Victim
This is the car it happened in. A repurposed government car, can you believe? An old white Ambassador with white curtains hanging from the tinted windows, so the sun and everyone else could be shut out from the hallowed government business that went on inside. I'm sure the tinted windows weren't meant for the same nefarious purpose which aided the perpetrators of my crime.
Perpetrators. What a great word. Has all the echoes of pervert, terminator, traitor, dictator, which for that one hour is what those two men and one "boy" were to me.
Yet nothing has the sting of the word rapist. Listen to it.
The rasping R
the shrill long A
the ultimately effete "PIST" of a loser
who preys on the vulnerable and weak.
You're not looking at the pictures of the car.
You wanna see inside?
Did you really look?You wanna see inside?
I mean you can rely on my description if you want. I'm good at describing things, everyone always says. Did I mention the red-orange paan stain on the back of the front seat? Don't mistake it for blood. That's on the back seat, vague patches of it left after a feeble attempt to wipe it off. But the erupting red-orange splots, that's paan, a ubiquitous stain across India. But who spits paan inside their car? Yet there it was. Funny the things you focus on when you're trying to shut out pain and humiliation. You can close your eyes, but that just magnifies the senses. So I clung to the bulbous splat on the dingy white seat covers and a small crack in the dingy white curtains that occasionally let in a shard of light from a passing street lamp.
OK, you don't have to look at the photos. You can just read my words and rely solely on my description.
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