She was just a girl then.
She ran.
On and on. She didn't know how long. Maybe an hour.
She began to feel that she might have a heart attack, her chest was pounding so unnaturally fast and hard. As she slowed to a staggering walk, determined to continue, to get as far from that cabin in the woods as she possibly could, her face, her ears, her hands throbbed with exertion. Her legs trembled with fatigue. She felt nauseous.
She had no idea where she was, or where she was going. She just pressed on, concentrating on continuing forward in as straight a line as possible, so as to be sure not to accidentally circle back to that place. She did not know the forest. Even if she did, in the dark of night, under the thick canopy of the trees, there was no moon, no constellations to guide her. When the heat of exertion and the numbness of fear abandoned her she began to shiver with cold. The October air was crisp, and she had only her blouse and skirt on. She trudged forward as long as she could, stumbling in the dark as she tripped over uneven ground, low bushes and fallen branches. After what seemed like several hours she stopped, aching to rest and hoping that in the dark she could not be tracked.
Too worn out by other fears, her whole being focused on getting warm and evading capture, she thought nothing of insects or other nuisances as she gathered a huge mound of leaves, concealing herself as she lay down for the night. The cold tormented her for awhile, but it was defeated, eventually, by the utter exhaustion that brought her sleep.
When she awoke, stiff and aching from her forced march and uncomfortable bed, it was still the misty gray of early morning. The cacophony of birdsong swirling and enveloping her was astonishing. Standing, she realized with panic that she no longer knew from which direction she had come. She circled around her bed of leaves in a widening spiral, hoping to see signs of her own tracks from the night before, but on the forest floor, thickly littered with leaves, branches and pine cones, there were no footprints or other such obvious signs to reveal a path to her, who knew nothing of tracking. Standing there, pondering in fright what she ought to do, she thought she detected the sound of rushing water. After considering for a moment, and reflecting that, not having heard the sound the night before she had probably been heading toward it all along, she set out in that direction.
For the first time she wondered if this was really happening. Her days with him had been too real to doubt. But now. Wandering aimlessly in the unfamiliar embrace of this forest. Her real life impossibly remote. Her tired legs and aching feet could not remember brief brisk walks across campus on smooth concrete and even brickwork; her hands, pained by the cold, did not seem the hands that tap danced over laptop letters, scurried pens over three-hole-punched pages in a desperate effort to keep pace with the sometimes inspired, sometimes inane ramblings of a lecturing professor. Her little apartment, warm and familiar. Was she still that girl? That girl did not have her memories. That girl was innocent.
Knowing someone might be following her she forced herself, against stiffening cold and aching muscles, to move quickly. Nearer and nearer to the sound of water she drew, until a large river came into view. Not yet swollen with the heavy rains of winter, it ran low and narrow, wide strips of rocky riverbed exposed on either side of its flow. She pondered her next move. She decided that if she could bear the cold, and walk in the river among the large stones, that anyone following would be unable to tell which direction she had gone. With any luck, they would turn back, discouraged. If they did decide to attempt to follow her, at least the odds were even that they would go in the wrong direction. With no sense for which direction the nearest road or town lay, she decided to head downstream, reasoning that it would be easier than climbing uphill.
She scrambled down the steep bank, over the sand to the stony ground just next to the river, then, bracing herself for a shock, stepped determinedly into the chill water. Eager to meet this visitor, the river pushed through the accommodating seams of her boots, seeping into the weave of her socks, sheathing her feet and ankles in its squishy coolness. She gasped a deep breath and turned downriver.
On and on she went, determined on this day to escape the men who might be following her. To find help. Her legs were growing numb with cold. Only the warm blood forced by her determined walking kept her limbs from paralyzing with stiffness. She stuck to the very edge of the river, where it was slow and shallow, just far enough in to be sure that she would not leave imprints in sand untouched by the river's flow, so that no one would be able to detect a single footprint and discern her direction. Now and then, though, she came to a spot where a tree trunk had fallen, forcing her to hoist herself up and over it, or a shrub growing thickly from the muddy bank forced her farther toward the center of the water, where the water flowed perilously fast. Then something disastrous-or fortuitous-happened. As she carefully navigated her way around one of these bushes that seemed to have grown just especially to block her way to safety, the stones under her feet shifted. Her numb legs failed to restore her to balance. She clawed desperately, trying to catch hold of the branches that had driven her to the precarious center of the river, but already the current had swept her feet from under her and was carrying her away.
Terror blocked all sensation. Struggling only to keep her head above water, to take a breath at each opportunity, she was swept down with the ever more violent current. Confidence that she would get a foothold, brake her speeding descent, evaporated. She began to believe that she would drown, but instinctively she continued to struggle, gulping air each time she managed to break the surface of the water. Suddenly she felt as though she were flying-no-falling. Then she was submerged, swimming, flailing, disoriented. Suffocating. Then surface. No longer immersed in a watery world, she was struggling between water and air. She gasped a desperate breath which she hoped would be air, not a deadly inhale of river water. Then, panting, she drew one grateful breath after another.
She was barely drifting with the sleepy current of the suddenly deep, fat river. Above her was the violent cascade of water that had spilled her into this placid basin. Trembling with cold, on the verge of complete exhaustion she weakly swam to the shore ¡V the shore opposite the side from which she had entered the river. She dragged herself onto the dry, rocky riverbed, not noticing how the rough terrain was raking her skin. Unwilling to remain there, in the open where she might be seen, with the final reserve of her energy she crawled into the woods, and collapsed in a patch of tall grass where the afternoon sun distractedly considered warming her. She struggled for a while to stay awake, but finally succumbed to sleep, weak with hunger and fatigue.
In the early morning she rose from her grassy bed, shuddering with cold, slow with stiffness, pained by hunger. She determined to ignore her discomfort, and to drive from her mind the disturbing images that kept coming to her, seeping back into her consciousness a moment after she had forced them out, like sand stubbornly sliding back into a freshly dug hole.
She continued her course downriver, promising herself that down there, not too far, she would find a town. Food. A phone. Help. To distract herself from the insistent pangs of hunger that were tormenting her, in her effort to diligently keep the three days and nights she had spent with that man far from her mind, she recounted to herself the stories from favorite novels. The sad, impossible love of The Sun Also Rises. Jane Eyre's rise from the cruelty of her wards and the orphanage, her employment with the dangerous, seductive, mysterious Rochester. Her wit, her will. Or the winged, Amazonian beauty of Nights of the Circus, her sword, the Siberian train wreck, elephants dying in the snow. Yes, Fevvers. Devan wanted those wings, that strength now. To fly away home. She felt so weak.
When thoughts of hunger penetrated the force field of imagination she was trying to sustain, she thought of what she might be able to find to eat. She had seen no berries or edible-looking plants growing in the woods. Probably there were fish in the river, but her hunger had not reached such a pitch that eating raw fish pulled from the water seemed reasonable to her. She almost smiled as she got an image of Gollum, soul destroyed and body transformed by perverted desire, tearing with teeth into the soft white bellies of flopping fish. Was that the next step in her transformation? She half laughed. Then her delirium-born mirth evaporated.
She wondered briefly if she might possibly start a fire. Had it been a long dry spell in July she might have tried, but not now. The October woods were pervasively and perpetually damp. So she pushed on, imagining a glutinous meal of hot grilled cheese on sourdough, onion rings, salad, apple juice and ice cream that would be given to her by the sympathetic waitress who would call her ¡¥honey' and look at her with eyes filled with maternal concern at the inevitable small town diner she would find, later today, tomorrow at the latest, in the town that had to be not too much farther down the river.
But before a town came into view darkness had begun to close in on her, hiding from sight everything before her in an ever-shrinking distance. When she could no longer see where she was walking she made another bed of leaves, convinced it had kept her a little warmer that first night. Promising herself that it had. She laid down and, in a short while, fell asleep.
Almost immediately she was awakened by a sound. Heart pounding, she listened. There it was again-the snap of a twig, the crunch of leaves. Maybe, she thought, it was an animal. That thought gave her no fear. She would be relieved to see a bear lumber out from the woods. Her greatest fear was that it was him. Conrad. She lay there, absolutely still, hoping it was not him, begging fate that if it were him, that she would be hidden by the leaves she had mounded up over herself for warmth.
Please, please, please. she mentally pleaded with nothing. She believed in no god, and even in fear for her life it did not occur to her to pray.
The sound of footfalls, padding nearer and nearer upon the thick detritus of the forest floor seemed unmistakable now. But was it a person? She still could not tell. She concentrated on being very still, very quiet. Breathing tiny, careful breaths so no person or animal could hear the air moving in and out of her, so an inhale or an exhale would not raise or lower her chest so much that it disturbed and rustled the leaves entombing her. Closer and closer the steps came. Human steps, she was sure now. Another step. Another. The next step, she feared, would fall upon her, giving her away. Her heart was hammering in her breast. Each tiny breath released with tremendous restraint threatened to get away from her and burst out in a powerful shriek of fear. The footfalls ceased. Silence. More silence. Had she imagined it? The waiting was unbearable.
"Get up, Devan."
His voice. No. No, no, no. It can't be. It can't. If I stay perfectly still, he'll go. He'll think it's just a pile of leaves and go.
"Come on, Devan. Get up."
A hand plunged into the leaves, grasped her arm, and hoisted her to her feet. Then let go. As she stood wavering there in the darkness it seemed to her that the fear-fuelled adrenaline pounding though her might literally destroy her. She had never felt more hopeless or more lost, but she did not cry.
"Devan."
His voice, as always, cool. Soft. Seductive. Tinged with a note of amused derision. She knew that moment, just hearing the sound of his voice vibrating with her name, that he had her.
He stepped near. She did not step back. As in her recurrent childhood nightmare, wherein she would find her feet bound inside giant concrete blocks as a terrifying monster approached, she could not move. He reached out. She did not recoil. He took her face in his hands, put his lips by her ear, and she listened for what he would say.
"You must know," he whispered, "how disappointed I am that you left before I'd fucked you. You were a naughty girl, Devan, running off before I'd had a go at that sweet little virgin pussy."
He let her go and took a step back. The clouds above parted and the full moon's light shone down upon the two of them. To her eyes his face had taken on the aspect of a demon, an angel cast from heaven who claims dominion of a dark underworld, thriving on the torture of flawed souls.
"Now, Devan. Take off your blouse."
Not only was she incapable of running, but she felt unable to resist his command. It was as if he had some power over her, could control her movement through his will. Perhaps it was her fatigue, the fact that she had not eaten in days. She did as he asked. She pulled the blouse over her head, then, instinctively, covered her breasts with her arms. With a restrained but powerful grip he took her wrists in his hands and forced her arms to her sides.
"Don't try to hide yourself from me again."
He stared at her bare breasts with a look closer to cruelty than desire, forcing her to feel her nakedness. Then he undid his pants and took out his cock. As he began stroking it he said quietly, with malice,
"Take off your skirt."
Unable to take her eyes off what he was doing to himself, unable to stop thinking what he was going to do to her, in a very few moments, with that, she unzipped her skirt, letting it fall by her feet. His cock stiffening in his hand, he said,
"And now, pull down your panties. All the way off."
She pulled them down to her ankles, stepping out of them and the skirt.
"Stand up so I can look at you."
She stood.
Tending his erection he looked at her. Her face, full of fear and violated modesty. Her tits, a surreal blue-white in the moonlight, nipples erect in the cold night air. Her stomach, swelling and caving with her panicked, rapid breaths. Her naked, mysteriously hairless pubis, the beginning of her slit vulnerably naked, invitingly visible. Legs held defensively close together. His hand abandoned his carefully cultivated erection long enough to pull off his shirt. She was surprised by how muscular he looked undressed. He seemed so thin in his clothes. The realization that he was strong, physically, redoubled her fear.
"Are you wet?" he asked.
"Wet?"
She pretended not to understand.
"Yes, love. Is your pussy wet?"
Unbearable humiliation twining endlessly with her fear.
"No." A bare whisper.
"Check for me, and see."
"What?"
"Put your finger in your pussy, and tell me if you're wet."
His voice worked on her as if it were her own will. She reached down to do as he asked, her legs clenched tightly together.
"You're not going to be able to do it like that, are you? You're going to have to open your legs, just a little. Go on." She stepped her feet a couple of inches apart, reached down, curved a hand underneath herself, and feeling like she was under some kind of mind control, put a finger inside herself.
"Show me."
She reached her hand vaguely toward him, but to him it appeared to have come to rest by her side, mirroring the position of her other hand. He leaned forward to take her wrist in his strong grip, lifting her hand up before his face. He ran his index finger along hers, feeling the slippery wetness that had coated it. With the tip of his tongue he licked the pad of his finger, tasting her. Then, still gripping her wrist in one hand, with his other he folded down all her fingers save the one she had put inside herself. That finger he took all the way into his mouth, sucking off all her juice as he pulled it smoothly from his lips.
"You're absolutely delicious. I'll have to take the time to really taste you. Later."
He looked at her, savoring her terror. Watching for her reaction to his next words.
"Get your back up against that tree." "Conrad, please. I don't want this."
He smiled derisively.
"Please, Conrad-"
"Shhhh. That's what you always say, love, but it isn't true. And you know, as I do, that it's only by insisting that it isn't what you want that it becomes what you want."
"No Conrad, please, you're frightening me."
A solitary tear slid down her cheek.
"Back against the tree."
His mirth had evaporated. His words were staggered, broken up by gaps of impatience.
She backed up until she felt a hard roughness scratch at her skin. He walked toward her, slowly, until he pressed his naked body right up against hers, crushing her brutally against the tree. She felt that the skin on her back was molding to the patterns in the bark, that the front of her was molding to the contours of his body.
Then sudden shock. New fear. Her thighs were slung over his hands and he stood now between her parted legs, her naked sex exposed, vulnerable, pressed against him. She had hardly felt him move.
He writhed against her and she felt the hard length of his shaft snaking along the damp valley of her sex. His lips came to her ear once more.
"I've been¡K"
Up and down rigid prick glided, parting her lips, grazing her clit, thrilling her with fear and pleasure.
"¡Kaching for so long¡K"
Down, down, down, the root, the shaft, the head, grinding against her clit, nestling between her soft folds, down, then, striking her rigid with panic it ducked beneath her and rose up, nuzzling eagerly at her entrance.
"¡Kto fuck you."
She felt a sudden, searing pain as he forced himself inside her, plunging deep and hard on the first thrust. She was pushing at his chest with her hands, trying to hold him away from her, but she remained impaled on his fierce erection as it stabbed her again and again. She was crying, begging him to stop. Then he did.
The pain that had been overwhelming ebbed suddenly away, and as he started moving again, she felt like a little glowing light had been put inside of her, like its warmth was radiating from that place at the center of her where he was, sliding in and out, that it was healing her-healing the pain he had given her, healing her fear, her hunger. Restoring her to the girl she had been a few days before, restoring her beyond even the best and happiest self she had ever been. As he moved against her, the arms she had braced straight and locked against his chest to keep him away folded, encircling his neck. His motions were gentle, tender. As his hips hinged rhythmically beneath her, she felt her body surrendering to him, and the warm pulsing wave of pleasure rippled through her sex, her tummy, her thighs.
He pulled back to look at her. She watched his face transform before her eyes, under the periwinkle beams sifting through the leafy canopy above, from gentle angel with a face almost like a woman's, to cruel demon.
Suddenly his penis felt like a hot iron inside of her, searing her flesh with every thrust. It seemed to be tearing her apart, battering her organs. She began sobbing in pain, screaming for him to stop. The more she cried and begged the harder he seemed to fuck her, ramming himself into her again and again. She let out a terrible, screeching scream of pain and fear that mingled with his roaring moan of pleasure as he came inside her.
She was bathed in sweat, writhing and sobbing when she awoke with a start from her horrifying nightmare. She felt certain at last of Conrad's nature-his hateful, violent, cruel nature. The truth of what he had done to her, and what he had planned to do to her. She even felt, in her hunger- and trauma-weakened state, that he had preternaturally visited her in her dream, done that to her through an act of will. Her dream felt so real, so immediate, the pangs of hunger racking her stomach seemed to be his wounds, his piercing and searing of her organs.
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