Chapter 48
Josephine
Anxiety roils through me as my stomach riots. I’m either going to puke or piss my pants. Maybe both.
As I look between the boats shrinking on the horizon, the frantic energy of indecision swamps me.
I don’t know what to do. How to react. How to get myself out of this situation.
The world feels a little hazy around the edges.
Like my brain is shutting down and trying to protect me from the reality of the situation.
No. Stop. I have to stay alert.
I’m snapped back to reality when one of the guys starts narrating as if we’re in a film documentary.
“Here she is. Queen of the Crusaders. QB1’s girl. Decker Crusade’s pet.” Their laughs are cruel, laced with contempt. “Doesn’t she look pretty setting sail across the waves of Lake Chapel, heading away from the charter cruise yachts?”
He’s filming me with his phone. He has the camera pointed right at me, taking a video without my consent. They’re going to show someone. They’re going to show everyone.
That’s the tipping point.
I lose it.
As if my consciousness is hovering above the tender, I watch myself thrash about like a wild animal trapped in a cage.
I grip the edge of the boat and scream. The sound travels to my ears, the frequency and pitch startling me, even though it’s coming from my body.
I scream and I scream and I scream. My throat will be ripped right open at this rate.
Never let them get you to the second location.
That’s the advice. That’s one of the safety tidbits drilled into young girls about kidnapping and assault.
Carry your keys in your hand.
Take down your ponytail when you walk alone at night.
Always tell someone where you’re going.
Never let them get you to the second location.
It’s my worst nightmare. And one I’ve already lived.
Another picture is snapped. A sequence of synapses fires off in my brain.
My grasp on reality slips.
I feel it. I’m going under. I can’t let them take me. I won’t go back there again.
My instincts take over, and it isn’t until the douchebag sneering at me says it out loud that my actions register.
“Oh, shit. Fuck. Grab her! She’s going to jump!”
I’m halfway over the side when I feel hands—hands everywhere.
Touching. Grabbing. Groping. Pulling.
Don’t fucking touch me!
I don’t know whether I think it or say it. Feel it or sob it. It doesn’t matter. They’ll do what they want. They always do.
Hands grope and pull until my toes no longer skim the water.
Arms brace around my torso as I thrash and scream.
I relive.
I regret.
The edges of my vision go hazy. My sobs turn to laughter, I think.
That’s when I know they’ve won. When the sobs stop. When my body stills.
I fought as hard as I could. It wasn’t enough. It never is.
I crave the rush of water as my vision blurs, my hearing wavers, and my body finally, mercifully, gives up the fight.