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floor.  He growled and yanked on the neckline of my gown, and it gave with a loud ripping sound.  I cried out and clutched the fabric to my chest, but it was savagely pulled from my hands.
     
    No.  No, this can't be happening.  This can't be real.  It's just a dream...just a dream...wake up, Sarah!  Wake up, please!
     
    But it wasn't a dream.  And I couldn't wake up.  No, this was a nightmare worse than anything my sleeping mind could have imagined.  And it was happening to me...while I was awake.
     
    I was pushed onto the cot, my head hitting the cinder-blocks with a thump that made my senses swim.  I prayed desperately for unconsciousness, to pass out and not remember.  For him to stop.  For mercy.
     
    But I guess God wasn't listening this time. 
     
    What came next is something I will never forget, nor will I ever fully remember.  I was being torn apart, inside and out.  Assaulted in the most humiliating way possible.  I was dirtied in a way that could never be made clean.  I screamed, I fought, I struggled.  But he was stronger than I, and held me with ease.  After I made one furious heave that broke one of my arms free, he reared back and slapped me on the face so hard that my consciousness broke into a million pieces.  I swam in a dark spiral of pain and shame, unable to faint, but unable to truly touch reality.  He punched me...in the shoulders, in the ribs, in the belly.  He slapped me with curved fingers so that my skin bled.  With one hand he held my wrists and with the other he hurt me, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
     
    God, make it stop.  Please make it stop.  Please.  Please.  Please.  Eventually my prayers turned into an incoherent, wordless pleading for relief, for an end to the horror, for the sweet darkness of unconsciousness.
     
    I don't know when it stopped.  I don't remember him leaving.  I remember vomiting over the side of my cot, I remember crying until my throat was raw and my eyes burned.  I remember huddling on my bed in a fetal position, unable to move except for the vicious trembling that wracked my limbs. 
     
    The pain.  So much pain.  Pain like I could  never have imagined.  It was in my body, but also in my soul.  A darkness that could never be cleansed or washed away from the depths of my mind.
     
    I lay there for what might have been days, or it might have been only minutes.  When the pain eased enough that I could walk I pushed myself up from the bed, clutching the remains of my gown around me.  Avoiding the vomit puddle, I stumbled to the bathroom and pulled the chain to turn the light on.  I was still shuddering so hard that my teeth were chattering.  I turned the water on in the tub, but I did not plug the drain.  I could not sit in the puddled water which washed off the man's filth.
     
    I scrubbed my skin until the scabs on my hands broke and water swirled pink down the drain.  I put my head under the faucet and let steaming water run through my hair until my head was sweating from the heat.  I sat and washed and scrubbed until the water ran cold.  My tears were constant and joined in the cleansing.  But no matter what I did, I didn't feel any cleaner.
     
    Finally the coldness of the water forced me out, and I pulled myself up.  I left the gown lying in a tattered heap on the floor and wrapped myself in the one clean blanket that had fallen near the foot of the cot.  I couldn't stand to touch the cot after what had happened.  In a daze I pushed the button on the TV that made it flick to life and shoved a random movie in.  I pulled the chains to turn off the bathroom light and the one in the cell. 
     
    That night I sat in the corner between the foot of the cot and the wall, huddled in my blanket, numbly watching the scenes of Bambi flicker across the screen.  I couldn't sleep.  I couldn't think.  I couldn't feel.  I couldn't eat the food on the tray even though my stomach roiled with hunger. 
     
    I told you