It has weight.

It has breath.

And that night, it pressed down on my chest like a shadow with hands.

I hadn’t spoken to Yaitamba in two days. Not after he looked at me like a worm crawling up his shoe. Not after he whispered, almost amused, “I didn’t know you were like that…” and then disappeared into the smoke of dorm gossip.

I had told no one.

But the truth is never something you hold alone. It leaks through the cracks of walls, rides whispers like diseases. It drips into locker rooms, hisses in bathroom corners, grows teeth inside other people’s mouths.

By dusk, the boys had already started calling me a bitch, a slut, a whore.

Words like slaps.

Words like belts.

Words like spit.

And I took it.

Because I thought that was the worst it could get.

Also because I was wrong.

---

I don’t remember who knocked.

I just know the knock wasn’t loud.

Three short knocks, then silence.

Like someone was inviting me to hell politely.

I opened the door because I didn’t know yet how long that night would last.

There were five of them.

Three seniors — faces I knew from across the mess hall. The kind who grinned at staff and scratched their balls in class. The ones who walked like nothing could touch them.

Two juniors — kids younger than me by maybe a year, eyes already drunk on cruelty like it was a rite of passage.

I should’ve shut the door.

I should’ve run.

But one of them smiled and said, “Come on, Queen. It’s your birthday today.”

It wasn’t.

But they made it one.

They pulled me in.

Shut the door.

Locked it.

And everything that was human inside me shattered into something wet and crawling.

---

They tore my shirt first.

Not with urgency. Not like animals.

Like butchers with clean knives.

One pulled my arms up while the others tugged. Threads snapped like whispers. My chest exposed, my skin shivering. They laughed.

“You have tits like a girl,” one said. “Should we put a bra on you?”

I said nothing. I didn’t scream. Not yet.

Because I thought maybe they were just teasing.

Because I was still stupid enough to hope.

They pulled my pants next. Yanked them down with force that made my knees bend.

I reached to cover myself.

They slapped my hands away.

“Hands behind your back.”

Someone grabbed my arms and twisted. Someone else held my face. One boy shoved his fingers into my mouth. Sexually or not sexually, I don't know. Maybe like domination.

But it was...

Just… like I was a thing.

“Say aaaah, slut.”

The word echoed. Slut.

Like a label. Like branding.

They spat on me.

First one. Then all.

On my hair. My cheeks. My lips. My chest.

The warm sting of it dribbled down my throat like acid. I gagged. Not from disgust. From knowing this was just the beginning.

---

“Dance for us.”

I blinked.

“What?”

A slap. Open palm. Across the cheek. My ear rang.

“Dance. Crawl. Be a bitch.”

They had already taken out their phones. Recording, maybe. Or pretending to. I didn’t know anymore. I dropped to my knees because that was the only thing I could do to not fall apart.

The floor was cold. Dirty.

Sticky in places.

I smelled it before I saw it.

Piss.

Sperm.

Food wrappers.

Sweat.

“This is where real men come, isn’t it?” one joked. “So go ahead. Show us how much you love it.”

They laughed.

And I crawled.

I don’t remember choosing to. My knees just moved. My hands slid. My mouth stayed shut.

Because my voice was already locked somewhere else.

“Lick the floor.”

I looked up.

A senior boy — tall, fair, with a mole near his nose — was holding his belt like a leash.

“Didn’t you kiss your boyfriend with that mouth?” he sneered. “Lick it.”

I didn’t move.

He raised the belt.

The first lash landed on my shoulder. Sharp. Dry. It ripped skin like paper. My body jerked forward involuntarily.

The second came down on my back. Then my buttocks. Then thighs.

Each stroke landed louder than the last, each strip of skin responding with red.

“Lick it,” he said again.

I bent down.

I opened my mouth.

And I tasted hell.

It wasn’t just piss.

There was sperm — dry and sticky. Dust that clung to my tongue. Crumbs of food. Garbage. Plastic wrappers. Someone’s used tissue.

I choked.

I retched.

They cheered.

“That’s our girl!” one said.

They made me crawl in circles.

Made me spin like a dog.

Told me to bark.

Told me to moan.

I did.

Because every time I didn’t, the belt came down.

And it always knew where to hit next.

---

My body had no shape anymore.

Just bruises. Just welts. Just marks where dignity used to be.

They dragged me up, back against the wall.

One boy pissed in a corner of the room — long stream — laughing like a drunk.

“Clean it.”

I shook my head.

Wrong move.

A belt again. This time straight across my chest.

“You think you’re too good? Clean like a whore you are.”

I collapsed onto all fours again.

I licked the piss. I licked the sperm.

I licked until my throat tasted like infection.

Until my tears mixed with what was already on the floor.

They recorded it.

They sent it to someone.

Maybe Yaitamba.

Maybe not.

It didn’t matter.

Because I no longer knew what mattered.

---

That was just hour one.

They weren’t done.

They made a cake. Bought from the canteen.

It said “Happy Bitchday, Slut!”

In pink icing.

They sang.

They clapped.

They shoved my face into it.

And then rubbed the rest over my body.

On the lashes.

On the open wounds.

The sugar stung.

My skin burned.

They lit candles and asked me to blow.

I didn’t.

So they pissed on the flames themselves.

“Make a wish, girl or boy."

I wanted to die.

But I didn’t say it.

Because even that felt like giving them a gift.

---

By midnight, I was bleeding from the mouth and thighs.

I couldn’t feel my ribs.

My lips were cracked.

My back looked like red meat.

I collapsed.

Sometime after they left.

Sometime before dawn.

In my own filth.

In someone else’s.

Wrapped in pain that had no name.

When I woke up, my throat was dry as dust.

I tried to crawl toward my water bottle.

I fell.

I tried again.

I vomited instead.

There was blood in it.

---

I sent an email.

Anonymous.

From a library computer.

To the board.

To the school authority.

To the hostel warden.

I kept it short.

> “Please help me. I am being tortured. I cannot take this anymore.”

I didn’t sign it.

But they knew.

They always know.

No action was taken.

Instead, next morning, I was summoned for “talk."

The warden looked at me like I was contagious.

“You sent a complaint?” he asked.

I said nothing.

He smiled.

“You should be more careful with your choices, son. We don’t like attention seekers here.”

And that was it.

The door was closed.

The world moved on.

My body didn’t.

.

.

.

It’s strange how pain fades quicker than memory.

The belt marks dulled by morning, but the voices—those stayed.

Even when the sun rose and the boys had gone back to pretending they had futures, their laughter still clung to the curtains. Their boots still echoed down the hall.

The smell of piss was gone, but I swear my skin still carried it.

I didn’t clean.

Not because I didn’t want to.

Because I couldn’t.

Because my limbs had become water, and my breath was a torn plastic bag collapsing in my lungs.

I sat on the floor, naked, dried blood webbing across my back like a cruel map.

I didn’t cry.

Crying required dignity.

And they had already taken that from me, poured it on the tiles, and made me drink it.

---

They didn’t stop, either.

It wasn’t a one-night thing.

It became routine. A rotation.

Different faces sometimes.

Same methods.

Every other evening, some reason. Some joke.

Sometimes they dragged me to the toilet stalls.

Sometimes to the laundry room.

Once to the abandoned storage block.

Each time they took something else.

A bruise. A nail. A silence.

They didn’t rape me.

They didn’t have to.

They made my soul feel like it had been opened and pissed in.

They made me touch things I couldn’t name anymore.

I stopped looking at my hands.

Because they were no longer mine.

---

Once, a boy walked in during the “games.” A junior.

He froze at the door, holding a flask of hot milk, confused.

I was naked on all fours, with a belt tied around my neck like a leash, crawling in a circle while one senior tossed biscuit crumbs on the floor and said, “Good dog. Eat.”

The junior said nothing.

He didn’t report it.

He didn’t flinch.

He just placed the flask on the desk and walked out, closing the door behind him like he’d just seen laundry.

That's when I realized—

To them, I wasn’t a scandal.

I wasn’t even a surprise.

I was just the new rule of the hostel.

This slut (me) is what happens to faggots.

---

At the mess hall, people giggled when I walked in.

Sometimes someone dropped food in front of me.

“Clean it,” they’d whisper.

“Isn’t that your job now?”

And I did.

Even when it wasn’t them ordering me.

Because the worst part wasn’t the commands anymore.

It was how easy it had become to obey.

---

I tried once—

To speak.

I approached the vice principal.

Outside the admin office, I stood, shirt buttoned to hide the welts, lips chapped, knees shaking like prayer bells.

She looked up.

“Yes?”

“I need to talk,” I said.

“About?”

I looked at her face.

She already knew.

You could see it in her sigh. That soft, bored sigh people use when a mosquito buzzes near their ear.

“Are you here about that thing?”

I blinked.

“What thing?”

She waved her hand.

“We’ve had complaints. From students. About you.”

I froze.

“About me?”

“Yes. About your behavior. Inappropriate touching. Kissing boys.”

My mouth opened, but nothing came out.

“You should know,” she said, tapping her pen on the desk, “this is a traditional hostel. We don’t entertain drama. Or propaganda. You’re not in Bombay or America here.”

I wanted to scream.

I wanted to burn the building down.

I wanted to throw her desk across the room.

But instead—

I apologized.

I apologized.

And walked away.

---

That night I didn’t sleep.

Not because of nightmares.

Because of thirst.

My lips had begun cracking again.

Tongue dry as old paper.

I’d forgotten to fill my bottle, and the others had stopped letting me near the common tap.

“Water’s not for sluts,” one boy had said the day before.

I laughed at that memory.

Actually laughed. A dry, cracked laugh that made my throat bleed a little.

I crawled out of bed.

Half-naked. Skin sticking to the mattress.

I didn’t know if it was pus or sweat or both.

My head swam as I stood.

The room tilted.

The fan above whirred like it was laughing.

I stumbled toward the bathroom.

Door locked.

Someone was inside.

I knocked once.

No reply.

I knocked again.

Nothing.

I don’t remember falling.

Just waking up.

Cheek on the floor.

Tiles cool.

Cooler than anything I’d felt in weeks.

I closed my eyes again.

---

Someone found me in the morning.

Maybe the cleaner. Maybe the watchman. I don’t know.

I was dragged to the infirmary.

My body had stopped responding.

I couldn’t even open my eyes all the way.

“Severe dehydration,” the nurse muttered.

They placed a saline drip in my arm.

My veins rebelled.

Skin too tight. Muscles cramped.

My stomach curled in like a dying insect.

I whispered, “Please don’t call anyone. Please. Please…”

She didn’t respond.

---

The head of the hostel visited me.

He stood at the door, hands behind his back, like he was observing a zoo exhibit.

“You’ve become quite a topic, young man,” he said.

I looked at him. Eyes sunken. Lips split.

“You should have kept things to yourself,” he continued. “Now everyone’s uncomfortable. Including us.”

I turned away.

That was the last time I asked for help.

---

A week later, they threw me another “party.”

No cake this time.

Just a cake box filled with trash.

Sanitary pads.

Used tissues.

Stale bread.

And on top—

Condoms. Used.

“Eat,” one of them said, grinning. “It’s tradition.”

I didn’t eat.

But I didn’t resist, either.

They smashed the box over my head.

The smell stuck to my scalp for three days.

My hair never felt clean again.

Not even when I cut it.

Not even when I shaved it all off, crying, trying to remove the memory from my skin.

That would be gone if I didn't care, but I have feelings alive till this point of time.

---

Every night after that was a replay.

I’d sit under the fan.

Naked.

Wrapped in a towel, blood drying beneath my thighs.

Watching the ceiling spin.

Some nights, I wrote letters.

To I don't know.

To God.

To whoever might care.

I never sent them.

I burned them near the back gate, watching the flames consume my words like they were ashamed to exist.

Every time the ashes rose into the wind, I imagined they’d land somewhere soft.

Somewhere I was still whole.

Somewhere I still had a name.

---

The walls didn’t change.

But I did.

And not in some poetic, butterfly way.

I rotted.

I stank.

I oozed hate from my pores.

And no one came.

Not even the ones who watched.

Because that’s the rule of places like this:

It’s not the scream that kills you.

It’s the silence after.

~shivirstoriesep3

(THE DISCOVERY OF THE LIGHT