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Hot water slid down my back. I leaned my head against the shower wall using my crossed arms as a pillow. The fissure inside me grew wider. All joy and contentment spurted from an emotional wound, like blood from an artery. Misery and pain slowly clotted the hole. Memories of everything I ever did wrong, real and imagined, played on a giant screen in my mind’s eye and I was powerless to turn it off.
Water washed down my spine splitting at my hips into tributaries that rolled down my thighs and calves. Focus on the water. The heat. I wanted it to help but it did little to carry my distressing thoughts into the drain. Make it stop. I pleaded with the universe which yielded nothing in return.
My mind slipped from the moment and into a space I knew to be imagined and real at the same time. I held a bullwhip in my hand, poised in desperate readiness to use it against my enemies. Who were those foes? I didn’t know. I only knew that I temporarily forestalled their attacks.
The bullwhip disappeared. Rope restrained my wrists and pulled my arms over my head. A whip struck me from the darkness. Confused by the pain and lack of control, I stared into the gloom searching for my attacker. A strap of leather lashed out again, beating me like Jesus or a slave. I cringed.
“I’m not a savior! Or a slave! So why are you doing this?” I cried.
Another crack sounded and the whip landed surely on my back.
“Am I so terrible that I deserve such punishment?”
A woman’s voice in the darkness said, “If you are going to use a whip, you should know what it feels like to be on the receiving end.” She was calm, not the slightest hint of anger in her tone.
Even though an infinite shade limited my sight, I knew the woman’s voice had a body and companions.
A length of leather braid smacked my back and she said, “You never know when they’ll hit.”
Another lash, harder than the last, burned my shoulder blades. “You never know how hard they’ll strike.”
I heard a loud snap in the air to the left above me and felt a strike from the right. “You never know when they’ll miss or where they’ll come from.”
The beating continued from all around and, just as she told me, I could not predict if, when, or where I would be hit next. I could not tell how much pain would be inflicted or who was controlling the whip. My mind, intoxicated by so much pain, held up who as the most important information to have.
The woman provided the answer before my pain-soaked brain fully formed the question. “Sometimes it’s others, people you’ve wronged. Most of the time it’s not.”
A dark haired woman in a long crimson dress stepped into view. The whip reappeared in my hand and I stood outside my own exhausted body. I used it on the tied woman, myself. I couldn’t stop torturing the part of me that a rope still held in place. She rolled her head weakly and looked at me. I helplessly turned my attention to the woman from the shadow.
I pointed to the bleeding woman. “Why are you doing this to me?” Tormented tears dropped from my burning eyes.
“I’m not. You are.” She looked at me through steady green eyes reminiscent of the undisturbed surface of a pond. The woman’s companions gradually emerged from the darkness.
“But I’m not, I couldn’t,” I stuttered. “I wouldn't do this to myself. Something or someone is making me.”
She shook her head, “You are beating yourself, punishing yourself for things you believe you should be punished for since no one else will do it.”
I handed the whip to one of the woman's companions, the featureless person nearest me. It was a shadowy thing, a stark contrast against the brightly lit and blood-striped body in front of me. I watched as the unidentifiable person whipped her, me, further. Others joined it and they took turns beating and abusing me, spitting at me and occasionally kicking me. I looked at the crimson woman again. “Why are you letting them do this to me?”
“I didn’t give them permission. You handed them the whip. You’ve stood here idly watching them assault you.”
Standing beside the woman at the edge of the shadow, I cried from the guilt of persecuting that person hanging limply from the rope. Returned to the delirious body I started in, I cried from the physical pain inflicted on me but stayed without a struggle because of the disgrace I felt. A chill moved down my spine.
My everyday self leaned face first against the shower wall using my crossed arms as a pillow. Cool water washed down my back, burning as it rolled over my spiritual wounds. I slid slowly to the shower floor, my face turned to the wall, and wept.
