--- Warning: explicit rape, violence ---
The table
in front of her is sleek, shining plastic, round edges. Gray floor, green
walls. Four of them in the small cubic room, with the door in her back. The
chains around her wrists rattle with every shift, when she crosses her legs,
uncrosses them, leans forward, back, squeezes her hands around the seat.
The
detective sits across from her, a blond woman, middle-aged, too much make-up,
trying to stay composed but her agitation is palpable. Rachel can smell it, the
boiling excitement underneath the plain façade, screaming. The detective is
enjoying it.
The
policemen in her back, one to the right, the other to the left of the door,
change. The detective stays. Rachel does not know time although she counts the
seconds in her head, seconds since she spoke to Noel.
“Let us
start at the beginning again. You gained entrance to the area of the dam, why?”
She always
makes sure that the ringtone is on its highest volume and the telephone is
lying in the charge station next to the bed. Victoria should have woken up
easily. Where is she, what happened to her? Did she get up to get a glass of
water, tripped and fell? Did she even make it to bed at all? What if the night
nurse was sick or late? What if Victoria went for a walk, or shopping, or
whatever came to her mind and is wandering around now in the darkness, even her
own name unknown to herself?
“You met
the victim. Where? Inside the guardhouse? Did you know him? What did you want
from him?”
Rachel
rocks her upper body back and forth, counting. The handcuffs rattle against the
plastic. How long?
“Was he
your boyfriend? Pimp? Client? Did you have a row? Was he your drug dealer? Went
something wrong? Could you not pay him? Did you try stealing from him?”
She
squeezes her eyes shut and bites on her lips to refrain from screaming.
Victoria’s image in front of her. How long until Noel gets there? Is she safe
already, is she okay?
“What
happened then? Did he get angry? Did you defend yourself? Or was he actually
careless, just one second, and you took the scissors and-“
The
policemen wrestle with her only shortly, forcing her back to the table, to face
the dreadful woman again. Brutally squeeze her into the seat.
“Was it
like that? Did you maybe plan all that, did you know you could not pay, did you
bring the scissors yourself? And afterward: did you regret it? Did you try
helping him…? I guess not. You left him to die, Rachel, while you watched! Was
it like that? Was it?!”
Red. “Fuck
yes, it was just like that! And I would do it again, you fucking cow. I would
slice your stupid throat slowly, watching the blood seep out of you to the last
drop, until you are nothing but an empty white shell!”
The small
spark of fear flaring up in the woman’s eyes is all she remembers before she is
yanked back and then there is the sharp pain of a needle injected into her
thigh and nothing.
***
Gray. Four
walls, no window. A dirty yellow door, heavy and solid. Her wrists are fixed to
her sides. The blanket is scratchy, flimsy, rough on her skin. No sound. Her
thoughts are walking through mud, every step takes her closer to exhaustion.
She knows that feeling, tries to shake it off, to get away although she knows
fighting is pointless – how long, how long? – But she gets pulled under by her
own efforts.
She is
woken again by a loud clanking sound, metal on metal, screeching against the
inside of her skull, making her ears explode. She screws her eyes shut. Hands
on her wrists, the restrains slide open. She is being led through that door,
over a sleek endless corridor. Into another room.
“Your
lawyer wants to meet with you.”
Since when
does she have a-
There is a
table in front of her, separated in two halves by a thick dirty vertical plane.
On the other side there is another chair and behind it, on the other side of
the room another door, it is opened by the man in a uniform guarding it – a
different one, different from his –
and through comes an elderly man she does not know, in a gray suit with a dark
tie and a gray face and behind him--
“Noel…” she
flinches at the sound of her own voice, dry and cracked from screaming.
He is leaning
on his crutches but something is wrong. She can tell by his posture and how
much he is relying on the metal rods, legs twisted, his steps slow and painful,
and the fact that he is not looking at her, looking anywhere but at her.
“Noel?”
The two men
advance her, the gray one obviously making an effort to slow down for Noel,
glancing at her all the time while Noel looks at the ground in front of the
tips of his crutches, advancing with an unsteady click and swish, dragging his
feet over the cement floor.
“Rachel
Nottingham?” The voice of the elderly man is surprisingly soft and she digs her
nails into her palm until they draw blood. The air smells of urine and alcohol.
The gray
man stops in front of the table, pulls the single chair back and steps to the
side to let Noel sit. Noel angles it towards himself with one crutch and lowers
himself into the seat, slowly at first, then falling into it the rest of the
way, a muscle in his jaw twitching at the impact. How come she never noticed
how impaired he looks when he is outside of his home and standing, walking
instead of hiding behind his desk, the towers of papers and binders, or
switching between the walls and cupboards and familiar supports of his
apartment? She watches as he untangles his underarms from the cuffs of the
crutches, leans the metal rods against his side, one arm around them
protectively, the other hand balling to a shivering fist in his lap.
“Noel!” she
demands. Why does he not look at her? She wants to read in his face, dive into
his eyes, wants to know about Victoria. What happened, where is she and how?
“Miss
Nottingham, my name is Vincent Parker, and I offer to take your case without
commission on request of my son.”
She blinks,
stops to fray the hem of her lose shirt to pieces – not hers, undefined color,
the threads thick between her fingers – and looks at the gray man.
“You are
being charged with possession of illegal drugs, trespassing and attempted
murder.”
He goes on
but she does not hear anymore, only the sea in her ears, the surge of waves
against her eardrums and she understands. Noel hates her. He hates her for what
she is. Unpredictable. Dangerous.
Sick.
Attempted,
the gray man has said.
“If you
agree, please sign here.”
She stares
at Noel, at his bowed head, the half-closed eyelids fluttering behind his dark
curly hair hanging over his forehead and into his face. Same color as his
father’s only without the white streaks, and longer, unruly.
He hates
her. But he is helping her (why?) and then… he is going to leave her. She knows
he will.
She picks
up the pen. The skin of her hand is gray and papery like someone else’s, the
veins unnaturally blue and the outlines sharp under it.
She writes
her name above the line.
“Thank you,
Miss Nottingham. I will come back later and we will need to discuss details
about the trial.” The gray man, Noel’s father, stops and goes on when she does
not react. “I leave you two then.” He passes Noel who hunches even more.
Vanishes through the door in long, elegant strides.
Effortlessly.
“Noel…”
He does not
move.
“Noel…
please… tell me…”
Finally,
after what seems like an eternity, he looks up, shifts, the crutches clicking
as he sits more upright, the rubber tips scraping over the floor as he pulls
them closer. His blue eyes blink rapidly. “I-I…. I’m sorry,” he whispers,
barely audible.
Sorry for
going to leave her or sorry for coming too late?
“Is she…”
He shakes
his head and something breaks. A dam, liquid flooding her lungs, her head and
she cannot see anymore. She hears him say sorry again and leave, feet scrambling
as he pushes upright, turns, the click of his crutches receding, the exhausted
drag of his feet growing fainter until all is drowned out by the thundering
roar of the water.
***
Karl’s
voice outside. He is arguing with the policemen who have driven the car to the
graveyard. The backdoor is flung open, light floods inside. The sun reflects on
the snow outside in thousand glittering spotlights, too bright and painful in
her eyes. The handcuffs come off but one of the policemen stays next to her
during the walk along the snowed-over pathway, past graves and headstones, soft
hills under the snow, to the only spot that is not white, the pit a festering
wound in fair skin, with a brown coffin next to it, snowflakes already settling
on its polished surface.
Rachel
barely registers who else is there. Two older women standing with some distance
to the open grave as if wondering if they belong here, probably Victoria’s
neighbors. A middle-aged woman with short red hair who was one of the nurses,
the only one crying. And Noel, of course, next to Karl, again not looking at
her when she joins them, the policeman taking up position half a step behind
her. So close she can feel the cloud of his breath hitting her neck.
Rachel does
not hear what the pastor says. She does not see the graveyard, the bending
trees around them, the sun bravely shining through the branches. Melting the
top layer of snow. She sees only the plain wooden coffin next to the hole in
the ground, unreal, a dream, a hallucination, drug-induced or maybe conjured up
by the mess in her head, who knows. All this time when things had not been real
this one should? What a nasty joke! No, surely not. Probably Victoria invented
this, like she invented so much, people coming to visit her who only she could
see and Reagan, her daughter, living with her still, returning from just a
short time away, a short walk to clear the head, an overnight stay at a
friend’s, to say sorry and to hug her mother and everything will be alright.
Karl nudges
her and she steps forward, mechanically. She is still dreaming. Takes a white
rose that is being offered to her and flings it down on the coffin that has
been lowered into the grave.
Nothing
changes.
The others
follow after her, one by one.
Then Noel
moves forward and she senses his left crutch slipping out from under him in the
soft deep snow before it happens, wonders why no one else sees his right knee
buckling under the sudden weight, the small bit of balance he has dissolving
into mist and his body tilting to the left, and she surges forward
instinctively, wrapping her arms around his chest before he can fall and
steadies him until he has sorted out his crutches again, his boots firm on the
ground once more.
This is
when he looks up, eyes like ice shards.
She
stumbles back, nearly toppling over the guard standing behind her. Turns away
from that gaze, itched into her memory, making her shiver, and lets herself be
escorted back to the car.
All the
time she thinks about the snow that is going to settle on the grave after it is
closed. The pile growing higher and higher with every hour.
***
The
slapping of wet skin on wet skin is obscenely loud in the small cabin. He
grunts with every thrust, his breath elaborate and she thinks he might die of a
heart attack. Wishes it for a second even.
“Fucking
whore… you were begging for that, weren’t you? How stupid are you even, coming
back? Someone must have fucked your brain out thoroughly, indeed.”
She keeps
silent, the edge of the table digging into her thighs, her cheek squishing some
papers lying on the surface. Closes her eyes as he rams his dick into her even
harder, thinking herself far away to some high place above the ground. All the
people and cars and houses shrinking to tiny ants.
“Or did you
come back for this, huh? Enjoyed last time, eh? Couldn’t stop thinking about
me, slutty cunt?”
He flips
her around and leans over her, the brown mole growing and a wave of his breath
hits her square in the face, sweet and foul. He is drunk, she realizes and
suddenly he slips out of her, swearing, fumbling with his member and she knows,
he has gone partly soft again. She cannot control it, her lips quirk into a
grin without her saying and his hand slaps across her face as he sees her
smirking at him, rubbing furiously at his half-filled dick.
“Is that
funny, whore? Is it? I tell you what, I won’t have anyone laughing at me…” and
he removes the belt around his uniform pants that hang low down his fat ass and
slide fully down to bunch around his fleshy ankles now, revealing his fat white
thighs. “Kneel.”
When she
does not react he buries his fist in her stomach and she yelps. A mistake
because she cannot seem to inhale again, the air has stopped wanting to enter
her lungs. He pushes her down on the dirty ground, her knees hitting the stone
hard, wheezing, and the belt goes down on her back, the thin blouse no
protection, once, twice, the pain white and sharp behind her closed eyelids. Then
he grabs her again, slams her back on the table and is over her in an instant,
his hand closing around her throat. Her back pulses with hot pain where the
leather hit her.
“Who is
laughing now? Who?!” He is sweating profusely and his spit splatters against
her cheek but he is hard again. Enters her without preamble, holding her wrists
down on the table over her head, the other squeezing her throat. She sees his
eyes growing bigger and bigger, and the veins pulsing in his temple and his
sick grin and suddenly she knows he will not stop before it is too late. She
squirms against his grip, tries to scream but her airways are blocked and his
fingers are closing tighter and tighter around her slim throat, the blood
rushes loudly in her ears and white dots appear in her field of vision – silly,
so silly that it is supposed to end like this – his grunts are starting to sound
far away, her hands fly over the table, fingers opening and closing, dying for something…
The first
gasp of air is like breathing liquid fire but it brings back the world, and the
tiny cabin with the yellow light from the naked light-bulb and the man lying on
the ground in front of her, wiggling in a sea of black, his stubby fingers
desperately pawing at his throat, scraping at the gleaming blades of the
scissors stuck there, something welling out of the other craters where she has
rammed it in, dark rivers creeping over the floor toward her.
She takes
two steps to the side and collapses to the ground. Heaves in air, more, more,
greedy for it and watches him shudder, squirm, without a sound. She knows she
is supposed to do something, but she cannot make herself go there, cannot make
herself look at him anymore, instead she watches the bright screen of her phone, for
some time, until she cannot hear him move anymore and then she dials.
“911,
what’s your emergency?”
She keeps
sitting there until heavy boots sound and the door gets flung open. Stares up
at the desk, at his laptop opened on top of it, with some porn movie stopped in
the middle, a grotesque scene frozen on the screen from when he had to leave
for one of his inspection rounds, the built-in camera facing her and the
motionless man on the ground, the lens watching them, black and innocent.
--> Part VI
--> Part VI
Thanks for posting on NYE. Happy new year! I'm looking forward to read more of your stories in 2017!
ReplyDeleteThanks chandelier!
DeleteRemarkable writing
ReplyDelete*blushes* Thank you so much! =)
DeleteHappy new year and thanks for updating on NYE!
ReplyDeleteThanks! You seem to have a doppelganger :)
DeleteHappy New Year to you, Lovis! Thank you for updating, great story. So sad at the moment, but I was anticipating this. Look very much forward to what comes next...
ReplyDeleteThanks, ano! Oh yes, what comes next...
DeleteAmazing story. Wonderful writing
ReplyDeleteThank you so much, blueskye! :)
DeleteAmazingly done! Great job.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Pepper! Makes me very happy to hear.
DeleteI'm saying it again how much I love it how you slowly reveal past and characters' background. I like it how things click into place chapter by chapter.
ReplyDeleteI'm amazed by Noel's loyalty and potential in Rachel's character which is shown in how deeply she cares/cared for Victoria.
And your writing overpowers me completely - I'm lost to this world while reading your story!
Thank you!
Awww, I want to frame that comment and pin it over my bed!! =) Honestly... thanks so much! I don't have the words to say how truly happy it makes me.
Delete