by Riley Moreno
And then she saw Ethan.
He was on the edge of his seat, ready to move and collect his into his arms at the second that she might need him. She thanked god that he was here and gave him a weak smile.
When this is over, Ethan. When this is over.
Leaving his eyes, Julie was finally led to the stand, and Morales patted her arm with what Julie took for a nervous glance. As Morales started to slip away, Julie tried to reach for her, but Morales shifted to Ethan’s side. The reluctant witness took note of now he tensed and moved to get away from her, and Julie was struck by the sense that there was something more that she had yet to understand. She was ready to scream out for Ethan when she felt a Bible being pressed under her shaking palm.
“State your name.”
Her fingers trembled about the leather bound book. Julie didn’t know if any god existed after all that she had suffered, but she still swore to be honest and fell into her chair. The room swirled around her, and every face but Ethan’s seemed ready to cause her further harm. She focused on his eyes and bit her lip as his face was covered by Leo Barber’s risen form.
“Hello, Miss Edwards. How are you this morning?”
Terrified. I want to go home. I want to be free. Ethan…
“Miss Edwards?”
She snapped to attention at the order of Leo’s voice. His eyes seemed soft as he stepped closer and asked for the details of her nightmare.
“Can you tell the court what happened to you in the wake of June 6th, 2012?”
She recalled his return. Julie was still begging for salvation, and the terror that was Carter McCord settled at her side. He dangled a rough rope before her eyes and quickly bound her hands behind her back. Julie struggled as the knot grew tighter. When all hope of freedom was lost, she wept into the stained mattress and started to slip into despair.
“Now that’s hot. You look so cute all tied up.”
Julie’s cringed as Carter lay down and pulled her tight to his chest. Her ravaged body turned to ice as he stroked her arms, and fresh tears fell when he kissed her matted hair.
“Please…”
Carter wound his limbs around her quivering frame. One hand stayed in her hair while his other hand slipped between her legs. He pushed inside her, and Julie screamed her torment for no one to hear. She wanted him to go away. Freedom was out of the question, but her mind stretched towards solitude and dreams of something better. As his hand left her hair, she was nearly there.
“You asked for it, cunt.”
Julie felt one hand still playing between her thighs while his other hand groped her breast. She didn’t move, hoped that if she stayed still he might grow bored and leave her. But she found something else, something worse. Her immobile form seemed to excite him further, and Carter’s revolting fingers pinched her nipples as his rank breath poured into her ear.
“Try to get away,” he whispered.
Julie shook her head, and he tugged at her nipples until she cried out in anguish.
“No!”
“Come on, cunt,” Carter said. “You know you want to.”
Julie wanted nothing more than to be free of his touch. So she worked her wrists into a frenzy and tried to escape the knots that held her fast it. Even as she tugged at the ropes, Julie knew that it was useless. He had bound her too tightly, and her world was awash in misery as he pulled her hair and turned her tear-stained face to hers,
“Keep fighting,” he said. “I like the way it feels.
“Just leave me---”
Carter slapped her face, and Julie let out a tortured cry for mercy as his tongue lapped at the sweat on her face, mingling with her tears.
“Do it, cunt,” he said. “I’ll bleed you slowly if you don’t.”
Julie winced. If she was going to die, let it come quickly. Let a knife swiftly slash her throat so that she could slip into blackness. But as she saw Carter’s brutal glare, she knew that he had something far more painful in mind. He would string her up and cut her into countless pieces. Julie would stay conscious and pray for death. A kind of freedom might still come, but the idea of the pain was too much to contemplate.
So she obeyed his order and twisted her wrists behind her back. Carter’s hand surrounded her struggling hands. The monster moaned, and she felt the return of his erection poking around her aching sex.
“Good. That’s good. Keep it up. Oh... oh, baby.”
It was a futile effort, but Julie kept trying to escape. She cried out again as he fingered the folds of her softest flesh and kissed her sweating, shaking neck. When she tried to look into his eyes, Carter flipped her to her belly and took her from behind. This was always the worst. It was more than the pain of the assault. As he thrust is hard piece in and out of her tortured rear, Julie knew that she would hurt for hours if not days after the point when he finally finished.
And Pete and Matt would never show her the kindness of a night off.
As she screamed for him to stop, her bound body could do nothing but suffer the indignity of latest invasion. No escape. Ever.
“Miss Edwards?”
Leo’s voice roused her from the memory, and she still couldn’t see Ethan as Leo blocked her view.
“It’s okay,” Leo said. “No one’s going to hurt you here.”
He laid his fingers across her shaking wrist, and she relaxed a little as his face brimmed with compassion. She had it wrong. They were all here to help her, to hear her. She just needed to be brave enough to explain what had really happened.
“I… we were taken,” Julie started.
“And how did that happen?” Leo asked.
She told the court about the diner, about Grandma and her crazy necklace and the man she labeled Short Stack, the one that she believed meant them real harm.
“And… and then Matt and Pete showed up,” she whispered.
“And you thought that they were going to help you,” Leo said.
Julie nodded and blinked back tears.
Only if they had just kept moving, if her mother had never married Greg. Why did any of it have to happen? Why was Kim dead?
“After that first night, what was it like?” Leo asked.
Carter pulled out with a laugh as he slapped her backside. The force of his hand caused her to scream again. Forgetting that it was what he wanted, she tried to break free of the rope. It was useless, but it was instinct. She had to get away.
“On your knees, slut.”
Moaning with each move, Julie struggled to assume the position. The splintering wood sliced into her knees, and Julie whimpered as she shifted from side to side in an effort to alleviate the agony. But it was no use. Every time one side of her body knew a moment of relief, the other side pained her further. She went on like this for a long time, and every time she summoned the strength to raise her head, she saw Carter laughing as he drained a bottle of beer and lit a cigarette.
“You want a smoke?” he asked.
Julie shook her head, but he moved closer and settled at her side.
“You sure?” he asked. “Really hits the spot after sex.”
But this wasn’t sex. This was rape. This was violence. Julie didn’t want a smoke. She’d prefer to find her hands free so that she could force the blazing end of the butt into his cock and hear him scream.
“Come on,” he coaxed.
Carter tried to force the cigarette between her lips, but Julie bit down on her tongue until she thought it would burst, yet she savored the small victory of denying the devil.
“Whatever.”
Her breathing slowed as he moved way, seemingly tired of the game that she refused to play. Julie resumed working her wrists around the ropes, and her mind turned to Kim. Was she suffering this much? More? Longing for her friend, she struggled violently, but the ropes would not give.
“Kimmy… help…”
The sound of her voice caught Carter’s ear, and she fell into defeat as he ground his nails into her shoulder.
“That’s the o
ther one, right?” he asked.
Julie tensed at the thought that Carter had tortured her friend in this same way or possibly done even worse. Yet she clung to the idea that he had seen her. And Julie forgot her shredded knees and her aching wrists.
“Is… is she here?” Julie croaked.
“Oh yeah. She’s on the clock, too. Not my type, but my buddy says she gets the job done.”
Pushing past the idea of what might be happening to her best friend, Julie held fast to the simple thought that Kim was alive. She had felt another body in the back of the van, but what if they had replaced her friend with some other poor girl? That thought haunted her, but now she had real proof. And as much as she hated to, she turned her face to his, her eyes full of questions.
“Tell me where she is. Tell me she’s alright. Please!”
Carter blew a trail of smoke in her eyes. As Julie coughed and struggled to breathe, she felt his cold fingers on her neck.
“To hear him tell it, she’s fantastic,” he said. “But like I said not my type.”
Tears streamed down Julie’s face as he traced the line of her lips. Somehow she held his eyes and waited for him to say something more, something that would lead her back to Kim.
“I like ‘em like you,” he whispered. “Scared like a little bitch on prom night. But who do you think you’re kidding? We both know this isn’t your first time.”
As he smashed his lips into hers, Julie squirmed and waiting. Once she was able to breathe again, Julie kept asking after her friend.
“But Kim’s here?” she said. “And she’s… she’s… is she okay?”
Even as Julie asked, she heard the stupidity in her question. If Kim was here, close by, she was far from okay. She too was in distress, probably bound and bleeding. But at least if she was alive, she---
“Nooo!”
Carter pushed the smoldering end of his cigarette to her neck, and Julie danced on her knees as she sobbed and shook violently. The pain was so intense that she barely registered Carter standing and lowering his pants.
“She’s having the time of her life,” he hissed. “Now suck, cunt.”
“I see,” Leo Barber said. “Horrible.”
Julie turned her head to see that her version of events had brought the jury to tears. Touching her scar, she watched Leo move away.
And then she saw Ethan.
His wore a mask of anguish as their eyes locked, and Julie wondered how she had ever survived long enough for him to find her. Somehow she smiled at the sight of him, and Julie nodded her head to show him that she alright. As Leo turned her over to the defense, Julie swallowed hard.
It’s almost over, almost.
A dark-skinned woman with bright red braids sauntered towards the witness box. Her face was full of faux compassion as she started to speak.
“Miss Edwards, I think that we can all agree that you endured something that no one wants to contemplate,” she started.
Julie tensed in her chair and offered a hoarse yes in response to the questions.
“And I’m sure that you had no idea that the danger was so close to home---”
“Objection,” Leo called out.
“Sustained.”
For a moment, she imagined that Greg would appear with her mother at his side. His day would come, but Leo Barber had assured Julie that she would only have to be mentioned in the context of that trial. There was more than enough evidence to prove that Greg had been doing this long before he darkened her mother’s door. Julie sat up straighter and stared into Vivian Porter’s dark eyes.
“Sorry about that,” Vivian said. “Got a little carried away.”
Vivian paced the courtroom and made eye contact with each member of the jury. As Julie looked to see if they were still firmly on her side, she made eye contact with the gray-haired lady on the end. Her eyes were warm until they were gone, and Julie looked away in search of Ethan. When their eyes met, she silently pleaded with him to help her.
“You ready?”
Julie dressed in the sanctuary in the bathroom and buttoned her high collar. Ethan rapped on the door again as she stared into the mirror. As she touched her scar, Julie wondered what it would feel like to be dead. Was it really the peaceful place in the clouds where she pictured her father and Kim looking down at her with love? Or was it just blackness? Was it rotting in a hole without hope? Or maybe it was the knowledge that the world still moved while there was nothing to do but weep into the dirt. Maybe death was an extension of the last moment of one’s life played in an infinite loop. Was Kim in a place where she their summer’s misadventure went on and on? Unconscious, unfeeling, Kim could wish for someone like Ethan to find her, but her rescue would never come. Julie thought that she saw Kim glaring over her shoulder when the door cracked open.
“Juliet?”
She shrieked as the image of Kim’s face was replaced by Ethan’s weathered stare. Julie turned to face him, and her cheeks flushed when he clasped her shoulders.
“Okay?” he asked.
Nodding, Julie settled into his chest. She wanted him to hold her again, and when his arms were slow to surround her, she desperately searched for his eyes. His face seemed pained, and the last thing she wanted was for him to suffer.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
Shrugging off her concern, he finally held her and whispered into her hair.
“I would have saved you both, Juliet. I swear to you.”
Of course he would have. If only he had had the chance. But he would help her though this. He promised.
Julie was shaken when Ethan’s head drooped to his chest. What was happening? In her darkest fantasy, she imagined him sickened by the thought of her with so many other men on multiple occasions. And she had only laid with him once. It had to hurt him. Ethan would never speak it, but she knew his thoughts. Why couldn’t she give herself to him again? Wasn’t he more desirable than Carter McCord? And he wasn’t forcing her. He loved her.
Julie started to speak to him, only to him, when the voice of Vivian Porter intruded on her thoughts.
“Miss Edwards, you never saw Kim after that first night, correct?”
Falling into the space of a new interrogation, Julie offered a yes, and Vivian tapped her nails against the witness box.
“So even though you claim to have suffered---”
“Objection,” Leo said.
“I’ll rephrase.”
Vivian stepped away from Julie and lifted her eyebrows towards the defendants. Looking at them turned Julie’s stomach and she saw Leo fidgeting in his seat and Morales glaring at Ethan.
Why wasn’t he looking at her? What had she done wrong? Julie was ready to leap from the stand and wrap her arms around his neck. She felt as if she was losing the one person that she could trust, and even though he was still so close, he seemed so far away.
Ethan?
“I am sure that you hate what happened,” Vivian continued. “Anyone would. But we heard from one Peter Bowen that he couldn’t be sure if your friend was actually dead when you were supposedly recused. Did you know that, Miss Edwards?”
She saw Leo fall back in his seat, and Morales formed a fist that found its way to her thigh.
And then she saw Ethan.
He looked sick. He looked like he wanted to be anywhere else but in her presence.
Ethan, tell them what you saw. Please. Just tell them.
“I asked you a question, Miss Edwards? Did you know that Peter Bowen never saw your friend die?”
Kim is gone.
She was back in the woods, hitting him, trying to get away from him, and not believing him. He said he was sorry and hauled her away to a tree. He had dragged her away from her captors, and then they found a cabin fitted with food and proper clothing. How had he known that it was there? Why was he so squeamish last night and up until the moment when he last squeezed her hand?
“I---”
“Truth is Miss Edwards that Peter Bowen never saw her die, my clients
took off, and the missing link is your good friend, Ethan Graff.”
“Objection!”
Julie had to hold onto her seat as she saw Leo rushing towards her. Why did he seem so scared? Ethan was her friend. He was… he was…
“Ethan saved me!” Julie screamed. “He would have saved Kim, too.”
“Oh really?” Vivian asked. “Then just answer this, Miss Edwards. Why did he leave her behind? No body, no murder.”
Vivian pushed her face closer to Julie’s, and she smirked as the witness trembled.
“Maybe he just wanted to get you alone,” Vivian said. “Maybe that was his game. After all…”
Her voice fell away, and Vivian looked to Ethan.
“You are living with him,” Vivian said. “Now what the hell is that all about?”
Vivian smirked at Ethan and stepped closer to his chair. Looking like the cat that got the cream, she cracked her knuckles, her eyes on him as she spoke to the jury.
“What do you think, ladies and gentlemen?”
Looking to the jury, Julie saw them confused by this new bit of information, and when Ethan sighed into his hands, she saw their eyes fix on his sagging form with a kind of condemnation.
No. No this isn’t right.
Julie forgot where she was and what was happening, and she stood.
“He’s not like that!” she screamed. “He loves me.”
And before Ethan could look at her again, Vivian wheeled around and pierced her eyes.
“In his own way, I’m sure. But the facts remain.”
“You don’t know---”
“But why did he leave Kimberly Beyer behind, Miss Edwards?”
He didn’t. Kim is dead. He told me…
With the weight of the universe pressing down on her shoulders, Julie stepped away from the witness box and blinked towards Ethan. Why wouldn’t he look at her? They only needed a moment alone, and he would explain everything. She would give him the chance, and….
Then their eyes met, and Ethan wilted.