Rape - trigger warning

October: I'm eighteen, shortcutting home through an autumn-burnished churchyard - copper-lustred leaves, moss-skinned stone - a jaunty swing of skater skirt and arm, college folder square-sturdy in my hand. In the moment. In the last pale pulse of sun. Hey, can you tell me...? I halt. I turn... Cold earth. Colder blade dimpling my skin. My coral cameo earrings scatter, daisy-dotting the green. My back is spiked by needles of yews. Sun skews, sky side-slides until his face is the firmament. I'm staring into the tumid blank-bloat of blue; the ground hardening beneath me, the death-spike trees stiffening. Heavy Special Brew breaths. Grubby, moist fingers like grubs crawling over my breasts, and, weirdly, I'm smelling pepper - horror-spice of pungent lust, its acrid nose-thrust - and woodsmoke is drifting from somewhere... lung-flame, tongue-flames of searing words - his words - blazing like the umber tumbling leaves. Please...Please...I'll... Fear-forced bargaining, but I'm beyond care. And I'm aware of the church steeple rising, its phallus penetrating sky. The tilting church could topple as tears crystal-crush in my eyes. Fear-faint, already half gone in a soundless scream, my muted mouth mouths silent goodbyes to Sarah, to Mum. Time slows to a crawl. I try to call. Nobody comes but the man who has me ground-pinned. Bleachy stink of semen whitening my ripped skater skirt, but some things don't fade and there is no clean in this, just dirt, wet leaf-mulch, shame. Ineradicable hurt. Sacred soil is soiled, sullied. Stunned, I stumble shoeless, knickerless, into the trees and heave into the mud, into the leaves strings of spittle-sick, my thoughts strung out, reality spun out. From stinking, pulped leaves I retrieve crushed coral earrings, ground-grimy knickers, my white court shoes that whitely scream the 90s, the scattered tatters of essays - white, like fallen feathers, sunk in the sludge, muddied, the red-inked words bloodied. I gather them together. Gather myself. I go forward into my future, stained from pain and tainted touch, the smears of fear, self-disgust. And oozing slime-soft into my ears the mire of incongruous apology: I'm sorry don't tell anyone - I won't. I don't.