Sins and Secrets

by P. F. Kozak

  When she finished, she held a drink for me. Cool lemony water. So refreshing.

  She untied my hands slowly, letting my wrists memorize the texture of the silky binds. After the tie slithered off, she held it up for me to see. Do not try to escape, her expression said. I am trusting you.

  An aromatic stew appeared on the table near the door flap. It must have been there all along. The scent of fresh tomatoes and Indian herbs filled the tent. Naan bread appeared at its side. I ate it, and I enjoyed it.

  The old woman was a witch. The lethargy she’d cast on me was something I couldn’t swim past. My feet were bound, true, but escape no longer beckoned me.

  Where would I go? Was I really in some exotic land miles—no, kilometers—from nowhere?

  I finished the stew, using the bread to suck up every last morsel. The old woman—Mariah, I reminded myself—nodded in approval.

  She knelt at my feet with a grace surprising in an old woman. With deliberate movements, with slow and exaggerated hands, she untied the silky cords binding my feet. She stood, and with the elegance of movie star, she held the tent flap opened, and gestured for me to leave my green nest.

  I did.

  Looking at the landscape, I felt like I’d been sucked into the television and delivered to Discovery Channel land. Dry savannah lay all around me. Thick baobab trees peppered the hills. A river trickled below us.

  The air smelled amazing. Had I ever before smelled air free of exhaust? And the heat, it defied description. I’d never been to the Southwest. Could anywhere in the United States be this hot?

  Mariah gently nudged me towards a small building. I realized it was a bathroom, an outhouse. I then realized that my clothing were not my own.

  Someone had dressed me in a sunflower-colored dress. Finely woven cotton fit tightly across my breasts and stomach, loose and flowing around my legs. Ignoring the achingly blue sky and the strange scent of the dust, I quickly undid the buttons over my breasts and looked down.

  My no-nonsense underwear were gone. Now, a leopard-print bra pushed my breasts high, made them look full and tempting. My pink nipples peeked out the top. A tiny triangle covered my pubis, also leopard-print. Tiny black strings ran over my hips, up the back of my ass.

  I stumbled into the outhouse in a cloud of yellow cotton. As I closed the door behind me, name of countries that had lions and that looked like this on the television started to filter to the top of my brain—Tanzania, Kenya, South Africa.

  Toto, I said to myself, we’re not in Kansas anymore. But I guess Oz did have lions. If I found myself talking to a tin man, I’d have to question my sanity. The world felt strange—monkeys might fly across the cloudless blue sky.

  When I came out of the outhouse, the panoramic view shocked me, took my breath away. I scanned the horizon seeing nothing unnatural, nothing made by human hand. A wide trickling river. Scrubby trees clinging to the shoreline. Huge boulders scattered over the landscape.

  Not a house. Not a road. Not an electric pole in sight.

  And Mariah was gone. But her witchy magic wasn’t. I felt compelled to sit on the boulder. To sit and watch.

  In bare feet, I climbed to the top of the big rock. A bright blue lizard with a peach-colored throat scampered away. A bottle-green snake gave me an apologetic look and slithered into the shade. Overhead, a bird of prey cried, sounding like my heart.

  And then the old witch returned. With a crook of her gnarled index finger, Mariah indicated I should return to my tent. She wasn’t a servant—she was Baba Yaga. Her chicken-legged home lurked just on the other side of one of these boulders. I knew it.

  So when Baba Yaga called, I went willingly, filled with the strange lassitude.

  I knew I couldn’t escape on foot. Where were my shoes? I’d need a car—or a camel. Did they have camels in East Africa?

  My knees felt weak. From travel? From fear? I couldn’t say. From the witch’s spell.

  My vision felt strange, wave-like and uncertain. Almost like if I blinked I might see a purple sky, blue and yellow striped zebras, a river running in flamboyant orange.

  Jet lag, I told myself. Drugs.

  I went to my bed in my emerald nest, and I did not object when Mariah fastened the silky cords around my wrists and ankles.

  I would have objected to the blindfold, but in my complacency and confusion, she tied it over my eyes before I knew what she was doing.

  Mariah was a witch. Black magic was her paintbrush. I was her canvas.

  Then she brushed my hair while I lay tied, and I relaxed, despite my captivity. The mattress beneath me felt like a cloud, like a slow-rolling wave crossing the Caribbean on a sultry day.

  The blindfold brought a strange comfort. In the purple blackness, silvery stars danced before my eyes. Gold ones shot past my view.

  Maybe the blindfold meant they were going to transport me someplace, and perhaps that someplace would be more amenable to escape. Maybe they realized that they had the wrong girl and they were bringing me home. If they were going to kill me, I thought, they would have done it before now.

  Maybe I’d just wake up in my own pillowy bed, in my sea of blue blankets with sun streaming through my white eyelet curtains. Set on a timer, my coffee would just start dripping into the pot, filling my apartment with its delicious scent. I know I must have been smiling as I drifted to sleep.

  I thought fates worse than death were literary exaggerations.

  “You no doubt have many questions, and I will answer none of them.”

  His voice seemed to come from a distant place, and it rung with a fantastic vibration—like he was both behind me and miles away. And his words did not reassure me, although I didn’t say as much. If I appeared implacable maybe he’d leave me alone.

  “I’m going to give you some rules. They are simple and basic. You will obey them.” With my captor in the room, the blindfold was no longer comforting. Where was he? What was he doing? Panic threatened to overwhelm me. I couldn’t imagine feeling more vulnerable.

  “Who are you?” I demanded, doing my best to sound imperious. “My father will pay you, if it’s ransom you’re after.”

  “I like your attitude,” he responded in a voice as rich as dark chocolate. If a magician could special order a voice, he’d want this one. “But I will not answer any of your questions.” I wondered just how much Dad could afford. This guy seemed like he had expensive tastes.

  I heard him pause as he approached me, and then he said, “Here are the rules.”

  I waited, hoping for something like, “Say ‘please,’ and you can go home.”

  “I will not penetrate you until you beg for it.”

  At this, I started fighting my bonds in earnest. My dreamlike weakness of the pervious day was gone. My wrists jerked and flailed, yanking the ties until they were as taut as my muscles.

  “Penetrate” could have several meanings, none of which sounded good. “Are you crazy?” I screamed. “Get away from me!” I tried to rub my blindfold off with my shoulder. Was he getting closer? The blindfold stubbornly held. Damn Mariah and her knot-tying skills.

  “Don’t be afraid. I will not enter you until you ask—until you beg. And you will. Even then I will not harm you.”

  In my experience, people say, “I’m not going to hurt you,” just before they hurt you. What doctor tells a patient that the injection will hurt like a son of a bitch?

  I screamed wildly.

  When he caressed the arch of my foot I screamed again, kicking my tied feet maniacally. Unperturbed, he waited until I stopped. My throat was beginning to ache. While continuing his caress up my ankle, he said, “I will touch you everywhere, in every imaginable way, but I will not penetrate you until you want it. And you will want it.” His voice sounded huskier than I remembered.

  I knew then that he used “penetrate” as in “to insert the penis into the vagina or anus of.” I’d been—unrealistically—hoping that he’d meant “penetrate” as in “to gain insight.”

  A
s his warm palm approached the inside of my thigh, I found myself hoping for a version of “penetrate” that involved knives and hearts, preferably my knife and his heart.

  “One day,” he said, “just hearing my voice will make you wet.” His thumb just brushed through the thin silk of my panties, just above my clit. I jumped, arching my back to get away from him.

  “The leopard spots suit you, my little fighter.” He chuckled, “and so do the black strings. How does that feel across your clit?” He shifted the string, and I bucked away, screaming.

  Then he said, “My goal is to have you wanting me at the sound of my voice. You’ve had too much control for too long. It’s time for a change.” His thumb danced gently across my labia, so accessible in this thong, despite my efforts.

  I made some small sound in the back of my throat, realizing the hopelessness of my situation. “Today—now—you can fight me without repercussions. But listen to my rules, for I will not change them.” I squirmed away again, but no matter where I moved, his clever hands found a light way to tease. His fingertips found my nipple through the cotton fabric of my dress and bra. The gentle pinch sent a shock through my body. What had I done to deserve this?

  “Why are you doing this to me?” I sobbed. “Get away!”

  “I demand that you will not fight me. That is my rule.” Again, I bucked to no avail, and again he laughed. His thumb insistently pushed against my nipple, and the corresponding thrill that ran through me sparked more than fear. “Don’t worry. I know that today you can’t help but fight. You won’t be punished for any recalcitrance today. But tomorrow and thereafter…”

  The threat hung in the air, and I thought that he was going to leave it unfinished. His breath warmed my cheek as he whispered in my ear, “Tomorrow and thereafter, you will be punished if you fight me.”

  I froze with the intensity of his whispered voice, and he left before I could respond.

  This book is a work of fiction and is not intended to authentically reproduce actual events. While some of the events, places, and characters portrayed in this book are factual and a matter of public record, the relationships between the historical figures and the fictional characters are completely fabricated. Wherever possible, the author has attempted to keep to the known historical facts, but literary license has been taken with context, motivation and dates of actual events.

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  Copyright © 2006 by P.F. Kozak

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  ISBN: 0-7582-2124-X

  1 The Pearl—No. 11–May 1880