by Riley Moreno
“Jules?”
“Just trust me, Kim.”
Her eyes were assailed by the pale light streaming from a darkened sky. Julie bit her lip, and Pete came into view. Just Pete. It was something. Matt was probably only a few feet away. Probably. But Julie needed to take this one step at a time, and dispatching one might give her a chance at the other.
“Enjoy the ride, ladies?” Pete asked as he stepped inside and started to crawl towards them. Julie inhaled deeply through her nose and gripped the crowbar tighter. One thing hadn’t changed since the party in the woods. Pete was still focused on her.
Good. Keep your eyes on me, boy.
“Hope it wasn’t too bumpy,” he continued with a laugh.
Julie was on the edge of the chance she needed as Pete took her by the shoulder.
Now!
Swinging with all the strength she could summon, Julie swiped the crowbar against Pete’s neck. He yelped at the impact. Without another thought, she brought the metal down again on his back. Pete hissed and cursed. Julie got to her bare feet, and even though she had no protection below her ankles, she slammed the sole of her foot into his side.
“Julie!”
She looked back at Kim and saw her hopeful for the first time since their reunion in the cabin. Julie was able to smile, but then Kim held out her shackled wrist.
Okay. The key.
Pete was moaning as Julie pressed the crowbar under his arm and began rifling through his pockets. There was a key that had obviously unlocked the van, but beyond that, nothing that she needed. Only spearmint gum, a bag of weed, and an orange lighter. Pete started to stir, and Julie whacked him again with the crowbar.
“You fucking bitch,” he groaned.
If she gave him the chance to get back on his feet, Pete would make her pay for this act of defiance. Her eyes darted about the van, and she saw the rope that that had been bound about her wrists. She reached for it hungrily and pushed Pete to stomach. He winced as she moved him, and Julie secured his hands behind his back. Wielding the crowbar again, she touched Kim’s face.
“I’ll find the key.”
“Julie---”
“I can do it.”
She took the risk of leaving Kim behind and hoped that the separation would only last a matter of seconds. As she started to climb out of the van, she had visions of encountering Matt, lighting up again or taking a leek or in some state where she could take him by the surprise. The adrenaline was coursing through her veins, and she knew that she had the courage and the power to take him out, to find the key, to free Kim, and---
Julie was still high on the idea of breaking completely free when Matt reared his smiling face. Gasping at the sight of him, Julie got ready to swing when Matt caught her by her hair.
“No, Julie!”
Kim’s voice was the loudest thing she had ever heard, but it swiftly faded into nothingness as Matt rammed her onto her back. Julie started to protest when Matt smashed her into a new state of darkness.
For the second time in the same night, Julie awoke to find herself in a strange place. Again she was chained, but instead of the cold concrete of the cabin and the disgusting mattress, she found herself in plush surroundings of mauve cushions and dim lights. She tried to move her mouth only to find it secured by a piece of duct tape. She lifted her hand to tear it off, but it would only reach so far.
As much as she wanted to, there was no way to scream.
A chill ran across her body. Now Julie was missing more than her sneakers. She was lying in only her panties and a light tank. How much more would she lose before they were done with her?
With her head still reeling from Matt’s assault, she struggled to sit up and searched for Kim. No luck. Julie was completely alone. Not knowing where she was or how far the van had travelled caused her heart to flutter wildly in her chest. But this was different from the cabin. There Julie had essentially been told that she was property for pleasure, and there she had fallen to her knees, bowed her head, and hardly struggled. But something unexpected had given her the idea that she could fight back and get away. She recalled attacking Pete and felt that she had been so close to the desired point.
No. No it was too easy.
Why would they leave the crowbar? Why chain Kim and simply bind her with a weak piece of rope? As her mind retraced the events every which way, she repeatedly arrived at the same conclusion.
It had been a set-up. It was contrived to give her hope, and maybe they even wanted her to fight. Like they needed another excuse to hurt her. Julie closed her eyes, but she still felt a single tear trickle down her face.
This was a new kind of terror far more awful, if possible, than everything she had already felt. She felt so stupid. Julie played right into their hands, and now they had a reason to do more harm. She felt sick at the thought, and she forced down the vomit that threatened to leave her stomach and curl up her throat. The gag would forbid escape, and she would choke to death.
In spite of what she knew was going to happen, Julie wanted to live to find another way out. She had to. She had to survive.
With her eyes still closed, Julie heard a key in a door, and she picked her head up to see a figure in a darkened hallway. Even before it moved and hit the hazy light, she knew that it was Pete.
Julie’s blood ran cold.
“Up for Round Two, Tiger?”
He came into closer view, and at the sight of his smirk, Julie’s head fell back. She tried to calm her breathing as she felt Pete nearing her side. He fell to the floor. She expected a smack, but Pete simply stroked her face. It terrified more than any blow, and she was unable to stop her body from flinching as his fingers made contact with her flesh.
“You’ve been a bad girl, Jules. You know what happens to bad girls, Jules?”
A part of her wanted to know. She wanted to learn exactly what lay in store. If she was going to endure it, she needed time to prepare, to absorb all possibilities so that she could send her mind somewhere, anywhere, else.
Julie shook her head slightly. Pete said nothing else. His silence was worse. It led her down a path. At its end was every awful thing she could ever envision, and her mind could do nothing but circle around apprehension.
Maybe it would have been wiser to choke and die.
Pete leaned lower and licked her cheek. Julie tried to turn her head away from his tongue, but he caught her by the chin. His hand became a vise around her face. He lingered in her eyes for a few minutes and blew a stream of hot air into her eyes. Julie tried to blink it away, but Pete’s other hand suddenly pulled on the skin of her brow. She couldn’t move her head or her eyes. There was the beginning of a bruise on his neck. She wasn’t sorry that she hurt him, but she was devastated by the fact that it was all she had been able to do.
The applied pressure brought forth more tears, and Pete finally made a sound.
He laughed.
With a rough push, Pete released Julie’s head. She twisted it away from Pete’s snickering grin, and she heard a jangling along with the rustling of fabric. She could feel the shackle leaving her wrist. Even though she was now free of her chains, even though the door was still open, Julie didn’t dare break into another run. It would come later. It had to. Once she ascertained where she was being held, once she understood the layout, then, only then…
She prayed for the chance. But first, she knew she was going to pay for her crimes.
Pete lifted her up. Out of a new instinct, she placed her hands behind her back. This time she expected handcuffs, not rope. Pete reached behind one of the cushions, and Julie heard the sound of metal. But instead of her hands, a cold collar was placed around her neck. Julie tried to shake it off, but she was too slow to stop the latch from clanging shut. Her eyes followed the space just above her chest, and she saw a length of chain in Pete’s hand. With a quick tug, he dragged Julie towards another room.
The hallway was darker than she had suspected. She tried to comprehend her surroundings, but Pete’
s pull was so fast and so forceful that she could do little more than register one closed door after another. Julie stumbled behind Pete, and she fell to her knees when they stopped before one of the doors. He turned another key in another lock and pulled Julie up again. Then he pushed her into the room.
Kim.
She was tied down to a large bed. Matt sat in a corner, smoking and counting cash. Julie focused on him for barely a second. As much as she wanted to look away, her entire world was now Kim’s current fate.
There were two men, older than her captors. One was completely naked, straddling Kim, grinding his body into hers as Kim screamed out no and writhed in a futile effort to just get away. His friend wore a crisp linen shirt and a blue necktie. Below the waist, he was stripped, and he started driving his dick into Kim’s unwilling mouth. She choked and sputtered at the new assault. Then the girls’ eyes met. Kim looked scared, but Julie thought she also caught a slight trace of anger at Julie’s failure to make good on the promise of freedom.
Julie lowered her eyes in a sign of sorrowful apology. If only she had been calmer, played it smarter. She should have tried to break free once they were out of the van. She should have said no to the boys at the diner.
Now, it was too late for everything.
As the room was spinning, Pete’s arm curled around her waist.
“They wanted an appetizer, Jules. But get ready. You’re the main course.”
It was specific. It was all too real. She wanted to block it out. She wanted reach for the moment when the violation would come to an end. Where was it? She needed to find it, needed to hold onto it with all the strength she had left.
This was going to be the worst moment of hers or any life. Julie felt weak in the knees. The fear, the fatigue, the unfairness of it all swirled together. Julie tried to speak through her gag, tried to call for help, as she fell forward into a faint.
6
Most people set alarms to help them wake up. Were it not for a buzz or a bell, a signal that they tapped over and over again in the hope of five more minutes, they slept until the body was fully rested. Once that point was reached, their eyes slowly opened, but they still lingered in bed for several moments more until the need to answer nature or calm a rumbling stomach or start hacking away at a list of errands forced the covers from their bodies. Then, and only then, did their bare feet hit the hardwood floor just beyond their beds.
Ethan Graff was not one of these people.
He was always tired. Who wouldn’t be after eight hours plus, not counting the subway back and forth? When he finally reached his stop, he picked up a sandwich or a pizza or something else ready-made, and climbed the stairs of his brownstone. He’d eat, watch some TV, read if he felt highly motivated, shower, then hit the sack.
And then he’d lie in darkness staring up at the ceiling.
He tried everything. Low music, the television in his bedroom set at a low hum, half a bottle of Nyquil, an entire bottle of wine. The last two usually allowed him to drift off for a few hours, but he was always roused from his slumber, and it was back to the shadows of a gloomy room. When that happened, he’d pop in ear buds or turn the set up higher, but not so loud as to infuriate the yuppies and their baby just one floor up. Anything to drown out the sounds he most wanted to avoid, the sounds in his head. And he kept his eyes open. Closing them only served to link images to the recalled sounds, and it was more restful to just stare at the plaster overhead. His eyes usually drifted to the window, and he watched the black night start to pale. When he felt it was morning enough to chalk up his insomnia to just being an early riser, or when the baby upstairs started crying, he fell on either excuse and started his day.
He always showered a second time. There was no need for it. It wasn’t as if he tossed and turned until his sheets were covered in sweat. Still, there was something in the night that made him feel dirty, so he stood under the hot water and tried to scrub whatever it was away. He never felt that he fully succeeded.
After the shower, he donned a robe, and made a pot of coffee. Ethan desperately needed the sleep that he wasn’t getting, and he required an entire pot of caffeine to make it to noon. Cup after cup followed throughout the rest of the day. His doctor told him to watch it. His blood pressure was dangerously high, and it was constantly inching closer to the need for medication so that his body could return to a level nearer to normal. Ethan never heeded the warning. So what if the vice led him to an early grave?
He kept pouring as he dressed and made sure that his files were in still in his briefcase. It wasn’t like anyone had stolen them during the night…
Ethan barely slept; he would have heard it.
When the pot was empty, he brushed his teeth and left his apartment. He double-checked the deadbolt several times before finally setting out for the start of his day.
The baby, a girl called Mason, wailed from above, and Ethan sighed. He started down his flight and was nearly at the front door when the he heard a chain shifting. As he crooked his eye, the faux crystal knob turned, and Ethan was met with his downstairs neighbor.
Nick.
He was a player past his prime who’d settled in a locale that he constantly referred to as slumming it, but with two alimony payments and three children to support from a distance, he had to make do. Ethan had learned all of this after accepting his neighbor’s offer to go a brew at the bar two blocks over. It had seemed a harmless invitation until Nick wouldn’t stop going on and on about the bitches that had his balls in a vise, and when he capped his venom laced monologue off with vomit in Ethan’s lap, the party was over. He was tempted to leave the then new neighbor hacking up his liquid dinner on the pub’s dirty floor, but then he thought better of it and actually helped the guy home. But from that night on, Ethan tried to keep his distance. It was far from an impossible task as Nick rarely spent his nights in his own bed. Wife Number Three, whoever she was, was probably just a few drinks away.
“Hey, buddy,” Nick said. Even several feet away, Ethan could smell the booze on his breath.
“Nick,” Ethan said simply as he started for the door again.
“What’s up?”
Great. So they were going to have a conversation.
“Nothing much,” Ethan said. “You?” he asked, trying to be polite.
Nick laughed through his smirk.
“Not nothing. You see the new girl two doors down? The blonde with the…”
He cupped his hands over his chest. To his credit, or hers, Nick didn’t have to describe the blonde with the any further for Ethan to know just who he was talking about.
“Oh yeah?” Ethan said, even though he didn’t need or want a more-detailed picture of the previous night’s events.
“Yeah, man. And let me tell you. She is a demon in the---”
“Sounds great, Nick. You’ll have to tell me all about it sometime.” He made a show of glancing down at his watch. “I’m already running late. Sorry.”
He really didn’t want to hear any more.
“Cool, man,” Nick said as Ethan stepped outside the building. “Catch you later I guess.”
Ethan could never be sure if Nick was being sarcastic or if he was concealing some kind of hurt or if he was just a moron. Maybe it was a little from columns A, B, and C, but Ethan kept walking. He couldn’t stand the guy.
He made his way underground and settled into a subway car. The hour was early, but the train was already filled with people going to or from somewhere. Ethan was able to grab a seat in the far corner, and he took pleasure in it. A seat like this would make for an easy escape when he finally reached his stop.
Ethan scanned his phone for his schedule. Today would be on the lighter side. No staff meetings, only one appointment. Ethan liked days like this from time to time. A steady diet of the uneventful would probably drive him insane. Just more time with his thoughts when he had enough of that on account of his sleepless nights. But once in a while, he welcomed a reprieve.
He lifted a f
ile from his briefcase and flipped it open. The single man of today’s hour was Carter McCord. It was a pompous name befitting the heir to a construction empire. The kid was barely twenty-five, and he had amassed, or rather been born into, more money than Ethan could ever dream of spending. He had his usual moment of resentment, but it quickly passed. Not because he didn’t care. A part of him did. Had to. He was, after all, only human. Pathetically human. But that still meant that any fortune, even Carter McCord’s, served no real purpose in the grand scheme of everything. Ethan returned the file to his bag and leaned back in his seat.
The subway car jolted to a stop, and Ethan was tossed forward. The jostling caused his eyes to meet a young girl wearing too much makeup. Her hair was blonde with purple streaks, and her fishnets were torn. He wondered if that was intentional, or if she had met with someone rough on what had obviously been a night of partying. Ethan pegged her as no older than sixteen, but he might be off by as many as five years. It was so hard to judge who and what anyone really was.
The purplish blonde sensed his stare, and she locked eyes with Ethan. He stayed in her gaze, dumbly, for a few seconds. When Ethan tried to erase the awkwardness with what he hoped was a kind smile, the girl simply stuck her tongue out at him. With a laugh, she turned her attention to the friend at her side. Her hair was brown with neon blue splotches. Both girls giggled, and the blonde pointed in Ethan’s direction as she murmured what had to be an insult under her breath. Ethan did his best to ignore them until they got off at the next stop.
He finally emerged into the day and walked the last two blocks to his office building. It was hardly a monument in the spirit of unlimited sky. It was five stories, lawyer on one, dentist on two, floors four and five were shared by an up and coming advertising firm that would fly the coup upon landing an account that would allow for the rental of a bigger space.
Ethan worked right smack dab in the middle of the action. He started with Arcadia right out of a state school as an intern. His superiors took to him and moved him up the ranks even as they initially entertained fears that he would take all that he had learned when larger operations came to call. The courting they predicted materialized; Ethan’s disloyalty did not. Naturally they took it as a sign that he was a man to be trusted implicitly, and they saw that he nurtured the most promising accounts on board and even let him continue to tend to a few once the client was in it for the long haul. What they didn’t realize, what no one ever saw, was the truth behind his apparent fidelity. Ethan stayed at Arcadia because it became habit and therefore safe. He had no desire to venture into waters that might swallow him whole. That’s what happened when the current grew too jagged.