Bosnian Inferno

The latter feeling was much in evidence at the wedding reception. It was good to see so many old friends: lads he’d been to school with, played football with, but none of them seemed to have much to say to him, and he couldn’t find much to say to them. A few old memories, a couple of jokes about Sunderland – town and football team – and that was about it. Most of them seemed bored with their jobs and, if they were married, bored with that too. They seemed more interested in one another’s wives than their own. The Dame hoped his sister…well, if David Cross cheated on her then the bastard would have him to deal with.

The time eventually arrived for the honeymooners’ departure, their hired car trailing its retinue of rattling tin cans. Soon after that, feeling increasingly oppressed by the reception’s accelerating descent into a drunken wife-swap, the Dame started off across the town, intent on enjoying the solitude of a twilight walk along the seafront.

It was a beautiful day still: cold but crystal-clear, gulls circling in the deepening blue sky, above the blue-grey waters of the North Sea. He walked for a couple of miles, up on to the cliffs outside the town, not really thinking about anything, letting the wind sweep the turmoil of other people from his mind.

He got back home to find his mother and Rosemary asleep in front of the TV, the living-room still littered with the debris of Christmas. On the table by the telephone there was a message for him to ring Hereford.

She sat with her knees pulled up to her chest, her head bowed down, on the stinking mattress in the slowly lightening room. The first night was over, she thought, but the first of how many?

The left side of her face still ached from where he had hit her, and the pain between her legs showed no signs of easing. She longed to be able to wash herself, and knew the longing was as much psychological as it was physical. Either way, she doubted if they would allow it.

This time yesterday, she thought, I was waiting for Hajrija in the nurses’ dormitory.

The previous morning, after the two Russians had been sent running back towards Sarajevo with their tails between their legs, the four Chetniks had simply abandoned their roadblock, as if it had accomplished its purpose. They had casually left the young American’s body by the side of the road, bundled her into the back seat of their Fiat Uno, and driven on down the valley to the next village. Here she could see no signs of the local population, either alive or dead, and only one blackened hulk of a barn bore testimony to recent conflict. As they pulled up in the centre of the village another group of Chetnik irregulars, a dozen or so strong, was preparing to leave in a convoy of cars.

The leader of her group exchanged a few pleasantries with the leader of the outgoing troops, and she was led into a nearby house, which, though stripped of all personal or religious items, had obviously once belonged to a Muslim family. Since their departure it had apparently served as a billet for pigs. The Chetniks’ idea of eating seemed to be to throw food at one another in the vain hope some of it went in through the mouth. Their idea of bathing was non-existent. The house stank.

What remained of the furniture was waiting to be burnt on the fire. And there was a large bloodstain on the rug in the main room which didn’t seem that old.

Nena was led through to a small room at the back, which was empty save for a soiled mattress and empty bucket. The only light filtered round the edges of the shutters on the single window.

‘I need to wash,’ she told her escort. They were the first words she had spoken since her abduction.

‘Later,’ he said. ‘There’s no need now,’ he added, and closed the door.

She had spent the rest of the day trying not to panic, trying to prepare herself for what she knew was coming. She wanted to survive, she kept telling herself, like a litany. If they were going to kill her anyway then there was nothing she could do about it, but she mustn’t give them an excuse to kill her in a fit of anger. She should keep her mouth shut, say as little as possible. Perhaps tell them she was a doctor – they might decide she could be of use to them.

The afternoon passed by, and the light faded outside. No one brought her food or water, but even above the sound of the wind she could hear people in the house and even smell something cooking. Eventually she heard the clink of bottles, and guessed that they had begun drinking. It was about an hour later that the first man appeared in the doorway.

In the dim light she could see he had a gun in one hand. ‘Take off the trousers,’ he said abruptly. She swallowed once and did as he said.

‘And the knickers.’

She pulled them off.

‘Now lie down, darling,’ he ordered.

She did so, and he was looming above her, dropping his jungle fatigues and long johns down to his knees, and thrusting his swollen penis between her legs.

‘Wider,’ he said, taking his finger off the gun’s safety-catch only inches from her ear.

He pushed himself inside her, and started pumping. He made no attempt to feel her breasts, let alone kiss her, and out of nowhere she found herself remembering her father’s dog, and its habit of trying to fuck the large cushion which someone had made for it to lie on. Now she was the cushion and this Serb was the dog. As smelly, as inhuman, as any dog.

He came with a furious rush, and almost leapt off her, as if she was suddenly contagious.

The second man was much the same, except for the fact that he didn’t utter a single word between entering the room and leaving it. Then there was a respite of ten minutes or so, before the group’s leader came in. He stripped from the waist down, grabbed a handful of her hair and lifted up her face to meet his own, as if determined to impress on her exactly who it was she was submitting to.

She let out an involuntary sob, and that seemed to satisfy him. He pushed inside her quickly, but then took his time, savouring the moment with slow, methodical strokes, stopping himself several times as he approached a climax, before finally letting himself slip over the edge.

The young one was last, and the other three brought him in like a bull being brought to a heifer. He couldn’t have been more than fourteen and he looked almost as nervous as he did excited. ‘Come on,’ the others said, ‘show her what you’ve got.’ He unveiled his penis almost shyly. It was already erect, quivering with anticipation.

‘I think he’s ready,’ the leader joked, and the other two grabbed hold of Nena and pushed her back across the mattress, legs hanging out across the floor. Then they pulled them wide. ‘That’s where you aim for, Sergei,’ one of them said, running a finger down her bloodied vulva. ‘We’ve got her nice and lubricated for you.’

He came when he was only halfway inside her, to the drunken jeers of his companions.

After that they retired to the room next door, leaving her lying, rolled up in a ball. She tried to ignore the pain, wondering how they could let her live after what they had done. Did they think the war would last for ever, that law and decency would never return, that they were immune to any retribution?

They probably did. She hoped they did, because what other reason could they have for leaving her alive to tell the story?

And if they did make that mistake…She lay there trying to fix all the details in her mind: the place, the faces, the tattoos, the names they had called each other, the individual smells…

She could hear them talking in the next room, and laughing too. She started to cry, silently at first, then in great, wracking sobs which seemed to go on and on and on.

Exhaustion must have driven her to sleep for a few moments, because she suddenly woke to find the group’s leader standing over her once more.

‘You’re in luck,’ he told her. ‘The rest of the lads haven’t come back, so you’ve had an easy night. But I thought I’d come for dessert.’

He pulled down his trousers and stood there, his cock hanging in front of her face. She could smell it, smell herself on it. ‘Make it grow,’ he said with a leer, and she took hold of it, trying to imagine she was back in the hospital, examining someone. And in his case, hoping to find something seriously wrong.

It swelled in her hand.

‘Now suck,’ he said, looking down at her.

She didn’t say no, but there must have been something in her eyes, because he abruptly changed his mind, pushing her back across the mattress, roughly pulling off her jeans, and rolling her over. ‘You’d bite it off, wouldn’t you?’ he hissed into her ear, and thrust himself into her anus. She cried out involuntarily, which seemed only to increase his ardour. After a minute of energetic pumping he pulled himself out rolled her back over, wedged her legs open with his own, and rammed himself into her vagina, this time coming almost instantly.

He exhaled noisily and lifted himself up, looking down at her. ‘You enjoy it really, don’t you. All you Muslim whores enjoy it.’

She said nothing, but she couldn’t control the look in her eyes, and he hit her once, as hard as she had ever imagined being hit, across the side of the face.

Perhaps she had blacked out for a few seconds, because her next conscious thought was of the door closing behind him. And then she had lain awake for what seemed like hours, feeling that a stain had been etched into her soul, and that nothing would ever be the same again. And when the morning light had appeared around the edge of the shutter it had seemed the greyest of lights.

Now she sat there, hugging herself around the knees, waiting to find out which fate awaited her – death or more nights like the last.

They were awake in the room next door, and this morning she could hear them talking, as the wind outside had died down.

‘I like blondes,’ one man was saying. ‘Fucking a blonde is…it’s sort of cleaner, know what I mean? Dark women feel dirtier somehow…’

‘Why can’t we keep her?’ a younger voice asked.

‘Listen to the kid. Thinks he’s a stud already.’

‘But why can’t we keep her?’ an older voice asked. ‘They expect us to look after the area, freeze our balls off on that road. We only get down to Stovic about once a month.’

There were a few moments of silence, moments in which Nena tried not to wonder what the alternative was to being kept.

‘We’re not keeping her,’ the group leader said. ‘Keep a woman here permanently and we have to feed her, watch her, keep her clean…’

‘What for?’