Harrowing

by S. E. Amadis

  “Annasuya,” she said, sticking her hand out automatically for the customary handshake. “What happened? I got a strange email from Bruno Jarvas full of complaints and criticisms about you. Come to my desk. Tell me your side of the story.”

  She led me to her cubicle in the middle of the office pool and held out a seat for me. I huddled onto it, shivering, and studied the woman who usually got me my top assignments.

  In her late thirties, attractive and immaculately groomed, Geri always wore her makeup and dark hair perfect. Today she appeared a bit harried, and red spots that you could tell weren’t from her makeup stained her cheeks underneath the high-coverage foundation.

  “It’s a good thing I know you, Annasuya, and you’ve always received the highest ratings from our clients,” she continued. “Or otherwise, from Bruno Jarvas’ comments, I would never think of hiring you again. Tell me what happened.”

  I began to shake harder, but no words came to me. At a loss as to what else to do, I slipped the signed papers from my bag and slid them across the desk at Geri.

  “You’ll pay me for today’s work, right?” I managed to stammer out, my teeth chattering.

  Geri glanced over the papers.

  “Yes. Of course. We always do. You know that,” she replied succinctly, then filed the papers onto a tray on her desk.

  After that she leaned back, clearly waiting. I buried my face in my hands. How do you tell someone who’s almost a complete stranger that you’ve just been raped?

  Geri sighed with impatience.

  “Obviously we’re not going to get anywhere like this. Maybe you need to take a break. Have a month off. Do you think?”

  I shook my head desperately. I needed work. We were so short of money.

  Geri reached forward and peeled my hands from my face.

  “Talk to me, Annasuya. Tell me what’s up. Is something wrong?” She paused. “Is it us? Are you not happy working with us?”

  I shook my head again, hard. Geri seemed to mull things over for a bit.

  “Are you in some kind of trouble?” She lowered her voice. “Do you need help? Do you want to talk about it?”

  She laid her hand on my arm in a friendly manner.

  “What happened to you, Annasuya?” She fingered my damp sleeve in surprise. “You’re all wet. Is it raining outside?”

  She glanced out the window. I snatched my arm away and started chewing my nails compulsively. The fading polish tasted bitter in my mouth. I’d started wearing polish to curb my nasty nail-biting habit, but now I was too jittery to stop.

  “It’s not raining. I washed myself...” My voice was almost inaudible.

  Geri stared at me in amazement.

  “You washed yourself? Why on earth would you...”

  Her voice trailed off. Her eyes widened in incredulity and growing comprehension. She clapped her hand over her mouth.

  “Shit. I don’t believe this,” she muttered under her breath. To me, louder, she exclaimed: “Wait here, Annasuya.”

  She leapt to her feet and disappeared, returning a minute later with her boss, Julia.

  I’d met Julia once before. She was an older lady, probably nearing retirement age, who inspired respect and confidence with her combination of cordiality and brisk competence. Now she dropped into a chair next to me and wasted no time in trivialities.

  “Hello, Annasuya. You remember me, don’t you?” she began. “I’m Geri’s boss, Julia. So what happened between you and Bruno Jarvas? Do you want to tell me?”

  I stared at the floor. Julia drew a deep breath.

  “Annasuya, tell me. Did Bruno Jarvas... do something to you?”

  I hesitated, nodded.

  “Something bad? Something horrible?”

  Another nod.

  “Did he attack you? Did he... assault you?”

  I nodded again. I knew what her next question would be. But she didn’t ask it.

  “Annasuya, I trust you’re a smart and sensible adult. You know that you should go to the hospital, don’t you? And report this to the police.” She paused. “Do you want us to accompany you? You shouldn’t have washed yourself, you know. Now you have no proof...”

  I bit my lip.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” I stammered out at last with my eyes turned to the ground. “I’m not telling anyone. Just please... I need more work. If you’ve got any new jobs for me...”

  Geri and her boss glanced at each other. A gawky young man with thick, horn-rimmed glasses and spiky hair stumbled inopportunely into Geri’s cubicle at this moment, waving a sheath of papers in one hand and some sort of brightly painted contraption in the other.

  “Geri, I need your signature,” he screeched urgently as he lay the contraption down on the desk next to us. “And check out my latest invention...”

  His voice trailed off as he noted the grim look on Geri’s and Julia’s faces.

  “Oh. Uh. Did... did I come at a bad time?”

  Geri gazed at him, thoughtful. Seemed to come up with something.

  “No. No, Hugh. Actually, you’ve arrived at a most opportune moment,” she told him in a soothing voice. “Here, give me those papers. We could really use a cup of water. Would you mind getting one while I sign those papers?”

  Hugh bumbled off and returned in a minute with a plastic cup filled to the brim. Julia tended the cup to me. I tried to take it, but my hand was shaking too hard. Half the water spilled out over my fingers. Julia held my hand steady as I sipped.

  Geri peered up at Hugh and handed the signed papers to him with a smile.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  She waited for him to leave, but he didn’t move.

  “Is there something else?” she asked at last.

  “You didn’t look at my windmill.” He gestured towards the painted apparatus, a bit crestfallen. “It really works.”

  He balanced it in his hand with pride. It looked like a miniature log cabin made of wooden slats, like popsicle sticks, painted in cheery fluorescent colours. A well-balanced set of blades stuck out from one side. Hugh pressed a button, and the blades began to spin at the same time that a light blinked on and a tinny bell started ringing inside the structure.

  Geri smiled indulgently.

  “Neat, Hugh. You’re very talented.” She glanced at him. “But don’t you have work to do?”

  Hugh shook his head. Then nodded. But he didn’t move from his spot.

  “What happened?” he said at last. It was clear curiosity was bursting out of him from every pore. “Are you Anna? Is that your name? Or something like that. You left your timesheets with me once, remember?”

  “Annasuya,” I mumbled.

  “Oh yeah, I remember now.”

  He mimed a thumbs up at me.

  “Gorgeous name, Annasuya. And, um, your hair looks nice today,” he finished lamely.

  I gaped at him in a stupor and tugged unconsciously at a shapeless, watery strand. Hugh gulped, then hightailed it out of there. Julia stared after him.

  “He’s friendly enough,” she sentenced. “Hard working. And he does cheer up the office a bit with his eccentric electronic inventions.” She bit her lip. “But perhaps he could use a bit of help in the social department...”

  She smiled and turned towards me.

  “Well, Annasuya, we were saying. I think you really should go to the hospital and report this to the police.”

  I shook my head.

  “What good would it do?” I asked bitterly. “The only thing that would accomplish is that the whole world would know what happened to me. And Bruno would get off scot free anyways. And they’d say that I was the one who asked for it. That maybe I shouldn’t have worn a short skirt or something. That’s what always happens.”

  I chucked the empty cup into a waste paper bin and started shuffling towards the door.

  “Thank you so much for listening to me, Geri.” I tried to smile at her. She had always come through for me in the past, and I knew she deserved much more from me than
I was able to give her at this moment. “Please call me right away if a new job comes up. Please. I need it.”

  Geri ran after me as I headed out the door.

  “Don’t worry about me,” I told her. “I’ll be all right.”

  I slammed the door before she could reach it and careened down the stairs before she could come after me, bumbling down several flights before I dared to come out and catch an elevator.

  *

  Calvin nearly hit the roof. He hung about in the kitchen, wringing his hands uselessly and banging objects down onto the counter without rhyme nor reason.

  “That perverted son-of-a-bitch! I’m going over to his place right now and giving him a beating he’ll never forget. If I bump into him on the street, I’ll skin him alive.”

  He waved his hands about in the air helplessly.

  “What’s his name, Anna? Why won’t you tell me?”

  I shrugged.

  “What good would that do? I don’t know where he lives anyways.”

  Calvin pounded a can of baked beans onto the counter, trying unsuccessfully to gouge a hole in the hard marble.

  “I can look him up. And you do know where he works. Why won’t you tell me that at least?”

  I grabbed him by the shoulders.

  “You are not going over to his office, you silly jackass.” I snuggled my head against him. “He doesn’t exactly work alone, you know. And I’m not letting you get into trouble because of me. I won’t be blamed for you getting a police record. So there!”

  He started punching the air with his fists again. I hugged him tight and pecked a kiss on his cheek. He stared at me in surprise, then sagged in my arms as if deflated.

  “Oh, you’re right, sweetie pie. I know you are. It just makes me feel so bloody powerless and like we were puppets or something getting dragged about on a string by this pervert.”

  I shook my head and pressed my finger against his lips.

  “Puppets on a string, no, sugar pops. We’ll never see him again.”

  Calvin nodded thoughtfully and began to follow me about the kitchen rather ineffectively as I started to cut onions and open tins. I stuffed a few lettuce leaves into the lab rats’ cage.

  “At least you should’ve gone to the police,” he said, pouting. “And not washed yourself off like that. You could still get a medical exam done right now, you know, even though you’ve already showered and changed.”

  I shook my head vehemently.

  “I’ve told you, no, no and no, Calvin. And that’s the end of that.”

  Calvin glared at me helplessly as I got dinner onto the table, shaking his head the way people do when studying Egyptian hieroglyphics.

  “So you’re just going to forget about it? Pretend it never happened? And that fucking bastard gets away with it all?”

  I nodded firmly.

  “Exactly.”

  Calvin made sure that at the very least I got myself signed into a self-defence class and hustled me into a therapy group as well.

  “Dr. Rheinhardt also offers individual sessions,” he hinted.

  I stared at him in dismay.

  “I don’t need individual sessions. And I sure as hell can’t pay for them.”

  “I’ll pay for them,” he offered brightly. “I’m an architect. I sure as hell can afford them.”

  He cradled my chin.

  “I only want my lovey to be well, you know.”

  He kissed me tenderly on the cheek and left me with my first group session.

  Things were very different at the Uptown Gym – which was actually located way downtown – where Rudolph Verenich held court over a straggling group of untrained housewives and teenagers.

  “Zo you are Annasuya,” he said with his thick foreign accent. “Why you come, Annasuya Adler?”

  I glanced at the floor and looked around uncertainly at the other students.

  “I suppose I don’t want to be defenceless,” I whispered. “Isn’t that why anyone signs up here?”

  “Yeah, yeah. But cut ze crap. No one zigns up for curiosity. Jill there...” He waved at a middle-aged housewife-looking lady with dark hair and a collection of wrinkles crossing a face dotted with age spots. “Jill got attacked by a goon, didn’t you, on a back street one night after a night out with ze girls. Didn’t you?”

  “All he did was take my purse,” she put in defensively. “It didn’t have much in it. I’d already drunk up most of my funds.”

  The group giggled nervously, apparently wondering whether that was a joke.

  “Yeah, yeah. But you got scared, didn’t you? Scared enough to come here.”

  Jill bit her lip and nodded.

  “How ‘bout Barry there?” He gestured at one of only two men in the group. “What happened to you, Barry?”

  Barry snaked a glance around the room.

  “Some frigging perv broke into my house one night. Took all my jewellery and silver.”

  He scratched his chin.

  “We had one hell of an alarm system going on too. Didn’t even make a hiccup when that asshole broke in. Still have no idea how he done it.” He toed the floor with his Adidas. “Wife and me was all cowed up under the sheets there. If I’d had the balls I’m getting here now, I woulda gone out and faced him. Least I woulda had the satisfaction of seeing his face and maybe punching it up a bit.”

  Rudolph gestured around.

  “Zo you zee, Annasuya. Everyone has a story here. Whatever happened to you, you’re not ze only one. Zo what’s your story?”

  I shrugged.

  “Sorry I’m different,” I shot out. “I haven’t got a story. Just want to make sure no one ever beats me up for my purse.”

  Rudolph cleared his throat and then began the class. That day I only learned basic movements: how to react quickly, how to cover my face, shoot out my fists, twist myself out of someone’s grip.

  At the end of class Rudolph pulled me aside.

  “Zo who was it, Annasuya? A perv wake you up in your bed at night? Zomeone mug you on ze street?”

  I shook my head firmly.

  “I told you. I just want to learn how to defend myself. I want to make sure no perv wakes me up in the middle of the night or mugs me on the street.”

  Rudolph glanced me up and down, grasping my arm with a steely grip. I stared at him.

  “I can wiggle out of that grip now,” I said. “You taught me how to do that today.”

  Rudolph raised his chin.

  “Show me,” he challenged softly.

  I twisted my arm with a vengeance. Even with his thick fingers, he was forced to let me go.

  “You sure aren’t endearing yourself to me,” I pointed out. “What if I decided never to come back here, after the way you’re treating me?”

  Rudolph shrugged and moved away.

  “You’ll be back. You know I’m ze best defence artist in ze city. And whatever ze hell happened to you, you want to make sure zat never, ever happens to you again.”

  He fixed me with a penetrating gaze.

  “Because you still afraid of him. You think whatever going on with him, is not over yet. And he’ll be back for more. Isn’t zat right, Annasuya Adler?”

  Chapter 4

  I remember the first time I felt that surge of power. It happened when I bashed my fist into the face of Brionna, my sister, six years my senior.

  I remember I was just a tiny tyke of nine or ten. Brionna had terrorized me all my life. I was scared shitless of her. They say you’re not supposed to hit a girl, but what was there stopping Brionna from hitting me?

  All my life Brionna had got her hots by hitting me, slapping me, kicking me, pushing me down and shoving me over low walls, bricks on the floor, bashing my head into doors. She taunted and teased me no end, even got her mates at school to join in.

  “Bruno’s a weeny. Bruno’s the puniest kid in his class. Bruno’s weenie is weeny.”

  They’d chant that throughout the schoolyard, and soon the whole school was yelling it into my fa
ce.

  One morning before gym class a bunch of boys cornered me in the shower room. Bigger boys. Older boys, who’d just come out of gym class before us. The hugest one of them shoved me roughly against the icy wall tiles.

  “Come on, Bruno. Show it to us. They say it’s tinier’n Tom Thumb’s.”

  I must’ve gone red as a beet. The boys began to pummel against me. I raised my hands in a gesture of truce, desperate.

  “Okay. Okay. I’ll show you, if you’ll leave me alone after that,” I whispered.

  Every fibre of my being was screaming at me to cower behind a shower curtain. But I was stronger than that. I wasn’t a chicken. I could face them.

  The big fella just grinned down at me.

  “Yeah. Sure. We’ll leave you alone. Right, guys?”

  His cronies all leaned over me, cackling and cracking up.

  “Yeah, no sweat ‘bout that. We’ll leave you in peace.”

  So I showed it to them. It was just a little peek. I only dropped my briefs for a second.

  But that second was enough to get them all pounding on top of me. They all leapt on me, all fifty stone or so of them, punching, kicking, elbowing. They snatched at my briefs and rolled me around on the filthy floor in my skimpy gym outfit as if I were a steamroller. I defended myself as best as I could. But there were at least twenty of them: bigger, older, heftier, more muscular.

  Finally they dragged me out the door and all the way down the corridor, chanting “Bruno’s a weeny. Bruno’s weenie is weeny. We’ve seen Bruno’s weenie.”

  As they plopped me on the floor in front of my homeroom classroom, they shouted out to all the passers-by:

  “Hey, everyone. Catch a look at Weenie’s weeny. It’s just as puny as everyone says.”

  I continued to cover my eyes. At least no one could call me a chicken or accuse me of bawling in front of the whole school.

  That is, until Brionna showed up.

  When I saw the cool, unemotional glance she raked over me, I suddenly realized how evil she really was. Suddenly I knew that even though she was my sister, she didn’t care one whit about me. She didn’t love me. Not even in private, when we were alone in our home. I could’ve been just a lump of coal to her.

  At that moment, I couldn’t help but start to bawl my eyes out.