Arrested by Mistake and Trapped by Two Strangers

I was twenty-one when I lived through the most intense night of my life. Quite a few winters have passed since then and, even so, no other encounter has managed to dethrone it. It still holds first place in my memory, undefeated, like a stain I don’t bother to scrub away.

It was the end of February. Those heavy days when the sun splits the tiles during the day and at night the air drops all at once and makes you clutch your jacket around you. That summer had slipped through my fingers. Between work at the café, pending exams, and a couple of stupid arguments with my mother, no plan ever quite came together. Until Soledad insisted and we managed to get the whole group together for a night out at the bar.

We were going hard. My throat already hurt from shouting over the music and my cheeks ached from laughing at Maxi’s idiocies. I had barely drunk anything: I’d been the designated driver, so I limited myself to a couple of glasses of soda and watched the others fall apart.

I’m not really sure when the fight started. Some guy said something out of line to Camila, my friend, and another guy who was with us answered him. Three seconds later there were shoves, broken glasses, and a couple of tables going down like in slow motion. I tried to get in between them and took an elbow to the eyebrow. When I saw my own blood on my fingers, a beast took over me. I started swinging my hands through the air, missing most of the time, but feeling bigger than I was. When the police arrived, we tried to explain, we stammered, we showed the injuries. It didn’t help. Several witnesses pointed to me and four others as the ones who had started the whole mess.

I ended up spending the night at the police station.

***

When I entered the cell the first thing I noticed was the bed: a block of concrete with a thin, stained mattress on top. In the corner, a metal toilet with no lid. My nerves, which I had managed to keep in check up to that point, suddenly shot through the roof. Part of me thought I’d pay a fine the next day and go home, but another part couldn’t stop imagining the worst. What if they filed formal charges? What if all of this stuck to my record forever?

My hands started shaking. I forced myself to sit down on that ridiculous excuse for a bed and breathe slowly, counting to four on the inhale and to six on the exhale. It worked, more or less.

A good while passed. I figured it was after midnight when I heard a chorus of voices coming down the corridor. I straightened up at once. The bars screeched open and a couple of women were practically thrown into the same cell, laughing and shouting obscenities at the cop who was shutting the door behind them.

Their auras were imposing. One had black hair as dark as ink, styled back in an almost surgical way. She wore thick eyeliner that made her eyes look bigger, and her arms were covered in tattoos in India ink blue. The other was a true redhead, with eyelashes and eyebrows the same copper tone as the braid falling over her shoulder. Her face, neck, and chest were speckled with freckles, as if someone had tossed cinnamon over her.

They were dressed just as casually: baggy jeans, heavy sneakers, and sleeveless tops. Under the yellow, flickering light of the hallway fluorescent, their faces gave off a calm that made my skin crawl. This looked like just another Friday to them. Me, meanwhile, I was huddled in a corner, trembling like a leaf.

After hurling a couple of obscenities at the cop who was already walking away, they turned around and realized they weren’t alone. They looked at each other and smiled. A tiny gesture, almost polite, but charged with an intensity that sent my pulse racing as if someone had stuck a finger in a live socket.

“Well, look what we have here,” the dark-haired one said.

“What’s a little princess like you doing in a place like this?” the redhead asked.

“What did you do, huh? Confess.”

“I bet her boyfriend kissed someone else and she made a scene.”

“Or they found white powder on her.”

“No, no, she doesn’t look like that.”

“Well, yeah, look at her, she looks like a daddy’s girl,” the redhead laughed.

They took turns asking me questions and mocking me with a shamelessness I had never seen before. My fear could probably be smelled from miles away, and they picked up on it even before crossing the threshold of the cell.

Since I wasn’t answering, the dark-haired woman got tired of it. She crossed the space in two strides and grabbed my jaw. Her fingers were rough, and they squeezed harder than necessary.

“Are you mute, or what? Answer me,” she spat each word.

Having her so close, I could see the details the hallway light had left behind. Brown eyes, almost black, but with an odd sparkle from the eyeliner. Full, pink lips, unpainted. She smelled like men’s cologne, something woody and expensive. And when she spoke again, I saw the flash of a metal piercing through the tip of her tongue.

“You’d better answer her, princess. Her patience is very short,” the redhead said from the corner, in an almost bored tone.

My lips stayed sealed. Not out of bravery, but because I couldn’t find my voice. And suddenly, instead of fear, I felt anger. Who the hell did that woman think she was, grabbing me like that? I spat in her face.

The dark-haired woman jerked back. For a second I thought she was going to split my other eyebrow open with a punch. But she only laughed, a low, ironic laugh.

“So you think you’re hot shit, bitch,” she said, wiping her face with the back of her hand.

“Oh, she’s got attitude! I like it, I’m in,” said the redhead, coming closer with a smile that was no longer friendly.

“For old times’ sake?”

“For old times’ sake.”

I had no idea what old times they were talking about, but I knew nothing good was about to happen to me.

The two of them stood in front of me, looking at me with amusement, like a pair of cats who have just realized the mouse doesn’t know how to hide.

“Since you don’t like talking, we’re going to do something,” the dark-haired one said. “If you make a sound, even a tiny one, we’re going to punish you. And you won’t like it.”

“Or maybe you will. We’ll find out,” the redhead added with a little laugh. “I’m dying to know how long you can hold out without breathing.”

She tapped my nose with her index finger, the way you do to a puppy. The gesture was almost tender, and my reaction was to inhale deeply. Her perfume was completely different from the other woman’s: floral, soft, with a hint of alcohol on the breath.

The dark-haired woman’s two hands settled on my shoulders. She shoved hard and threw me to the floor.

“On your knees, hands behind your back,” she ordered.

“And stick your little tongue out, I want to see it.”

Panic choked me for a moment. I did the math quickly. They were taller, broader, stronger, and, above all, two against one. If I wanted this to last as little as possible, I had no choice but to give in and pray it would be over soon.

The redhead pulled down the zipper of her pants, dragging her underwear with it. She grabbed me by the nape and brought my face to her cunt. She gave me two or three seconds to take in the terrain and then I felt her folds pressing against my tongue. She was the one guiding the movements, dominant, rough, with an energy that made me follow her.

“Don’t you dare close your eyes,” she hissed.

My knees and neck already hurt. I managed to breathe in the little gaps her movements gave me. Her taste was overwhelming, intense, unlike anything I had ever tasted before. Her gasps weren’t really gasps, they were short growls, almost animal. And to my surprise, they started tickling places where I did not want that to happen. It lasted a few minutes that felt eternal, until I felt her come in my mouth in a long spasm.

The dark-haired woman, who until then had only been watching, leaning against the wall, interrupted.

“Now come here.”

I started to get up.

“No. On your knees. Crawl to me.”

The order made my whole face burn with shame. I put my hands on the cold concrete and moved forward. At least one is already done, only this one left and then I can go back to the corner.

First she made me lick between her legs over her pants. Then over her underwear. Finally, on skin. By then she was completely wet and throbbing, and I was breathing like I’d run three blocks. This one was going to be faster than the redhead, I told myself.

I was concentrating when I felt the redhead sit down beside me and grab my arm. She guided my hand to her crotch and pushed my fingers inside. The message was crystal clear. I started fingering her with two fingers while still licking the other woman.

One wanted me faster. The other, deeper. One pressed my head against her pussy. The other dug her nails into my wrist.

I was giving it everything I had. Their bodies would tell me with tiny jolts when I hit the mark, and I repeated those movements again and again. I needed them to finish already, for this to be over. And yet I couldn’t ignore what was gathering between my legs, a traitorous wetness that had not asked permission to appear. I wasn’t oblivious to their contained moans, to their hips moving in tiny circles, to the increasingly frantic pressure of their hands.

Their bodies started trembling almost at the same time. The inner walls of the redhead tightened around my fingers. The dark-haired woman throbbed against my mouth while I took in everything, the very last drop. And then my own body betrayed me. A small, ridiculous, indefensible moan escaped my lips.

The cop shouted from the hallway, asking if everything was all right. As best I could, I answered yes. The footsteps came a few meters closer and then receded.

The fury in those two pairs of eyes made me feel tiny.

“What did we tell you?” barked the dark-haired woman.

“It was all going so well...” hissed the redhead. “What a shame for you, because now things are changing.”

“Stand up.”

I wanted to protest. I wanted to say it hadn’t been on purpose, that it slipped out, that I hadn’t even felt it come out. But the battle was already lost before it began. The two of them pinned me against the wall and started groping me without restraint, with a methodical calm that was worse than any violence.

“Same rules,” one of them whispered in my ear. “One sound and you’ll have us to deal with. Behave and keep your mouth shut.”

Right then the hallway lights went out. Some nighttime protocol, I suppose. The darkness was total. Not even the moonlight slipped through the high slit in the wall.

I no longer knew who was doing what. Their perfumes mixed, the woody one and the floral one, and formed a new scent I couldn’t name. Four hands took over my body, and my dress slid to the floor with painful slowness.

One pinched my nipples while licking my neck. The other bit my back while kneading my ass and sliding one finger all the way through my slit, with that unhurriedness reserved only for someone who knows there’s nowhere you can escape to.

“I’m starting to think this stopped being a punishment for you. You’re dripping,” one of them told me in a hoarse voice in my ear.

The one in front knelt and started sucking my clit without mercy, while fingering me with two fingers. I felt something metallic and cold against my sex and guessed it was the dark-haired woman’s piercing. The other, without breaking rhythm, started playing with the entrance to my asshole, sliding one finger deeper and deeper, and with her left hand she alternated between tugging my nipples, barely choking me with two fingers in my throat, and putting those same fingers in my mouth for me to suck.

The whole scene was an abomination. They were doing whatever they wanted with me, occupying all my holes at once, marking my skin with bites and hickeys I would have to hide under scarves for a week. And the cruelest part was the titanic effort I had to make to hold back my own moans.

My breathing was broken, desperate. While they wrecked me, my hands clung to them, pulling them tighter against my body. I had never felt so much pleasure all over my body at the same time. I clenched my jaw until it hurt and everything shook through me in a series of spasms that seemed endless.

I couldn’t hold back anymore. I felt my lungs empty all at once as I screamed with pleasure. They covered my mouth with a hand, but the moans slipped between their fingers like water. The ecstasy didn’t seem to end. My head was spinning and my legs stopped holding me up. If the two of them hadn’t caught me in time, I would have slid to the floor like a rag doll.

“Sorry,” I managed to say in a very low voice when the aftershocks started to ease.

One of them laughed. The other kissed my forehead.

***

The next morning, very early, they came to get me. My father, white as a sheet, had paid the bail. My case, in fact, didn’t go any further. A fine, two hours in an office signing papers, and home.

Before leaving the cell, I stopped and memorized the scene. The two of them were sleeping as if nothing had happened, one curled around the other on the concrete block, the redhead with her arm across the dark-haired woman’s waist, her messy braid covering both their faces. As if they hadn’t given me the best night of my life. As if I were nobody.

Just remembering them, even today, I still feel a strange emptiness below my navel that no later encounter has managed to fill. I’ve gone looking again for blue tattoos and freckles on other women’s chests, but I never found anything like it. Maybe it was the cell. Maybe it was the fear. Maybe it was them. Or maybe it was simply me, discovering myself for the first time in the most unlikely place in the world.