An Illustrated Story: Abused War Captive

[cisco47]

Camryn’s hut became a focal point. They installed a heavy padlock on the outside and painted a crude red symbol on the door – a universal sign understood by every soldier rotating through. Her existence settled into a numbing horror. Days blurred into nights punctuated by the scrape of the lock, the heavy tread of boots, and the inevitable violation. She was fed slop twice a day, just enough to keep her alive. The whip marks scabbed over, then scarred. The internal wounds from the initial rapes never fully healed, a constant, low throb beneath the fresh assaults. She learned to dissociate, retreating into a blank space behind her eyes, focusing on a single crack of light in the wall, the sound of rain on the roof – anything but the present.

[cisco47]

Complaining was unthinkable. Early on, a soldier had complained she was "too cold." The next day, instead of her thin gruel, the guard escorted her to the ‘punishment room’. He didn’t whip her hard, not like the first time, but hard enough to reopen two scabs on her back. "Earn your food," he’d sneered, tossing the whip onto the dirt floor before returning her to her hut, unfed. After that, she did her best to please. She forced herself to respond, to move, to make sounds they seemed to expect, even as her soul screamed in silent protest. Any hint of reluctance, any tear she couldn’t choke back, any failure to perform meant her mealtime was replaced by a whipping. Hunger became a sharp, familiar ache, but the lash was worse. Survival meant becoming an instrument of their pleasure, no matter how it hollowed her out.

[cisco47]

story to be continued...

[bakerboy]

story to be continued...

I will wait for the movie

[cisco47]

The General’s decree echoed beyond the island. Soon, the scrape of the padlock heralded not just soldiers, but new arrivals. They came in small, guarded groups – terrified girls with haunted eyes, deposited like cargo onto the beach. A delicate girl with porcelain skin and raven hair, trembling in silken robes now stained with salt spray. A fierce-eyed beauty with dark braids and high cheekbones, her proud posture broken by exhaustion. A young woman with sun-bronzed skin and fiery curls, her freckles stark against her pallor. They were all young, all beautiful, all nationalities plucked from conquered villages and cities across the empire’s vast reach, Chinese, Korean, Dutch... Girls were readily available due to the enemies’ many campaign victories during their initial blitz for world domination. Their languages were a discordant symphony of fear – guttural dialects, lilting tones, sharp consonants – but their shared terror was a universal language. They were herded into larger, partitioned huts near Camryn’s own, their arrival marked by the same crude red symbol painted hastily on new doors.

[cisco47]

[cisco47]

Camryn watched them arrive through the cracks in her bamboo wall. The soldiers’ appetites were insatiable. The demand for "comfort" surged with each fresh battalion rotation. Her own hut remained a constant, a grim landmark. The new girls’ presence didn’t lessen her burden; it spread the horror wider. The sounds changed – muffled sobs in unfamiliar tongues, sharp cries abruptly cut off, the sickening thud of flesh against flesh. Camryn learned to recognize the rhythms of their despair. She saw the defiance in the fiery-haired one’s eyes extinguish after a week. She heard the porcelain-skinned girl’s soft singing fade into silence. The fierce-eyed beauty fought, once, leaving a soldier with a bleeding cheek; they dragged her away, and she never returned. Camryn became a ghost among ghosts, her blonde hair now a dull, tangled mess, her pale skin mapped with fading scars and fresh bruises. She moved through the motions, a hollow vessel, the memory of Moana’s bright eyes the only spark she guarded deep within her ruined core.

[cisco47]

[cisco47]

[cisco47]

The small mercies were perverse. When blood stained the thin rag she used as a pad, it meant temporary reprieve. The soldiers recoiled from the "unclean" women. Instead of the hut, they were marched at dawn, wrists shackled, to the pumping station near the officers’ club. It was a monstrous thing – a rusted iron carousel bolted to a concrete slab, its heavy handles extending like spokes from a central axle. A thick pipe snaked from its base towards the compound’s water tower. The guards chained each woman’s ankle shackle to a handle, forcing them into a circle. "Move!" The command was sharp, accompanied by a bullwhip prodding a thigh. The handles were cold, heavy iron. Pushing them required leaning her full, aching weight against the bar, straining her raw shoulders and scarred back. The carousel groaned, resisting. The first steps were agony, dragging the reluctant machinery into motion. Sweat stung her eyes and the open cuts on her back almost immediately in the humid dawn air. The metallic scent of blood mingled with rust and her own sour fear.

Beside her, the porcelain-skinned girl gasped with each rotation, her delicate hands blistered. Across the circle, the fiery-haired one muttered curses between labored breaths, her freckled face flushed crimson. Their collective effort was the only thing that kept the handles turning, the pistons pumping, the water rising. The guards lounged in the shade, smoking, occasionally barking laughter when one stumbled. The sun climbed, baking them. Camryn’s feet bled inside the rough wooden sandals they’d given her. The shackles rubbed her ankles raw. Still, she pushed. Pumping was better than the hut. Here, pain was clean exhaustion, not violation. The burn in her muscles was something she could understand, could control in some small way. The rhythmic creak of the machine drowned out the distant sounds of the officers’ club – laughter, glass breaking, the occasional scream.

They were given ten minutes at noon – just enough time to drink tepid water from a shared tin cup and wolf down a handful of stale rice. Camryn crouched in the shade of the pump, watching the new girls. The fierce-eyed one was gone. The porcelain girl hummed softly under her breath, a lullaby in a language Camryn didn’t recognize. The fiery-haired one stared holes into the dirt, her jaw set. None of them spoke. Words were pointless. Survival was the only language left