The Rose Girl

The Rose Girl

By: Mary Grace Sulla

5th of April, Monday dawn.

Stacey’s bedroom had a dark ambiance as she was struggling in her sleep. Nightmare was creeping in her head seducing and yielding her to death. She wanted to scream but she couldn’t. Her mouth was silenced by its hands. She wanted to open her eyes but she also couldn’t. Nightmare seemed to have blinded her. At this moment, she was fighting for her life. She was fighting hard to live because death, just like this nightmare, is a dreadful thing. She tried to get up but she couldn’t. Nightmare was beating and ravishing her hard that she couldn’t break away from it.

She was moaning.

Her heart was beating rapidly.

Stacey heard a loud knocking on her bedroom door. She wanted to open the door and save herself from her agony but still, she couldn’t get up. It was as if her body was strapped on her bed.

She kept on trying to wake herself and get up. She kept on moaning.

Until...

She felt a cold hand slap her right cheek. She finally woke up, her right cheek was aching. Christine, Stacey’s stepsister, looked at her disdainfully with lips smiling maliciously. “Get up Emily Rose!” Christine removed the bed sheet from her violently. “You can’t skip school by pretending to be possessed!”

Christine’s yell almost made her deaf. “I’m not pretending to be possessed and I never tried skipping school unlike you!” Stacey retorted, mimicking her stepsister’s yell.

Christine pulled Stacey’s hair and dragged Stacey to the bathroom as Stacey screamed in pain. She brought Stacey to a sink where a mirror was hung above. She held Stacey’s head with both hands and made her face the mirror. “LOOK AT YOURSELF! YOU’RE AS UGLY AS YOUR BEHAVIOR! DON’T EVER TALK TO ME LIKE THAT AGAIN!”

Christine slammed the door and left. Stacey didn’t react to what her stepsister did. She was used to the maltreatment Christine did to her. She experienced it every day. She became numb.

Stacey Perez was fifteen years old turning sixteen next week and a junior high school student. She had a brown complexion, a deformed face which made her look like a monkey, eyes that were green like jade, long, wavy black hair that flowed on her shoulders like a river, and an aquiline nose. All her physical features were fairly good except apparently the second described.

Stacey belonged to a family that was far from being her ideal consisting of an indifferent father David who was always “busy” working as a sheriff and had not even a little time to spend with his family, an alcoholic and moody stepmother Lana who had been unemployed two years up to now, and a hostile stepsister Christine who went to school with her and bullied her every day.

Stacey had a queer old-fashioned habit of wearing a rose on her hair every day by placing it behind her left ear. When she was little and her real mother was still alive, she was told by her real mother how beautiful she was when she wore a rose on her hair. She had acquired that habit since then. However, her stepmother, stepsister and classmates told her that the flower didn’t suit her and it couldn’t change her face and make her beautiful and that only beautiful girls wear flowers on their hairs. Despite the torture of their insults, she continued the said habit to remind herself what her real mother told her. Her real mother was her best friend and the best person she had ever known. Stacey believed only in her. She kept her real mother’s photo which was placed in a photo frame inside her drawer. She’s the only member in her family who kept the photo.

Stacey went to school. She passed the corridor carrying her bag loaded with books and other school stuff and headed for her classroom as her three classmates who were also passing the corridor talked and laughed behind her. She looks ridiculous with that rose on her hair, commented a first. Her face looks burned in hell, commented a second. She had a face of an orangutan, commented a third while mimicking a monkey’s movement. Everyone laughed except her. Stacey was near tears but she stopped them as she walked in the classroom and sat on her chair. Her classmates continued laughing and mocking her as they infected the whole class with their laughter and mockery. The whole day in school was shit.

She went home from school. She entered the living room and was “welcomed” by the sight of her stepmother making out with another man on the sofa and the table adorned with beer bottles and used cigarettes on the ashtray. This was the twentieth time she saw Lana with another man and she was sure that something more than that happened between the two. She had seen her naked nineteen times with equally nineteen men. This broke Stacey’s heart. In her mind, if she only had even a slight chance she would stab Lana and the man to death. She loved her dad and this bitch did nothing but get drunk and fuck other men. She felt invisible daggers pierce her heart.

Lana and her man got up from the sofa. “If you tell this to your dad, I’m gonna lock you up in this house and burn you,” said Lana menacingly. Stacey nodded, turned her back to them and burst into tears. She heard the man whispered, “What the fuck is wrong with her face?” Lana sniggered like a madwoman as the man headed for the door. Shit in school. Shit at home. The same shits went on and on in her life until...

Her 16th birthday. 9th of April, Friday evening.

It was JS Prom night in the school gym. It was a special night where most girls had a chance to show off their elegant dresses and hide their true faces with makeup to attract boys and make their fellow girls envy. It was also a night where boys had a chance to boast their cars and would have their opportunity to fuck with the sophisticated chicks in dresses in their own cars. It’s vanity and lust night. Everybody wanted to be the King And Queen of the Night. Everybody wanted to have a great night as well and have somebody to sleep with. Well, almost everybody, at least. None of these had crossed Stacey’s mind. She was sitting alone at her table (wearing a rose on her hair and makeup that barely changed her face) indulging in her iced tea. Nobody asked to dance with her. She didn’t feel bad about it. In fact, she predicted that she would be alone in this event.

She felt a warm gentle hand squeezed hers. She looked up to see whose hand it was. Magically, it was Scott’s. Scott who was a popular boy in school took her hand and danced with her on the dance floor. At first, she felt like an idiot because she didn’t know how to dance. Nevertheless, his lithe movements supported her and made them possible to dance beautifully. The girls in made up faces and elegant dresses who had mocked her in school stared at her them enviously, while the boys who had laughed at her were stunned. That dance was the best thing that ever happened to her. She reckoned that if she’d have a dance with Scott all the time, she’d be perpetually euphoric. She blushed as she thought of this. The boredom that she felt earlier when she was sitting alone at her table, having nobody to talk and dance with, was eventually replaced by euphoria since Scott danced with her. She was utterly happy at this moment and she felt important for the first time. She was the happiest girl this night.

Prom night was about to be over and the King and Queen of the Night crowned. Everyone was seated at their tables. Scott sat beside Stacey and again, the girls stared at them enviously over their table (which was earlier occupied by Stacey alone). The girls’ faces were distorted as they scowled and looked disdainfully at Stacey. Scott took Stacey’s hand again and squeezed it, this time tighter.

“I want to give you something that you won’t forget,” he whispered to her. Puzzled and enchanted by the statement, she asked what it was. He said it was a surprise.

The emcees were about to announce the King and Queen of the Night. All ears were listening to their announcement. The announcement of the emcees surprised everyone. “We’re Queen and King of the night!” Stacey exclaimed in disbelief and excitement. Scott beamed at her. They came up on the stage and were crowned as King and Queen of the Night. Everyone else applauded for them.

It was like a dream turned into reality for her.

He blindfolded her and they went further from the school gym.

They went outside the school gym and inside a garage filled with weapons. She groped for his hand, he held hers. “Where are we?” she asked.

“I told you it’s a surprise,” he whispered. She zipped her mouth and dared not to ask again fearing that her eagerness will spoil the surprise. He approached her and held her face with one hand by the chin to kiss her lips. Her heart stopped beating as his lips touched hers. She forgot to breathe. The kiss had almost killed her. When he’s done kissing her, she felt him let go. She was still enchanted.

She touched her lips in shock and still savoring the kiss. The feeling she had when Scott kissed her was special and surreal - she wouldn’t expect it to be his surprise. He swept her off her feet. It was the best and only gift she received from anyone. She wanted to do it again with Scott if it wouldn’t be too much of a demand. He embraced her tightly.

Scott removed his arms around her and walked away from her. The enchantment she felt was suddenly gone. “Goodnight queen of the night,” he said. His voice was musical. He bowed down in front of her even though she couldn’t see him. He went off and left her in the garage. She was still blindfolded.

Stacey removed the blindfold and saw the place where they stayed. She was horrified by the sight of the weapons which filled it and the men who stood in front of her. They all looked stoned with their red eyes. They stared maniacally and smiled wickedly. She shuddered that the rose she was wearing on her hair fell.

She ran from them but one of them caught her. One of the men kissed her violently on the lips and let go. “Did you enjoy it honey?” he mocked. His companions laughed maliciously. She spat on his face. He swiftly took a knife from one corner of the hideout and placed it near her throat. Her eyes widened in fear. “Do that again and I’ll bury it in here,” he hissed. He took the dagger away. “You follow our orders tonight or we’ll kill you. Take off your dress.”

She took off her dress and shown the stoned men a beautiful body she unexpectedly got: beautiful shoulders and arms, small but firm breasts, well-toned abdomen, virgin vagina behind the thick pubic hair and long flawless legs. One of them took off his clothes and laid her down the ground. Tears rolled down her rough cheeks. He fondled her breasts and licked them, first around their corners and then the nipples. She closed her eyes in disgust and whimpered. His tongue traveled to the midst of her breasts and abdomen and finally vagina. She cried hysterically. He penetrated her. She moaned not in pleasure but merely in pain. When he was done raping her, he beckoned the other two men. Two men came to them. One man also took off his clothes and commanded her to stand up, turn around, face the wall and press it hard with both hands holding on to it, spread her legs and bend them so that her buttocks were exposed to him. She did exactly what he commanded. He penetrated her from behind. She moaned in pain again. Another man opened the zipper of his denim pants, pulled it down and then his underwear. He commanded her to give him a blowjob. She reluctantly sucked his cock and licked it. He moaned in pleasure.

The three men raped her until dawn. When they were done raping her, they dressed themselves and told her to leave. She dressed, put the fallen rose back on her hair and exited the hideout crying. The nightmare that she had a week ago had turned into a monstrous reality. She cursed this night and loathed herself endlessly as she ran home.

10th of April, Saturday dawn.

She was in the street heading home. The sky was gray and the clouds produced heavy rain. She was drenched; the dress that she was wearing nearly looked like wet rug wrapped around her body and some of the petals of the rose on her hair fell on the ground. Everything seemed tranquil as she walked on the street. Windows of all houses were all shut and no one was on the street but her. Everyone seemed asleep. She landed her feet on the ground near the gate of her house and rang the doorbell. No one came to open the gate for her. She climbed over the gate and jumped to the terrace, opened the door of her house and went inside.

As she went inside home her father David was throwing every breakable decoration he saw to Lana while whining at his bitchy wife’s infidelity. Lana was evading every breakable decoration thrown at her and was pleading forgiveness from David.

Lana ran to the kitchen and took a knife from the silverware drawer. David followed her. She brandished the knife at him. He backed off and pleaded her not to hit him with it. She aimed the knife and threw it at his heart. The knife was buried deep in his heart and his shirt was stained with blood. He fell down and died. Stacey cried hard. She blamed herself in her mind for failing to save her dad because of her fear that she would die had she tried to kill Lana. She blamed herself for being such a wimp standing and watching her stepmother kill her father. The only person left who mattered to her just died before her eyes. Now the urge to kill her stepmother grew.

“Go to your room you fucking beast or I’ll kill you with this!” Lana commanded while playing with the knife. Stacey went upstairs.

Stacey saw that Christine’s bedroom door was locked which hinted that Christine was sleeping soundly despite the wild commotion earlier downstairs. This was her great chance to kill Lana and avenge her dad’s death. No one and nothing’s going to stop her. She headed for her dad’s bedroom, rummaged through his bed drawer for a gun and took it. She went downstairs to do what she had to do.

It’s high time for Lana to pay the price due for her infidelity towards her husband and for her killing him. Lana had to be dead.

Stacey headed for the kitchen and saw that Lana was cooking sunny side up eggs for breakfast. She aimed the gun at Lana’s back. Before Lana turned and noticed her holding a gun, she pulled the trigger and...

BANG!

At last - Lana died before Stacey’s eyes lying face down on the frying pan. The back of Lana’s shirt was stained with blood and her face was boiled on the frying pan with the eggs she was cooking earlier that she looked uglier than Stacey in her death. Stacey was very happy. She had at last killed the person she had wanted to kill and avenged her dad’s death. The people who mattered to her had bidden farewell from this cruel world she had known and endured to live. She decided to die beside her dad for her life was not worth living anymore.

She walked beside her dad, removed the rose on her hair which only had four petals left since the rain made the rest of the petals fall on the ground outside their house, and placed it on his heart. She lied down beside him, aimed the gun at her heart, and pulled the trigger and BANG!

Her heart stopped beating and her dress was stained with blood.

Christine woke up from the roar of the gun and smelled the smell of blood and a rose that filled home.