The woman’s right foot rattled the floorboards. She peeled the skin her from fingers and left crescent shapes in her palms.
“Did you do it?” The officer asked.
The answer sat in her throat like a pill without water; her tongue grated against her teeth as she pursed her lips instinctively—Her body was already regretting the next few words.
She knew the officer wanted her to say it, to lay herself bare and admit her crime.
“Yes,” she whispered.
“We did have sex.”
The officer narrowed his eyes at her, and she felt it then. She was no longer a woman. Instead, she was an eyelash stuck to the cornea; the sunlight that peeks through curtains; an itch that persists.
“Now why would you do that? Thats the trouble with women these days…they just don’t think,” the officer sighed.
Her leg stopped bouncing; her body gave up. The officer knew her boyfriend had raped her.
To serve and protect, she was naive to believe those pillars extended to her—the criminal.
“Show me his photo… oh I see he is good looking, well aren’t you a lucky girl,” he grinned.
His voice droned around her head, but her gaze was fixed on the floor.
“You were his girlfriend, heck, if I saw my missus coming home drunk, I’d pound her on the spot!” The officer lamented.
“But I don’t remember consenting, officer. I don’t remember.” The criminal said.
The officer scoffed, his lips curling with disgust as he mocked the criminal, “well if you don’t remember it, what’s to say you didn’t say yes?”
“Why don’t you go on home and talk to him? Rape is a heavy word ya’know.”
But the criminal knew, she had felt the heaviness of rape that morning when she woke up. The criminal remembered the dull ache between her legs; the streaks of blood that marred her legs and dyed the bed sheets. The copious semen that indicated several bouts. He didn’t care enough to clean her up. She knew he got off on her agony, especially when he confessed to finishing inside her without a condom.
The criminal could only wonder if they knew the heaviness of rape, maybe then she would have been spared.
