The empty office space was huge. Its walls were glass. The air was stuffy with sunlight. There were sheets of paper, old mugs, filing cabinets, chairs and sheets of plastic.
In the centre were the mannequins. They hadn’t moved.
Immediately on her left was a small walled office. It had no windows but an open doorway. Nearby was the fire-escape that she had padlocked earlier that morning. She came closer. She felt dust on her bare feet. She heard snores.
Inside, it was dull and hot. She counted six sleeping men. They were lying, mostly naked, overlapping by foot and hand. Ute had once been scared by these men. Now she was disgusted. There was a camping toilet in one corner. In another, a television and a computer games console. There was a large duvet in the centre. The stench of sweat and semen was overpowering.
Ute took the can of lighter fluid from her bag. She squirted it onto the duvet. It was a good feeling. She was pissing on these men. Next she took a match and flicked it into the centre. The duvet erupted. Thick smoke poured outward in a carpet, hugging the ground, making for the door. She did not hurry to withdraw her stun gun. Humans cannot smell while they are asleep. She had checked.
She saw the moustached man who had led her from the club. He had bought her drinks. He was middle-aged and balding, but Ute had always preferred older men. He had drugged her Martini. Mildly, but enough. Later, he had injected her with scopolamine and morphine as she crouched to re-tie her shoe. Life had become hazy and slow. Her resistance had fallen away. For passers-by she was a drunk. The man waved them on with a laugh.
She fired the gun. Two darts flew out and embedded themselves in his buttocks. They connected to the stun gun with strong, insulated cables. The darts had barbs. They could not be extracted without ripping flesh. The man grunted but did nothing more. He was drugged. There was a second trigger to activate the charge. She did not squeeze it yet. First, she fired darts into all of the men. There were six of them; she had ten pairs of darts.
She shot the man who had taken her from the club. He had smoked a large joint the entire time. It must have been two or three hours. He re-lit with his Zippo, opening the lid on his thigh on the downstroke, lighting the wick on the upstroke.
She shot the others too. All of them. The drugs extinguished their pain.
The drugs. She remembered the moustached man injecting her again. He had put a fatherly arm across her shoulders and taken her for a walk. He had led her to the Rhine. One last injection: the rest of the syringe. A gentle push and she fell.
She pulled the trigger.
Callused arms had found her in that cold, empty hell. Pulled her onto a deck. Shouted words in a language she did not understand. Wiped hair and muck from her mouth. Shone light in her eyes. Injected her.
She pulled the trigger again. This time the groans were louder, angrier. Eyes sought her. They were monstrous but they were pathetic. She realised that they would never be as strong as her. She had returned.
They’ve killed you, said a voice, high in her mind, yet another voice, much lower, said And killed themselves.
She pulled the trigger a third time. Bodies convulsed. The smoke was thicker now. One of the men began to realise his fate. He tugged at the barbed darts in his chest. Ute watched the skin stretch. It would not rip. Finally the man collapsed in the smoke.
The only light in the windless office came from the doorway. She reached back and pulled the door shut. The burning duvets produced their own light. She watched the flame. It was as blue-green as a firework.
Something grabbed her ankle and Ute screamed. She pulled the trigger again and the hand tensed. It fell and lay flaccid on her foot.
She pulled the trigger again and again. The elements of her mind combined to urge her on. She was a mob that lusted for the death of these men, even as it hastened her own. With each pull of the trigger, she imagined herself raping them, firing into them, inching them towards the edge of an abyss with each dirty push.
The smoke was thick and poisonous now. Thirty seconds had passed. She felt sick and near collapse.
“This, gentlemen,” she shouted, “is what it feels like when you’re fucked.”
Someone muttered a word. She could not quite hear it. Behind the burning duvets, a figure rose. It muttered the word again. It shimmered through Ute’s tears.
The word was ‘Weibsstück’. Bitch.
It stepped forward and Ute gasped. It was a woman…and she was momentarily awed at her own stupidity. The men were lying supine, satiated. Of course there was a woman. A woman like Ute herself. She reached forward to help the victim from the room.
She would have a straightforward escape through the door to the staircase and, from there, through the perfume shop to freedom.
The woman grabbed her throat and pushed hard. Ute dropped the stun gun and they broke through the door. In daylight, her eyes seemed to be more animal than human. Cat’s eyes. The eyes were familiar; she had been present at Ute’s rape. She had looked on.
Ute tripped but the woman followed her down. Her gripped remained. Like the men, she was high. Ute could feel her head expanding with trapped blood. She scrambled backwards. They made progress across the floor. Ute felt the world darken. Above them, the ceiling of the main floor was on fire. That’s my gift, Ute thought. Plastic embers began to fall like ash. Still the world darkened.
They crashed into the pile of mannequins. The landslide covered them. The dolls were heavy and one struck the woman near her temple. Her grip relaxed momentarily. Ute took a breath before
