Trifecta

by Pam Richter

  The hoarse breathing didn't change during the silent struggle. He didn't sound like he was exerting himself in the slightest. Finally she stopped fighting. Just breathing was becoming impossible.

  She noticed that the phone had stopped ringing sometime during the struggle only because it began to ring again. It gave her a little hope.

  Michelle had heard that you must humanize yourself if you are assaulted; make the attacker acknowledge you as a real person, not an object. She heard her voice shaking. The croaking sounds were not familiar. It was hard to talk because she was hoarse from the painful constriction when he had squeezed her neck.

  "My name is Michelle. You don't really want to hurt me. I'm Michelle Montgomery. You've scared me, and you are very strong. So I won't fight. If you leave. Just go away. I won't tell anyone. Promise."

  He let go. Michelle was so stunned she didn't move.

  Then she saw the knife. She suddenly knew why he had been holding her down with one hand. His other hand had been holding the knife, waiting for her to stop fighting so he could present it. It was large and he moved it up slowly so that she could get a good look at it.

  Michelle screamed and tried to roll away, but his knife hand was suddenly fisted against her throat, pressing painfully into her windpipe. His other hand was ripping at her night gown, pushing it up. She was fighting again but it was useless. He used the knife to rip her nightgown from the throat down, the knife cutting her between her breasts and then slashing her stomach. She could hear the ripping and could not move. The knife was again at her throat.

  So she was going to be raped. The thought was frightening, but she was no virgin. If only he didn't kill her. She wanted to yell and tried, while she heard him adjusting some of his clothing, but her vocal cords were smashed or injured too badly. Now she couldn't even scream.

  She remembered the phone, but it had stopped ringing.

  Michelle's hand grasped the pillow beside her as she felt her legs being pushed roughly apart. She was sure he was going to use the knife and the will to fight left her. He had already cut her badly. Her chest and stomach burned where the knife had sliced.

  Michelle put the pillow over her face. She didn't want to feel his breath in her face when he raped her. It hurt her throat to cry and she tried to stop. Killers wanted you to be afraid, rapists loved the helplessness of their victims, but she sobbed into the pillow as she felt herself being harshly violated. It went on and on and she knew this was no natural intercourse. She knew she was being hurt inside and she whimpered, holding the pillow over her face, wondering if he was using the knife instead of a physical part of his own.

  She kept telling herself it was only her body. He didn't really have her, her essential part or essence, but she knew she was wrong.

  She must have passed out from the pain for a while because she heard someone pounding on the door. At first she thought it was the sound of the man pounding into her, but it was someone at the door.

  The pounding sound really awakened Michelle from the nightmare. She found herself sobbing and grasping her pillow. She opened her eyes groggily and shook her head, willing the dream back to her subconscious where it belonged. Although the room was not warm she was perspiring. Her heart felt like it would burst through her chest it was palpitating so fast and hard. She willed herself to get rid of the dream. She hadn't had one this bad in months.

  The knocking that awakened her came again. Michelle groaned, rolled to the side of the bed and looked at the clock. It was five-thirty. Damn.

  She got up and hurried out of her bedroom, grabbing her robe and shoving her arms into it. She went into the living room and down the hallway to the door and opened it.

  "You should be more careful, Shelly," Heather scolded, walking in with her coffee cup. "Never open the door without asking who it is. How many times have I told you?"

  "Murderers and rapist are all asleep this time of morning," Michelle said, yawning hugely.

  "Not funny," Heather said as she closed the door and bolted it behind her. They went into the kitchen. The automatic pot had done its duty and Michelle poured herself a cup and sat down at the kitchen table.

  "You look like hell," Heather said observantly, filling her own cup and leaning against the counter.

  "Oh fuck," Michelle said, as though surprised, and Heather laughed.

  "I have a shoot this morning, at six-thirty," Heather said. "Actually you look better than you used to, though."

  "Thanks loads. I bet you pulled on those jeans and just walked on over," Michelle said. It was depressing how beautiful Heather was. She never looked tired, never got bags under her electric blue eyes, and stayed thin without dieting.

  "I do it every morning," Heather said, a little put out.

  "You never look like something nasty an alley cat dragged in. Even in the morning."

  "I look horrible now," Heather said, really believing that too. She looked at Michelle carefully. "Did you have the dream again?"

  Michelle nodded.

  "Finish it," Heather said, sipping her coffee.

  Michelle obediently closed her eyes and remembered how the man who was raping her had suddenly jumped up. The knocking had been going on for some time. She started a croaking scream, now that someone was at the door and might hear her. She heard the pass key in the lock. She pulled the pillow from her face and watched her attacker run to the door and unfasten the chain. He threw the door open so hard that he must have knocked the person on the other side of the door to the ground.

  There was an eerie total silence when the door clicked shut on automatic springs. She looked down at herself and saw slick blackness in the dark. She was covered with blood. Moving to cover herself was impossible.

  She should have felt relief, but she knew there was something still in the room with her. A blackness that was darker than the black room. That was when her memory stopped. No matter how hard she tried, she never could bring that part of the nightmare to light. The attacker was gone, but time stopped when the blackness moved toward her.

  The adolescent bellhop was the one who had ended the attack, knocking on the door, bringing her some insect spray. He was worried when she didn't answer her phone and had gone to her room to make sure she was all right. She found out later that he tried to spray some of the insect poison at the rapist, but the man got away down the hallway and disappeared down the stairs. Her attacker had never been caught.

  It seemed like hours before the ambulance arrived. The young man had covered her with blankets and called 911. Then he had run downstairs and brought her some brandy from the bar. Michelle gulped it straight from the bottle. It was the only thing that stopped her sobs and the uncontrollable trembling. It even helped take away some of the physical pain. That was the beginning of her life with alcohol as her best friend.

  She was told later by her team of doctors that she had been lucky. Oh yeah, Michelle had thought at the time, real lucky to be attacked, raped and ruined.

  They said the man would certainly have killed her if he had not been interrupted. But the scariest thing for her was the fact that she could pass her rapist on the street and never know it. She knew that he was big and very strong. So now she was afraid of men. And the fear had generalized so much that even tiny men could numb her with fear if they looked at her wrong. Wrong being looking at all, in Michelle's mind.

  The police hadn't wanted to believe that she could not identify the rapist. There was a gigantic manhunt going on because this kind of attack, in one of the best hotels in Las Vegas, adversely affected the tourist industry. They hadn't been able to keep the incident from the newspapers or television.

  The second day she was in the hospital two detectives brought piles of albums with pictures of criminals with the same sort of M.O., as they put it. Rapist/Slasher types. Michelle looked at the pictures and told them over and over that it had been dark and she had not seen his face. They countered that just the head shape or maybe a profile would grab her. Michelle was not gra
bbed, she was disgusted. So many pictures. So many violent people.

  When the pictures didn't work, the detectives sent over a police artist. Michelle described what she had seen in the mirror. And she saw again, in the artist's rendering, the shape hovering over the bed. Then she described the head and shoulders looming above her during the violent fight. It came alive on a drawing tablet.

  She knew the police were sorry for her; she was, after all, being cooperative. Then they were confused by the fanciful drawings of a demon lurking over her bed. But the most troubling thing to Michelle was when they began to disbelieve her whole story. The lab results had come back and she didn't have any physical samples of fluids on her body from another person. There was no saliva, no seamen, no blood, and no hair, except her own. It was a locked room mystery and they didn't believe her any more. She was disgusted when they were disappointed that the man had not ejaculated inside her.

  Michelle found out later that the young bellhop had gone through the same sort of interrogation. He could no more describe the man than Michelle. The boy had been flung to the floor by the door when he was trying to open it. He just saw a tall shape covered in blood. Michelle was grateful he had witnessed the gigantic shape running down the hallway. At least there were two people who had seen the attacker, even though both witnesses could only describe a large male. The police had to believe her with the boy's verification.

  During the rape, when she told herself her attacker was not possessing her really, not the essential Michelle, she had known it was not true, even then. She had been possessed and brutally injured in both mind and body.

  While Michelle was in the hospital it had been too painful to walk for days, but when she finally could, she managed to get to a communal bathroom down the hospital corridor from her room. There she took off her nightgown and looked at herself in a full length mirror. At first she cried. Then a funny thought occurred to her. She would be a perfect centerfold!

  She started laughing and quickly got hysterical, doubling over with spasms, tears running out of her eyes. She tried to stop because she was hurting the stitches by the giant whoops, but she couldn't.

  The orderlies at the nursing station heard the strange laughter, finally went to investigate, and helped Michelle back to her room and into bed. She had a large red and puckered scar that ran from the top of her chest to below her navel, with black stitches holding the skin together. She was neatly bisected down the middle. A centerfold complete with staples.

  Michelle was in the hospital for reconstructive surgery for a couple of weeks. Then she had psychotherapy for six months. Now she tried not to think about how much she had loved physical relationships with men in the past. She would not think about how she could have been construed as loose or, that most terrible of words for women, easy, but she knew she had been, sometimes. The difference was that she had always been in control. She had been the one to decide whether she wanted a physical relationship. Now she couldn't bear the thought of a man touching her.

  She had been too badly injured by the assault to ever have children.

  Michelle opened her eyes and nodded at Heather, signaling that she had finished. Her therapist had told her to finish the dream whenever she had it, calling it Closure. Michelle wondered if it did any good. All it did was scare the bejesus out of her yet again by the conscious repetition. It was bad enough in her dreams.

  "I'm sorry," Heather said softly.

  Michelle turned away and poured more coffee so Heather wouldn't see the beginning of her tears. She took a deep breath, bit her bottom lip hard, and controlled it. She blinked very hard and fast. Heather was the nicest person she had ever known. Niceness always made her feel like crying.

  To cover up her feelings Michelle said, "You should have seen what happened last night."

  "What?"

  "There's this new older man in the building. He bought the top floor."

  "The one with the black hair and creepy eyes?"

  "Must be the same one. He asked me out for a drink..."

  "You didn't!" Heather exclaimed. She was one of the few people who knew that Michelle had a problem with alcohol.

  "Yes. But I didn't mean to. So it wasn't a slip. Honestly. I mean, I told him I didn't drink, and he brought me a Virgin Mary. But when I drank it, I knew it was spiked."

  "Oh, no!"

  Michelle nodded, "I jumped up so fast I spilled both drinks in his lap. And the whole table."

  "Good." Heather was smiling.

  "I ruined his suit. You should have seen the tomato juice all over him. On this dazzlingly white shirt with onyx studs. Even in his cape."

  "His cape!" Heather was laughing hilariously.

  Michelle looked at Heather. "It wasn't funny. Stop laughing," but she could feel her own mouth quirking into a smile.

  "I can't."

  Michelle reached for her cigarettes on the table and watched Heather. At least she had brightened her day. "I was mortified."

  "You shouldn't be. You told him you didn't drink. And a man like that. I mean, he must be a shit."

  "You mean because he's gorgeous," Michelle said. It wasn't a question. His looks were a given. It was obvious that Heather believed that he had done it on purpose.

  "No question. Or else he's gay," Heather said.

  "That's what I thought. I can't imagine why he asked me out," Michelle said.

  "Well, that's obvious."

  "No," Michelle said shaking her head.

  "You're simply the most interesting looking person he probably ever saw."

  "Right. He's attracted to a giantess with yellow eyes."

  "I mean it."

  "I used to be attractive," Michelle said frowning. It seemed like a long time ago.

  "You used to know you were. Before. You know what I mean. You have gorgeous black hair. And your eyes really are so unusual."

  "Right," Michelle said smiling. "You forgot the freckles."

  "Keep kicking yourself, lady. But since you stopped drinking, you really have improved."

  Heather had made it a habit to bring her coffee cup over every morning. She had seen Michelle with gigantic hangovers many times in the past, so sick she could hardly move, her face swollen and her eyes bloodshot. At that time she had never mentioned to Michelle that she looked horrible in the morning.

  "I still want it, sometimes," Michelle said.

  "The litany for models at the agency is no sugar, no fat, no salt, no carbohydrates, no calories. Might as well chuck eating altogether. But especially no alcohol. And I don't care."

  "You'll never understand. And you eat anything you want anyway. I just want to get out of my head. Have things ease up a little. Have some fun."

  "Well, you certainly won't have it going out with that black haired stick."

  "Omar," Michelle said, significantly, watching for the reaction.

  "Omar?" Heather said. She started laughing again and Michelle joined her. It was one of the best things about Heather. She saw humor in everything.

  "Exactly my reaction when I heard it," Michelle said.

  "Oh my God. Omar," Heather was hysterical again. She got up still laughing. "Perfect. I have to fix my face." Laugh tears were running down her cheeks. "Omar." She shook her head helplessly and headed to the door.

  "Actually, he was quite nice," Michelle said as Heather walked out.

  Michelle watched Heather's yellow hair drift behind her down the hall. Laughter and the name Omar floated back to her.

  CHAPTER 4

  Actually he had been nice, Michelle thought as she flipped on the computer and tried to figure out how to finish the bi-annual financial projections for six buildings in two hours. She had done most of the homework, so she just had to plug in the figures. Still, it was a gigantic, daunting task.

  As she swiftly and mechanically toiled away on the statistical reports, she decided that the thing she hadn't liked about Omar was that he was a Toucher. He had found reasons to touch her arm or pat her hand, even brush back
tendrils of her hair as they talked. Michelle thought it might be a European mannerism that was practically ingrained, but she couldn't help flinching when she saw a male hand come near her. Especially those spider fingers of his. He had not seemed to notice her withdrawal. Or maybe he found it interesting or amusing when she recoiled. Anyway, it didn't matter. He wouldn't want to go out again with someone who clumsily knocked drinks all over him. The clots of thick tomato juice had looked like blood, reminding her that she had thought of him as a Dracula type figure in the cape.

  Heather's immediate reaction had been about his creepy eyes. When Michelle thought of them close up, she was suddenly and sickeningly reminded of spiders again. Or that monstrous insect on her bedroom wall. Omar had long thick lashes on both the top and bottom lids. It reminded her of spider legs. Which was ridiculous, because his eyes were slanted and extremely unusual. Even if they were kind of spooky. And it had been nice to get out for an evening. Michelle couldn't remember the last time she had been alone with a man.

  As Michelle's fingers automatically plugged in the projected costs of electricity, janitorial services, landscaping, maintenance personnel, construction, and all the other expenses inherent in running large office buildings, she decided that if Omar asked her out again she would consider it.

  Michelle worked silently and intently for a while, turning off her thoughts and concentrating on getting the work done. When she had almost finished she grimaced and shook her left hand. She hoped she wasn't getting carpal tunnel syndrome. Working on the computer was essential to her job.