Free War From The Clouds by Nick Carter

the States.
    There, I thought in my typically American way of thinking, she could finish out her schooling, live in peace, perhaps fall in love with a handsome blond boy on the football team and settle in suburbia with a couple of cars, a dog and mortgage. And, of course, kids.
    We were resting beside a clear-running stream along about noontime when Elicia brought me a container of water, sat beside me and gazed up into my eyes. Antonio was off downstream, looking for edible fruits and vegetables.
    "I have not thanked you for saving my life," she said.
    "I didn't save your life, Elicia," I said, remembering that night when the Marine with the enormous organ had tried to rape her. "I merely stopped…"
    "You saved my life," she said emphatically, placing her slender brown hand on my knee. "I had promised myself that very day that, if the Marines came again and did that to me, I would cut my own throat. What I was living, what I have been living the past three months, has not been life. It has been a kind of horrible death, full of terror and disgust, and no joy. I still feel the disgust."
    "For the Marines?"
    She looked at me curiously. "No, for myself."
    "Why would you be disgusted with yourself? You did nothing wrong?"
    She gazed at the ground and took her hand from my knee. "You do not think I am soiled? You do not think I am something for disgust?"
    "Good God, no. Why would I think that?"
    She didn't respond and I began to think how similar rape victims are the world over. They cannot control what has happened to them, they were unwilling victims of one of man's oldest invasions of privacy, yet they always seemed to feel guilt, or, in the case of Elicia, self-disgust. It was a phenomenon that never ceased to amaze me. I had no words to console the girl, or to change her mind about herself. But I still couldn't remain silent.
    "Virginity is important to you, isn't it?" I asked.
    Her head snapped up and she looked into my eyes for a time. Then, she looked away and muttered an almost inaudible "yes."
    Then, you must consider yourself a virgin, Elicia. In your mind, you are. You gave nothing of your own free will. It was taken from you. In God's eyes, you are still unspoiled, if that's the way you must look at it."
    A fraction of a smile crossed her lips, and then she was sad again. She looked at me, holding my eyes with hers.
    "For many months before the Marines came, she said, speaking as though to a priest, in confession, "I had certain thoughts, certain feelings, that I could not control. In spite of all that has happened, I still have those thoughts and those feelings."
    I understood perfectly. The girl was a woman, she had thoughts and feelings about sex. She had had them since she was at least twelve or thirteen. Because she had had them, she felt that what had happened to her was God's will, that she hadn't had her virginity taken from her. She believed her previous thoughts had actually caused the rapes to occur.
    "The thoughts and feelings you had and are still having," I said, "are natural thoughts and feelings. Every human and every animal alive has those feelings. They shouldn't be sources of guilt, though. In God's eyes — and in mine — you're still a virgin, still unspoiled, or whatever the word is."
    She moved closer, seeming to understand what I was trying to say. Or wanting to understand so badly that she was fooling herself.
    "I know what thoughts are natural," she said, "and what thoughts are not. What I am feeling now, for you, is natural. If I am a virgin still, I want you to be the one to receive the fruits of my virginity."
    Not even an American high school girl, with all her modern boldness brought on by the national yen for honesty and forthrightness, could have put it more plainly. And very few American high school boys would have turned down such an offer. But I was years away from high school. And I couldn't give as much as I would take.
    My silence was my answer. Elicia sat gazing up at me for