Harrowing

by S. E. Amadis

  “Don’t worry, babes,” he said. “I’d bet my bottom dollar nothing’s going to happen to you between now and your appointment.”

  Chapter 14

  I clapped my colleague, Drew, a sound one across his back. He gulped a mouthful of coffee as he hung up my mobile for me.

  “Thanks loads, mate,” I said. “That’ll earn you some brownie points next time I talk to the head honcho.”

  Drew shrugged.

  “Bloody hell. That prancing sissy called himself a lady,” he muttered as he returned my mobile to me, choking on his coffee.

  “Naw. I think he was referring to the lady he’s protecting. The owner of the phone you just called.” I gestured towards my laptop. “Technology these days makes it easy peasy to spy on just about anyone.” I pointed at an app on my screen. “That phone call you just made for me connected my phone to hers, and inserted a tracking programme into hers. It’s undetectable even by the most sophisticated anti-virus. Now I’ll know where that bitch is no matter where she goes. She won’t be able to hide from me, so long as she’s got her phone on her. And who leaves their home without their phone these days?”

  Drew rolled his eyes.

  “Dunno what you’re up ta, Bruno,” he murmured. “And don’ care neither. None a my biz, it ain’t.”

  I glanced at him.

  “That’s why you’re my go-to guy for everything. So. How’re the folks?”

  “Just moved outta the fucking stinking city at last, with all them deadly fumes and all that shit. I’m a-telling ya, New York jus’ ain’t the place it used ta be, what with all them hoodlums and thieves and rapists and stuff runnin’ round wild all over the place. Not that ma ole lady’s ripe pickings for a rapist no more.” He guffawed. “They got ‘em a wee neat house up on Long Island now. Haven’t seen it yet. Gotta get ‘round ta visiting ‘em one a these days.” He ogled at me, making faces. “Think the boss’ll gimme a few days off?”

  I smiled. This guy wasn’t very tactful, if I did say so myself.

  “I’ll put in a good word for you,” I replied. “To return your favour.”

  I accompanied him to the door and practically shoved him out.

  “Be sure to mark these hours down as overtime,” I said. “It’s after nine o’clock. You ought to be home with your mate.”

  Drew laughed cynically.

  “What mate? Them ladies all run from me the moment they see ma face. Well, the decent ones, anyways.”

  He snapped out a military salute at me before stepping into the elevator.

  “It’s probably your accent they run from. Not your face,” I muttered under my breath as soon as the door closed behind him.

  *****

  I settled my laptop in my lap, curled up on my favourite sofa-futon and typed in “Facebook”. Once there, I created a new account, using the first pseudonym that occurred to me

  “Elena Farber”, I wrote, using the initials of Eli Fabian, Romeo’s father and my first love.

  Once I got onto my new page, I browsed around for photos of the top dogs at the Herbert and Mons Clothing Company. And there he was, beaming up at me with his all-round sweetie-pie, football-star, glowing-skinned good looks, the greying hair tousled in slight contrast with his youthful, wrinkle-free complexion. I saved his image to my computer, then uploaded it to my new Facebook account.

  “BEWARE! THIS MAN IS A RAPIST”

  I printed across the top of my first publication as Elena Farber.

  “My name is Elena and I am a temp clerical worker. One morning I was sent to this man’s office to provide administrative services for him. He was alone in the office. The first indignation I suffered was his initial refusal to open the door to me. He insinuated that perhaps I was some sort of corporate spy. When at last he let me in, he literally barked at me every time I turned my head and looked someplace other than the floor.

  “‘Don’t look in the other offices. There are company secrets in there,’ he would scold me every time I swung my head about. He locked the office door and then, at last, he cornered me inside the conference room, where he proceeded to carry out that vile and abominable act. I won’t go into that in detail. I’m sure you can watch any number of dramas on prime time TV that depict that act in blazing colours.

  “I might add that I am not a virgin. I am a mother and currently enjoy a magnificent and monogamous relationship with a member of the opposite sex. In spite of that, I am not loose. I dress conservatively and not provocatively. The day this happened I was wearing a typical corporate office uniform, and I don’t believe there is anything less provocative than that. I don’t usually look at other men since I am radiantly happy in my relationship. I don’t flirt and if I go out in the company of other men, it’s usually as a couple, with my sentimental partner accompanying me.

  “I didn’t report this to the police. I was too ashamed and afraid to. If people knew what had happened to me, I would have become the pariah of society. People would blame ME for what happened. They would think of me as a whore, a slut or a weakling. Or they would start to regard me as damaged goods, while the SOB who did this to me would walk away scot-free and humming a tune of victory. NO ONE would think to blame HIM, look at HIM as the scourge of our society and expect HIM to take a pay cut – as happened to ME – as a consequence of his actions. No. In fact, his cronies probably even patted him on the back afterwards and took him to the pub to celebrate!

  “Ladies, if you see this man, run, don’t walk, to the nearest exit. If you happen to have the bad luck of being sent to work as a temp employee in his office, get the hell out of there the minute you set eyes on him. I won’t reveal which city or company he works in lest I get slammed with a libel charge or something. But ladies, be warned:

  “THIS MAN IS DANGEROUS!!”

  I signed out of Elena Farber’s account and signed into my own personal one. There, I searched for Elena Farber and shared her publication.

  “Pass this on,” I added as a comment. “All women should know about this. And if you are a man and there is a woman that you love in your life, pass this on for her sake.”

  I logged out of Facebook and went to cook up another packet of macaroni and cheese. Calvin waltzed in the door just as we were sitting down to dinner. I glanced up guiltily.

  “I’m sorry, sweets,” I said, smiling sheepishly. “I thought you’d be sleeping at your place. There’s no food left for you.”

  Calvin popped a bag of takeaway out from behind his back.

  “Surprise!” he exclaimed.

  Romeo ran towards him squealing like a mouse and literally yanked the steaming plastic bag out of his hands.

  “We never got that takeaway you went for that other night,” Calvin said, “and I’ve been hankering ever since. So I stopped into Mr. Leong’s on the way over.”

  I clambered on top of Calvin as if he were a tree and covered him with kisses.

  “I’ve never been happier to see you in my life,” I exclaimed.

  Calvin flashed a pleased grin at me.

  “Well, if that’s all it takes to get you to eat me up with kisses, I’ll have to bring you takeout every night.”

  Romeo started laying out cardboard boxes in the kitchen and spooning the contents onto plates.

  “Yippee! My favourite. Chicken wings,” he cried, jubilant.

  For once we enjoyed dinner in peace. Nothing happened to jangle our nerves. After our meal Calvin stretched his legs out on the sofa-futon and piled his laptop on top of himself while I curled up next to him.

  “What’s this on your Facebook, sweets?” he murmured.

  I glanced over at his screen, then explained what I’d done. Calvin frowned.

  “Don’t you think you could get into trouble or something for that? Maybe that creep could sue you for libel or something.”

  “I didn’t write his name on it,” I said defensively.

  “Get rid of it,” Calvin hissed. “Close that Elena Farber account thing. Now.”

  I hard
ened my chin and shook my head.

  “I can be just as stubborn as you when I want to be,” I retorted. “If I eliminate Elena Farber’s account, the publication would disappear too. So no way.”

  All the same I signed into my own account, checking through my biography. Already there had been a slew of reactions and my – or rather, Elena’s – photo and story had been shared several times.

  “Who is this creep, Annie? And who’s Elena Farber?” wrote Lindsay. In a separate private message she added, “Isn’t that the bastard we saw outside the subway station a couple of weeks ago? What’s up, Ann?”

  “She should’ve reported him to the police, the moron. Creeps like that shouldn’t be running around loose out there, and she’s just letting him get away with it all,” scribed in a distant acquaintance, a classmate from high school that I hadn’t seen in over ten years. “No wonder she got raped.”

  “Peeps like YOU are probably the reason why she didn’t go to the police to begin with,” I retorted hotly below her comment. “Do you see how you’re blaming the victim already?”

  A message popped in as I was browsing.

  “It’s from Bruno,” I whispered, my voice trembling.

  Calvin glanced at my screen.

  “What did you do? You changed your settings and made your profile public?” he screeched.

  I nodded.

  “Of course. I want everyone on Facebook to see the photo of that bastard loud and clear.”

  I strummed my fingers over the message from Bruno, which I hadn’t opened yet.

  “The fact that he’s sending you messages means he’s probably been spying on your Facebook,” Calvin suggested. “Either that, or it’s just a wild coincidence that he just happens to be writing to you at just exactly the same time you’ve published a photo of him all over the net.” He gestured at my mailbox. “Well, open it. Don’t you want to see what he has to say?”

  I clicked on the message, casting a cursory glance at the notification that Bruno wouldn’t see if I’d read his message or not until I accepted him as a contact.

  “YOU WANT WAR, ANNASUYA ROSE ADLER? THEN YOU’VE GOT IT. I WILL NEVER. EVER. EVER. LEAVE YOU ALONE AGAIN!”

  Bruno accompanied his friendly missive with an enormous photo of an obviously dead child, about the same size as Romeo, heart-breaking and innocent, curled into a foetus on a stainless steel slab, burnt and battered beyond recognition.

  “I AM DANGEROUS, ANNASUYA ROSE ADLER!

  THIS WILL BE YOUR FUCKING LOUT OF A SON BY THE TIME I’M FINISHED WITH HIM!!”

  PART II

  Chapter 15

  The year Brionna turned eighteen, Momma and Dad died in a car accident. Dad was driving, pissed out of his mind as usual. It was a tragedy just waiting to happen. By happy coincidence, Brionna just happened to come of age shortly before, so automatically I passed into her custody.

  With no one to control or restrain her, Brionna let loose with all her rage and fury and took out all her bile and demons on me. A day never went by when I wasn’t beaten black and blue by whatever instrument Brionna took to her fancy that day. Belts, baseball bats, boxing gloves, sticks. No object was too crude to satiate her needs. Nothing was below her. If she had nothing else at hand, even the fork from the dinner table was good enough for her.

  Every night I dreamt of smashing in her face, the way I had done once before. But she’d learnt her lesson and now she never lowered her guard. She never took her eyes off me when she was awake and she slept with her bedroom door locked and bolted from the inside.

  The only solution that occurred to me was to find a job and escape. The day I turned fifteen, I snagged a job cleaning pigpens at a farm just outside the city. Brionna started strutting around the house pinching her pretty, upturned nose with her fingers and peering down it at me with disdain, complaining that I stank worse than the filthiest porker alive. I was relieved, though, because it meant that at least her beatings stopped. She simply couldn’t stand coming close to me anymore.

  When I’d saved enough money, I moved to my own apartment and cut off all contact with her. At last, I thought, I was free to live my own life, the way I wanted. With no threats hanging over my head anymore. No fear, no terror. My days were my own, to do with them as I pleased. When I came home at night, there was no one screaming insults at me. I could walk around the house without the dread of receiving a fist in my cheek. No more spankings with a belt. No more punishments of getting my face kicked in or my ribs bruised with Brionna’s boxing gloves.

  I finished high school and won a scholarship to university. A degree with Honours in Business Administration led to an entry level position at Herbert and Mons Clothing Company. I settled down to roost there and started climbing the corporate ladder, making it to Vice President. It seemed I finally had it made. I lived an idyllic life, one most men could only dream of. My salary came in the high range. I owned a renovated mansion on Bedford Park. My relationship with Lulu was absolutely groovy, totally taking off.

  Brionna and all the suffering and humiliation of my childhood belonged to the past.

  What I didn’t expect, never would have anticipated in a million years, was that my past would never leave me alone. What I’d lived through in my first years would haunt me forever. Affect me forever.

  And I had no idea just how deep my childhood had taken root inside me, festering within me and turning into something spinning way out of my control.

  *

  That night something woke me up. It was like an almost silent whoosh! Like a chill breeze that blows past you, almost without a sound, but you can feel it filling the air with dread. With horror. With something so terrible and terrifying that you know is about to attack you, that you just know you can’t escape. Something just waiting to pounce itself on you. To pile itself against you and dig its claws deep into your flesh, grab you by the throat and never let you go.

  My eyelids flew open, and it was there. That pillar of fire. A flaming bush burning harsh and furious and unforgiving in the corner of my bedroom. The cavernous, unearthly voice of a god echoing about my room, filling my eardrums, condemning me, threatening me with the fires of eternal hell and damnation.

  “Heed my voice, Bruno Jarvas,” the unfamiliar god declared, sonorous and yet filled with ice. “Obey my instructions. Do as I say, or unending agony and excruciating pain will be all you have to anticipate upon your unlamented demise from this carnal earthly life.”

  I gaped at that thing in the corner of my room. My legs were shaking, my knees rattling straight together like a wind chime made of bones. My whole being shivered as if I’d been stricken by a raging fever. I clasped my bedsheet with numb fists and trembled in fear and awe before my god.

  “Y-y-yes, I am here,” I cried. “And n-n-no, it would never occur to me to disobey you. Wh-what do you want from me?”

  Laughter, cruel, chilling, filled the air. Resounded in my head. Bounced off the walls and ceiling and echoed about inside my head as if it were hollow, refusing to leave me in peace.

  “You are a messenger, Bruno Jarvas. From now on, it will be your mission to announce the destiny of certain women to them. Women whom I will personally pick out from among my favourites and make evident to you. Women destined for greatness. It will be your calling to whisper this message to them.”

  I nodded my head convulsively.

  “Y-y-yes, of course. Whatever you say, my lord... my... my master. But... but how will I know which women you’re talking about? And what must I do to get your message across to them? And what message do you want me to tell them... exactly?”

  A chuckle of arrogance and superiority. Of course. I realized no one could possibly surpass or overcome my god. This harsh, severe god that had somehow chosen me from among all other mortals.

  “You will simply know the women when you see them,” it intoned, imperious. “As to how you will bring my message to them? That is why I have chosen you as my messenger, Bruno Jarvas. You figure it out. You may bring
my message to them any way you wish. I leave the means up to you.”

  The pillar flamed so fiercely it nearly singed my ceiling.

  “Do as I say, or I will return, Bruno Jarvas.”

  I glanced at my quivering fingers spreading sweaty patches across my bedsheets.

  “And... and if I do everything you say... milord... my master. Does that mean you will leave me alone?”

  I swore if it could that horrific being would have smirked.

  “Yesss,” it hissed. “As long as I am pleased with you, you will not see me again. I shall leave you in peace.”

  A tongue of fire, flaring high up to the ceiling and burning the plaster angrily. Blackened, jagged cracks snapped out across the white paint. Shards of smoking wood rained down on me, searing my face, singeing my hands and bed covers. Then the flame disappeared, leaving the room as cold and hollow as if nothing had ever happened. I flipped on the light, hysterical, wondering if I had perhaps hallucinated it all.

  There was nothing on my bed. Nothing on my ceiling. No bits of plaster littered my bed covers.

  I checked my hands. They were smooth, unblemished. No burn scars or marks of any sort.

  I stumbled out of bed, nearly tripping over the trailing sheets and collapsing to the ground, and I crawled into the bathroom. I studied myself, bleary-eyed, in the mirror and splashed a sinkful of ice cold water all over my face. My skin was as fine and poreless as ever, marred only by the faint marks of incipient wrinkles. I spun my face this way and that, unable to avoid admiring what I saw in spite of the fright I’d just experienced.

  As I turned to leave, my hand brushed against something rough and bumpy just underneath my ear. A sudden flash of red hot pain seared through me. I tilted my head, peeked underneath my ear.

  There, barely visible, was the swollen red line of a recently-acquired burn.

  Chapter 16