You cunt,” he said. “You fucking worthless cunt.”

She didn’t answer him because he had his belt tight around her throat. Her body convulsed and her sight went. He released his grip, and her vision cleared. Her arms and legs were cold; she tried to move her fingers and wasn’t sure she succeeded. His face came into focus over hers, wavering out of darkness like a dream. He was saying something, but she couldn’t hear, the roaring in her head was too loud. She felt him inside her; her vagina was tight and dry. He tightened the belt again, and again she lost her sight. He released her; first his eyes came out of the darkness, then his face. She tried to tell him to stop, but her voice wasn’t working.

He held his hand before her and moved his fingers in a gesture she didn’t understand. Then she realized he was snapping his fingers. He grabbed her jaw with a hard pinch, and moved her head back and forth. Her vision started to go blank again and then cleared abruptly.

“Hey,” he said. “Hey. Are you okay?”

She put her tongue experimentally out of her mouth and touched her lips. They were so dry they didn’t feel like flesh.

“Here,” he said. He leaned over her body towards the floor and then rolled back onto the bed clutching a bottle of sloshing liquid. He put it to her lips. Reflexively she tried to take the bottle with her hand and couldn’t; she remembered her hands and feet were tied at the corners of her bed. She opened her mouth and the burning vodka made her sputter and cough. He shoved the bottle against her teeth and kept pouring, letting it run down her chin after she had closed her lips.

“Thought you were gone there for a minute,” he said. He took the bottle from her, put it to his lips, up-ended it, and drained it. He emitted a loud “ahhh” noise.

“I wanna get up,” she said. “Untie me.” She heard the fear in her voice, and it frightened her more.

He leaned back against the wall and looked at her, smiling.

“Goddamn it, Bryan. My stomach hurts and I have to pee.”

He extended his hand and began to stroke her cunt. His eyes looked like the eyes of Mrs. Rabinowitz; the iris bristling with dismembered emotion, the whites riddled with yellow veins.

“You look like a lunatic,” she said.

He slid away from the wall and put his head between her legs. She retreated further into her body. He followed her. She closed her eyes and imagined leaving her body to float away in empty air, turning somersaults in the contactless ease of space, unseen, untouched, unalive. Instead her body stripped itself for him; her full bladder and all her other organs lay exposed, shivering in assonance with the slow movements of his tongue. She felt she was turning gradually inside out. He could’ve strangled her. To her horror, the thought excited her.

“I’m your daddy’s good buddy,” he said, “and your daddy told me I can play with your little pussy any time I want.”

“Don’t,” she said, “please don’t.”

“Any time I want I can take you out to the park and make you take your little panties off.”

“Please, Bryan, don’t, don’t.” Her words were a landslide of pebbles and dirt under someone’s foot.

Her buzzer sounded. He turned and looked at the door. “Expecting anybody?” he asked.

She was unable to answer.

He got up and walked unsteadily to the intercom. He looked at her and smiled. “I’ve always wanted to meet your friends,” he said.