the diktat of your urges. You take off her clothes as one would rip out weeds ; you dispose of her in a corner of these woods as one would get rid of his waste. You fail to open the black shorts she is wearing. Those are her favourite, she thinks they make her legs look nice. What does it matter, you tear them apart in the hasty movement of a man to whom no one dares resisting. She's not crying. Why would she cry? She knows it won’t do her any good. In shock, she observes the spectacle of her clothes you are destroying one by one. She's almost naked.
Does she still have any hope left then? Truthfully, she can't even think anymore. Two verses keep on spinning in her head. She's probably about to die and yet she thinks of poems. What a strange girl she is, who hears Breton's words when she's about to lose everything.
I make my way towards the bedroom where I lie
And I set it on fire
So that nothing remains of my extorted consent…
No doubt if these woods were burning someone would cry for help. She would like to cry “Fire!” but she can’t even cry “Rape!”. We often think this kind of thing only ever happens to others. And yet it is happening to her. She tells herself it is her name we will find in the papers' headlines the next day. Her naked body will be found in a few days, or in a few hours. And as for her, she will be dead. She tells herself it isn's fair while you ravish the last piece of tissue she was carrying. She's naked. She feels vulnerable. She knows she is at your mercy.
Fortunately, you don’t think of removing the invisible armour that all strong women carry. Your cruelty will only ricochet on its shell. You don’t know she's impermeable to you. In that moment, she remembers she's an optimist. Another verse comes to her mind. She has only a vague and blurred souvenir of it. Still, it is exceptional she's able to have any thoughts whatsoever in that moment. But it is a verse her friend Inaya told her about the week before. One must try to live… She can’t seem to remember the beginning, she still can’t remember it goes The wind is rising, one must try to live. And yet the wind really is rising that night. And she wants to live a little still. She wants to make sure that she will. So, she dares to open her mouth. For the first time it is not a scream that comes out.
"Are you going to let me live?"
You ask her what for. Funny response, but it is enough to terrify her. Why would you let her live? Her will should suffise, but a woman’s desire means nothing to you, only you matter. And your own desires lie in between her legs. She doesn't know what to answer ; so, she keeps quiet again.
She usually seems to be strong, this girl. And yet, there she is, lying on the muddy ground of this forest entrenchment where only nightmares can cradle her. She has known gentler beds. She can’t see a thing, but she feels you moisten the parts of her she wished she could’ve kept a secret forever. Your mouth touches them as if you were trying to mark your territory. You disgust her, and yet, you are colonising, bit by bit, every inch of her body. She feels dirty everywhere, soiled all over. Your embraces over her skin feel like the bites of a wild beast. You approach her mouth. She wants to scream, but all she can do is kiss you back. Try to understand her, she wants to live. You place your mouth over hers as if you were knocking on a closed door. She wishes it would stop. She wishes she could punch you, kick you, get you off her. You are most definitely a terrible kisser. She doesn’t know it yet, but she will harbor the infectious feeling of your tongue in her mouth for hours on end. She’ll wish she could rip out her buds until she bleeds, if only it would allow her to forget the way you taste.
She will never forget your voice either, that voice which keeps whispering soft words to her. "My sweetheart…" You whisper words no one has ever spoken to her before. First words of love spoken with the most prominent animosity. It might be that the sound of a shut opening accompanies them. She realizes without looking that you are drawing the weapon with which you will put her down. She realizes everything now, she is no longer the spectator. She regains possession of the body you have transformed into her personal hell. A rational thought finally reaches her.
The execution starts now. Now she understands that you're raping me.
But you are already pushing yourself inside me. You decide the time has come, so you penetrate me with the violence of oblivion. And you keep on calling me your lover, filling me with hatred. I am in pain like never before. I feel as if you are stabbing me. You plant your black flag in between my thighs as one would hammer a nail: with several strokes that bang like a hammer. But I can't scream, because I am afraid you'll kill me. Although, you are now only penetrating the empty corpse of a life I promised to reserve for love. You enter me like a graveyard. I wish I could break with my heel this wicked battering ram you keep forcing on me, on this door you have already opened one too many times. I'm so powerless that I claw onto my own leg in order to suppress my cries of pain. I am condemned to settle for an endless moan that is of no help, while the back-and-forth movement you enforce upon me continues. It is endless, it is tireless. It is as if you are alienated: beyond this jackhammer you keep pushing deeper inside me, your whole being transforms into a machine. I witness your humanity disappear as you withdraw yourself from my body. You seem satisfied. You've found your pleasure in the greatest of my misfortunes. Your blood-stained sword has only somewhat murdered me.
It feels as if this situation went on for hours, even though it only lasted about twenty minutes. In those twenty minutes you've become a monster. While I've become the most human I have ever been. And in that moment, I promise myself not to abandon, in this dark corner of the woods, any portion of my lifelong happiness. I promise myself that I will survive you. And then the wind rises. And so do you. I try to see you. I can’t, because you're covering my eyes. If I saw you on the streets, I wouldn’t even recognise you. It is selfish of you, to avoid being caught. But thanks to you I won’t have to chase the features of your hateful face out of my nightmares. Four months later, when I'll be shown a picture of you, I won’t be able to identify you. But I care little about your face anyway. I just want to survive.
You tell me to wait for you. "Two minutes, I will be back in two minutes." I don’t understand. You say it again. Two minutes, I am going to get your card. Two minutes. And then you disappear. I am lost in these woods and even you abnegate me. I don’t know what to do. No doubt I should abandon myself too. I refuse to: one must try to live. My situation offers me only one choice: departure or death. I could care less for dilemmas, I choose life. I take my jacket off my eyes, the one you turned into a weapon. I don’t know where you are, but I know you can't be far. I need to leave, so I throw away my heels that would hinder my escape and I turn this jacket that blinded me into a lucky garment. I find myself wanting to remain bashful even though my life is at stake.
And I go for it. The crime scene is near a path leading to the main road. I run, I crunch, I scream. I'm alive but still need to be rescued. I stop passing cars. I scream "rape!" for all those minutes you forced me into silence. Maybe that's when I start to cry. I feel lucky to be alive, I think. I cry like an infant, as I'm witnessing my own rebirth. Like any childbirth mine is painful: I stop a taxi that refuses to get me out of there. He dares to feel more endangered than I am. And you, you are only meters away, I know it. I can’t afford to negotiate, there's no time. I keep running, and running, out of breath. There are only men, sitting alone in their cars, and I' afraid that the nightmare will start all over again, so I only ask them for the police.
They lead me in the wrong direction, I run for over a kilometre. The adrenaline keeps me from feeling the fatigue and the pain. Nevertheless, the dirt and stones I treaded to get away from you will stay encrusted in my feet for days. Every (wo)man for (her)himself. That night, propelled into a world of adults, light came to me from a child. I run through this empty and dark boulevard when I stop him. He's the only one who's willing to help me. I don’t know exactly what I owe him, my life perhaps. He calls the police and comforts me as one would cradle a child. In the midst of my big person problems, it was this little one who helped me. I don’t really know what was on my mind in that moment. Maybe just the realisation. I am alive. I am alive. I am alive. I watch the clotted blood leave my claws, and life starts over.
And already this gloomy night is filled by the waking sound of sirens. They are there for me. Nothing will ever be the same, not like before, ever again. The police interrogate me, I realize I am engaging in a war. In this first battle, you shall not come out victorious. I am told we need to go back there. I guide them. Going back to the crime scene, to me, is like observing a grave. Mine. To the place where I ceased to exist for a few moments. But now it all resumes. I break down into tears once I catch sight of my shoes, flung with the strength of my terror. It hasn’t even been a half an hour since it happened and I can already picture myself there again. A paramedic accompanies me to the truck that will take me to the hospital.
There, I must let a man examine all of the parts of my body. You didn’t hurt me, your razor blades left only a few tears on my forehead, tears that will vanish in a few days. I recount the scenario of the horror film I just lived through over and over again. The one in which I fell silent even though I wanted to scream. Now I'm screaming because you would’ve rather I kept quiet. My silence would’ve been your victory, but you have found yourself an opponent of your own size. The man examining me takes pieces of you from my skin, thanks to which you will be locked up in a little over two months. I still don’t know it. My back hurts. I hope I won’t have to endure the feeling and weight of your body over mine for too long. It was my whole body that shut down when my imagination refused to accept what reality could no longer deny.
They tell me I won’t get pregnant, but that I might get sick. We still don’t know if you were able to plant death in my blood. I take medication in order to mithridate myself against your venom. I demand they bring me my mom. It is still not 6am. I have been refused any contact with her since I was saved. I miss her as one would miss the dead. They tell me to go and shower, my parents aren’t answering anyway. But she calls back. "Mom please come, I need you." I take a shower. Dad still hasn’t answered. He won’t learn what happened until eight hours later. In the end, it's the water of a hot shower and not that of the lake which runs down my skin. I'm safe. They let me borrow some clothes and some shoes, the ones I was wearing are now evidence for conviction. I am told that mom and T. will be arriving soon.
They put me in an empty room. The wait is long. Then, I hear their voices and their steps approaching. I hold them like the first and the last time. I cry, they don’t. Do you know what he did to me? They don’t. They only talked about an assault. I must recount before the two people I love the most in the world these fatal words. He raped me. They stare now only at the void, yours undoubtably. It is already past 7, and I still need to report it. I would’ve hoped for a more tender night.
I tell the story one more time. It is all I can do. They tell me I'm brave, courageous. That means nothing, courage. I only survived. I feel as if I am reciting a text, mechanically. I tell them you put your hand over my mouth. That you dragged me. That you raped me. That I thought I was going to die. That you asked me why. That you told me we would go to your place. That I begged you to leave me. That I ran to escape you. One step after the other. Maybe not in the right order, what do I know. I am filing a complaint against a stranger, since I don’t know who you are. I keep telling myself I never will. And yet, P. …
They finally let me go. I have to tell them what happened. I was supposed to sleep at M.’s, she might be worried. And I., what will she think, I.? I no longer have a cell phone, since you threw mine in the lake to prevent me from calling for help. T. lets me borrow his, I quickly record a voice message.
I., I am going to say this bluntly, so we can get past this. It’s going to sound dark, what happened was dark, I think we can say that T.? Basically, I was raped and it’s very serious. So, I couldn’t go to the party. I am telling you this because people will know, and I want to tell you and I need to talk about it to feel better. I spent the night at the police station and at the hospital, I am moved to be alive since seven hours ago I wasn’t so sure I'd be and… I'm alive. I’m fine. How are you?
She'll tell me a few months later that the contrast between the airiness in my voice and the violence of my words made her tremble. Did I really know what I was saying back then? I need to sleep. I'll tell the others later. When I wake up, I'll tell everyone. On social media, any social media. I no longer have the strength to tell the story individually, so I decide to write it down for everyone to read. One must talk in order to heal, so I am writing. It happened seventeen hours ago, I hope it's not too soon. I'm not ashamed of what happened to me, and under no circumstances must I keep quiet. I was raped… And now everyone knows. People keep telling me that I'm brave, very. I don’t understand. I think I'm brave only by default. Did I really have a choice?
I promise my friends I'm okay. I only have medication I need to take, and appointments at the hospital. I want to see them. They want to see me too, I think. So, we agree to go together. That day, my friends accompany me to the hospital. In other circumstances they might’ve accompanied me to the graveyard. How happy am I to be able to love them still. Did you know that, in Hôtel-Dieu’s pharmacy, pharmaceuticals come down in a slide? I talk to the nurses. "There is little chance they’ll find them, right? It’s rare." I can’t believe it, I have to get used to the idea that he will walk free forever.
But on August 1st everything will change. That day, I'll receive several messages from my mom:
Hey Romane the commissioner called… they found your attacker
You can call her
She said she would try to call you
I'll see this message when I wake up. Trembling, I'll call the number my mom gave me. The officer will confirm that you were caught. You did it again, to another girl, late July. She'll be certain it was you. We'll only have to wait for DNA confirmation. She won't be able to tell me more. And anyway she'll leave for vacation that same night. She'll tell me to call her in September. I'll break down in tears. You'll be locked up a day after. I'll get justice.
From your prison cell, you won’t let go of the fight. First, you'll send an army of demons to haunt me. But I'll be fine. And I'll eventually see you again, since victims are often offered the opportunity to confront their attackers. What will I tell you then? Surely that I forgive you.
All rights reserved © Romane Guyon
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