“I can’t stop the bleeding,” Tony said. “I need more towels?”
“This is it,” Rudy replied and pointed to the bloody pile between the beds.
“They’re too wet to do any good. Take the car back to that store we stopped in earlier. They’ll have something.”
“I’m not too good at this, Tony. Why don’t I take Natalie? I’m sure she would know what we need.”
Natalie had to keep herself from laughing out loud. Tony would see through that in less than a heartbeat but it moved her that Rudy had tried to find a way out.
“Right dickhead,” Tony said, “and once you and Goldilocks leave, what’s to say you’ll come back? Damn it, get the keys and get out of here.”
She caught Rudy’s eye, and offered him a smile in appreciation.
Rudy looked back but his expression was unreadable. He turned his eyes away and made an effort to glance around the room. “Where are they? Does Hank still have ‘em?”
With his free hand, Tony felt Hank’s pockets, “Nothing, shit. What’d you do with the keys, buddy?”
Hank eyes were closed, his breathing heavy and strained. He didn’t respond.
“Maybe he dropped them outside,” Tony said.
Rudy started for the door.
As he grabbed the door handle, Tony said, “And don’t try any shit, lover boy.” He pulled the gun from his waistband and pointed it at Natalie. “If you come back with the cops, you can be sure I’ll make time to waste her.”
Rudy looked back toward Natalie, dropped his eyes and opened the door.
Natalie turned her back to Tony again and lay still. While she had been in the trunk, she vowed that she wouldn’t succumb to being a panicked victim. She had struck back with force. The result lay on the next bed with a hole in his chest. Even though she had lost control of the pistol, the results of the last few minutes pleased her. At present she still had breath, she had won freedom from her steel imprisonment, and she had begun to turn one of her abductors into an ally.
In some ways she knew she and Rudy were both stalked prey, their scent pursued by a ruthless predator. For now, she needed him to be convinced they were fighting a common enemy—Tony’s oppressive talons—but eventually she would have to be freed from him as well. She knew the moment he realized she too had turned against him, his world would implode, but he had been complicit in her exploitation. The plan he in part engineered caused her to consent to rape by both him and Hank.
Since she first realized what was happening to her in the warehouse, it had been too easy to assume the blame. She had replayed what-ifs again and again. Each time it made her feel pathetic. Excuses came easier than taking responsibility. It had only proven what she already believed—she was a weak and naïve farm girl, and a long way from the protection of home. Even with her mother’s iron fist, at least she had felt safe there.
But now, another justification invaded her, she neither needed nor wanted it, but it seemed to have a mind of its own. What if I said yes when Rudy asked me out? If she had said yes, would she have been raped? If she had said yes, would she have had the terror of the gun shoved inside her? If she had said yes, would she have spent the last day starving and thirsty unsure at any moment if it would be her last? If she had said yes, wouldn’t she be getting off work in a couple of hours and tonight would sleep in her own bed? If her heart had been in a different place and she had said yes, she and Rudy may have been friends. But everything had changed because of that one decision, and if she lived through this, it could well define the rest of her life.
She could have stayed in Iowa. It would have offered a much different life, a less stressful life, a more predictable life. The Westerhill’s were respected in their church, so a good husband would have been simple to find. By now she might have been engaged. Despite her mom’s baseless assumptions of promiscuity—Natalie preferred to think of it as experimentation, a popular teenage behavior in a town with not much else to do—there had been boys whom she dated and didn’t go all the way with. One in particular had become very close. Since his father owned the local tractor sales and service business, he would have been a good choice for a life partner. He worked hard for his dad and would be in line to someday take over the company, so she could have been set for life. She could have continued to work on her acting craft in the community theater and maybe even felt fulfilled. But ambition and the feeling of emotional abandonment had driven her away from the farm, as far as she could get from Amy Westerhill.
In a new prison now, within the clutches of a sociopathic monster whose full will she was yet to see, that girl was nowhere in sight. Natalie, despite the bullying she suffered at the hands of the Queen—See that boy?—and her court, regardless of her parent’s fundamental interpretation of the Bible as the divine rulebook, in the face of the blatant hypocrisy she had never had the courage to reveal, she longed for Amy as never before.
Natalie glanced toward the nightstand at the pen and paper. She needed to retrieve them but without Tony’s notice. Hank’s groans had been replaced with labored breathing. The only other sound came through the walls, the neighbor’s television. Other than that, it was quite, too quiet. So quite she imagined that Tony had turned into a poisonous snake and even now slithered under her bed just waiting to strike when she moved.
She pushed down the urgent impulse to grab the writing instruments just yet. She needed to get a gauge on Tony. Had she at some point actually dozed off and not heard him step outside for a smoke? That made no sense as she could even now smell his fresh tobacco. Was he leering at her, plotting his next assault? Had he fallen asleep? She controlled her movements and slowly rolled over to her back. Once there, she opened her eyes as if she just woke up.
Tony still sat next to Hank on the far side of the other bed. His right hand put pressure to Hank’s wound. He had taken off the tweed jacket and she could see the brown grip of the pistol above his belt. Their eyes met. She looked into the abyss of an empty soul.
She couldn’t get to the pen yet, but a plan began to germinate.
_____
©
Jearl Rugh 2012
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