by Lee Kerr
*****
He closes the door and that’s enough to make her shudder. Every small noise and every subtle movement feel like an earthquake to Lucy’s crumbling mind. She doesn’t know how she will do this, doesn’t know if she really can. She imagines him coming closer as she uses everything she has, desperately trying to play dead, to not move, to make sure he suspects nothing. Surprise is all she has got and it can only help her the once.
She waits for that first touch. It will be a test for the both of them – can she really pretend to still be asleep, and can she make no move and no sound, even though she wants to explode with a mixture of pure fear and absolute rage?
She knew it was coming but his one simple stroke still takes her by surprise, distracting her whilst she plots and schemes. Her foot instantly moves, an involuntary twitch that she didn’t see coming and could never have stopped. It was such a simple test; such a clever way to check if his prisoner was actually awake.
She immediately feels his tight grip around one of her ankles as she imagines him looking through those infra-red goggles, inspecting every part of her body. She knows it’s over, that she has lost the only thing that could have helped her win – the element of surprise. She doesn’t feel any more touching; she knows he’s not on the table and that’s where she needs him to be. Close, but not too close. He’s too in control of the situation, too balanced – both of his feet are still firmly on the floor.
Lucy doesn’t know what to do and cannot believe that her one chance has come to an end. She waits for his questions, his shouting and his swift punishment. And as she waits and wonders, that is when the thought comes to her, as she gently moves her head and lets out a short groan. Her only hope is that he will think she is rousing from a peaceful slumber and that it will be enough to appease him, enough to entice him to do what he always does, what he plans to do to her every night until fate, or some luck on Lucy’s part, forces them apart.
He doesn’t appear to move, his stillness giving nothing away as she tries to remain calm. She lies still, as if in her dream state she is far away from him. The agonising seconds tick by. She waits for his hands to grasp her throat, a punch to her ribs, or worse – a needle entering her veins and returning her to the state she should have been in. She is just moments away from sheer panic and doesn't know how to stop it.
‘The medication grows on you, dearest,’ he says, as she feels him climb onto the table. ‘We will have to increase your dose from tomorrow.’ She feels his sudden warmth against her face, his moist tongue running up her cheek, his rancid breath penetrating her nostrils. ‘We can’t have you joining the party before it gets properly started.’
She says nothing, her eyes firmly closed as she lets out another short moan. It’s all she can do to breathe in and out properly, enabling fresh air travel into her lungs. He moves away from her face, his full weight resting on her stomach as she struggles to hold her breath. This is what happens when she sleeps; her limp body and absent mind somehow cope with it, but when she is awake she has the experience of this overwhelming pain without any of the anaesthetising effects she desperately needs. She moans again, which is the only way she can get control of her body, as she wonders if he has spotted something very different to every other night in this week of hell.
He moves further down her body, his pelvis lined up with hers. Lucy knows what is coming next but she still feels relieved when his crushing weight is removed from her chest. It is clear that he suspects nothing, remaining focused on what he wants. She feels the rough fabric of his clothes against her soft skin as his body grinds against hers.
She wants to scream; she's desperate to push him off, but instead, she just talks to the hero inside her. Be calm and be ready, that brave voice inside her says. It won’t be long now, although she really can’t be sure how long all of this will take.
Her patience starts to pay off: she senses him taking off his clothes, layer by layer, scraping his hairy stomach against her at every opportunity he gets. The moment must be coming but she can’t feel it, wants to feel it, wants all of this to be over.
He’s naked now; she can feel their skin touching as he kisses her all over and shuffles around. It’s so uncoordinated and not at all what she expected. The silence seems to have taken her scary captor and replaced him with this shaking, shell of a man.
She can still feel nothing where she thought it would be worst. He is still grinding on top of her but nothing is growing and the darkness now makes more sense to her. His ample weight, horrid features and feeble girth of that thing below now reveal him for what he is. Behind every man is a little boy and Lucy sees this one. She wants to leap up, to grab him and tell him he’s less than half the man her Harvey is, but she stays still, not wanting to provoke him, not dare reveal her fully awakened state.
‘You are losing your appeal, dearest,’ he says, as he huffs. ‘You’re becoming very ugly to me. Very ugly indeed.’ She feels him moving, ready to climb down and give up at a time when she desperately needs him to stay and continue the torment. ‘We need to start this over again because this is all wrong.’ She feels a slap to her face. ‘All of this is because of you! If you were asleep, then it would all be fine, but you are not, are you?’
She wants to scream, wants to shout and plead for her life, but instead she lets out some sort of whining noise. She takes all that anger, frustration and fear and channels them into a long and playful groan. Time is against her and Lucy cannot afford to sleep, cannot afford to miss this moment because she knows she will not get another.
She tenses her body against the straps as much as she can, teasing with whatever she has left, hoping that he will somehow find the energy to carry on. She keeps her eyes closed, her head moving as she fakes a stirring, a longing for impulsive love-making; the kind that comes from nowhere and consumes a couple for a short time in the middle of the night before they fall back to sleep in each other’s arms.
She can sense that he is still watching her; he hasn’t moved since she faked this new-found interest in him, this desire for him to touch her, to tease her and to do what he came here to do. She imagines him looking through those goggles, his senses torn between trying to understand her sleepy motives against believing any genuine desires his prisoner could ever harbour for him.
He finally runs a hand up her stomach until he reaches her breasts, and as he takes a firm yet clumsy hold she lets out a deliberate gasp. She pushes her body upwards, subtly begging him to follow through on his primal urges. He lets out a moan of his own as he runs both sets of fingers down her body and then pushes two of them inside her. He doesn’t tease, doesn’t offer any love, just brutally takes what he wants. His sharp nails tear into yesterday’s still-fresh wounds and Lucy knows all she can do now is beg.
‘Don’t stop,’ she says, her eyes open, although she can’t see anything.
‘You’re fully awake,’ he says, his deep voice sounding shocked.
Lucy knows how dangerous it is to change his rules but she doesn’t stop, doesn’t fear him anymore. ‘Take me now,’ she begs, her body moving up and down as much as she can without giving her game away.
He lets out a long growl, his manhood stabbing where his hands have just been. His thighs are pinned on top of hers, and he tuts and moans as he tries to find the right angle to get in. Whilst he is doing this, Lucy takes her chance to get ready, her hands slipping out of the fake knots tied around her wrists. She pulls back, her legs stretching against the restraints, knowing she needs to make him work a bit more, just to be sure his focus is on this moment and on this most evil of tasks.
‘Stay still!’ he shouts and smacks her across her face. She feels the pain and yet somehow thinks she is the one who has gone too far, pushed him over the edge of what he will tolerate. Her defeated mind anticipates the next slap and the ten more that will follow it.
When it doesn’t come she feels relieved. Both of his hands brush against her inner thigh as he tries to push it in. She imagines
the pressure mounting with every moment that goes by, and her lack of encouragement could cause a quick shrinking. More than anything, she knows that if he loses his erection she loses this night.
She knows that this is her time – it has to be – and while he is focusing both his hands towards the centre of their embrace, his body the most unbalanced it will ever be, she shifts all her energy and any power she has left to her stomach. She doesn’t shout, doesn’t scream, as she silently pulls herself up. At first it feels like the most painful pull-up she has ever done, with every part of her body aching at this brutal heaving. But with every ounce of energy she has left she pushes herself all the way up, and as she starts to move she summons all this power that’s being carried through her arms and shoulders by nothing but pure determination, because she will not remain her, at his mercy, for a moment longer.
She collides with his body in exactly the place that she wanted to; the palms of her hands dig into his chest and push into him with everything she has. With his body off-balance and his mind occupied, the force of her push makes him fall backwards and off the table, his initial shouting soon replaced by welcome silence.
Lucy remains sitting upright, her heart pounding and her head turning and jerking as she tries to listen for what she cannot see. She waits for a moment, wondering when he will grab hold of her neck and start to strangle her, or batter her head with his angry fists until she is no longer a problem.
When nothing happens she finally finds the courage to untie her ankle restraints, and then slowly lowers herself off the table, her foot hurting the moment the open wound touches the floor. She lets out a whimper but continues to limp forward slowly, her arms held out as she reaches for something ahead of her. She takes a couple of small steps but can’t feel anything yet. She thinks that maybe her plan didn’t work and that he is silently watching her from the other side of the room, getting a kick from her obvious failure, planning her next punishment.
She lets out another moan when she finally touches something. She hears him cry out in pain, calling her a bitch and a whore; he starts graphically describing what he will do to her but is clearly unable to follow through with any of these threats. Lucy takes this as a good sign and fumbles around until she finds what she is looking for.
Once she has taken the goggles from him and put them on she finally lets herself breathe again. After taking a moment to adjust, she is able to see the dark green image before her. His shouting is combined with snarling and teeth gnashing; his face is half-hidden by an overgrown beard; the whites of his eyes move frantically around. He has been plunged into a dark world and is trying to see. Trying to move, he cries out in pain; the wooden stake that passed through his back and out through his chest still has him pinned to the wall.
Lucy watches for a moment, seeing the result of the agonising hours of preparation that has turned into barely a fraction of the justice she deserves. She knows that he cannot move, that his body is impaled on the floorboard she battled to get up and placed delicately where she hoped he could be pushed into it. She thinks of taking her time now, of slapping, beating and strangling him. She even thinks about poking both of his eyes out, leaving him in the permanent state of darkness that he so freely exposed her to.
Her thoughts quickly turn to Harvey, to the other women and maybe men, all of them needing to escape this place where at least one more captor is still here. She quickly ties his ankles and wrists together and gags him so he cannot scream, before standing back and taking one final look. His head is already bobbing up and down, the loss of blood causing him to drift away. She smacks him, just the once, so that she sees him come back to life.
She moves closer, putting her mouth next to his right ear. ‘You are not a man – you never have been – and you will die in this darkness. This secret slice of life, as you call it, will be your tomb, and I will be free to live my life away from you and this hell-hole.’
She quickly heads for the door, knowing she should have said something even worse, wishing she had the guts to push her thumbs into his eye sockets and hear him scream through the dirty rag she has stuffed deep into his mouth. Instead of any of that she thinks about Harvey, about him looking for her, and how she will not change who she is, will not become like them.
And so, thinking only of those who really matter and how she can escape, she opens the door and feels the welcome light of freedom flood through her goggles, an immediate reminder that the darkness is no longer her home.
*****
After I had faced down the barrel of my gun nothing else seemed to scare me. I wasn’t able to end it, not without knowing what had happened to her, and so I moved back down through the house in some sort of trance. The weapon was hung by my side; I didn’t point it at anything the whole time. I didn’t seem to care if I made it out alive, or if I suddenly found Carlos or Marius hiding around the next corner. As it happens I made it out unharmed, yet clueless about where they are.
I walk around the house and find Terry and the other two women on the front lawn. The other two are starting to wake up; they are still disorientated but at least able to stand. They remain huddled together, their few clothes barely covering them. I end up stopping Terry from breaking into Marius’s car: she seems to have found her balls from before I met her, before all this happened. ‘You shouldn’t break into a police car,’ I say, risking starting some big discussion about why there would be a car here without any policeman. I tell her not to think about that now, not wanting to risk telling her about who her jailors really were.
There’s a sudden bang in the distance which makes us all jump onto the ground. I look up to see several flashes, followed by more loud bangs, as the skyline of many miles lights up with its own special pattern of destruction. I watch as buildings I have often visited now burn and collapse, and I city I have called home all my life, slowly falls to ruins as the army launches things at an enemy I don’t even dare to imagine. I follow the lights and picture the explosions as realise that they are not too far away – maybe only a mile in the distance.
‘What was that?’ Terry asks, a fearful look returning to her eyes. It’s the same look she had when I found her, when I shook her awake; she naturally thought I was one of the bad guys, back for another round. ‘We need to get out of here,’ she says.
I nod but I don’t really agree. I have to find Lucy; have to figure out what is happening. I was so preoccupied with getting into the house that now that I have searched it I don’t know what to do next. I look at these three women; they are people I have saved from certain death, yet I couldn’t feel more confused and angry. I sit down on the lawn and look around the neighbourhood, knowing there has to be something I’m missing.
‘Did you hear me?’ Terry says, shaking my arm. ‘We need to leave.’
I don’t answer her, looking only at the house straight ahead – the house that’s opposite and the one that Lucy identified in the last few moments of her call. I grab my notebook out of my bag and flick through the pages, all the time trying to block out Terry’s very fair demands.
She is still shaking me when one of the other women starts to cry. ‘Please, we have been through enough, you have to get us out of here!’
I say nothing, but reach for my car keys and hand them to Terry. I look into her eyes, knowing it is the only freedom I can offer her. ‘I have to get my girlfriend.’
Terry shakes her head, tears forming in the giant craters where her eyes once shone, now looking only hopeless and defeated. ‘There were other girls, you know that, right?’
‘She’s not dead.’
‘But she’s not in the house, either.’
I push my keys into her palms. ‘My car is down the street,’ I say, absently indicating with my head where they will find it. ‘I know you want to get far away but please wait for us because I promise we will be coming. Wait at the corner of Moorland Avenue.’
‘Thank you,’ Terry says, nodding repeatedly as she tries her best to assure me that they
will wait. ‘But how long should we give you? The helicopters are getting closer.’
‘Give me thirty minutes. It’s all I will need.’
She nods and starts to motion the other two women to get up, her protective instincts taking over. ‘I don’t know what else you can do,’ she says.
‘I do,’ I say, looking at Number 12. ‘I know exactly what I’m going to do because I know Lucy is in that house.’
We both look at the house over the road; all the lights are off and the front door and bottom windows are boarded up, just as they were last time I was on this road.
‘I don’t understand,’ Terry says, although I’m not sure she really wants me to explain.
‘Every time I have been to this road over the last few days that house has been empty and all the lights have been off. The owners had apparently abandoned it weeks ago.’
Terry quickly nods. ‘It looks abandoned.’
I nod back, showing her a page in my notebook. ‘If it’s abandoned then why are the upstairs curtains, which were open yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that, now closed?’
Terry smiles, showing the fight that is still left in her, even though her brown mouth is full of the stains and troubles of such a tormenting week. ‘Two houses, even more trapped women. But you can’t go in there alone,’ she says, and then holds out the car keys, freely giving them back to me.
I nod, feeling relieved, immediately thankful for the help. ‘Get these two into my car and then meet me in the basement of this house.’
‘This one?’ she says and frowns, as she looks back at Carlos’s house. ‘But it’s empty.’
I nod, looking at the road. ‘It’s also our way in, because I think he built a tunnel between the two houses. Maybe they planned to use both or maybe one of them is the decoy, but I know Lucy is trapped in Number 12.’
‘We’re helping too,’ one of the other women says.