by Riley Moreno
“What about him?” Ethan said through clenched teeth.
Morales smoothed her hands down her thighs as she continued.
“He wants to talk. Wants to tell us who set this thing in motion.”
As much as Julie hated Pete, she wanted him to name names. This was more than the doing of two bored boys who chanced upon the like-minded, the depraved.
“And… and we think there’s still other cells at work.”
Cells? One cell or another had been Julie’s only definition of home even as she had longed for the one she had lost. But Morales was talking of other places.
“I… I thought you rescued the rest?” Julie asked.
Morales nodded as she continued.
“There are many. But… but we think… Peter Bowen has suggested that others are still hidden. He’s ready to give up the ghost. But…”
The but scared Julie, and in her fear, she struggled to fight back the idea that she would have to return to terror.
“No!” Julie cried out.
“Julie?”
She left the couch and felt Ethan’s arms around her as she imagined being forced back into Pete’s hands. His friend was gone, and Pete would probably make her pay for that by forcing her body into customers’ hands without even the small mercy of a night’s sleep. In Julie’s mind, Pete would make her work off the debt that was Matt’s body until she was past hope, and now it would be easier since others knew the tale but hadn’t had the skill to intervene. Julie kept struggling as Ethan pulled her closer and whispered into her ear.
“I’m right here,” Ethan said.
His voice seemed distant as she continued to thrash under his hold.
“I want him dead!” Julie screamed. “I can’t… I can’t… ”
She ignored the approach of Morales and clung to Ethan’s neck.
“I can’t see him again. I… I can’t take anymore. Ethan. Please.”
It had seemed normal. The need for breakfast, groceries purchased, but it was no good. Julie had to stay in state of fear of Pete.
Morales stepped to Julie’s side.
“Julie? He’s going away. For a long time. I promise you that.”
She latched onto the idea of Pete locked away. He deserved that and more after what he had done to her. To Kim. But…
Morales touched her face. Julie didn’t wince, but she still moved closer to Ethan as his hands gently clasped her elbows.
“He said he’ll only give the names to you. Julie, I need you to meet with him.”
“Don’t make me,” Julie said as she shook her head.
Ethan’s arms held her closer as Morales lowered he voice.
“Bowen can tell us where the other girls are.”
Julie trembled wildly at the thought of others enduring the fate that she had known for an entire summer. What was worse? Those whom had just been captured or those who had lost all hope at the thought that the horror would never end as they wished for life to just end?
“Julie, he wants to talk to you. He said he’ll tell us who set this in motion if he can just see you. Alone.”
Before Julie could protest, Ethan pressed her behind him and stared Morales down.
“You’re not putting her in a room with him.”
“Mr. Graff---”
“Hasn’t she been through enough?”
Morales grabbed Ethan’s hand. He turned his eyes back to Julie and tried to tell her that he would keep her safe. But Julie couldn’t beat back the idea that she was on the verge of more torment.
Julie’s eyes pleaded with Morales, but the detective held her ground.
“It won’t be like before. Even if he could use his legs, he’s not getting anywhere fast cuffed to a hospital bed. There’s a guard at his door at all times. I’ll go with you, and…”
Morales’ voice trailed off as she looked up at Ethan.
“And I’m sure Mr. Graff will come with you. Right?”
She didn’t even need to ask, but Ethan still wasn’t on board with the idea.
“How can you ask her to do this? Don’t you know---?”
“I do, sir. Yes. And I if you want the truth, it turns my stomach to think that he’s going to get one more thing that he wants when he’s already taken so much.”
Morales leaned closer, and Julie could smell the faint trace of tobacco on her breath.
“But it’d make me even sicker to have to deal him out to see how deep this thing goes. He opened the door, Julie. I need you to be strong enough to step through to the other side.”
Julie shared Morales’ desire to see him put away, and the way she laid things out, the way she made it seem like she would be safe for the face-to-face, was almost enough to tell her that she could do this. But what would Pete have to say? Who else behind the torture? Julie wasn’t sure that she wanted to know. She had seen a lifetime’s worth of evil in the space of a few short months, and she didn’t want to know how many others could do this by night and carry on each day without a care for those lingering in despair in a world without hope.
“I---“
And then Morales played her final card.
“Maybe he knows where your friend is. Don’t you want to find her?”
It was total manipulation and a perfectly honest, logical question in the same smoky breath. Julie’s mind flashed back to Amanda’s Beyer’s anguished rage. She would never forgive Julie for living when her child was never coming home. What if the shoe was on the other foot? Would Kim be brave enough to look the monster in the eye to uncover Julie’s grave? While Julie wanted to answer that question in the affirmative, she had to admit that Kim had cracked long before Julie gave up, and maybe she wouldn’t have been strong enough to stand before Pete’s bed even if he was shackled and injured.
Could Julie be strong enough?
“Yes. Of course,” Julie said. “Can I… can I think about?”
Morales took the absence of Julie’s out and out refusal with a warm smile and nodded.
“Call me,” Morales said. “You have my number. I’ll talk to you soon.”
She started towards the door then looked back over her shoulder.
“I… I think it’ll be better if you know, Julie. Then you can really start to put this behind you.”
Morales closed the door quietly, and Julie listened to her feet pad down the steps. There was the sound of an inner door opening, and Julie imagined Nick poking his head out to make sure that the uninvited guest was back on the street. That was realized by the sound of the front door swinging open then shut. She heard Nick follow suit with his own door.
And then her legs gave out.
She sank to the floor and held her face in her hands. However she twisted it around her brain, the writing was on the wall. Julie would have to see Pete again, and the thought of it filled her with a new fear that was really just the old terror returned, revived.
“Juliet? It’s okay. It’s…”
Turning her face to his, she wiped her teary face with the back of her shaking hand.
“I have to see him again. Don’t I?”
Ethan took her damp face in his hands and tried to remove what remained of her tears.
“You… you don’t have to if you don’t want to. I don’t care what she says. If it’s too much---”
“It is,” Julie said.
Ethan kept holding her face. It was too much. It had always been too much. Why her? Why them? Was it coincidence? Was it a crime of opportunity that Matt and Pete just couldn’t resist passing up? Every way she spun it, she owed it to Kim to learn the answer to the whys.
And she owed it to herself.
“Ethan?” she finally asked. “Could… could you do it?”
“What do you mean?
“If you had chance to know why… the person you loved had been hurt, could you do it? Could you face them?”
Ethan fell away from her and rested his head against the couch. She watched him wade through his own river of torment as he carefully consid
ered the question. With a heavy sigh, he looked into her eyes again.
“I’d like to think I could, Juliet.”
20
She stood in the hospital lobby with her hair pulled back and Ethan’s arm around her shoulders.
After Morales had departed, Julie still made the breakfast that she’d promised. Each crack of the egg was barely a distraction for the call that she knew she had to make. Morales would get her names, Julie would find Kim. And Pete would get to see her again, and linger on the damage that he had wrought.
But she didn’t have to make it easy for him.
Pushing her untouched plate aside, Julie rushed to the bathroom and tore off the bandage. Her wound glistened under the light, in the mirror, and she knew it would be one more scar. But unlike the marks on her back, this scar would be on display for every set of eyes that crossed her path. When she touched the slash, when she pressed her fingers against her skin, the cut still burned, but Julie ran the water and tried to wash the pain away. Upon lifting her head from the sink, her face looked cleaner, healthier, and she patted it dry with a hand towel. Maybe with some makeup…
“Juliet?”
She dropped the towel and saw Ethan in the doorway. Julie lowered her eyes as Ethan asked if he could come in, and when she nodded, Ethan stepped forward and carefully lifted her face to his. His eyes ran over the uncovered wound, and he gently turned her stare back to the mirror.
“It’s healing,” Ethan said.
At least some part of her was.
“Juliet,” he continued. “If you’re not up to this…”
No. No she had to be. Turning away from the mirror, turning towards Ethan, she swallowed and finally spoke.
“I have to be. I… I can do this.”
Ethan smiled and moved a damp lock of brown hair from her quivering eyes.
“Just come with me, okay?”
Morales appeared on the scene.
“Julie.”
Morales took Julie’s hand and shook it firmly, warmly.
“I knew you could handle it.”
Julie managed to smile as Ethan stroked her back, and Julie started to speak when the automated doors slid open again. From the outside in there a man with a sharp nose in an expensive looking suit. He was answering a message on his phone, and when the deed was done, he returned the phone to his pocket and looked at a suddenly trembling Julie. Who was he? Why was he here? He reeked of cologne. Julie was reminded of the men who had forced their evil between her unwilling legs, and she shivered against Ethan’s chest.
“Miss Edwards?”
Julie looked to the stranger and expected a lascivious sneer, and she wondered if this was a new trap. What was the plan? Get her alone with Pete so that this supposed gentleman could inject her with a handy needle and lie to Ethan that she wasn’t healing so well? Ethan would want to see her, but Julie pictured her unconscious body loaded into an ambulance to hell to get her back on the job that Pete implied was the best gig ever. What was rape when she didn’t have to worry about rent? Was Morales somehow in on this conspiracy? Julie was about to scream and break into a mad run when the stranger kept speaking.
“This is a very brave thing that you’re doing. We’ll have you in and out before you know it. And then I’m going to put the screws to this asshole, and he will never see the light of any free day again.
Confused, Julie looked to Morales. The stranger spoke like someone who was out for blood and that placed him on her side. But…
“He’s our DA,” Morales said. “Kind of hands on. Julie Edwards, meet Leo Barber.”
He offered his hand, and Julie took it cautiously.
“You’ll be perfectly safe, and it’ll be over before you know it.”
Leo Barber looked to Ethan.
“And you, pal. Way to do the right thing. Glad to know one of the good guys.”
As Ethan shook the DA’s hand, Julie relaxed again. Maybe there was more than one good man left in the world, and all she had to do was face Pete, fight back the urge to vomit as she heard what he had to say, and that would be the end of it.”
“Are you ready, Miss Edwards?” Leo asked.
Julie swallowed and nodded. Leo guided the group to the elevator, and they stood together as he doors slid shut.
The car crept up the floors, and when Julie took Ethan’s hand, he rested his head against hers.
“He’s here,” Julie said.
“But he can’t hurt you. No one can anymore. And I’ll be right outside the door.”
She was beyond grateful for his presence. The night leading up to this was a place where she took on his sleeplessness, so Ethan again seemed to ask for permission and held her alert body as the light shifted to dark, and whenever she asked him if it would end once she finally confronted him, Ethan ran his hands through her hair and told her yes. Julie prayed that he was right and closed her unsleeping eyes as the moment both necessary and dreaded slowly approached.
And now here it was.
Leo and Morales spoke in hushed tones to the officer guarding Pete’s door, and she heard the assurances that the room was secure. It all seemed so well-orchestrated, and Julie resolved to step into the breach to get the facts.
“Juliet? If you want to go… home.”
She did. But she couldn’t. Julie had to be with Pete one more time.
“I do,” Julie said. “But I have to do this first.”
Ethan squeezed her elbow, and his eyes filled with pride at her ability to make this sacrifice. With a deep breath, she left his side, and Morales eased her into the room.
Pete.
He was hooked up to IV drips, his legs under a blanket. No. The plural was wrong. His right side ended with a stump, and Julie realized that one of her bullets had cost him the ability to ever run anywhere. Julie couldn’t help but take some satisfaction in his inhibited position, and she felt stronger still as she neared the edge of his bed.
Pete, amputated, was wide awake and waiting for the return of the virgin raped over and over and over again.
“Well look who came back to play.”
Julie shivered and then started when Morales formed a fist and pounded it into Pete’s helpless middle.
“Owww! Police brutality!” Pete cried out, but Morales ignored the complaint and tugged his head to attention with a pull of his hair.
“Okay, boy. She’s here. You get five minutes. You tell her what she needs to know. And that’s it.”
Pete started to speak again when Morales stopped his speech with a quick smack of his lips. Julie couldn’t help but flinch at the sound of flesh meeting flesh, but Pete as the victim strengthened her resolve, and she knew that she could fight back any and all fears to stop him and his operation for all time.
“I get it,” Pete said. Morales gave his hair another quick, rough, pull, then let him fall back to the pillow. She turned to Julie and pressed her hands to her shoulders.
“We’re right outside,” Morales said. “You need us, we’re here.”
We. We was Morales and her ability to hurt Pete. Leo Barber’s need to see Pete behind bars for all times.
And Ethan.
Julie wished that he could stand at her side and see her through this moment, but she knew that his presence would still Pete’s tongue, and she had to stand alone to learn the truth.
“Okay?” Morales asked.
Julie gave a quick nod, and Morales was gone. As she closed the door, Julie turned her head to see Pete scooting to attention under the force of his elbows, and he actually smiled at Julie as she trembled where she stood.
“Speak, cunt,” Pete finally said. “You know you want to.”
Julie felt herself falling back into hands that pried her open and bodies that penetrated her without consent. She had longed to be free of the ropes, of the cuffs, but every plea for mercy went unanswered.
“I… I do,” Julie started. “I did.”
“Come again?”
Julie slammed a fist into the one ankle
he had left and forced herself to keep going even as her eyes were fresh with new tears that she didn’t want him to see.
“How many times? I begged you to let me go. I didn’t… I didn’t want to be… hurt. Like that.”
Pete licked his lips.
“Like what, Jules.”
She didn’t have to say it. He knew. Pete had never taken his turn. But Matt had. And Carter McCord. And so many other evil men. Pete’s bag was to lurk in a doorway, smoking and smiling, as Julie was ravished in ways that she never should have had to even imagine. But every worst fear became all too real as a new cock drove its way into her aching hole. She remembered the night of more men than she could number. The real horror wasn’t the rapes themselves but the lack of space between each assault, and Julie remembered the feeling that she would certainly be fucked to death even as she pleaded for a break. Just a few seconds to herself as another man took her bound form in the most brutal way imaginable, and when Julie was on the verge of fainting from the pain, Pete would tell the next brute to wait and bring her back to awful life with the glowing tap of his cigarette against her aching openings. She had screamed. What else could she do? Roused from desired unconsciousness, she was wide awake for the next assault and could only cry as the next attacker set out to hurt her.
And he knew. He’d seen it all.
“I was raped,” she said. “All night. Every night. You put me through hell. Why…?”
Suddenly, that wasn’t the question.
“How could you do that?”
Pete laughed at her quivering lip.
“Like you didn’t love it. I saw you, Jules. You got wet, every time. It was everything---”
“No.”
“Everything your little virgin hole ever wanted.”
Julie could no longer hold back her tears. Slipping to the foot of the hospital bed, Julie held herself as she furiously shook her head. How could he? Was he so warped as to believe that she wanted to suffer under rough hands while other parts were stuffed inside her? Throughout every assault, Julie had begged for it to stop and implored her captors to just let her go. She swore, over and over again, that she’d never tell. And she would have honored that plea. If she could just find herself free of the torture, Julie would have forced it to the pit of her soul and stayed quiet in the face of escape. She never stopped to think that it might mean a life spent in shadows. She just wanted it over.