by Riley Moreno
“How… how did you get here in the first place?”
Julie’s voice startled Ethan out of his reverie of vengeance. So she wanted details. Ethan hesitated for a second, but then he resolved to be honest. Lies had brought her to this place, lies had brought him here, but the truth would see them out the other side.
“I, uh… I came with… with them.”
Now she stopped.
“What?”
She froze where she stood, and her hand flew to her mouth.
“Wait. So… so you’re… you know them?”
Shit! Including himself with the boy wonder, the publishing magnate, and their collective perversion did nothing to sway her closer to his side. Her eyes revealed the opposite effect, and Ethan could see her racing through the last hour of her life.
“So you knew what this was?”
Ethan shook his head and stepped towards her. With a small cry, Julie backed away. Raising his hands, Ethan desperately shook his head and tried to plead his case.
“No. No, I told you I didn’t. I just… look. It was a business thing.”
“Business? So what? Did you all go in on this together?”
“No. Absolutely not. I… Carter came to me for some advice. Next thing I know I’m having dinner with all of them. Then they’re inviting me here.”
“What sort of advice?”
She kept stepping into the darkness as she spoke.
“He wanted to diversify…”
Ethan’s voice trailed off. That bit of truth had no bearing on the present moment.
“And… and as like a thank you, he asked me to dinner, and then… I don’t know. There was drinking and laughing, and I guess… I guess they just assumed that I’d be into this, and---”
“Why would they assume that?”
Because Ethan wanted to be a man in their eyes, but he was slowing becoming one in a long line of the lowest form of filth in hers.
“I… I don’t know.”
Standing her ground, Julie ripped off his shirt and stood in nothing but his oversized shoes.
“Julie, what are you---?”
He expected her to run as he moved closer, but she fell into his trembling arms even as she cringed. Ethan didn’t know whether to hold her or push her away.
“I get it.”
Julie’s voice was tinged with rage as she went limp against him.
“So this really is your thing. Make me trust you. Make me think it’s over. And then what?”
“I… I…”
“Then they come back and… and maybe you do watch. And you laugh. And… Kim’s not dead. She can’t be dead. It’s a lie.”
Now his hands clasped her arms, and she started to struggle.
“You’re wrong. I swear I just want to help you.”
Horrible laughter poured into his ears as he kept her close.
“Help me back to them. Then what? Less food. More of them beating me up. Then your friends take a turn?”
He was losing her to fears that were understandable but unfounded. But of course she’d believe the worst of him when no one had shown her anything but total brutality for months. The want to hold her was trumped by the need to bring her back around. Ethan released her. The sudden shift in his position was something she didn’t expect, and she fell to the ground. Standing over her, he watched her cry. Why was this happening to her? What was her life before she was taken? She’d never answer those questions now, but Ethan had his own truths to tell.
Sitting down in the dirt, he ran his hands across his face and sighed into the sky.
“I… I know… I know how you feel.”
Julie looked up. She grabbed a handful of earth and flung it in his face. Ethan let the soil hit his shoulder and slip down his arm.
“What do you know?”
“I… I saw someone hurt once. Hurt… hurt like you. And I… I think about it all the time. I don’t sleep. That’s how much it still kills me.”
She scoffed, but images of hands groping skin and eyes that ignored pleas seemed as real as they had been on the night that kept him up, and his face darkened as he kept talking.
“It’s the truth, Julie.”
Moving towards her, Julie started, but he was quick enough to touch her wrist. He knew she didn’t want to feel him. The person who kept him awake also didn’t want to know hands ever again. But she never got the chance to move past the worst moment in her life, and Ethan would be damned if he didn’t give Julie a different ending.
“I don’t know where we are or if I can get you home. But I swear on what happened to you and… and what happened to her that we’re not just going to wait for them to come back.”
Julie continued to regard him with the same distrust that seemed appropriate because of every man she’d been forced to know. He released her wrist and hung his head as he waited for her reply.
Nothing.
Ethan’s eyes returned to hers.
“I… I will not hurt you. I… I couldn’t. But them…?”
“They will,” she whispered.
Sighing, Ethan kept his gaze in hers.
“You heard them. And I… I won’t. I… need you to just try to believe in me. Please.”
Julie’s eyes went blank, and she turned her head to the trees. What was she looking for? Did she still believe that Matt and Pete would reappear at any second to remove his shoes and rape her in the open night? While he couldn’t blame her for the thought, he was distressed to think that his presence was adding to her agony.
When she looked at him again, there was no hope. But he thought he saw an acceptance of some of his story.
“Kim’s dead?”
Her question had latched onto the worst part of his truth. Ethan nodded and slowly rose to his feet. He held out his hand. Without words, he implored her to trust him enough to get her away from this. Naked, Julie inched up. He could see her shaking, and he retrieved his shirt and folded it around her body again. When he started to press the buttons through the holes, she pushed him back.
“I can do it,” she said.
He watched her close the shirt. Ethan waited for her to get the buttons in place, and then Julie started forward again. It took him a second to catch up, but then they were side by side. Relief washed over him as she kept moving. She was no longer crumpled in the earth and searching for escape. And she believed in something. It probably wasn’t him. Her body was violated, her friend was dead, but something gave Julie the strength to carry on. He walked with her in silence, and they turned a corner into a clearing.
Julie stopped and looked to Ethan. He expected her eyes full of accusations, but there was only a quiet pleading.
“Kim’s dead.”
This time it wasn’t a question. Ethan had started this, and now she wanted to know more.
“Yes. There… there was blood. They talked about how to get rid of her.”
“So they what? They buried her? Out here?”
A small sad place among the trees wasn’t fitting for anyone. Ethan had never known Kim in any state but that of a victim, but Julie’s voice changed when she spoke of her. This was her friend. This was someone that she had known and loved prior to Matt and Pete and all the rest. Julie seemed to believe him. She was accepting the fact that Kim was gone. But maybe talking about who she had been would fortify her for the long walk ahead.
“You knew her… knew her a long time?”
Julie clenched his shirt to her body as she spoke.
“Like forever. We… we wanted to see the world. It was just like a vacation, you know. It… it wasn’t supposed to be like this.”
Again his mind slipped back to the idea of what this meant. People, men, had hurt her and left her with tears and broken skin. He would have given anything for it never to have happened, but since it did, he felt to know all of it.
“Tell me, Julie.”
Walking, her hands grazed a sloping branch as she started to slip into a memory.
And then she told him
the stories.
In her words, he learned of a road trip that went wrong. The plan to stop at an undetermined point led to a diner with a scary man and his curly head. Ethan started to speak, to reveal something that he had seen, but he fell back on the possibility of coincidence and let her keep going.
“And there was a lady. An old lady with like charms around her neck. I actually thought that she was who we needed to get back to.”
Now there was no denying it. Ethan and the others had lunched at the same place of her last meal, and Ethan moved in front of her and started to spill.
”They took me there, too.”
He expected her to gasp, but Julie’s gaze just drifted to the ground.
“Another coincidence?”
So she only trusted him as far as she could throw him. Given his proximity and the small distance between them, the length was not far, but Ethan believed that he had gained enough ground to keep her talking.
“Maybe. It… it doesn’t matter now. Just keep talking, Julie.”
He risked her running and walked away from her. As he hoped, Julie stayed at his side, and continued to speak.
“What do you want to know?”
“All of it. What… how did they hurt you?”
As her eyes returned to his, Ethan expected more accusations, and he vowed to do all that was still in his power to drive them away. If she ran again, he’d chase until he caught her. In his mind, it would mean safety. For her body, it would be awful. But Ethan would do what was required to keep her near in the hope that he could convince her that he was someone she could trust.
Julie turned her back, and she started touching her hair. He thought she was trying to remember a moment when hands ran through it with care, but then she began to tear at the strands, and soon she was ripping locks from her scalp. Julie cried out at each self-injury, and Ethan moved to stop her attack. She started to push him away but soon just sank into his arms and sobbed as the memory he needed was playing out in real time before her mind’s eye.
“I… I never did it. I was waiting. I was waiting for someone special. He… he wasn’t special,” she spat.
He gently rubbed her arms as she kept telling the story.
“I was tied down. I couldn’t get away.
Ethan caught her meaning. She was unsoiled before these beasts brought her into their lair, and she was forced into something that she wasn’t ready for, especially under the roughest of circumstances. Ethan knew the cries. He could hear the sobs. They were a futile grab for mercy against those who didn’t care if she was unwilling. Nothing was worse. It was supposed to be a consensual act. Anything outside of those lines was wrong, and Ethan touched her hair. Julie spun away from him.
“And… and then Pete came back…”
Ethan waited for the part of the story that told of Pete taking advantage of his prisoner. He saw Pete taking his turn after Julie was already ruined. He probably laughed as he forced her to relive recent anguish in the space of only a few seconds. But Julie’s description of her next assailant described a man who could only be Carter McCord.
“He had hazel eyes. He made me look at him. He said he’d remember me on his wedding night.”
Ethan shouldn’t be stunned, but he was. Was Melissa Troxel somehow complicit in this? Was it a role play that she’d shared but never dared to execute, and was Carter meant to put the plan into action in a sick effort to enhance their lovemaking?
“He said he’d be back because….”
Julie’s voice trailed off, but Ethan needed to know all of it as he tried to hold her.
“Why, Julie? Why was he coming back?”
Her face met his eyes, and Julie smirked.
“Because he said I’d be a better lay the second time around.”
Maybe it had nothing to do with Melissa. This was just Carter playing around with Geoffrey’s aid. How had they come to the realization that they were such kindred spirits? Geoffrey Troxel was far too careful as to just take a guess. He wasn’t Carter. So he had to have known Carter in some other life. How could he commit his only daughter to a man with these low intentions? Stupid question. They were also his intentions. Ethan knew that they were abhorrent birds of the most horrible feather. But he still wanted to know more.
“And… and Carter?”
Julie’s eyes went blank at the mention of his name.
“Carter? He did me. He made me bleed. More. He said he liked me broken in. He wasn’t the one they were talking about.”
So who was the one? Who was the man who had stolen something from her that she could never reclaim? Ethan knew that Matt and Pete still lurked in the woods. He knew that Carter and Geoffrey were probably heading back to the city to perfect their cover story. But suddenly Ethan didn’t care. He wanted the man who had ripped Julie away from the place that she counted on and dropped her in a land where nothing made sense.
“Julie? Who was your first?”
She recoiled at the memory, and she twisted her head from side to side. Although she knew he didn’t want it, Ethan pulled her close.
“Who was he?”
Julie screamed out and formed fists that moved up Ethan’s frame, and they crashed into his face. Ethan let go and backed away from her even as he expected her to run. But Julie didn’t flee. Ethan just looked at her and waited for the truth.
It came.
“He was an unfeeling asshole who wrecked me. And you’d think… you’d think that would be enough. But then it keeps happening. It’s every night. It’s always supposed to be special. They whisper it. And then they fuck me. I… I just want to go home.”
Julie looked to Ethan with a pleading that he could comprehend.
“Please. Please let me go home.”
She didn’t have to ask again.
Ethan didn’t touch her, but he pointed into the dark and spoke as he stood.
“It’s going to happen, Julie. I won’t let them touch you again.”
13
Julie was broken, but she kept going. The stranger, Ethan, was one of them. He’d only caught a case of cold feet before he decided it might be more fun to make like a white knight. She still believed that it was a piece of a plan that she wanted no part of. but at least his voice was kind. It held tones that she had forgotten for so long. She didn’t, she couldn’t really trust him, but Ethan kept trying to plead his case. She looked at him as they walked through the shadows.
Men, most men, were now nothing more than an idea that she couldn’t bear. In her previous life, the life before the rapes, someone like Ethan would have seemed interesting. He was older, weary in many ways, but Julie would have wanted to hold him and assure him that everything was alright, and she’d know that he’d be gentle. Maybe that’s why the boys from the dorms held no appeal .
None of that mattered anymore, and Julie wondered if it ever had.
She trudged on in his shoes, and she looked down at his feet. If the pebbles and the twigs were causing him any harm, he didn’t reveal it. Not with his voice. Not when she watched his face focused on the destination he was unsure even existed. Her mind went back to Kim. Julie tried to remember her in her bedroom or laughing as they binged on frozen peanut butter cups in between cramming for an exam or when they set off on this stupid trip with everything ahead of them. But the only image that floated before her eyes was Kim, bound to a bed, being taken from every side as she struggled and cried, as her big blue eyes pleaded for the mercy that was nowhere to be found. That was the last time she’d actually seen her best friend. After that, after each endless night, the blindfold covered her eyes, and she was thrown into the back of the van from which she had attempted the futile escape. Julie could never see, but she could hear someone else whimpering into a gag and trying to shake off a chain. She might have never known that it even was Kim if Pete’s cruel voice hadn’t teased her with the fact that they were so close and yet so far apart, so far from home.
“Having fun, girls? Is your road trip everything you hope
d for?”
And then the door would slam shut, and the motor would start to roar. Julie’s restraints kept her from even moving a single inch towards her friend, but she always tried to speak to her. She wanted to ask her if she was okay. It was a ridiculous question, but it was what she wanted to know most. They couldn’t plan or guess what was coming next or just try to remember better times and use them like a life raft until the next opportunity to run impossibly appeared. In the beginning, she told herself that at least they were still together. And alive. She imagined the day when they would break free. No one else would ever understand what they had survived, and it would be something to have each other’s backs in the aftermath.
Night after night, that hope grew dimmer. Kim didn’t make a sound, but Julie knew that she was still there. She took Kim’s silence as proof that she had given up. Julie didn’t want her to go out that way. Kim could always handle anything, but no more.
Then came the night where three men took turns in a never-ending round. They wanted Julie strapped to a table, her legs spread wide. When the first one, fat and hairy, dropped his pants and entered her as she screamed, she fought. Her hands were cuffed behind her back, and she could do nothing but lift her head and glare. He raped her for more minutes than she could count, and Julie went from pleading for him to stop to just begging him to finish. When he dumped his fluids inside her and pulled out, she had what seemed like two seconds to try to catch her breath before his friend took his place and entered her unwilling body. He moved slower than the first guy, and what was worse, he touched her sweating , shaking body everywhere as he pressed himself deeper. His hands contradicted his dick, and Julie despised the feel of his fingers in a mocking caress down her sides, across her face, all over her breasts. Even before he finished, Julie knew that she would never, could never, let anyone touch her body without remembering the beast with red hair who added insult to injury by kissing her lips lightly before he stepped away from the table.
If her hands were free, she would have wiped his taste from her mouth. But her hands were useless, and the flavor of peppermint and whiskey stayed on her tongue as the third man’s shadow crossed her face, and he started to pound her. Julie twisted her head away from what he was doing with a miserable whine, and she tried to think of something, anything, else as he slapped her face and formed fists that battered her stomach as filled her with his piece. Julie hated the fact that she had reached a point where she could distinguish size. What he lacked explained the blows to her body, and soon she couldn’t even feel his clenched hands pounding into her flesh. But she still wasn’t able to run away from what was happening. So she just became a body that was entered and left and entered again until her head turned to a single window that saw the first light of day shining through. Again and again, the same men, the same assaults, repeated in a horrible loop. When the end finally came, truly came, she was still strapped down, and she heard the men laughing and thanking Pete and Matt for the good time. After a door opened and closed, Pete came back forced a bottle of water down her aching throat. Most of the water just dribbled down her chin and bathed her chest. Pete laughed at her inability to swallow and told her that she better hone up for the boys coming tonight. She couldn’t think that far ahead as she was stuffed into the van. She could hear Kim breathing beside her, but there was no point in trying to get a message to her friend. They were doomed, and kindness, intended or motivated by depravity or whatever, was no longer real.