Mercy (36 page)

With violence I could have the appropriate socially-approved victim response. I knew from experience anything else could produce a very different physical reaction.

***

At seventeen I'd gotten involved with my first real boyfriend. He was cute and had that edge of danger that girls of that age are so fond of. He gave off an air of something wild and frightening, and I'd been along for the ride

We'd fooled around a lot. My strict religious upbringing didn't allow for more without fear of God's wrath coming down on me, and orgasms weren't worth an eternity in hell. Though in hindsight, the idea that some deity could be bothered to punish any one individual for what they chose to do with their clothes off, seems stupid at best.

He'd pressed me down on the bed, my legs hanging over the edge. We were in his room; his parents were downstairs. The sounds of the nightly news drifted up to the bedroom. I was
lying
there, my pants forgotten on the floor, though I was still wearing a shirt.

He wanted to go down on me. It was more than I was ready for at the time, and I was paranoid about getting an STD,
the
STD. Yes, this was how empty my education in sexually transmitted diseases had been in the abstinence climate. Still, I'd said no. I'd meant no.

He'd ignored me, spreading my legs wide for his perusal, gripping my wrists tightly against my thighs as he held me down. “You'll like this, I promise,” he said.

I struggled, but he was too strong, and I didn't have the proper leverage to shove him away. He buried his head between my legs, slowly laving the bundle of nerves there. I wanted to cry out, but I couldn't face the shame of his parents running up there and finding me half naked on his bed.

Somehow it was worse knowing I could have stopped him. It was one violation or another. His tongue on my clit, or his parents knowing what we'd been up to, thinking I was a slut.

“Please, please don't.” I'd begged him, and yet he hadn't stopped.

It was incredible how little time it took for my resolve to melt, for “Please, no” to turn into “Oh God, don't stop.”

When he was finished, I just laid there, my legs shaking from the force of my orgasm. They'd turned to jelly, and I felt weak, drugged in the post-orgasmic afterglow euphoria. The orgasm I couldn't possibly go to hell for. He looked up into my eyes, a self-satisfied smirk on his face and said teasingly, “I told you you'd like it. Now, what do you say?”

“Thank you.” It was our little inside joke. It had never previously been applied to anything sexual. The words had slipped out of my mouth before I could stop them, and on some level they were true.

He and I never talked about the incident after that, and he never directly forced me again. He never had to. I didn't give him the opportunity because it was too confusing. In his mind, I'm sure he believed he hadn't done anything wrong, since he'd successfully changed my mind by turning my body against me. In the end I'd liked it.
The entire sordid event from start to finish.

The juxtaposition of fear and helplessness, set up next to complete pleasure and eventual surrender. I'd masturbated for months afterward to the memory of the event. It was several years before I mentioned it to a friend.

She'd insisted it was no different than rape. I suppose she was right, but I'd never seen it that way. I'd for some reason never had the normal emotional response. I'd gotten off on it. Something was different in the way I was wired and that, perhaps, was the only thing that had saved me. Over time I developed an intense shame about it, not because I'd been violated, but because I wasn't properly traumatized by what had been done to me.
Because I sometimes still touched myself thinking about it.

***

I thought he'd left me alone again, but then I heard another metal chair scrape against the floor. His heavy weight fell into it, and he placed something on a table. My breath hitched.

Moments later, a spoon was prodding at my lips. I opened my mouth, and warm chicken noodle soup slid down my throat.
Comfort food.
Oh, sweet irony. I wasn't worried he'd drug me. Why would he?

Drugging had been a convenience of transport. He had me where he wanted me, no doubt in some eerie sound-proofed basement cell. I heard him crumble crackers into the soup before feeding me another bite. I hadn't realized how hungry I was. Intense fear tends to shut down the hunger response.

After the second bite, his hand gently fondled one of my breasts through my clothing. I stiffened and flinched away. He didn't yell or hit me. He simply placed the bowl back on the table and got up. Then his footsteps started to recede in the direction they'd come from.

So this was the game he was playing? Either I would accept his touch, or he'd starve me to death? I hear it's a horrible way to die, second only to drowning or suffocation. Those things could still be on the menu. It was early yet.

“Please . . . wait.” I hated myself for saying it. Hated myself enough that had my hands been free and a razor been nearby, I might have pressed the blade into my skin and bled out right there in front of him.

I was already bargaining, doing
the
appease
the captor and maybe he won't hurt you too bad
thing. In turn, he would show a small kindness here or there to gain my total dependence on him
And
voila . . . instant Stockholm Syndrome.

His footsteps stopped, and I heard him turn, still as silent as ever. After a moment, he returned and sat back down in the chair.

I was trying not to hyperventilate. I wasn't sure what I'd have to allow him to do to let me breathe into a paper bag. This was how our agreement began. He never said a word, never made any kind of verbal threat. He didn't need to.

It was a tacit agreement. I would give him what he wanted, or else. Right now the bargaining chip on the table was food. I was still arguing with myself over that one, berating myself for not being stronger, not holding out longer. He hadn't tried to fuck me yet. Having my breast fondled was a small price to pay to eat.

The spoon prodded at my mouth again and I opened up for the warm liquid. He'd gotten the good crackers.
The oval-shaped Townhouse kind.
The kind I liked. I had a moment of almost hysteria wondering how long he'd watched me, how much he knew about me. Did he know this particular food somehow idiotically made me feel safe?

I tensed as I heard the spoon clank into the bowl again. I knew what that meant. Every cell in my body felt poised, on edge, trying to inch away as his hand closed over my breast once again. He hadn't moved to take any of my clothes off. He seemed to want me to agree to every step of my desecration.

I didn't want to respond, but his thumb caressed over my nipple through the layers of clothing so gently, so enticingly that I found myself arching toward him. I wanted to jerk away, but if I did he'd leave and take the food with him. This time my begging might not bring him back.

This pattern repeated itself over and over. First a bite, then
a fondle
, until the soup was gone. He wanted to make sure the conditions were clear to me, that nothing would be given to me freely. I would pay for it all.

I kept rewinding the day in my head. What if I'd done something differently? What if I'd never left the table? Had it been necessary to reapply my
lipstick that close
to the end of the day? Had a tube of waxy color called
Sassy Vixen
really been
the catalyst to take my freedom from me?

I knew it was crazy to think that way. He would have gotten me sooner or later if he was determined enough. That moment in time wasn't the definitive moment. I would have had another unguarded moment later and would have paid for it then.

We'd gotten through the bowl of soup and
an awkwardness
descended. It was as if he'd only planned this far and had no idea what his next step should be. Maybe he was waiting for me.

Okay.

“Please tell me why you're doing this.” My voice was stronger now. Maybe it was the captive/captor alliance we seemed to have formed. He didn't seem the kind to lash out with no planning. He instead seemed the type who could wait multiple eternities for everything to work to his desire.

No reply.

He placed his fingers on my lips, gently silencing me. He had no intention of answering the question, and I had no power to make him do so. He knelt on the ground beside me and I heard the knife as it cut through the ropes binding my legs to the chair.

I had the urge to kick him in the face, but I didn't. If I kicked him, I was escalating the situation to real physical violence and he would no doubt retaliate. This wasn't someone with gentlemanly scruples. Before I could make a solid decision against kicking him, my chance slipped past me, as he moved behind me.

He sliced through the ropes around my wrists. I hadn't realized how much they'd cut into me, but they burned now that the air hit them. He came back to stand in front of me, bringing my arms around with him, placing my hands primly on my lap like I was a
posable
doll. I could barely feel myself breathing.

I have a deep and abiding fear of knives.
Honestly, I don't know many people not afraid of knives.
For most, a knife is scarier even than a gun. If someone kills you with a gun, it can be quick, painless. Knives don't offer that possible luxury. They are intimate and violent in a way a gun could never hope to be.

Despite my hands and legs being free, I still didn't fight back. He had a knife, and I was blindfolded. It didn't take a mathematician to work out those odds. Before I could reach up to remove the blindfold, his hands were encircling my wrists, rubbing them, as if he were actually concerned he'd hurt me.

But I knew that wasn't the case. Anyone who drugs you, kidnaps you, and locks you in a cell doesn't care if they hurt you. Maybe he just didn't want to hurt me, yet. In one quick movement, he ripped the blindfold away.

Although the scrap of dark fabric hadn't been pleasant, it had acted as a sort of safety, a filter. Now there was nothing between us. I looked into the coldest, blackest eyes I'd ever seen, fathomless pools of something I couldn't quite recognize as human. There was an otherness about him, something that made him different from me, from anyone I'd ever spoken to before.

I expected him to start the verbal threats now that the mystery of my captor was over, but he didn't. He just stared. I was his science project.

In another situation I would have found him attractive. He was muscular, had a firm jaw, great hair, not an ounce of body fat. I imagined this was what Ted
Bundy's victims
felt at some point, that it was utterly impossible he could want to hurt them and be so beautiful at the same time. The unbelievable shock someone so attractive could be a predator.

Why would he have to be? Didn't women just fall at his feet automatically? I had the sudden bone-chilling terror that this man wanted something he couldn't get from a date, perhaps my body chopped up in little pieces and arranged in neat white paper in the freezer. I shuddered at the thought and quickly tried to block it out.

Monsters aren't supposed to be beautiful. It's the rule. The Hunchback of Notre Dame was ugly. Frankenstein's monster was ugly.
Nosferatu
. . . ugly.
Ugly was in the rulebook. And yet the man kneeling calmly before me wasn't ugly. Not on the surface. Look anywhere but into his eyes and he was the man women fantasized about from puberty onward.

He stood and backed away from me then, his gaze pinning me to the chair. He wasn't holding the knife in a threatening way, but he still held it. He started toward the door,
then
thinking better of it, he turned, came back to me, and pulled me out of the chair. I was almost to the begging point again, but he wasn't interested in me.

He stacked my chair on top of the one he'd been sitting on, folded the card table, and took the bowl and spoon.

I could have spent hours, days even, berating myself for not at least trying to run past him for the door, but I was glad I didn't. There was a combination keypad on the wall. Leaving required a retina and thumbprint scan. Whoever had me, had some discretionary funds. Maybe I was part of a secret government study.

The door shut loudly behind him, and I was alone in the cell with nothing but the clothes on my back.
Concrete floor, concrete walls, unknown ceiling composition, all gray.
A toilet sat in one far corner with no lid and there was an odd drain in the floor a few feet from the toilet. It was like prison without bars, or windows, or a bed.

I didn't know what time it was or why this mattered to me, but there was something disconcerting about not knowing whether it was day or night. When would I sleep? Not that it mattered. There was nothing to do but sleep.

In the movies, there's always a way out. It doesn't matter where the bad guy traps you, there's a way out. You can pick a lock, or use some kerosene, a match, and some sort of fuse and make a bomb to blow the door off. You can crawl out through the ceiling tiles, or smash a window, or find some weak point in the wall and start chipping away at it with a sharp tool you just happen to have in your pocket.