Natalie awoke in her steel crypt
and realized the car wasn’t moving. How long she had slept she didn’t know but
despite the shallow sleep, she felt somewhat rested. The taillights had been
extinguished so no light crept into the cavity. Whether day or night, she had
no way to judge how long she had been imprisoned, but, since they hadn’t killed
her yet, every moment she stayed alive offered new hope.
The throb in her head wasn’t as
intense as it had been when she first roused but the other wounds seemed to
make up the difference in her discomfort. She rolled to her back and laid flat
on the grimy steel floor. The intense pain of that simple act made her wince
and reminded her that it hadn’t been just naiveté that trapped her; simple blind-eyed
pride with no thought of the consequences had drawn her like a bug to the
zapper on her parent’s back porch. Too much ambition had overpowered all the
warnings she had sensed and herded her emotions with too little caution toward
bad decisions. One phone call as Maggie had suggested, regardless of how she
felt about her agent, would have revealed that Ansell Parker hadn’t formed a
production company and more important, Tony Alonso wasn’t even a speck on
Hollywood’s radar.
Her self-protective psyche had
wanted to block out as much of the inhumanity as possible, but instinct told
her if she had a chance to survive, she had to harbor every vile detail of the
attack. She had been objectified to nothing more than a sexual toy for personal
gratification, and to heighten their pleasure they had found it necessary to
beat her with their fists and bludgeon her with a gun. But she wasn’t a piece
of meat to be consumed. If she remembered one thing from her high school US
History class, she had rights, “inalienable rights to life.” Whatever the
outcome, she chose to exercise them and plot her escape.
Too often victims of rape find
their epitaph on page eight of the local newspaper, reduced to being nothing
more than a frail casualty. Everyone is sad but few are surprised that another
woman has been victimized. Even though the farm provided a haven for rodents
and snakes, she never got used to things that scurried and slithered. She
screamed for help rather than assert control. Now she needed to build a
reservoir for her tears and turn the fear of the monsters into rage. It was
time for an emotional revolution. Victims try to block out the reality.
Survivors grasp the terror no matter how merciless, and manipulate it to win
their own redemption.
She started a tactile inventory
her body. Her fingers moved across from injury to injury. Every sore muscle,
aching bone and tender ligament; each bruise, bite and scrape, brought to mind
a vision of that specific assault and the witness of the heartless way the two
fiends had used her. Except for one, the painful lump on the back of her head.
As she concentrated on the swelling and massaged the wound, a vague memory of
the glint of something shinny slicing through the air showed itself just before
everything in her world went dark—the gun.
Even though the car sat silent
and still, she was certain she hadn’t been dumped. She felt the presence her
predators lurk nearby. That brought renewed determination. They won’t take me again and remain unharmed. Even if they kill me, I won’t go down with a whimper or without a final
stand.
She couldn’t see it but she knew
Hank’s blood and flesh were under her fingernails. Under the blankets she
started to pick with her nails to eradicate the filth, but then realized it
represented something she needed. She dropped her hands to her bare chest,
closed her eyes and visualized the strength from it filling her mind. It’s my war-paint.
Since her prison
cell was the trunk of a car, she realized there might be some kind of weapon
within her grasp. On her back, she freed her arms from the blankets. The cool
air bit at her skin. Despite the chill, she began to explore her surroundings.
With her left hand, she reached
over her head and found a cloth wadded in a heap. She pulled it to her chest
and in the dark examined it with her fingers. She found it to be two cloths and
separated them. The smaller one was the towel she had worn just before the
attack. She shivered without warning, not from the cool air but from the
memory’s sudden intrusion. She grasped to control it and fed it to the rage.
She set the towel just to her left. The other had a terrycloth texture. She
decided it must be the bathrobe the kid had held and bunched it together to
make a pillow. She slipped it under her head, just above the aching lump at the
base of her skull.
With her left hand she continued
to search and located the wheel well of the left rear tire. She waved her hand
around the area and bumped into the spare tire on the floor just to her left. A
flicker of hope ignited. A spare meant there might be tools—a tire iron. She
slipped her fingers under the edge and tried to lift it. Her angle wrong, she
couldn’t get the needed leverage. She rolled to her left and reached with her
right hand for the opening in the center of the wheel. Unable to fit her hand
through it to investigate the space under the tire, disappointed, she gave up.
_____
©
Jearl Rugh 2012
All
Rights Reserved
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