PATH OF THE STAR HUNTER

How long had it been since I was in this place? weeks...maybe months, at some point time stops mattering when you find yourself in hell.

The pain, the torture, the humiliation, and the desperation became a day-to-day thing, something so common and yet something that continued to hurt like the first time.

The desire for this to end, for someone to come save us, to be able to escape from this place died every day at dawn when our captors returned to torture us, no one is going to save us, there is no escape from this hell.

Or maybe there was but I was too cowardly to end my own life and the rest of the girls were too broken to even try.

How did we end up in this place? It was a question I asked myself every day even if I already knew the answer, it was this damn cruel world, it was our weakness, it was our beauty that condemned us to this hell.

Beauty, we were beautiful, some of us still are, even with the bruises and marks of abuse, we were still beautiful, maybe that’s why men continued to covet us and continued to abuse us.

In a certain way I cursed and thanked my beauty, it was because I was the most beautiful and exotic of all the women here that saved me from being raped by the men who intend to sell us as merchandise; they believed that I would be worth a fortune as long as I remained a virgin.

The other girls fared much worse, they were raped almost daily for hours, sometimes they forced just one of them to serve almost a dozen men, they tried to break us, train us and enjoy us in the process.

.....

As for me, even though I was still a virgin that didn’t save me from all kinds of abuse, they made me look closely while they raped the rest, they insulted and torture me while they made me look, and even now I’m still covered in all the male dirt that they put on me; I might be a virgin but I was just as broken as the other girls.

They didn’t treat us like human beings, we were less than pets to them, they fed us whenever they felt like it and there were even times when they covered our food with their dirt, but the hunger was too intense and we ate while crying with humiliation.

Some of us just couldn’t take it and stopped eating, slowly starving themselves, while others were more drastic and committed suicide by biting their tongues.

It was strange, even in this hell every time one of us died the pain and despair we felt was even deeper than when we were being abused.

Perhaps in our pain, in our desperation, in our hell the only thing we had was each other, we hug each other at night to endure the cold and do the best we can to help each other; quite ridiculous given our circumstances but still brought us some comfort.

Time went on and hell took its course, recently they told us that they had finally found a buyer for us so we would soon be out of here; though none of us felt that was a good thing.

At this point, the only thing we remembered about ourselves was our names and the names of the other girls, any notions of being rescued or escaping had completely died.

Then it happened, the routine of abuse and rape changed, today someone came to feed us and left without even glancing at us, maybe we were too dirty and we looked too unpleasant to attract the man’s gaze; That’s what I thought.

The rest of the girls didn’t think too much about it and they all concentrated on eating. Because they already had a buyer, they had started to feed us better so that we would gain a little weight and recover some of our figures, none of us wanted to look more attractive for no one but hunger made us eat desperately.

While I was eating a stupid thought crossed my mind, it was that maybe because they would sell us, maybe we could take a bath, I haven’t had a bath in such a long time, I miss hot water and soap; at this time I was so dirty.

But I quickly shook that thought from my mind, no matter how much I wanted to take a bath I would rather remain dirty and unattractive than clean just to become some degenerate’s sexual pet.

What kind of fate awaited us after this? It would be worse than it already is or it would just be living this hell for the rest of our lives... Or maybe a person who didn’t treat us so badly would buy us? Such naive thought did not last more than a second.

What seemed like hours passed and strangely no one had come to torture or harm us, there was a lot of noise outside but because the door was too thick it was not possible to know what was happening.

At some point we began to hear shots followed by cries of pain, it seemed that someone was attacking the place, I hope they kill everyone in this place; I hope they kill us too.

At no time did it cross my mind that the disaster out there was some kind of rescue, any hope would only lead to more pain; something that I had learned in my time here.

The gunshots got louder and louder and the screams became so loud that they could be heard without any problem even through the steel door.

Then everything became silent and I assumed that whoever the people in this place were dead or everyone who attacked this place was dead, it was strange but I didn’t feel anything about it nor anticipation for the result nor pleasure at the thought of my captors being dead.

Maybe I even stopped caring about that, I think that everything had stopped caring, then... Why did I want to stay alive?

As those dangerous thoughts filled my mind, the door started to open, the creaking of the door brought me out of my thoughts and forced me to see who had come to this place.

I must admit I was slightly surprised when instead of seeing one of our usual executioners, what appeared in the doorway was a person dressed in black with a creepy-looking white mask.

For some reason, I think I’m not the only person surprised as the masked person didn’t seem to have reacted as if he expected to find us here.

I wonder what he expected to find, I wonder what he will do now, I wonder if he will get us out of here or leave us to our fate... or worse.

The masked person seemed to hesitate for a few moments before he decided to take a step into the room, I couldn’t see his face but I was sure of two things, the first was that this person was a man and the second was that this man was probably feeling a lot of disgust right now.

It couldn’t be helped, not only this place but we were also covered in all kinds of filth, not only the smell was disgusting; I imagine it was also an uncomfortable image to look at.

Many unimportant things kept going through my mind, trying to anticipate the next move of the masked man although this was useless I must admit that the next move of the masked man would never have been expected.

It was just a gesture, a simple wave of his hand and the next thing I knew, little by little spheres of water began to form out of nowhere, it was a strange sight that quickly told me that this man was an Esper.

I understood that the man was an Esper, but I still didn’t understand his intentions, soon what seemed like dozens of liters of pure and crystalline water kept floating in the form of spheres around the man; before starting to fall.

Like intelligent snakes, the water crawled on the ground before reaching me and the girls, at that moment I felt fear, but also relief; I assumed that the man had decided to kill us all for some reason that only he knew.

Perhaps my only regret was that he would prefer not to die by drowning because I knew that it was much more painful and slow than many might think.

But the suffocation never came, instead what came was a soft warm touch that crawled across my skin, how long had it been since I felt the touch of hot water? How long has it been since my body experienced any type of sensation besides pain?

It took me a while during which I let myself get carried away by that feeling of comfort that the hot water brought me before I understood the intentions of the masked man, he was not trying to kill us; he only wanted to clean the filth that covered us.

I did not know his motives, this could be some kind of kindness from a noble soul or the prelude to a new hell, I did not know, but for a moment... a simple instant... I felt something that I had stopped feeling a long time ago... I felt hope.