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Rose

Rose

I t’s amazing how fast your life can change. Days can go by with monotony and regularity, doing the same things repeatedly. Then one day, in an instant, everything can change and you’re never the same again.

That’s how I felt when mom got her diagnosis. Again when she died. Hours, weeks, months of her slowly slipping away. Then, just in the click of a finger, she was gone, and I had no mother anymore.

This is a day like that. I’m just walking home from the diner, not thinking about much at all, when a black van slows on the street and starts keeping pace with me. I turn and look at it in time to see it stop. “Get lost, creep,” I say to the driver.

He looks panicked. He jumps out and runs over to me. “She’s dying,” he says, running back to the van, swinging open the door at the rear. “Please, help me. I think she’s choking. My little girl. Help me!”

I run over and look in the back, and that’s when I realize what’s happening. It’s so fast. That’s the problem. I don’t get time to think. One minute I’m walking down the street, the next several pairs of hands are grabbing me and pulling me into a black van.

At once the doors slam shut, and a bag goes over my head. I get a punch to the stomach as I scream, and it knocks the wind out of me.

I’m gasping, my mouth sucking in the bag’s fabric, and I think I’m going to suffocate. “Shut up,” a man’s voice hisses in my ear. He’s got a thick accent. Italian maybe.

The engine starts and we’re rolling along the street already. I don’t know how many people are in there with me, but I count at least three by the different voices yelling at me to stop fighting. What the fuck is going on?

I’m too angry to be scared. It’s like this time I fell off my bike when I was about eight. That was a year before mom got diagnosed.

I was out on my own and I had spent ages trying to build up to riding Death Hill. So called for the steepness and the way it ran straight out onto the road at the bottom. A length of grass and one track of mud worn away from generations of kids riding and sledging it.

The trick was to turn at the last possible moment before you race out into the traffic and get smooshed.

I sat with my bike on so many occasions I lost count until I finally went for it. I rode straight down and was going far too fast to turn at the end. I hit the brakes and went straight over the handlebars.

I flew like Peter Pan over a couple of cars and then landed on the road with a thump. The air flew out of my lungs and I was just gasping like a goldfish out of its bowl.

I didn’t feel pain then. I didn’t feel fear as a car came barreling toward me. I just felt anger. How could I have done something so dumb? It stopped, and I lived, but I was pissed, not scared.

That was how I felt when I nearly got abducted a couple of years back. Angry, not scared.

That’s how I feel in the van. How did I fall for it? Blacked out vans are almost a cliched method of abducting women, and I walk straight over like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

Fear creeps around me as time passes. They have bound my hands, my ankles too. I’m rolling on the bed of the van and the men are saying nothing. I’ve stopped moving so much. I’ve got my breath back, but whenever I try to talk, someone puts the boot in.

We take lots of turns and then there’s a squeal of brakes and a crunch under the tires.

The back door swings open and light gets in, shining through the bag enough for me to know it’s still sunny out there. I’m outside. That’s something.

I’m dragged out of the van and then dumped on the ground. Someone is walking toward me. I can hear their footsteps on the gravel. Then a shadow over my face and a voice near my ear.

“Where’s the chip?” The voice is oily, faux friendly. The guy’s breath is bad enough for me to smell it through the bag.

“Who the fuck are you?” I ask.

A hand grabs my right tit through my sweater, squeezes it hard. “There are four men here not including me. “If you don’t answer me, I’ll let all of them fuck you, and then I’ll ask again. So if you don’t want that, you better be honest with me. Where’s the chip?”

“What chip?”

The hand grabs my tit again. I try to shove it away, but he laughs. “Nice and ripe,” he says. “Bet you’ve never been fucked.”

“Fuck you.”

He slaps my face through the bag. “I’m getting bored with this, so I’ll explain in a way a child could understand. You have a casino chip that belongs to me. I want to know where it is. Where is it?”

His hand is moving to my throat, choking me. I’m gasping for air, fighting to get free, but other hands are on my limbs, holding me down on the ground.

“My house,” I get out. “It’s in my room.”

“Good girl,” he says, his hand moving down between my legs, squeezing hard. “When we’re married, I’ll enjoy doing this again. I like the sounds you make when you choke.” He lets go of me and stands up, his voice further away. “Go get the chip and bring it back here.”

“What about her?”

“Oh, I’ll keep her company for now. Don’t you worry about that.”

There’s the slamming of doors and then the van moves away, leaving me alone with whoever the fuck that is out there.

“Let me go,” I say.

“Where would be the fun in that?” he replies. I can hear something near my ear and I take a minute to work out what it is. Scissors.

They snip down the front of my sweater. My favorite sweater. It’s sliced in half and then there’s an exhalation. “Oh, my,” the voice says. “So much bigger than I was expecting. You shouldn’t keep them hidden away like that.”

“I will fucking kill you,” I say, trying to roll away from him.

He rolls me onto my back, a firm hand in the small of my stomach, pressing in hard. “Is that anything to say to your future husband?”

“Who the fuck are you?”

“Of course, we haven’t been introduced.” He pulls the bag off my head and I’m looking up into a zit covered face of a guy in his mid-thirties.

He’s grinning at me and he’s got a hard on that he’s not trying to hide. His hair is plastered across his forehead and his front teeth are crooked. “Ricardo Belucci at your service.”

He leans down and squeezes my tits through my bra, a drop of drool forming at the corner of his mouth as he does it. “So ripe. So tasty. I like to bite them when they’re that ripe.”

“Get the fuck off me,” I snap at him, shoving his hands away. He stands up, reaching into his jacket and pulling out a gun. “You know, a woman can still get fucked with a couple of bullet wounds. You’d be surprised how much blood you can lose and still have a working pussy.”

He waves the gun lazily in my direction. “I think I’ll have a look at that pussy while we’re talking about it. What do you say, future wife?”

I’m staring down the barrel of his gun. The fear that was absent before is pouring over me like a waterfall. I’m terrified of what’s going to happen. The guy’s insane.

“Don’t act so scared,” he says. “I’ll be a good husband.” He reaches for the waistband of my yoga pants. “As long as you put out when I want you to.”

He pauses, shaking his head. “Actually, I think I preferred you with the bag on. I don’t like them looking at me. They always judge me.” His voice is changing, turning angrier. “Stop looking at me!”

He grabs hold of the bag and shoves it over my head again. “That’s better. Now I can do it properly without you judging me. Women are always judging me, but I’m in charge now. When we’re married, you’ll have to do everything I say and if you don’t, my father will have you killed so you better behave.”

His hand is back on the waistband of my yoga pants, yanking them down my thighs. I try to fight him, but with my ankles bound, there’s not much I can do. My heart is pounding, and I’m desperate to get free. I just want to get away. That’s all I want.

There’s a snip of the scissors and the yoga pants are whipped away from my ankles. “That’s better,” he says. “You know, I can see the outline of your cute little pussy through those panties.”

He yanks them upward, almost lifting me off the ground with them, giggling as he does it. “Camel toe,” he says, his voice almost a moan. “I like it. How come you’re not wet yet? Frigid, are you?”

“Let me go,” I say, squirming from left to right.

Like I said, one instant can change your life.

There’s no noise. No sound of the approach. Just a thud. That’s all there is to tell me something has happened.

A thud and a thump as a body hits the ground.

“What the fuck?” Ricardo’s voice wheezes. The wind is knocked out of him. “You? Do you know what my father will do when he hears about this?”

Another thud. A punch or a kick, maybe. Then gunshots and yelling. Engines are nearby, cars or vans driving fast toward me.

Suddenly, I’m being picked up and carried through the air. I’m over someone’s shoulder, my legs flailing. “What’s happening?” I say. “Who are you?”

I get no answer. It’s a man, I can tell that much from the size of his hands. Strong too, he’s carrying me without panting. I can smell him. He smells good. Why am I even noticing that?

I’m loaded into a van. Is it the same one? I don’t know. No, this is different. It’s carpeted instead of metal under my feet. Thick carpet. What does that mean? Is it an RV?

Whoever is carrying me lowers me to the floor of the van. Something is attached to me and I don’t know what it is, but I work it out when we set off. It’s ropes holding me in place.

When we take the bends, I don’t move. I’m laid here wondering what the hell is going on. I try to ask whoever it is driving the van but they don’t reply. It’s like talking to a brick wall.

The van picks up speed, and my head throbs. It’s not just the panic, it’s the heat. It’s getting hot back here. I’m sweating and I need a drink. The bag over my head makes it hard to breathe, but it’s not taken off me even when I beg.

I try to focus on the moment. I need to concentrate, wait for the right chance to escape. The entire time I’m lying here, I’m fighting the bonds around my wrists and ankles.

I don’t know what they’re made of but they stretch without ripping. Artificial, definitely. Tightly bound, too. My wrists are hurting. All of me is hurting.

The van slows sometime later. We go down a slope, I can feel it. Then we stop. The driver’s door opens and then the back door. Whatever was attached to me is removed, and once again I’m hoisted up over the guy’s shoulder.

“Who are you?” I try again. “What’s going on here?”

A door opens and we go through. I’m taken down some stairs, dumped into a chair, then the bag is pulled off my head. I look up into the unsmiling face of Dino Gianni.

“Should have said yes,” he says before turning and walking back up the stairs, slamming the door shut behind him.