by Lauren Rico
“I loved you. I shared a bed with you. As you’ve just pointed out, I had a child with you. Yeah, I think I do know you.”
He shakes his head at me in disbelief.
“And to think we used to call you The Mouse.”
Before I can reply, he lurches forward, grabbing me by the shoulders and slamming me hard against the wall behind me. I gasp, trying to reclaim some of the breath that’s been knocked out of me, but then, his big hands are around my neck as he leans in close to my ear to speak.
“Oh, Jules, always so naive. You have not even begun to scratch the surface of what I’m capable of. But David, he’s going to know. He’s going to get a real good idea of the kind of pain I can inflict.”
“No,” I am shaking my head and gasping. “No!”
He smiles and nods. “I’m afraid so, Jules. Your boy will grow up without a mother,” he murmurs in faux pity. “But you know what? At least he has a father. And I don’t mean Matthew. I mean his real father, his biological father. Me.”
“What are you talking about?” I manage to huff out.
“I mean, a simple DNA test will prove he’s mine, and with you dead, well, Matthew won’t have a legal leg to stand on.”
“You don’t want him!” I croak.
“You’re right, I don’t. But I don’t want Matthew to have anything. Not you. Not that sea monkey you’re carrying and not sweet little David. No, I’m going to take him away from the only father he’s ever known, from the only home he’s ever known.”
“You can’t!” I object. But it even sounds pathetic to my own ears.
“I can. And then you know what I’m going to do, Jules? I’m going to throw your son away like a piece of trash. I’m going to sell him to the most deviant fuck I can find. A pedophile with a sadistic streak who will keep little David alive as a toy to be shared with all his friends. To take pictures of. To torture. And I will make sure that whoever gets him tells David every single day of his life that his mother hated him. That she abandoned him. That he was never loved.
“He will live in a hell on earth, Jules. Your sweet little redheaded cherub will suffer every single day of his short life. Because, believe me, it will be short. Guys like that aren’t interested in their toys once they get too big. And with no one to report him missing … well, even if his body is found, no one will ever know who he is or where he came from.”
My blood has turned to ice in my veins and I feel as if I’m going to pass out. I know this man well enough to know that he is not exaggerating. He’s thought this out carefully. He probably already has a plan in place, someone in mind to take my baby.
“This, Jules, is your torture. Your punishment for everything you’ve done to me, you bitch. You’re going to die knowing that you cannot save either of your children. Your last thoughts will be of your son’s pain and Matthew’s grief.”
My breath is coming in quick pants now. There’s nothing I can do. Or can I? I read once about a woman who lifted a car off of her child, trapped underneath it. She just grabbed it by the bumper and lifted it up. One woman, so fueled by love and fear and the protective instinct, that she was able to transcend the bonds of human limitations. Jeremy is the twisted wreckage of that car, bearing down on me and my family. I feel the danger to my child as surely as if he were pinned under ten tons of steel.
He’s loosened his grip on my throat, allowing my feet to slip back to the floor as he chatters on about what he’s going to do to my baby after he kills me. It’s now or never, and I have nothing left to lose. I put my hands together, just like the teacher in my self-defense class taught us, finger to finger as if I’m in prayer.
“Do you really think God is going to help you, Julia?” Jeremy mocks me.
Even as he says it, I thrust my arms upward, using the connected hands as leverage. I’m just strong enough, and he’s just surprised enough, that it breaks his hold around my neck. I only have a matter of seconds before he regains the power position. I reach up and grasp either side of his head with my hands, using the thumbs to dig straight into his eyes. He howls in pain as I push forward, away from the wall. Still with his head in my hands, I close my own eyes against the blow that I know is coming, and then I yank his head forward into my mine. Hard. Once, twice, three times. When I finally open my eyes, I see blood running down his face. I don’t allow myself the luxury of feeling the pain myself, I just let go of my grip on his head and he falls backward onto the ground. I skirt around him and run out to the hallway and toward the back door.
“You fucking bitch!” he bellows from behind me. “I’m going to fucking kill you!”
As I fly down the hall and back through the kitchen, I topple chairs and stools in his path, praying that they will buy me just a few more seconds. When I get to the sliding glass door that opens onto the backyard, I unlock the handle and pull, but it doesn’t give.
Shit!
I look down and see the broom handle that Matthew put inside the track for added security. I reach down, grab it, and drop it again. I finally get the thing out of the way and I try the handle again. This time the door gives. But, this time, I can see Jeremy’s reflection in the glass. He’s right behind me. I drop to the floor and fumble around for the wooden handle. At least it’s some kind of a weapon. But I’m not fast enough, or lucky enough.
Jeremy grabs my arm and yanks me to my feet, dragging me away from the back door. I thrash and scream and try to break things as we go. Finally, tired of fighting me, he simply picks me up and throws me over his shoulder, so that I’m hanging upside down against his back. I pound on him with my fists, screaming and clawing, but it doesn’t seem to faze him as he carries me through the kitchen, the living room and then up the stairs to my bedroom.
When we get inside, he slams the door shut behind us with his foot, stomps over to the king-sized bed, and tosses me down onto it so hard that I bounce a full foot off of the innersprings. The fury is coming off of him in waves. I make one last attempt to get off the bed, but he drags me back by my hair.
“Don’t you move!” he spits at me. “Don’t you fucking move, Julia!”
I don’t, until he pulls another pair of zip ties from his pocket. “No,” I protest as I try to sit up. “No, not again …”
The punch comes so hard, and so fast, that it knocks me off the bed, onto the opposite side of the room. I’m amazed that I don’t feel the pain at first, just the immense and uncomfortable pressure of his fist against my flesh. What I do feel is the thick slick wetness that’s running down my face. Jeremy makes his way around to where I’m lying, dazed, on the floor. He looks like a giant as he stands over me. A very angry giant. Before I can even finish the idle thought, he delivers a quick, vicious kick to my ribs. I grunt in pain and curl up into a ball on the floor.
“Please,” I cry into my hands. “Please …”
Jeremy bends over and grabs a fistful of my hair. I have no choice but to follow it upward and onto my unsteady legs. When I’m upright again, he takes my right wrist and uses it to pull me back onto the bed and all the way up to the headboard. At this point, I am in too much pain and too stunned to protest, as he uses one of the plastic fasteners to secure it to the wrought iron headboard. In a matter of seconds, the left wrist joins it. Then he is leaning over me, his face only a couple of inches from mine.
“Beg and plead all you want, you stupid cunt. All you’re succeeding in doing is giving me a hard-on. I’d kick that fucking thing out of you right now, but I don’t want to deal with all the blood while I’m screwing you.”
He runs a hand over my rapidly swelling cheek and then holds it up so I can see the bloody smudge on his fingers.
“See that, Jules? If you think that’s a sticky, painful mess, just wait until you feel your baby leaking out of you,” he taunts softly with a smile that sickens me. “You know, I was going to wait until later, but I’m thinking maybe we should take advantage of this big old bed right now. What do you think?” He’s patting the mattress next to me. “
Hmmm? Still think rape is a little too common for me?”
I turn my face away from him and he straightens up with a chuckle.
“Uh-huh. That’s what I thought. I’m going to get another drink, and while I’m gone, I want you to think about how badly I’m about to hurt you. Just wait and see what I can do when I really put my mind to it.”
I still have my face turned away from him when he leaves the room, whistling a Mozart horn concerto as he moves into the hallway and down the stairs.
.
Matthew 39
“Fuck, Brett! Can’t we go any faster? Jesus! Every second she’s with him …”
“Matt, you need to stay calm,” he says, putting a hand on my shoulder from the driver’s seat of the car. “This is not the time to have a meltdown, man. Julia needs you to be calm and clearheaded.”
I sigh and rub my temples. I have never felt so helpless in my entire life. Jeremy was exactly right. This is worse than anything anyone could possibly do to me physically. Julia is suffering. She’s bleeding. He’s probably got his hands all over her right now … No. I can’t let my mind go there. Besides, I’m not the only one with something to lose here.
“What do you think will happen if your mom walks in on them?” I ask quietly.
He gives me a sideways glance from the driver’s seat before he speaks again. And when he does speak, it’s with an iciness that reminds me of the man Brett Corrigan used to be.
“If I know my brother, and I do, he’ll be surprised. And then, he’ll be happy.”
“What?” I gasp, twisting around in my seat to get a better look at him now. “What do you mean he’ll be happy?”
“She’s next on his hit list, I’m sure. She’ll have saved him the trouble of tracking her down. And then, after her, it’ll be me he’s gunning for. Then Maggie, most likely. Jeremy is nothing, if not thorough.”
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. I mean, I always knew that Brett had an insight into his brother’s mind that the rest of us didn’t, but I never realized he could peer so deeply into the murky depths of Jeremy’s soul. That is, if he had a soul.
“I’m sure I’d be up before you …” I start, but Brett’s mouth turns into a tight little smile that gives me the chills.
“Oh, no, Matthew. That would be too easy. He wants you to live on and suffer.”
“You mean …you mean after he kills her?”
My question shakes Brett out of the dark place he’s in and brings him back out into the light.
“No,” he asserts, shaking his head emphatically. “No, man. He’s not going to kill her …”
I turn back and face forward, watching the scenery on the Long Island Expressway go by in a blur. No, he won’t kill her, because I’m going to get there before that happens. But that doesn’t mean she won’t be begging him to kill her by then.
Julia 40
There was a point in time when I wanted to know about my father. What had happened to him that day I was taken into state custody. Matthew had Tony dig up the police and CPS records for me and I spent a long, rainy afternoon sitting by myself, reading page after page of reports and statements and evaluations.
The snapshot of that day slowly began to come together as I put the pieces of the puzzle together. Rex had been arrested at the construction site where he worked. By the time he was processed at the county jail, he was complaining of police brutality. The arresting officers stated that they took him into custody like that, with a broken nose and some teeth missing.
While all of this was going on, I was three towns away at the hospital, having my chest x-rayed. They took pictures of every square inch of my tiny body. Every burn, every scar, every healed-over break and scab and scratch. Those pictures were in the files, too, and I looked over each one as if I was looking at a stranger.
I didn’t recognize the painfully thin, malnourished little girl with the blank expression on her face. My eyes looked too big for my face and my hair hung around me, matted and tangled and dull. For the first time in my life, I looked back at the child I had been, and I saw what they saw.
I put everything back in that box and put it away inside the depths of my closet, where it still sits, untouched since that day. I refuse to throw it away, because it’s a reminder of what I was, how far I’ve come, and just how much one small child can endure in her fight for survival. That little girl was my shame back then. She’s my hero now, as I suffer blow after blow at the hands of the man I once loved.
Jeremy doesn’t leave me tied to the bed for very long. Not once he realizes he can do a lot more damage by throwing me around the room. And, he was right, I had no idea you could experience this kind of pain and still be alive. After the first blow to my face, I was stunned. When he hit me again, the pain erupted in my head, literally causing an explosion of light behind my eyes. Right about then, my latent survival instincts kicked in, and I felt like an observer, outside of my own body.
The impact and the pressure of each punch was there, but they weren’t accompanied by the blinding pain anymore. It was like the day David was born. The epidural blocked the pain of my body being torn apart. It would appear now, that I can manufacture that effect all on my own.
I’m flat on my stomach on the floor now, lying where the force of the last blow sent me sprawling. I try to make a quick mental inventory of my injuries, but it’s hard to localize the pain at this point. I do know that one of my eyes is swollen completely shut, and my mouth is filled with the metallic taste of my own blood. I’m pretty sure there are a few less teeth in my mouth now than there were when I got up this morning. There’s a raw, scratchy feeling on the back of my head where I think he may have pulled a clump of hair out. He’s avoided punching me in the stomach and ribs, thankfully. Of course, that’s no guarantee that my baby is alright.
The worst of it is the disorientation. All of the trauma to my head has made me lose some of my sense of spatial awareness. I know I’m on the floor, but I can’t quite place where in the room I am. I can hear every word he says, but I can’t process them all immediately. I close my one good eye and let my mind pull away from my body. And then, I scream.
My attempt at dissociation is interrupted by the indescribable pain of my arm breaking under the weight of Jeremy’s foot. It’s the first noise I’ve made in nearly half an hour, save for the occasional grunt as he pushed, shoved, punched and slapped. Now he’s pulling out the big guns.
“Awww, I’m sorry, Jules! Did that hurt? Well, you only use that arm for bowing,” Jeremy taunts me from above. “But don’t worry about it, you won’t need it anymore anyway.”
I’m breathing hard, panting really, as the few tears I have left bubble out of me and spill to the shiny oak planks below me. They mingle with the blood that has already dripped all over.
“I want Matthew to see your blood on every surface of this room,” Jeremy explains, as if reading my thoughts.
I try to pull the broken limb to me, to protect it against further attack, but it’s too painful to move even an inch. Jeremy takes care of that for me, though, when he grabs me by the foot and drags me toward the dresser. I let out a cry of pain as he lets go with an unceremonious thump. Maybe he’s tired. Maybe he’s going to take a break. Maybe …
My wishful thinking is disrupted by agony as he bends over and grabs ahold of me from under my armpits, hoisting me up high enough so I can see myself in the mirror. It’s like looking at those old police photos all over again. My face is so swollen and distended, I actually wonder for a brief moment if there’s something wrong with the mirror. Blood is smudged and drying all over my face. It stains my torn blouse, and cakes in my wild hair. My jaw doesn’t look quite right, but that might just be the way it looks through my blurry vision.
“Lookie there, Jules! What a transformation, eh? I’ll bet even your daddy didn’t do that big of a number on you, did he? No, I’m guessing this is the worst you’ve ever felt. And you know what? I think it’s time we commemorate the occasion, don’
t you?”
Before I can even form a reply in my fuzzy, agonized mind, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out my cell phone. The one that’s been missing for weeks. The one I was so certain David had taken. Now, he holds it out in front of me, and uses it to snap a picture of my face like some perverse selfie.
“Perfect!” he quips. “Now, let’s just send this to your husband …” He’s holding me up with one arm and using the other to send the image to Matthew from my phone number.
It rings back in less than ten seconds. Jeremy puts it on speaker, but Matthew is yelling so loudly he needn’t have bothered.
“Jeremy you motherfucker! I’m going to kill you with my bare hands, you fucking animal!”
I can’t tell where Matthew is exactly, but I’m praying it’s in a car, on his way here.
“Now, now, Matty Boy,” Jeremy purrs. “Julia and I have just been having some fun! Too bad you’re not here to join in.”
“You’re a dead man,” I hear Matthew hiss from the other end of the line.
“Maybe, maybe not,” Jeremy counters. “I think things are a little more decisive for sweet Julia, though. Say hello, Julia,” he lilts, putting the phone to my bloody mouth.
“Matthew,” I manage to whisper.
“Baby, you’re going to be alright. It’s all going to be okay,” he echoes back to me the same words I used to comfort David in his crib. The room is starting to spin around me, and I’m afraid I will be sucked into its vortex before I can get the words out.
“Take David and go, Matthew! Jeremy wants to take him. Go, Matthew. Protect him …”
It doesn’t take Jeremy more than a second to pull the phone away, and give my broken arm a twist that makes me see stars as my body slides to the floor in slow motion.
“Don’t bother trying to trace this phone,” he is saying to Matthew. “The SIM card will be out of it as soon as I hang up. But don’t worry, I’ll find some other way to get you a picture of your wife’s body. Just so you can have a little something to remember her by,” he sneers and hangs up before my husband can respond.