Chapter 14
EMME
The week went by, achingly slow, and I still did not contact any of the people a normal person would have called, not my friends and not the cops.
I decided to let my little adventure slide by until it blurred into the past. I would shed it like a snake sloughing off last year’s dead skin.
And me, I was done with experimenting with my kinks.
I did make an appointment with a doctor. My explanation to them, that I’d been off doing dangerous kink and needed to know if I’d been infected with anything, was received with a severe, skeptical air. With the request form in hand, I went off to get tests done for all those unsexy nasties.
In a few days I would know if I had syphilis or AIDs or whatever other diseases made your bits fall off. Considering what I had seen and heard at his house, I was more likely to give Mr. Scott some STD than he was me.
The first day back at the college arrived.
It was back to teaching biology for adults wanting to re-enter the tertiary education stream.
I dressed in my demure black skirt and delicately floral shirt, adjusted the skirt, and put on a pair of low-heeled shoes.
I was about to open my door to run down and catch the eight AM bus, when a text buzzed.
I lowered my handbag to the floor and fished out the phone. The message flashed up.
An unknown number. The summary hammered a nail into my heart.
Wear red today. S
“Fuck.” I put my hand to my throat. This had to be from him.
The arrogance was astonishing. How dare he instruct me.
Then I imagined him close and threatening, handling me as he wished to, and my panties dampened. Telltale wetness slipped from my lips below as they swelled.
I should not do this. Would not.
I raised the phone to contact the cops.
He knew where I would be, otherwise why bother texting this?
If I didn’t stop him, he would find me, hurt me…make me cry while he did unspeakable things.
I hugged myself. I was going to obey him anyway, wasn’t I?
“Shit!” I walked stiffly and stern-faced to the bedroom, as if someone might notice my flushed face and arousal and mock me.
I pulled a pair of lacey red panties from the drawer and swapped them for my skin-toned ones.
Then I realized if he wanted me to do this as a signal, it needed to be visible.
A scarf? I had a scarf with some red on it.
I yanked it from the drawer and ran for the door, unlocked it, slammed it shut and locked, sprinted for the stairs.
The elevator was slower when it was one flight only.
On the way down, striving not to trip and kill myself, I flipped the scarf about my neck.
I was wearing red to tell this stranger I wanted whatever he meant to do to me. Totally fucked up. Just totally. I should be ashamed of myself. I was. In the bus those thoughts crowded out my awareness of everything else.
I nearly missed my stop.
I was so distraught and turned on, my panties were sticking to me as I jogged up the steps of Monarte College.
After nodding to Mrs. Theodore, who manned the front office, with her spectacles, bun, and neatly arranged desk, I headed to the classroom.
In the break room, where we had drinks and meals between classes, conversations seemed insignificant.
I knocked back an invite from staid Mr. Holder to a small party on the weekend.
The day swarmed past, headily, as I wondered what and where and how He might turn up.
Not at school. No.
On the way home then? Unless he was messing with me and never intended to do anything? After all, I might set him up and cops might be waiting.
The trip home was uneventful. Maybe he was only messing with me. I unlocked the door, closed and locked it behind me, and slumped into the wall.
Semi-angrily, I tossed my handbag onto the table and sat on a kitchen chair to punch out a reply to the message from S.
Then I deleted it. Fuck him for toying with my emotions, and for making my insanity so obvious. I did have a death wish. I must have. What else could explain this craving?
I needed to talk this through with someone.
Instead of a text to Him, assuming that stranger was Mr. Scott, I began tapping out one to Charity. She was the only person who might understand and accept my dilemma and maybe even why I…
I slumped, shoulders down, hands cradling the cell phone in my lap.
Why I wanted his unique brand of unscrupulous and immoral mindfucks? Yes, that.
No one could understand, but perhaps being yelled at could cure me. I sent the text.
Half an hour later while I was frying some kebabs, Charity’s reply came in.
How about we meet this weekend at the shooting range on Koft Street? Sunday at ten AM?
I sent her, yes, slid the phone away, and flipped the kebabs.
I’d been to that shooting range before. Dad had taught me how to go blam blam at paper targets, and I had introduced Charity to it. Her competitive nature, or maybe her killer instincts had kept her interest in the hobby going for this past year.
Nothing more came from the stranger.
But because I was obstinate and dumb and hopeful, I wore red on Tuesday. Subtle red in the form of a pendant with a small cloisonné heart.
By the afternoon, my jitteriness was in full force, and I scanned everyone who took the bus. Or rather, I checked out all the men. Nothing. None of them even vaguely resembled my villainous lover if one could call him that.
Lover. I rolled the word around in my head. While ascending the apartment block stairs, I was still pondering my weirdness and had resigned myself to a boring night marking assignments. No one grabbed me before I opened the door.
Wednesday, I wore the same red pendant but was sure nothing would happen. Almost sure. Though, of course, even going up the stairwell seemed fraught with deadly possibilities.
Thursday, I hesitated then went to work at the school with nothing red on me.
Friday, while scolding myself, I made a detour through an alley to the bus stop.
It was one I never ever took because it felt unsafe and isolated for a lone woman, even if it was barely fifty yards through a concealed alley between thick concrete walls.
Red graffiti sprawled overhead. I dodged the crushed drink cans and paper litter.
No one could hear you scream, from the middle. Except for the pigeons.
I was definitely crazy and hurried through. It wasn’t self-destruction I sought.
Saturday afternoon, disgruntled and lonely, I went to feed the ducks at the lake at the local park that nestled beside a highway and road intersection.
The traffic sounds filtered over the embankments and the trees planted to shield the place.
It was large enough to feel like a piece of nature and small enough to fit into suburbia.
There was no playground, but swans and ducks seemed to treat it as home.
Feeling disconnected from everything around me, I found a bench and sat, eyeing the stretch of lake, a central island, and the reeds.
Six ducks swarmed in a feathery flotilla to the water’s edge, and a few waddled closer to quack at me.
I drew the packet of food from the pocket in my long skirt and leaned in to scatter it before the eager birds.
When the last of the food had been thrown, I looked about, only to realize I was the last person here.
I wondered about S then dismissed my fantasies. I needed to move on.
I stood to dust the crumbs off my skirt, and someone seized me from behind then hauled me backward.
We were submerged in the bushes within seconds.
Darkness and leaves swished in above, twigs scratched my arms and legs.
It had to be him, I thought, even as I wheezed and spluttered against a chokehold and tried to claw his hand off me, only to have both my wrists trapped at my back.
I couldn’t see them, whoever they were.
Only a man would have this strength.
Something thin pressed in on my wrists.
Leaves crunched and scattered underfoot. I lost a shoe but tried to kick him. There was sky then dirt as I was twisted to the ground, face first, my wrists already caught by a hard plastic tie.
The arm had left my throat, and I wheezed.
If I screamed, I might be rescued. Unsure who this was or what was happening, I opened my mouth.
As I sucked in a breath, a wad of something was stuffed at and past my teeth, muffling me.
I choked as he kneeled on my arm. When spit dribbled from my mouth, it made him chuckle.
He plastered a piece of sticky tape over my mouth, sealing in the cloth.
He rolled me and pinned me face up, brushing leaves from my face when I tried to shake them off.
A balaclava made his identity almost impossible to decipher.
Those eyes… He leaned in to whisper even as he wormed his hand under my head.
His hand closed on my hair, and he wrenched my head back, tilting my neck.
He made my head move from side to side as he spoke, punctuating the words. “I have to punish you because you forgot. And it’s almost sunset. No one will know there is a woman in here being fucked to death.”
I forgot?
I whimpered, clawed the ground with my bound hands.
His hard thighs straddled me, and he began to efficiently trace my curves with his hands, as if checking what creature lay caught beneath him.
My shoulders, my breasts, my hips, were felt, then a finger circled on my shirt, pushing the fabric into my navel.
His thumbs and fingers pressed in on me, holding me at the hips.
He rose off me to inch my skirt up my legs, baring me to panties level.
My clit throbbed disobediently, but I squeaked a protest past the wad of cloth and the tape.
This shouldn’t be turning me on, but that was Mr. Scott’s voice, wasn’t it? Or was I wrong?
Like some ridiculously slow echo I recalled the last words, fucked to death.
What if it wasn’t him?