On Revising An Old Short Story

About two years back I wrote a short story that still rests in my drawer, so to speak. It has received (I just checked) four rejections, each for a different version of the piece produced in gaps of few months. This weekend I sat down to revise it for the nth time and churn out yet another version, but I could clearly see that the story wasn't working. It has never worked. Now, my deeply held conviction is that any story can become good upon revision. Then why was 'Her' (as I was calling the latest version) not working after all this effort?
You might have heard  of the popular quasi-metaphysical-law 'Everything happens twice - once in our mind and then in reality'. Well, I have a similar law for my writing. Writing must first happen in my mind, visually (as if the characters are in a film or theater, acting out the scene) and with words (I must form the sentences in my mind) and then the actual prose writing should happen on a Word document. The law is supposed to be followed not only while writing the first draft, but also during revisions. My revisions otherwise often are just superficial adjustments, prose polishing, with little room for something truly new to develop.
Also I believe that if the writer herself or himself is not able to visualize the fictional world, how can they expect the reader to? Not saying that this is an essential practice. I know it is not. Just that, I am more in control of my craft and feel I know what I am doing when I have everything running in my head. The whole thing, with the minutest details - in the head.

Did I do that with 'Her'? Hell no.

So this is what went wrong with it. I never ever visualized it. 

And I realized this mistake only about thirty minutes ago! Just thirty minutes ago. After two years of it with me in its various forms. I ambitiously wrote the first draft as 'The Ultimate Rape Story' which humbled down to 'An Almost-Rape Story', 'About a Near-Rape Story', 'My Confessions About An Almost-Rape Story', 'About Her', 'The Phenomenal Woman' and finally just 'Her'. How come had I developed such a huge blind spot all this time that I overlooked my own writing principle? 

As soon as I asked this question, I found the answer. This story was written from memory. Rather, from someone else's memory. I was narrated the incidents by a friend who experienced them first hand. That friend is the protagonist here. For the longest time, I could not separate the reality from the fiction; the tale I was told from the tale I was writing. And so there was no way my story was going to work. I mean, what a stark, complete absence of character motivation! Who was my protagonist? Where was she coming from? No answer. I could never ask these questions because I took the situation and the characters for granted. They were in the story as they were in reality. The characters do what they do in the story because that's what the flesh and blood people did in reality. And if I am merely recounting that, without adding my insights or views or analysis, sure with a touch of narrative craft, aren't I just fancy news-reporting? Leaving it upon the reader to make sense of the events - to make anything, or nothing, of the events (and even allowing them to not care at all)? This might have been fine if (and only if?) the events were unheard of, if they were extra-ordinary or rare. An almost-rape situation, such as that there is in 'Her', is banal as fiction material. No reader would be sparked by the mere knowledge of it. Which renders the whole writing exercise pointless.
This is obvious to me now; this I did not see all this time.

I want to revise and submit 'Her' by coming Saturday - the submission deadline of the magazine I want to see it printed in is March 15. I must distance myself from all I know about the story (check), kill the unnecessary, unquestioned parts (check: reduced the word count from 4k to 2.1k), re-imagine what would happen and why (in process) and write down those new, key parts (should take three days time) and thoroughly revise before submitting (two hours to two days time, depending on availability).
Since I desperately want to accomplish this by March 15, I will. In my mind it has already happened. So should it in reality, right?