by R. J. Lewis
“Curious where you came from, beauty,” he murmured in my ear. “Where were you thinking of going in this little skirt?”
It was so quiet in the car, I knew they all heard him.
I swallowed again, my throat felt so dry. I hesitantly replied in a tiny voice, “I was going to class.”
“Oh, right,” he said, his face pressing closer to my neck now. I felt his hot breaths, and I shivered in disgust. “Planning on driving those boys wild, honey?”
It took everything to shake my head no.
“No?” he asked, his lips pressing against my throat. “So, you were just gonna tease the boys with your bare legs, then.” It wasn’t a question, so I didn’t respond, and he didn’t wait for one as he went on with, “What’s your name?”
I didn’t answer. It turned my stomach to think he might say my name. For some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to say it. He pressed more kisses, this time along my jaw. The second I felt his breath blowing at my mouth, I whipped my face away from him, turning it in the other direction.
It was a cold rejection. I didn’t have to see his face to know he was pissed. His entire body tensed beside me. I squeezed my eyes tight, already anticipating another hair pulling, and I wasn’t wrong.
He balled my hair into a fist and yanked me back to him, forcing my face in his direction. Hot tears fell down my cheeks. I clenched my teeth, pulling my face away from him, uncaring that he was tearing out thick strands of my hair. The blood was rushing to my ears. I heard him mutter something, like I was feisty or something to that effect before he slammed his filthy mouth against mine. Two seconds into the kiss, I bit his bottom lip hard and he hissed, tearing his face away from me.
“Bitch made me bleed,” he laughed in shock. “Fucking skank likes it rough, don’t you, honey?”
“Ever looked at your face in the mirror, man?” Mills chuckled. “You are fucking nasty.”
“And you’re such a flower, huh, Mills?” Beckett retorted.
“I think she wouldn’t resist me so hard.”
“I think we’ll have to find out, then. Won’t we, honey?” He ran his hand up my leg and beneath my skirt, cupping my sex suddenly. The violation sent hot pulses of rage throughout my body. “We’re gonna have fun with you, I think.”
“Fuck you,” I hissed, grabbing at his arm and clawing. He immediately grabbed at my hands, cursing, and demanded something to bind my hands together. Moments later, someone delivered. He shoved me face first on the seat and painfully brought my hands behind my back, tying them up with a cable tie. He tightened it so hard, it dug into my skin.
“Play nice, bitch,” he told me. “Maybe we’ll be easy on you. But keep this up, and I’ll make sure I fuck you watching you take your last breaths.”
29.
Victoria…
I was long past the point of shock.
My tears had dried.
I sat dejected; my fight gone as the sick fuck occasionally touched me. Chatter had long died, and it was straight silence the entire way.
Three quarters of the way there, I felt my ears beginning to pop. The car was driving on an angle, going up, and up.
We were climbing a mountain.
Fuck.
My wrists felt sore from the cable tie, and I needed to pee. My sob-fest had clogged my nose up bad, so I was breathing through my mouth, taking in quick, uneven breaths.
It was hard to say where my thoughts were.
Most of them involved my mother.
I kept talking to her inside my head. I told her I was coming home. I was going to see her, to get ready for me because I wasn’t going to make it out of this.
These men were bad.
Even the guy that didn’t want me to eat the pavement hadn’t said a single word since he’d blindfolded my eyes.
Because he didn’t give a fuck.
I tried not to think of what they were going to do to me, but I knew it was going to be rape, and a lot of it. Even blindfolded, I could feel their stares clinging to my skin.
They’d blown that man to the ground without batting an eye, stepped over his dying body without a single fuck given. They were prepared to toss me out of a speeding van where my death was imminent and, again, zero fucks given.
These were evil men.
Still, I couldn’t prepare myself for what was to come.
I wanted the ride to never end.
So, when the car began to slow down and the van shook violently as we drove over crunchy snow, I knew the end was coming and I began to have a panic attack.
“You’re not going to go far like this,” Tucker said. “Roads are too bad, man.”
“I’ll go until I can’t go anymore,” Roz replied. “The closer we are, the less of a distance we gotta trek.”
We were off road somewhere. The van wasn’t equipped to drive through feet of snow. I wondered then how bad it must be out there.
“Should’ve stolen an off roader,” Mills grunted. “Something with big fucking tires.”
“The trail has to be taken on foot,” Roz said. “It’s too narrow for a car.”
“How much walking we gotta do?”
“According to Hobbs’ instructions, a lot of it, man.”
A few more minutes passed with us bouncing around. My throat felt tight as I struggled to take breaths in. It was coming any second. He was going –
The engine turned off and I could faintly hear the keys jingling.
“Alright, guys, this is it,” Roz declared. “Can’t go anymore. File out, let’s get these bags out and move.”
All the doors opened up and the icy breeze whipped into the car. Shivering, I listened tensely as they stepped out and opened the trunk. I heard footsteps crunching into the snow and the heavy sounds of the bags being thrown to the ground.
“Six big bags, fellas. Let’s try doing this in one go.”
“What about the girl?” Tucker asked.
“Just leave my bag near the car,” Beckett replied. “I’ll be in the car with the girl for a while first.”
“Are you serious?”
“I’m not going to bust a nut in front of you assholes up there.”
Laughs erupted.
Ha-ha.
“I think I’ll wait around then,” Mills said.
Roz chuckled as the trunk slammed shut. “You fuckers and your pussy, I swear. I’m going then. Nixon can carry two because he’s the biggest fucker here. Don’t be long, or this fresh snow fall will cover our trail.”
I heard the sounds of footsteps crunching away. Then a body entered the van and I could smell Beckett’s scent in the air as he fiddled around. The back of my seat fell away, landing hard behind me.
My lips trembled, a plea was about to form but I swallowed it down. The blindfold was pulled from my eyes suddenly, and blinding white light replaced the darkness. I blinked rapidly, trying to adjust. I saw his face close to mine, and his eyes ventured down my body. He pulled my boots and socks off, tossing them randomly behind him. Then he grabbed at my jacket and unzipped it, pulling it down my arms.
“I need these off,” he told me, his voice taking on a different edge. “Been a long while for me. honey.”
I didn’t take the jacket off. Instead, he pulled the sleeves down as I shook violently. But then there was a problem.
“Shit,” he whispered, and then poked his head out of the van. “You got a knife or something, Mills? I gotta get this cable tie off her.”
Footsteps approached and I looked up to see another face without a mask poke his head in. It was a round face, middle-aged, a light beard on his cheeks. He glanced at me, his eyes lingering around my chest before he stuck a hand into the pocket of his dark pants and removed a switchblade. “Here you go.”
Beckett took it and slammed the door shut on him. “Turn around for me.”
I didn’t move. He grabbed my arm and pulled, making me bend over enough that he could reach the tie. I heard the knife switch open and felt him cut at the tie.
; My heart was beating so hard, I felt my stomach turn.
My vision spotted.
I was going to pass out.
Weak all over, I was barely drawing a breath in now.
He slid the jacket off me and grabbed at my sweater next. He removed it quickly. I felt his eyes all over my chest, felt his fingers along my bra strap.
“I think I’ll have this on,” he murmured, heatedly. “And the skirt too. It’s fucking hot.”
I didn’t respond. The shock was clinging to me like armour.
“Lean back for me,” he then directed. I felt his palm press against my chest, pushing me back. I didn’t even resist. Maybe this was me giving up. I didn’t know, but something had shut off inside me.
I wasn’t sure how he was going to do this. There was barely any room in here. My head was dangling off the make-shift rape bed he’d made. But then he adjusted me by spinning me around so I was lying on the seat horizontally.
He mumbled something about it being too cold, so he turned the engine back on and had the heaters blasting. He didn’t return his attention to me until the van was warm.
Minutes passed.
He breathed heavily.
I could hear my heart thumping in my ears.
He cleared his throat.
I felt dead inside.
More minutes went on.
The warmth filled the van.
Then he looked back at me.
It only started to dawn on me when he began to undo his belt quickly, like he couldn’t hold back any longer, that this was going to fucking happen.
I looked at his grotty face, at the heat in his brown eyes. I looked past him, at the round face peering into the side window. Watching us, waiting for his turn.
Tears fell from my eyes and a surge of fear tore through my shock.
I was surprised right then because…I preferred to feel it, even now, even before he was about to take me.
His body climbed over me and I began to shake my head. My hands shot up, pushing him away when he tried to lean into me. He grabbed them and threw them over my head. I bucked under him, my legs going crazy now. Nausea consumed me. I needed to vomit. I needed to scream. I needed to fight him off me.
“Too late for that,” he grunted, forcing my legs down with his.
I spat on his face and he swiftly let go of one of my hands and punched me so hard in the face, I saw white flashes. I gasped from the shock of pain as it shot up my nose and tore through my skull. Weakened by it, I could hardly see straight. He flipped my skirt up and settled back over me. I felt him grabbing at my underwear. I tried to twist and turn but he wasn’t moving. I screamed at the top of my lungs, but he told me he liked when I did that. I felt his hard length through his pants as it rested against my hip and I dry heaved. The bile spilled from the corners of my mouth and I felt so angry.
I didn’t stop fighting, even when he slapped me across the face again, when he grabbed at my hair and pulled. He was going to take me whether I liked it or not, but I wasn’t going to make it easy, either.
“Fuck you!” I screamed.
“Look at the fire in you!” he laughed.
I could tell he was struggling to contain me. He was pissed about it, too. He pulled my hair so hard, I felt like my scalp was burning. I was dizzy with pain, with the slaps he kept striking me with, but I didn’t stop twisting.
The trunk of the door opened just then, amidst the fighting.
“Hey, Beckett,” said a deep voice.
Beckett looked up in the direction of the trunk. “Yeah, Nixon –”
A loud gunshot ripped through the air.
Beckett’s head…popped before my eyes.
Blood spattered in all directions.
And I screamed.
30.
Victoria…
I bucked wildly, forcing the lifeless body off me as shots continued around the van and Mills screamed. I gripped the door, slid it open and fell out. My hands sank into a foot of snow. Cold wind and falling snow whipped around me as I crawled out in nothing but my bra and skirt and no boots.
I didn’t make it two feet before a hand grabbed at my arm and hauled me back into the van.
“You stay,” Nixon growled, slamming the door shut on my face before I could see him.
I was sitting in brains and blood and a man whose head popped from his body. I looked out the window, panting as I saw the back of Nixon rounding the van and firing at Mills.
Mills had been running and suddenly fell to his knees and began crawling away in the other direction. Nixon fired the gun again, but nothing happened, so he threw the gun down and trailed after the wounded man.
Mills begged. I could hear the muffled pleas. Could see his hands in the air.
Pulling something out of his pocket – a knife I quickly realized – Nixon caught up to Mills and stabbed the knife into the top of his skull in one single motion.
The man collapsed to the ground, dead.
The sight was so jarring, I keeled over and vomited more bile.
The smell of blood was in my nose. I was coated in it. I saw it when I closed my eyes. I saw it when I opened them. I groaned in the disgust as I took in the head that was no longer a head, at the oozing flesh and brains and it was so fucked up.
I vomited and vomited some more.
Trembling, I saw Nixon approach the van again. I saw his black hair, and the side of his face. No mask, either. Oh, fuck, I was going to fucking die.
The van door slid open and he bent over to peer in at me. I looked back and this time I really did feel like I was going to pass out.
Nixon was Mr Fuckable from the bus.
Of course he was.
How could he not be, with the duffle bag, with the mask on the duffle bag, with him getting off at the same stop and moving in the direction of the porn store.
He’d changed his clothes though.
It wasn’t really my fault.
I had poor attention to detail.
I blamed social media for my lack of attentiveness.
He was in black pants instead and his black leather jacket was replaced by a thick black sweater. He’d smirked at me in that bus and I’d held his hand…
“You paid for my bus fare,” I said stupidly, numbly, because I couldn’t wrap my head around the fucked-up direction my life had taken. Beginning to shake my head, I pleaded, “Please, don’t kill me.”
“Why?” he asked, detached. “What do you have to live for?”
My lips trembled and my mind went blank.
I had nothing.
I had nothing to live for.
He stared at me for a beat longer, his face completely still, then said, “Put your clothes back on and get out.”
I couldn’t move though. The situation was traumatic, didn’t he know that? I was all weak and shit. My bones felt like jelly, and everywhere I looked I only saw blood and brains and, ohmyfuckinggod, was that bits of bone on my arm?
“Please, help me,” I whispered, distraught.
He looked at me, two beats longer now, his face still clear of emotion. Then he leaned into the van, pushing me aside as he dug up my thin white sweater and black jacket – both utterly covered in blood and brains. I whimpered as he threw them at me. With shaky fingers, I picked them up and dry heaved some more.
He watched me as I attempted to put the sweater on, but it was inside-out and I had my hands through the neck hole, which wasn’t right.
I was so confused and pathetic. I sobbed aloud, unsure of how to fix my sweater up. I’d forgotten how to put it on and there were brains all over it.
I dry heaved again.
My body was not reacting kindly to any of this. Everything was monumentally more difficult than a few minutes ago; even breathing took enormous effort.
He snatched the sweater out of my wobbly hands and put it on me. His movements weren’t gentle. In fact, he looked pissed off. He grabbed my hand and shoved it into the sleeve, and then again to the other. Grabbing my jacket next, h
e dressed me in that in two swift movements before shoving me out of the van. My bare feet sank into the snow and I gasped as the cold shot up my legs. When I turned to look at him, he was inside the van, digging under the body and grabbing at my gumboots. He threw one at me, then the other. I quickly slid my feet into them, but my toes were already numb, and I wasn’t about to ask a man who’d effortlessly murdered two men for my fucking socks.
I looked around quickly, my eyes darting all over the place. We were stopped on the mountain side, close to a cliff. The snow was coming down heavy, and the dirt roads were mostly covered, except for random patches under giant Douglas Fir trees. Legit, we were in the middle of nowhere, going up some mountain I didn’t know. I couldn’t see signs from where I stood, didn’t know how far we had driven up here.
I started to panic again.
Nixon slammed the door shut and began to approach me. I turned to him, eyes filled with tears, begging, “Can I go now?”
His movements slowed as he watched me carefully, his head tilting to the side. “Where will you go?” he questioned simply.
I pointed in the direction we’d driven up. “There.”
He didn’t look where I pointed. “You’ll die.”
“That’s fine. I just want to go. Can you let me go?”
He didn’t answer straightaway. He glanced around us, at the road we’d taken, at the road we were meant to keep trailing. Then he took a step closer and peered down at me. The snow was in his hair, caught in his eyelashes, piled up on his shoulders.
“You’ll die,” he then repeated, his voice harder than before. “You have to come with me.”
“I’ll die either way,” I said.
He turned and moved to the stack of duffle bags by the wheel of the car. “Then pick which way you’d rather die. Down there is certain death. Up here” – he gestured his cut jaw to where he was headed – “you might still have a chance.”
I watched in awe as he picked up four giant duffle bags, two in each hand. His entire body went taut with the weight, but he looked capable. Even in his sweater, I could see the muscles in his arms and chest flex as he began trudging away from me.