Pretty Faces and Dark Places by Rose B. Mashal Read Free Book Online Page A

sandpaper; no spot on my skin went untouched. Every piece of my body was being scratched as I was being pulled down. And my screams only grew louder as the pain grew greater.
    If that was how it felt to be swallowed by the ground, then I didn’t really want to know.
    After what felt like ages, I felt as if my legs, starting with my feet, were being freed from all of the sandpaper-grinding. Soon I felt the same thing on my waist, then my stomach and chest, ending with my head. And once I was completely freed, I found myself falling from a high spot toward the ground, my hands in front of me doing nothing to ease the fall. I was pretty sure I’d broken some bones, and the bloodcurdling scream that I let out once the side of my head hit the ground was enough to make anyone around me realize how painful it really was.
    I don’t think it was more than a minute later when I felt hands – many hands – carrying me and then placing my feet on the ground to put me in a standing position. My body was very weak and my eyelids were almost too heavy to open. Everything I could see was nothing but blurs of people, arms and legs and ... feathers?
    I felt the hands tying my own to what I realized to be a cross, and at the same time I felt other hands tying my feet together and then tying them to the south part of the cross.
    “No, no!” I screamed. “Please, no! Let go, let me go!”
    My screams and begs for whoever was there to hear me didn’t do anything to help me. It was only when I felt the heavy and cold chains being tied and secured over my stomach that I realized I was completely naked.
    My throat felt as if it was burning from the inside out, just like the rest of my body. My nudeness in front of too many strangers to even count or see brought tears to my eyes. My tears stung and hurt, but the feel of them over the wounds on my cheeks and chin was strangely welcomed, because it eased the pain I was feeling in them just a bit.
    The fear of being raped consumed my every sense. I had no idea what they were going to do to me, had no idea why they were tying me up this way, had no idea if they were some psychos that would get off on seeing me being tortured to death, or what.
    And in that moment, death didn’t sound like a very bad thought. I found myself wishing for it to come and hug me so I would feel no more pain.
    I felt a hand on my cheek, so tender and gentle that I think my head leaned a bit into it. The hand wiped away my tears ever so softly, and then I heard it, a whisper that was even tenderer than butterfly wings, “Hush now, Beautiful Angel.”
    A soft gasp left my mouth. “Andrew?” I asked, eyes still too heavy to fully open, head still pounding too hard to be able to move it, and voice is almost too low to be heard.
    “Yes, Angel, it’s me,” I could hear the smile in his voice.
    “Andrew, please help me,” I begged. The questions I had about him and about what had brought me here, or all of the things I’d wondered about for the past year, were completely forgotten. All I could think of now was for him to just get me out of there and back to the comfort of my house.
    “I am helping you, Love,” he said, to which I frowned. He couldn’t be serious. I was in so much pain, I was tied up, I couldn’t move, I was naked and I was bleeding from all over my body – how could he say that he was helping? “It’ll end soon.”
    “Andrew, please, please!” I cried and pulled at my restraints. All of my attempts to free them were fruitless, only managing to make my body heavier and the wounds all over my skin to sting badly.
    More tears came out of my eyes and more screams and begs came out of my mouth as I felt Andrew no longer beside me. The thought that maybe he could be the one who’d brought me here and was the reason why I was facing all of this made my stomach twist and turn.
    It felt as if hours and hours passed as I stayed in this position. I was no longer screaming, no longer asking for help, no