Kidnapped teen

PART THREE

No one told me that Hunter was back in town.

That's because no one knew.

I'd talked to his mother and father, and they'd been sorry to hear that it didn't work out, but they told me that they'd pretty much given up on him a long time ago.

"Well… you could have told me about it before now," I said.

"Girl, if you wouldn't listen to your own mother, you damn sure wouldn't have listened to us, would you?"

I had to admit that they were right.

They didn't have much more than that to say to me, other than they wished me the best and would I please not bring Hunter around if he should come back to town?

"You mean…?"

"Look, girl. You said it, not us. That boy's bad, and he's bad clear through. Ain't nothing for it but to shut the bastard out, and if you're smart, that's what you'll do."

I took them seriously, of course, but of course, I didn't really think that there was anything that I needed to worry about. Hunter might want to follow me back, but I'd already gone to court to file for a divorce, and there wasn't much that he could do now.

If he was to come and start pestering me, I could just send the county sheriff after him.

But like his mother and father said, he wasn't going to be coming around. No one wanted him.

So I thought.

I got to feeling weird, the kind of weird that's just an empty feeling in your guts, the kind of feeling you don't have any real reason for, and you don't need any reason for… the kind of feeling that says something's wrong, and if it don't look wrong to you right now, it's going to real quick, just as soon as it gets bad enough.

I felt like… you know… eyes were on me. I kept telling myself, Marilyn, you're being just stupid… as stupid as you can be.

But you know… I kept feeling it… kept thinking that there was someone following me… someone watching me.

It was getting so I was afraid to open my curtains at night… and this was in the bedroom I'd slept in every night since I was a little girl!

I finally got a grip on myself and convinced myself that I wasn't going to be afraid any more.

That was the first night in a long time that I'd been able to get to sleep easily.

That was also the night that it happened.

I woke up with a hand over my mouth and my heart racing madly.

Those first few seconds after you wake up are awful… you have no idea where you are… what you're doing… why you're doing it… who you are…

And if you've been dreaming at the time you wake up, you can't figure out which is real and which isn't.

I knew that there was one thing that was real.

There was a hand over my mouth, and it was pressing down so hard that I didn't have a chance to make a single sound, let alone call for help!

I was frozen for a moment, and then I reacted mindlessly flailing about in all directions, my muscles charged with an overwhelming charge of energy. I was panic stricken.

I was out of my head.

I couldn't think.

I reached up and grabbed an arm… it was a solid, firm arm… it was a man's arm.

I knew in that moment, somehow, that it was Hunter.

He'd come back for me… he'd returned to Sludge Falls for revenge, and he'd somehow gotten into the house, and he was going to kill me now.

I was having trouble breathing. My heart was beating so fast that I couldn't get enough air in my lungs to keep oxygen in my blood, and I felt like I was going to start blacking out.

I shook.

I jerked.

I tried to break away, but then his other hand got me up to my neck, those awful long fingers that had stroked me so lovingly on our first date… those caresses that had convinced me that he was a gentle human… those fingers that had lied to me now were clamped tightly around my neck, pressing in… squeezing me… harder… harder… harder…

I started to feel dizzy.

I felt my mind drifting away… felt myself being sucked down into some kind of strange vortex, like a plug had been pulled on reality's drain and now I was going to be sucked into a cosmic sewer for all time.

He brought his head down to my ear and he spoke, and for the first time I knew without a doubt that it was Hunter.

"I have a gun. You can yell… but if you do, you'll be dead before anyone can come close to you. Do you understand? I'll kill you. I'll put a bullet in you that'll take an hour to kill you… but you'll die, no one will be able to save you. Do you understand?"

I couldn't say anything. How do you talk to an insane person? How do you tell someone that you agree to madness… his madness… that you agree to let yourself be destroyed. How?

He slowly took his hand away from my throat. "I'm telling you the truth, Marilyn. I'll kill you if you make a sound."

I didn't say anything. I'm not stupid, after all.

He slowly took his hand away from my mouth now. The flat of his palm hovered about an inch above my lips… I knew that I'd get perhaps a quarter of a second of a scream out and then he'd slam his hand back down on me, and he'd break my neck.

But maybe he'd wait… rape me first… and then break my neck. I didn't know how he'd do it, but I was already preparing myself to die. I had given up all hope.

"That's good," he said, when I remained silent. "That's what I like to see."

He reached into his pocket and removed something… I couldn't tell what it was in the dark, but then I felt something soft against my teeth.

He pushed it harder, and I realized that it was a soft rubber ball… maybe the kind that you can pick up in any toy store.

He forced it to fill my mouth, completely… but it wasn't so big that it hurt my jaws.

It just made certain that I'd never have the chance to scream.

I suddenly felt a wave of fear and blind panic sweep over me, and I screamed anyway, but of course, it was too late…

There was no one who could have heard me beyond the door to the room unless they'd stuck their ear right up against the wood.

I knew my mother was sound asleep… and there wasn't anything short of a war that would wake her up.

I wanted to fight him… maybe do the same thing that I'd done to him the last time I was with him… but I didn't have the chance. Or the strength.

He had me tied up before I knew what was happening… my arms behind my back, my feet together…

He lifted me off the bed, and to my amazement, my arms and legs hung down like limp pasta.

I couldn't move them. I couldn't move at all… I don't even think I could have screamed if the ball was out of my mouth.

Nothing seemed to work anymore, particularly my brain, and my will to survive.

He carried me out the open window that he'd entered by, deftly descended a ladder and bundled me into a van that was parked out by the road.

He drove off, and as far as I could tell, there wasn't a soul around that saw a single thing.

I finally got a chance to see the hunting retreat that his family owned, the place that had provided him with the past-time that created his nickname.

Only now… it wasn't going to be used as a hunting lodge.

It was going to be used as a torture chamber.

He carried me into the wooden structure, and laid me on one of the bare mattresses that were stacked on iron bedsprings.

He said nothing to me.

He didn't need to. I knew exactly what his plans were. It was as if I could read his mind.

"So," he said looking down at my bound form. "You think you're pretty hot shit, don't you?"

I looked up at him, feeling more frightened than I'd ever felt in my life.

He wasn't looking at me with a demented look in his eyes… he wasn't giving me any indications just from his facial features that he was out of his mind.

But I knew that he was. I knew that he was crazy… mad as a hatter.

I knew that he was capable of doing anything to me… no matter how disgusting.

I took it for granted that he was going to kill me.

He set about preparing his props which I realized were fairly sophisticated.

"You're looking this stuff over pretty carefully, Marilyn. You've never seen anything like this before? Come on. You're not that unworldly, are you? A block and tackle? You've never seen anything like this? Give me a break. Haven't you ever wondered how people managed to fuck before the block-and-tackle was invented? I know I sure have."

He was being friendly, jaunty, and then he started to whistle.

I realized that he must have either done this before, or else he'd been up here already preparing the place for my arrival.

There were hooks all over the place… large hooks, solidly embedded in the walls to make certain that they'd support the weight of a human body. My body.

He attached ropes to the hooks, chains to the hooks, pulleys to the chains…

It looked a dungeon master's nightmare.

I just lay there on my, bed, staring, unable to comprehend any of it. It was just too awful.

Finally, he looked over at me.

"You're ready, aren't you? I sure hope so. I'd hate to think that you weren't ready, after all the trouble I've gone to. You really disappointed me, Marilyn. I hope you realize that. I came back out here just to impress you, let you know that I don't hold any hard feelings just because you were unfaithful to me, and injured me physically, and now you're trying to divorce me."

"I wanted you to know that I'm still wilting to work things out. If you want to. But… well… it occurred to me that you might need a little persuasion before you really work things out all the way in your head… and I'm more than willing to do it for you."

"I'll give you all the persuasion you need, my darling wife. In fact, when I'm finished with you, I think you'll be pretty much persuaded to do anything I fucking well tell you to do."

He laughed.

"That's what I think."

Then he gave me a hard slap on the side of my thigh. "How about you? Do you agree?"

I shuddered. The pain raced through me… and there remained a hard stinging sensation over the surface of my skin where he'd hit me.

But then, he lifted me off the bed and carried me over to the ropes that were hanging from the ceiling hooks.

I started to fight him… resisting as hard as I could. But he was too strong, and soon he had the ropes looped around my wrists, fastened securely to the ropes that had already been fastened to me.

He pulled on the ropes now… pulling against my arms. They began to move up behind my body, the pressure against my shoulder joints until I was certain that my arms were going to snap out of the socket joints.

I screamed. Oh God, how I screamed. But there was hardly any sound. My jaws were growing weaker and weaker from biting against that ball that was in my mouth. I was lost.

I felt nothing but pain through my body and fear all through my brain.

He pulled tighter on the ropes, until my feet were just off the floor. If I stretched my legs, I could just barely manage to brush the tips of my toes over the surface of the floor, and I was even able to take some of my body weight off my tortured arms… but it wasn't worth the effort. The muscles in my legs rapidly grew far too exhausted for me to attempt anything further.

He ran his hands over my body.

"It's too bad you ran out on me, Marilyn. You really shouldn't have done it. I would have been willing to talk things out. I would have been willing to give you what you wanted… what you thought you needed."

That was a lie. I knew it, and he did too. But there was no way that I could say it.

"You didn't need to hurt me like that, dear. You did, you know. You hurt me terribly. I may never be the same. That's what the doctors are telling me. I might never be the same. I might never be a real man again."

"But you know what? That's all right. Because now I have you. And I'll be able to balance things out. Don't you believe in balance, Marilyn? Don't you think that whatever you do comes back to you? I think it does. That's why I've come back to you, and why you've come back to me. I'm going to make sure that you're never going to be a real woman any more, either."

I felt my blood run cold when he spoke those words.

Suddenly, his hands were digging into my tits… hard.

The tips of his fingers buried themselves deeply in the soft mounds of my tits and the pain filled them at once, sending sharp bursts of agonized sensation all through my body.

He kept his hands on my tits, and started to move backwards.

He dug deeper… and deeper… and deeper… he pulled on my tits as he stepped away from me, and as he did so, my body was forced to follow, swing from the ropes as he pulled me by my tits.

Now, there was the added pain in my arms that was even more excruciating than what he was doing to my tits.

I suffered.

I have no idea how long he amused himself with my tits… but the various things he did to me settled into a couple of different groups. He squeezed… and he hit.

Everything came under one of those headings.

For example, after his fingers and his hands seemed to be getting tired, he produced a new gimmick. Clothespins… which were followed about a half-hour later by alligator clamps… which were followed after that by screw-clamps for my nipples.

He slowly tightened the screws, pressing the small metal plate against the body of the clamp, my nipple caught in between, slowly being pressed completely flat.

I felt myself starting to come apart.

It was agony unlike any that I've ever felt in my life.

It was to get worse.

He left the nipple clamps on my nipples, and every fifteen minutes or so, he would turn his attention back to them, give the screws another slight twist, sending more and more excruciating sensation ripping through my tits.

I screamed against the ball in my mouth… harder… harder… and finally, my muscle reactions grew so intense that I could no longer control anything that happened.

The tip of my tongue pressed against the rubber ball from the back and shoved it out of my mouth.

It flew across the room and bounced against the wall.

He applauded.

"Nice… nice. Good effort. I like getting positive feedback on what I'm doing, Marilyn. It's nice of you to let me know you appreciate my efforts…"

"You fucking pig," I muttered through lips that were too weak to open.

"Aw… that's not nice," he said. He slapped my face.

"Oh God," I cried, and he slapped me again.

"I think you should apologize, Marilyn. That's what I think. What do you say? You want to apologize to me, or are you going to make me really hurt you?"

I could scarcely talk, but I managed to repeat what I'd first said to him.

"You're a pig."

"A pig," he said. "Hmmmmm. Mighty harsh words. Almost as harsh as, say… this whip…"

He held up a thick, hard-leather riding crop.

I stared at it uncomprehendingly.

I can remember wondering to myself what he was doing with it… wondering what it was… what it was for…

Nothing was making sense to me now.

Nothing seemed to fit.

But then, he stepped up to me, reached his hand underneath my two tits and held them straight out.

I watched as he raised the riding crop, and as it hovered there for than split second, I moaned, "Nooooo…" but it was futile.

He cracked it against me. It was like molten lead had been poured over my tits.

My body went rigid.

I jerked… I shuddered.

I screamed.

I screamed some more.

I screamed as loudly as I could.

"Go ahead, scream," he taunted me. "Scream just as loud as you want. I love it. I love hearing you scream. It shows me that I'm doing this right. There's nothing worse than someone who refuses to scream when you're working so hard on them…"

He brought the riding crop down across my tits again.

Again it stung like molten lead. I couldn't stand it. I had no choice, but it was driving me crazy… as crazy as Hunter was.

He hit me again and again on my tits, and then began to move down my bound body with the riding crop, striking me anywhere he felt like it.

My back… my stomach… the front of my tits, directly across my nipples…

Down now to my thighs, my ass… hitting my up between my thighs, slamming that awful riding crop right up into my pussy slit…

I screamed and screamed… and when my voice finally gave out, I continued to scream, silently.

I writhed in pain… and when my muscles finally refused to work… I hung there limply, the electric sensations rippling through my nerves still from every stroke of that riding crop… and even though there was no movement in my muscles now because they'd been pushed past their endurance, the feeling of agony persisted, and if anything the sensitivity of my nerve endings increased.

And when I passed out at last, he waited, patiently, for me to wake up on my own, wanting me to feel every stroke of his whip… wanting my body to savor and absorb every red stripe that he laid across my once flawless skin.

I was bleeding now. He broke my skin in many different places.

I felt like my body had swollen up to about three times its normal size, but this was really the first sensation of numbness creeping over me. He was killing me, beating the feeling out of my body, beating the life out of me.

It went on for days… weeks… months… years…

There is no time when your every waking moment is pure hell.

I only know that I completely lost touch with reality… I completely forgot everything… who I was… what I was… where I was… there was nothing left in my life but pain… and finally, even that was denied me.

I passed out… and it might as well have been for good.

I don't know how long I was unconscious.

I had no idea what was happening around me.

They thought I was going to die.

I woke up in a hospital, and they were shocked to see my eyes open. They didn't believe that I could have regained consciousness.

"What do you remember?" they kept asking me, not realizing that all I wanted to do was to forget.

"Try to remember," some would say.

"Move this finger," others would say.

"How many fingers am I holding up," others would ask.

I was patient, but I said nothing. It was almost a year before I would talk again.

In that time, I learned that Hunter's family had alerted the police that their lodge was a likely place to look, assuming that I really was kidnapped, as everyone was thinking.

They'd come up, finally, but not before he'd beaten me senseless… not before he'd gone mad himself and turned a gun on his brains.

They found me hanging where he'd left me… almost dead.

But somehow, someway, I came back.

Enough, anyway, to provide this court deposition. But I still refuse to speak.

Someday, perhaps I'll rejoin the world of the living… but for now, I still feel half-dead, and I prefer not to pretend to be alive, thank you.