A Bestiary of Unnatural Women (28 page)

I was more than a little distracted by rushes
of pure terror and punctuated by moments of elation at the prospect
of escaping unscathed.

Twenty minutes later, I pulled into the lot
of the Valley Motor Inn on the highway out of town with no
accidents and no new moving violations added to my already spotty
driving record.

The middle-aged clerk looked as bored as
lumber as he took my credit card imprint and handed me the key to
Room Eighteen. He acted like single, beautiful, thirty-something
women with no luggage checked into his motel every afternoon. Maybe
they did. How would I know?

The motel had exterior entrances to the rooms
and eighteen was on the ground floor, giving me easy, anonymous
access. It was on the highway side but I parked in a space behind
the building so that my car couldn't be seen. I had to walk around
from the back to let myself into the room.

It was a pretty standard motel room, sparsely
furnished but cleaner than I expected.

Before anything else, I closed the heavy
curtains over the windows so that Rick would not be able to see me
from the street if he happened to drive out here and thought to
glance in the windows. The probability of that happening was
infinitesimally small, but I was taking no chances whatsoever.

I had no luggage to unpack so I dumped myself
on the bed, grabbed the remote and clicked the TV to life, not
caring about anything but the joy of being safe, pain-free, and
unraped.

Running like a coward and hiding in a hole
might not be the most dignified thing to do but it left me with a
hell of a lot more dignity than being forced to bend over a
dining-room table and raped from behind. Or worse.

Tomorrow, I would apologize to Rick for
standing him up for our little rape date and cook him a special
dinner. He liked spaghetti and that was easy enough. Cheap, too.
Maybe, if he accepted my apology, I would let him make love to me.
Nice, gentle, happy lovemaking. Not rape.

Before I could find a channel to watch, I
heard a sharp rap on the door. I clicked the set off to hear
better. “Yes?” I called out.

A low voice mumbled, “Manager. You forgot to
sign your registration card.”

What a compulsive idiot. Who cared if I
signed the damn card or not? I bounced off the bed, cracked the
door open and stuck my hand out. “Give me the card,” I sighed
through the crack.

Instead of feeling the card slip into my
hand, the door slammed into me, throwing me back, and a man wearing
a plastic clown mask burst into the room. I started to shriek until
he held a huge shiny knife in front of my face and hissed in a low
bass growl. He didn't articulate any intelligible words, he just
hissed. I understood what he meant. He wanted me to shut up. And
his knife could make my silence permanent if that was what I
wanted. I clamped my mouth shut tight and forced myself to say
nothing more.

He slammed the door shut behind his back and
advanced on me. I stepped back automatically, keeping distance
between me and the knife, but he shook his clown-masked head and
waved the knife slowly, the point weaving toward my face.

I stopped moving.

As soon as he was close enough, he grabbed my
arm and twisted me around so that I was facing away from him. As I
was turning, he slipped the arm holding the knife around my neck so
that the sharp side of the blade pressing lightly against the side
of my throat.

I dared not move for fear of sliding against
the razor-sharp edge and slicing my jugular vein or carotid artery
or whatever vital blood vessel was nearest the surface of my skin
in that particular spot.

He grabbed my right wrist and moved it to the
small of my back, then did the same with my left. I dared not
resist and left my wrists exactly where he put them. I heard chirps
of a ratchet and felt cold steel caress each wrist in turn. He had
cuffed my hands behind my back.

From that point on, compliance was my only
option.

Staying behind me, he raised the knife from
my neck and held it in front of my face again, this time pointing
it directly between my eyes with the edge facing down. He held it
there for a long moment while he moved his left hand up to grab my
throat and pull me back against his chest. I was terrified that he
was going to stab me in the face. I dared not so much as squeak for
fear that it would set him off. I wanted to stay alive. Oh, God,
did I want to stay alive.

His breath whistled harshly though the
plastic mask in my ear. My breath sounded even louder as my lungs
bellowed in terror.

My eyes stayed fixated on the point of the
knife as though I were instantly hypnotized by it. I followed its
progress as he continued turning it and slowly lowered it until the
tip was resting against the soft hollow of my neck just above the
collar of my tee-shirt. Though I could no longer see the tip
itself, I continued to watch as much of the blade as I could. I
felt a stab of pain as he nicked me and I whimpered involuntarily.
He hissed a quick shush in my ear and continued to slide the point
of the knife down to the lower extent of my throat. I could feel it
slipping underneath the edge of the crew-neck collar and saw the
white cotton tenting away from my skin. He pulled down slowly,
applying more and more force until the shirt’s collar was digging
into my neck at the sides and stretched almost to my cleavage
against the razor-sharp blade. Suddenly the fabric parted and slit
across the blade. Once the blade started the cut the shirt, the man
pulled it slowly downward, first revealing my breasts encased in
bra cups, then past my waist, unveiling my midriff, until finally
the lower hem was severed. The front of my tee-shirt was left
hanging open like the curtains parted to expose my chest.

The man raised the knife again and used the
tip of the blade to slide the remnants of cotton off my shoulders.
I could feel the cold steel sliding along my skin and looked to
assure myself that he was not cutting me. Yet.

When the ruined tee-shirt was hanging from my
wrists around the handcuffs at the small of my back, the man
brought the knife back to the center of my chest to slide the point
down my sternum into the cleavage between my breasts, the sharp
edge still pointing away from me. When he severed the connection
between the bra cups, my breasts sprang apart, falling away into
their natural position, still loosely covered.

My first thought was that I could no longer
wear either my tee-shirt or my bra. When the man left, he would be
leaving me topless. My second thought was that he wouldn't care if
I were topless if he intended to kill me. And if I were dead, I
wouldn't be worrying about being topless, either.

He used the point of the knife to push the
bra straps off my shoulders as he had with my tee-shirt. When the
remains of the bra slipped down my back to join the tee-shirt
around my cuffed hands, my breasts were left naked to the cool air
in the room. I looked down to see that my nipples were erect and
the aureolae puckered. From the cold? Fear? Arousal? I hated the
thought that I might be aroused despite my humiliation and terror,
but it was the truth. I knew that I would already be wet between my
legs, too. Sometimes a woman can hate her own biology.

He pulled his hand away from my neck. A
second later, I heard a rip and then something covered my eyes.
Duct tape. He had blindfolded me with a piece of duct tape. I felt
him press the tape hard against my forehead, across my nose, and
tight over my cheeks. I could see nothing but pure black.

Nothing happened for a long time. What was he
doing? Closing curtains? No. I had already closed them. Searching
through my purse? Maybe. Looking for something to steal? Probably.
Looking at my naked tits? Almost certainly.

While I stood there with my tits on display,
I thought about the man. Was it Rick? I prayed that it was only my
husband doing what I had asked but I didn't see how that could be
possible. Rick had not come home before I'd left. If he did not
leave work early, and Rick seldom left before quitting time, then
he would be at the office for at least four more hours. And even if
he had left early and had arrived shortly after I left, he would
have found the house empty and would not know where to find me.
That was the whole point of running and hiding in this random
motel.

This man had burst through my door within a
couple of minutes of my having checked in. Even if Rick had been
looking for me, there had not been enough time for him to have
found me. This man had come prepared with a hunting knife,
handcuffs, and duct tape. When would Rick have had time to assemble
a rape kit?

Despite my prayers, I knew in the pit of my
stomach that this man was a stranger. A violent sociopath who was
as likely to murder me as not. Who was he? The manager of the
motel? Probably not. The manager couldn't leave his desk for this
long without someone noticing and coming to look for him. A friend
of the manager? That was more likely. Maybe a friend had asked the
manager to call and let him know if a woman of a certain age
checked into his motel alone. Or maybe he was just an anonymous
sociopath who parked on streets near motels and waited for
beautiful women victims. It didn't matter. I was helpless in the
hands of a violent stranger and did not doubt that he was going to
rape me very soon.

I began to pray that he would get it up
quickly, get it over with quickly, and get out without killing me.
I had heard somewhere that failed rapists were more likely to kill
their victims than successful ones, if just to keep the woman from
reporting their impotence to anyone. If this man had trouble
getting an erection, then he was going to blame me for not being
sexy enough and kill me.

I wished that he'd free my hands so that I
could help massage him erect. I was good at getting Rick erect. It
was one of the few things that I did well in bed.

I flinched when I felt his hands slip into
the waistband of my jeans. I sucked in my stomach so that he could
more easily unbutton them. When the button let go, he unzipped them
and pulled them roughly over my hips. When I felt them fall around
my ankles, I stepped out of them, being careful not to lose my
balance and fall over. I hated myself for being such a pathetic,
eager, accommodating victim but what choice did I have? I went
further and raised my feet, one foot at a time, so that he could
pull my socks off.

Standing blind, I was naked but for my
panties. I wondered if he would pull them down or tear them from
me.

I felt the tip of the knife slide across my
stomach. He was going to cut them off. And cut them he did. The
fabric pulled into my crotch and against my hips as he forced the
blade through the material. There was a sudden release and I felt
the soft flutter of shredded cotton against my thighs as the bits
of material fell to the floor.

Now there was no barrier, physical or
symbolic, standing between any part of my body and my rapist.

Hard hands fell on my shoulders pushed
downwards. I understood what he wanted and dropped to my knees. I
parted my lips and teeth to make it easier for him to push himself
into my mouth. There was no end to the lengths that I was willing
to go to satisfy him. I wanted to earn my life by giving him
pleasure. But he did not want to enter my mouth. At least not right
now. When I was on my knees, he went behind me – he must have
squatted – and unlocked my handcuffs.

If I were going to make a break for it, this
was the time. But I couldn't escape blind and I'd never get the
tape off my face before he caught me and cut me to bloody ribbons.
I waited passively with my unbound wrists still pressed to the
small of my back to see what he wanted.

He grabbed my right wrist, moved my hand down
to my side and pressed my fingers around my ankle. Then he did the
same with my left hand and left ankle. It was a strain but I
gripped both ankles as tightly as I could. I heard another ripping
sound and then felt sticky, clammy duct tape against the back of my
right hand. With a few clumsy twists, he bound my right hand to my
right ankle. Then he ripped off another strip of tape and added it
over top of the first, I could feel my fingers and ankle merging
into a single, solid unit. Then he moved around and did the same
with my other hand and ankle.

Holding the position was a strain, but the
tape gave me no choice. It was already difficult to tolerate but I
could tell that it was going to get a lot worse before long. My
knees would soon be screaming from the constricted circulation. I
wondered if I would live long enough to feel the pain when it
reached its zenith.

I felt a hand wind itself into the hair at
the back of my head and begin to drag me across the carpet. This
new pain was intense. It felt like he was going to pull my scalp
off. I scrambled to crawl as best as I could manage with my hands
taped to my ankles. The skin was being scraped off my knees; the
industrial-strength carpet was as bad as sandpaper.

At least I would be leaving some DNA evidence
for the crime scene investigators. Of course, they would have an
entire body's worth of my DNA when they found my corpse. I wondered
if my rapist would leave any of his own DNA inside me or if he
would use a condom.

In my struggles I found that I could relieve
some tiny, just noticeable amount of strain on my shoulders by
spreading my knees and ankles wide apart. It made my crotch feel
exposed but, at the moment, that was or less concern than relieving
the tension in my joints.

He unwound his hand from my hair and left me
alone for a minute. I heard a zip and rustle of fabric near my ear,
then a creak of bedsprings in front of my face. Hands wrapped
themselves in my hair again, this time one hand at each side of my
head. My face was pulled forward toward him.