by Riley Moreno
“I want the mastermind, Morales.”
16
Julie was alone.
Since she’d been home, her life had become an endless stream of questions, and she was forced to tell the story of her shame over and over again. First there were the local cops. Initially they listened like they were humoring a crazy person. Forced sex clubs in their neck of the woods? Not in their town. The leader of the pack scribbled her story on a notepad and told his boys to check the woods from which she had emerged to see if there actually was a cabin with chains and blood. Julie shuddered as she imagined the place wiped clean of all evidence. That was her captors’ style, and she couldn’t even begin to tell them where to look for Kim.
A blonde officer soon returned to the hospital and motioned for his Lieutenant to climb out from behind the curtain where Julie’s gowned body was about to be invaded to see if there was other evidence to match her story. Julie never should have showered, but the water had been so inviting.
When the lieutenant returned, he carried a small box.
“Sorry, Miss,” he said as he removed the lid.
And there it was. A collection of still shots that revealed Julie and Kim repeatedly abused. The shiny discs in the mix had to contain moving records of the endless assaults. So Pete and Matt had finally slipped. A part of Julie was relieved that there was more than her word to tell the tale. But she was also faced with the idea that the images could be shared, and she wondered how many nameless hands would vicariously violate her from the safety of their tablets.
“I… uh. We’re starting a search for your friend.”
Would they ever be successful?
Soon her parents arrived. Sharon Heller gasped at the sight of her daughter, thin and pale and shaking. Julie sobbed as she reached for her mother’s embrace.
“Mom?”
“Oh my, Julie. What…? How…?”
So she told her about Kim and the diner and the strangers who seemed so sweet before they revealed their cold hearts.
Sharon Heller’s eyes moistened, and she kept twisting her head from side to side in what Julie took for a futile effort to make it all untrue. Julie’s description was far too detailed to be invented, and when she could no longer bear to continue, she fell into her mother’s breast and actually wanted to be touched, to be held.
Sharon cried softly as she awkwardly wrapped her arms around her daughter. The warm assurance that everything would be alright now was quickly replaced by the feeling that she’d done something wrong. Julie looked up into her mother’s eyes, and they regarded her like a creature for which she’d have to constantly explain and excuse once the lurid story ultimately made its way out to the world. Sharon pulled away, seemingly unable to be so close to her only child. She clung to Greg, and he smoothed his hands down her quaking back. Sharon trembled at the effect but couldn’t bring herself to console the cause.
But Greg touched Julie.
He grabbed her face and stroked her arms as he demanded answers once Sharon excused herself for some air.
“Did they tell you who they worked for?”
“Worked for?” Julie confusedly asked.
“Operation like that. They… they have to answer to someone. Who arranged it? Do you know, Julie?”
She did not. Not really. There was the heated confrontation after Ethan shielded her within the tree. Something about shit hitting the fan if she made it to the light of day. Julie was so lost and still so scared that she shared as much with Greg. Maybe he would hold her and tell her that there was nothing to worry about, that she was finally safe.
But Greg kept pressing.
“Why would they say that? What do you know, Julie? What did you see?”
She had seen a world where there was nothing but darkness. She had seen her trust and felt her body desecrated. Wouldn’t someone tell her that she didn’t have to be afraid anymore?
“Think, Julie! For God’s sake!”
She tried to tell herself that it made sense. It was like Ethan. He wanted to know everything so that he could best plan his revenge. But Julie had nothing else to offer but the bare facts of the story. When Julie could shed no further light on why her, why Kim, Greg pulled away from her and stepped outside her door. She heard him make a phone call, and once he had someone on the other end of the line, he stepped out of her earshot. Julie started to cry as a soft spoken nurse entered with a smile and told her that she would soon give her something to help her sleep.
Julie washed herself as clean as possible and felt a warm blanket spread across her aching body. But she was still filthy. If Kim was here, if they could just see each other and share the awful memories, there would be someone who could make her feel less dirty. But Kim wasn’t coming back.
And after a futile effort to sleep despite the nurse’s drugs, Kim’s mother appeared.
Amanda Beyer was obviously on something as she entered Julie’s hospital room. Julie couldn’t blame her for the need to hide from what was now the most horrifying reality.
“Mrs. Beyer.”
Amanda stared vacantly at Julie before moving to the room’s single window. It was raining, and Amanda ran her hands down the streaming glass.
“Mrs. Beyer, are you okay?”
Amanda looked back at Kim with a quivering lip and a twitching eye.
“Why did you make her go?”
“What?”
“She had a future. She had a job. You took her away from all that? Because you had nothing, and…”
Amanda broke down. Even as Julie’s heart stung at the revelation that Kim’s plan had been laid at Julie’s feet and now there was no one but Julie to dispute her version of events, she wanted to tell Amanda Beyer that she, like her, had loved her daughter. Struggling from the hospital bed, Julie tried to touch Amanda’s face. But Kim’s mother swatted her hand away and slumped into a chair.
What was she supposed to do? Should she lie and say that it was her idea but that she had no way of knowing where the road trip would lead? It might preserve something of Amanda’s suddenly revised memory of her child. Deep down, she had to know Kim had never done a single thing without her own consent, and Julie had spent enough hours in the Amanda’s company to have fully assumed the role of follower to Kim’s leader. But she played along to comfort the grieving mother.
“I loved, Kim. She was like a sister to me. And I… I never would have asked her to go if I’d known… if I’d known this.”
Julie could think of nothing else to do, and she lowered her gown. She revealed her shoulders permanently scarred by the cracks of whips against her flesh. No amount scrubbing would ever take them away. The pictures that others might see were nothing compared to the marks that she would have to face for the rest of her life as her skin grew old and wrinkled. But the scars would stay.
Amanda stood, and her eyes widened when she saw Julie’s transformed body. Julie wanted her to understand that both girls were caught in a situation from which there was no escape, and maybe Amanda would take Julie into her arms and comfort her as she would have her daughter were their current, permanent, roles reversed.
“Mrs. Beyer? I’m---”
She slapped Julie’s face. Julie buckled under blow and reached for the edge of the bed. Amanda Beyer reached into her purse and pulled out a flask. Whatever she drank mingled with the pills that were already altering her brain, and she wiped her mouth as she glared at Julie.
“She should be here now. She was a princess. Smart, full of potential. Nothing like you.”
Julie tried to tell herself that Amanda didn’t mean it, that she was just shattered by what had happened to her little girl. But maybe it was true. Maybe Julie was nothing, and she should be the one in the ground.
“I’m… I’m so sorry.”
Amanda Beyer started to lung forward, but then the nurse, mercifully, returned.
“Ma’am? You need to leave.”
“Why? So you can make this one all better?”
“I’m not go
ing to ask you again.”
“No one’s gonna fix, Kim? Because of you. You should be dead, you spoiled bitch!”
Julie couldn’t fight back the sobs as the nurse ushered Amanda out of the room with a hushed voice that simply said that she needed to go.
“You should be,” Amanda cried again as she was removed from Julie’s line of sight.
Julie climbed back into the bed and pressed the sheets around her body. She cried softly as the light from the window turned from pale to dark.
Because of her circumstances, Julie was given the privilege of a private room. Except for the nurses that poured in to check on her and asked if she needed anything, Julie was all but abandoned in the darkness. It wasn’t what she had expected. Despite all that had been done to her, she needed people to tell her that it was finally okay, that she could get back to normal. Her mom and Greg were gone. Amanda Beyer was gone. Kim was never appearing, and Julie sobbed into her pillow as the room grew darker.
When she was being held against her will, the one place she could slip away to and try to forget or pretend the worst wasn’t really happening to her was the dream world. She didn’t so much fall asleep once the van came to a halt and she was dumped in a murky room before the next round of customers made their way to wherever they now were. Julie passed out on account of the total exhaustion after being used so roughly and for so long. Sometimes the escape was just a black void where no one was hitting or raping her even as she still cried for someone to show her a shred of compassion. Other times, she was back in combinations of places that made little to no sense but were still preferable to the place where she was trapped. In one dream, the steps to her grandmother’s front porch bled into the lecture hall from her first college class. Another time she was before her father’s coffin, but when she turned away, she was heading down a mall’s escalator. The people that she’d see there mash-ups were only vaguely familiar, but for the most part they stared blankly as she walked by them. A vision of her father found its way into this mix. When she awoke, Julie recalled wanting to speak to him, to ask him for some kind of help, but the space of the dream kept her silent. Still, she took some comfort in the brief reprieve from her torment. Very brief. Without fail, she always awoke to the nightmare renewed.
Julie was dreaming again. Clad in her hospital gown, attached to an IV drip, Julie made her way down a shadowy hallway that in no way resembled the hospital just outside her recent room. She could hear the whirring of a motor in the distance and the clanging of pipes. A scream pierced the air, and Julie started back to her room. Dragging the IV drip, Julie felt like she was trudging through mud. She wanted to run faster, she knew that she could, but suddenly each step was a supreme effort, and Julie reached the point where she wasn’t moving at all. As she tried to pry her feet from the floor, she felt a hand touch her hair. Turning her head in slow motion, she saw Pete, standing straight and tall on uninjured legs. Julie tried to scream, but no sound came out. She could barely shake her head. Expecting to be seized, waiting for him to double her over with a punch and heave her over his shoulder, Julie was surprised when he simply smiled and pointed down the hallway. Then he began to move from her side. There was a brief second of relief before Julie found that she had regained the ability to move her legs, and as if being pulled by an invisible string, Julie followed him. As much as she struggled to stop again or at least change directions, the faster she moved, and she did not halt until Pete opened a door. She peered into a new room and saw a horde of men waiting for her in various states of undress with evil grins stretching across their collective faces. She felt cold and looked down to see her hospital gown gone. But the IV drip remained.
“Keep it for the pain,” he said as he shoved her into room. Julie felt as if she was falling and everything went black as the hands were everywhere. The palm on her shoulder felt more real than the others, and Julie desperately tried to push it away as her voice finally returned.
“Go away!”
“Julie---”
“Get away from me!”
“Julie.”
The hand surrounded her entire shoulder and shook her, gently. Julie was pulled from the dream and she blinked when she realized where she was and who he was.
“Ethan?” she finally whispered.
“Hey. You okay?”
“I…”Her voice trailed off as tears fell from her eyes.
“Bad dream?” he asked.
Julie could only nod at him.
“I know about those.”
“Do you?” Julie asked softly.
Now Ethan nodded. As Julie’s gaze drifted over him, she noticed his arm suspended in a sling.
“Your arm,” she said.
He brushed it off like it was nothing and started to ease a chair to her bedside with his good arm. He was about to sit when he suddenly stopped himself. Julie was unsure exactly what he was waiting for, but she knew without question that she no longer wanted to be alone.
“Is this… is it okay with you?”
And she liked that he asked. For days now, people came, people went. Everyone had questions masking what trumped her real concerns. So what if she didn’t want to talk to a counselor but did want her mother to look at her like she was something more than a stained garment that could never be unsoiled.
Ethan didn’t look at her like that.
“Sorry,” he started when she stayed silent. “Maybe… maybe I shouldn’t be here,” he said.
No. That wasn’t true. He had every right to be back. He was the one that had had pulled her out of the pit, and Julie needed to know that he was alright. But more than that, she wanted to be close to someone who could understand what had happened to her. Even at her lowest, Julie had believed that she would have Kim to share the story, and while one night in hell was nothing compared to endless days, Ethan had seen what had happened and fought hard against it. Him just sitting here was more than she’d had just moments before.
“No. I…I’m glad you are.”
As he smiled, she looked at his arm.
“Ethan.”
Saying his name felt nice. He started to take her hand and just as quickly was back on his feet. Was he just someone else that was about to leave her feeling dirty? She folded her hand under the bed linens and turned her head as she started to cry.
Ethan lingered with his eyes lowered at the foot of her bed. When he saw her weeping, he didn’t ask for an invitation, but he also didn’t return to the chair.
“Sorry. I… I shouldn’t have touched you. I---”
He was silenced when Julie met his eyes. Ethan’s hand reached for her, but he kept his fingers just above her face.
Julie shook her head and offered her hand.
“I… I know you’re not like them. I really know that now. Please.”
She was so desperate for a kind hand on a small part of her broken body. Ethan’s touch had never been anything but, and in the wake of the other hands and eyes that all seemed to blame her for having the bad luck to stop for lunch and never return to the road, she wanted Ethan to hold her hand. He obliged and sat. Julie sighed and relaxed. His hand was exactly how she had remembered it. Strong. Sure. She couldn’t bear the idea of it in the places that were ruined by other hands, but like this was nice.
“Thank you,” she said.
“For this?” he asked.
Julie closed her eyes and remembered everything that he had done for her. He wasn’t one of them, one of the many who never had any intention of stopping her suffering if it meant another chance of finding her bound and helpless. Not Ethan. He rescued her. He removed her from the dungeon and saw her through the last night. He had killed for her. And she knew nothing but his first name. And the fact that something had happened that turned his memory and his stomach at the sight of what she was being forced to do.
Julie was grateful that he had just been there.
“For everything,” she finally said. “You saved me.”
Ethan smiled and curled hi
s fingers around hers.
“It’s nothing. Juliet.”
She blinked at the mention of her true name. How did he know? Again her mind started to fill with thoughts that he was setting her up for something, but Ethan just shifted his eyes to the chart resting against the foot of her bed.
“I can read.”
Julie was able to smile as she turned her head into his hand.
“Sorry. It’s just… it’s just...”
She couldn’t go on. She was exhausted from all that she had endured, and having to relive it was proving even more daunting.
“I know.”
As he kept his hand in hers, Julie realized that she didn’t have to explain what had happened. He was the first that knew outside of her abductors’ circle, and he had seen enough to connect the dots. She liked this. It was nice to be with someone who didn’t require her explanations. It was nice to just be with him.
Ethan smiled down at her.
“Is it okay?’
“Is what okay?”
“Can I… can I call you Juliet? It’s pretty. And…”
He closed his eyes and struggled to continue.
“And… and they probably never called you that. Can… can I?”
In every way she liked the sound of it. It was her name, so long shortened and forgotten, but it sounded right as it passed through his lips, and she lifted her hand to his face. She had his eyes again, and she smiled.
“Call me Juliet. I... I want to be someone else.”
Julie pressed her hand to his cheek and she sighed at his touch. His hand left her fingers, and he slowly reached for her hair.
“I told you I’d do it. I told you you’d get back home.”
Home. Home was nothing that she had imagined. Home was supposed to be welcoming embraces and a chance to leave the torment behind and a world where she didn’t suffer. Instead, it was cold eyes and hands that only touched her to search for DNA samples or eyes that either turned away in horror or glared at her with accusations. It was nothing that she had hoped for. Naturally she had no desire to go back, but she still wanted to get away.
Until now.
“Yes. I…”