Three weeks, and tonight I offer up something so different from my usual that I can’t even tell you where it came from. I sat down to start writing. I had nothing. I looked in prompt books. Oh, I have ideas, yes, but sometimes finding the edge to get one of those ideas down requires the prompt book to jog the muse, or poke her in the eye, or something. But tonight’s story wasn’t one of those ideas. It was…spontaneous. Unbidden. And weird. So I am going to let it stand as it is. If it means anything to you, well, let’s just say I’m sorry. If not, just pass it by.

First, though, five amazing women for you to give those doubters who think women never do anything worthwhile.

• Mochizuki Chiyome - Japanese noblewoman, led a woman-only ninja group in the 15th century

• Marianne Faithfull - singer, songwriter, and actress

• Henrietta Leavitt - astronomer, Harvard computer, developed method for determining brightness of stars

• Ida B. Wells - journalist of the Civil Rights movement

• Zenobia - Third century queen of the Palmyene empire in Syria

THE ANTIDOTE TO PAIN

I always said the antidote to pain was more pain. Now I was having to eat my words. Literally. I stared at the plate and gagged, but there was no choice. If I wanted to get out of here alive, I would need to eat it. Whole.

I stared at Justin, willing him to say no, to let me go, to make the pain stop. He had that look on his face, the one that told me it was no use. I would eat the cactus, spikes and all, or he would continue his abuse. If I showed him…if I was strong enough…if I could do it…he would let me go. He would let me leave, let me escape the torture, the horror that my life had become.

His headphones blocked the painful noise playing over the stereo. His boot dug into my bare foot, and I could feel the pain of the large nail in the chair. If I tried to sit back, it would run through me. I couldn’t sit back anyway, since I was strapped forward in the high chair, my face nearly resting on the cactus. I could reach it enough to eat it, but I couldn’t pull away. At any moment, he could pull the cord around my head and yank my face into the cactus.

I knew there was no other answer. I inhaled and closed my eyes. I made a wish, though I didn’t expect it to come true. Wishes never did come true, even if you made them on stars. Though I had accidentally made most of my wishes on Venus, not knowing it was a planet until the night an old boyfriend laughed at me in front of all his friends. Maybe that was why my wishes never came true. I was making them on a planet. I was doing it wrong. As I did everything wrong.

This morning I made the biggest mistake of my life. I opened my trap in front of the guys at the office. They were dissing women, as usual, talking about how weak we were, how ridiculous we were, how stupid we were. Well, I certainly managed to prove I was stupid. It wasn’t that I disagreed with them, or that I presented evidence to back up my claim. No, that was all right. I proved I was stupid by accepting their challenge. Prove it, they said. Not statistics, those lie. Prove you can take pain. Prove we can’t break you.

So here I was, tied to a high chair, naked and bleeding. I hadn’t broken yet, but I was close. They really dished it out, all day. I hadn’t cried. I hadn’t screamed. Not until they started beating me. I had done all the tasks they set me, impossible situations but I managed. I had walked barefoot over the sidewalk to deliver water to the house next door. I had crawled through broken glass on my knees to feed the dog, while tied to a wheelchair holding one of the men. I had done it. I managed to escape that one with only a few shards of glass in my knee; I picked my way carefully around most of it, and arrived intact, mostly.

Then the beatings…and yes, I cried. Who wouldn’t? But I said it had to be fair, and how did I know they wouldn’t cry? So one of them volunteered to be beaten. He cried, and I didn’t lose the challenge. That was when the abuse really began. That made them mad. They started to up the ante, adding humiliation on top of abuse, stripping my clothes off and making me complete the tasks naked. Now here I was…the final challenge. If I ate the cactus, they would let me go. If I didn’t…well, I had no idea what else they had in store, but it seemed like a good idea to eat the cactus.

I lowered my head, just a little, almost touching the spikes. I felt prickles run up my face and down my spine, but I didn’t cry out or beg. I was going to take the plunge. Yes, any minute now. I was ready. I would do it, they would let me go. Then I could go to the clinic and get the spines removed from my mouth, and the glass from my knee. I could go home, write my resignation letter, and never see these assholes again. I could leave knowing that it wouldn’t change anything, that they would still dismiss women, that any woman they hired to replace me would still  have to listen to their nonsense, suffer their jibes, live with their grabbing hands and their bragging mouths. But I would be out of it. Unlike them, I will have learned my lesson.

There. I did it. The cactus is eaten. My mouth is brutalized, but I managed it. I didn’t cry out…I can’t cry out. The pain is too intense. I am effectively silenced until I can get treatment.

The ropes are slackening. The boot is off my foot. The stereo has been silenced. I am…I am alone. They left. I am alone, naked, my mouth full of cactus, my knee full of glass. At least they untied me. I do not know where I am, but I know what I must do. I find my clothes, I get out the door and flag down a cab. I write the name of the clinic on a scrap of paper, and the driver takes me there. My credit card…there, I found it. He leaves, and I stand on the curb…I fall on the curb. I lie there.

It’s over. The pain has ended. I am in bed, an IV drip in my arm, bandages around multiple appendages. I tell my story to the doctor, to the nurse, to the police officer. They pick up my tormenters, but in the end, nothing happens. I become a minor celebrity, laughed at and mocked on daytime television and the nightly news. What a stupid woman, they say. Stupid woman to take a stupid bet. Serves her right. She asked for it.

I lie in my bed at the hospital and watch the circus. I don’t care. I ignore them. I always thought the antidote to pain was more pain. I was wrong. The antidote to pain is morphine.