The firecracker went off again. Then again. She drifted in and out of consciousness. Faces appeared. Some angry. Some frightened. Voices taunted her and urged each other to…violate her. "Yo, Des, your turn." Their voices sounded like crows in the cornfields of Iowa, where she'd grown up before she'd moved to New York to become a writer, fell in love at a Fleetwood Mac concert, married, had a baby, and named her Rhiannon.

"Fuck her, homes, ain't you a man?" There was a terrible pain on her right breast. She heard herself scream, but it sounded as if it was coming from some other woman.

There was a moment's respite. Then the first boy spoke again. "Hey, ratface, you want some of this bitch?"

Another voice entered her head. An evil voice, laced with malice. "Show you boys how to treat these bitches," the voice said. "If you want to teach them a real lesson, you got to fuck them dirty."

A man with a pockmarked face and foul, rotting breath leaned over and grinned in her face. Someone rolled her over. She felt the cool sand on her shattered face; it felt good and she wondered if these boys would now allow her to die. But the nightmare wasn't over. She felt herself penetrated again, ashamed to be used so horribly. Filthy, dirty, so much shame that she welcomed the new blows to her head, hoping that they would put her out of her misery. Die, she told herself.

In the distance, sirens wailed. The boys shouted words of alarm, indistinguishable from the screams of the seagulls and the whispering condolences of the waves.

Then the monsters were gone. She felt their running footsteps recede across the sand as she waited for death to release her from the humiliation and pain. But death was not so kind.