Abduction (24 page)

As soon as I'd come and slipped out of her, Jimmy came forward and grabbed her arm, pulled her off the couch, made her lie down on the floor. Then he was on her, fucking her. Not thirty seconds had gone by and his dick was in her, where I'd just shot off. He started riding her, his ass bouncing up and down between her spread legs.

Seconds later Taser Girl was there, lifting her skirt, straddling Miranda’s face. Taser Girl, who’d let slip only the slightest of stoic moans up until now, was hoarsely and loudly groaning. As she came, Jimmy released what he’d been holding back for hours, pumping his come into Miranda’s pussy.

When they were done Jimmy and Taser Girl stood up, and a second later Miranda rose to her feet. She wasn't crying, but she looked sad. From that moment, until they left, she didn't look at me again. I don't know what I thought, but I felt slightly sick. That sickness. It stuck with me for days. Well, even now. That girl's expression, broken and sad. The nasty, smug look on Taser Girl's face. Those images still make me nauseous, make me cold. Why?

The whole thing, I'd blamed it on Miranda. Even though Taser Girl had been the brains, the muscle, the mouth, I blamed Miranda because it seemed to be her crush on me that had brought them all to my house. But in the end, I think her position wasn't that different from mine. Taser Girl had mind-fucked her, used her for her own twisted sport.

With me, they'd used Edi to get me to do what they wanted. Maybe they'd convinced Miranda that she'd get to fuck her rock star, that I'd like it. That it would be fun. Instead, she'd seen me cry, and then I'd turned her away and brutally fucked her from behind, so she couldn't see me. It could have been anyone using her like a nameless, faceless piece of meat. And then, at the moment of her disillusionment, while she was feeling used and humiliated and probably sore, Jimmy threw her to the floor and fucked her, too. He and Taser Girl had gotten off on how I'd treated her. On the poor dumb girl's misery, and then they'd used her to get off. That's the thing. What makes me feel like throwing up, even now. She was more innocent than I'd thought, and I hurt her. On purpose. And liked it. Christ.

They all left right after that, Taser Girl saying that I'd been a good little puppy and that in an hour she'd have Edi freed. As soon as they were gone I got my cell phone and called Edi, and learned what I'd pretty much expected—no one had held her hostage. It 211

was just a ruse to make me cooperate. I was relieved. Of course I was. Jesus, I don't think I could have taken it if the other thing had been true. But I felt something else, too.

More sickness I didn't understand.

Edi.

For days after, I sort of pretended that it hadn’t happened. But I would get flashes, feelings, fleeting thoughts. Still, maybe I would have been okay. I don't know.

But a few days later I got a DVD in the mail, sent anonymously. When I played it, there was Taser Girl, grinning at me from my computer screen, telling me she hoped I'd like her little present. Then, there we all were, each of them kissing me, me stripping off my clothes. The whole disgusting episode had been taped. From above. My own fucking security cameras. It took me a while but I finally figured it out. Taser Girl, or maybe Jimmy, worked for the security company. That was how they'd gotten in past the surveillance—they'd killed the system remotely, activating just the cameras. And that's how they'd know what Edi had been wearing when she'd left that morning.

For a minute I almost laughed—the dumb bitch had put the evidence right in my hands. But then I watched the DVD. The whole vile, humiliating thing. I thought about it, very carefully. The blackmail really screwed me. There was no gun. And the beginning, the part where I'd been stun gunned, had been cut. If I went to the cops with this, the three of them could just say it was some kind of stupid role-play. Hell, they could even say I'd hired them. And then, of course, the footage would get out. The next online celeb porn, like Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson, or Paris Hilton.

A bolt of panic shocked my stomach. What if that bitch had already put it online?

I Googled my name, my name plus 'sex,' my name plus 'orgy,' and everything else I 212

could think of. No video. I checked about thirty times that day, my guts in a knot, certain that the next time I entered my name in the browser, the horrid thing would pop up in the top listing. I obsessed about it, terrified, for weeks. It never appeared, and I still don't know why. I'm sure that little cunt could have made a wad of cash.

When Edi came home I tried to act like nothing was wrong, but she saw right away that something was going on with me. And the longer it went on, the longer I kept pretending, the worse it got between us. The thought of sex was revolting, I couldn’t be with her. Of course she noticed. Started wondering. She began to believe that I was having an affair, that I had fallen in love with someone else. I couldn’t tell her the truth, and she couldn’t believe that nothing was wrong.

And now she's left.

Fuck. There's more. I know there's more. So what is it? What's my fucking problem? Why can't things go back to how they were before Austin? Why can't I be normal? Why can't I be with Edi?

I don't trust people so much anymore. Don't like being around people. I guess that's not surprising.

Edi, though. I don't know. I think maybe the problem is…those nights…I don't understand why I thought, why I felt the way I did. Why I still get hard when I think about what happened. Why I think about that stuff whenever I try jerking off—Psycho Barbie sitting on my face and sucking my cock, Jimmy and Taser Girl stripping and spreading and licking Miranda, me bending her over and violently fucking her. Christ. Even Jimmy giving me head. Even the couple times I tried to be with Edi I couldn't stop it. My mind 213

always goes back to that shit. I don't even like to jerk off anymore because I don't want those images in my head.

But I can't go back either. Even if I could stop picturing those things, I can't be a lover to my wife, the way we were before. Fuck—what do I mean by that? It's not that I don't want 'normal' sex. It's not that I'm not attracted to Edi. It's that there's a part of me that she's never seen, that I never knew about, that's hungry. It's ugly and it's hungry and Edi won't like it. I know it. Fuck,
I
don't like it, so why should she accept it? But to pretend it away and stay with her would be dishonest. It would make our marriage a lie.

In a way. God, it's so sad to think it. To write it. But in way, maybe our marriage was a kind of lie already. I mean, I love her. Still. But what I'm realizing is, I'm different than I thought I was. Different than what I'm supposed to be. It's like we were together under false pretenses. Her not really knowing me because I didn't really know myself.

And me being with her because she was part of who I should be.

But I'm not who I should be.

I think about that episode with Psycho Barbie and, Christ. I liked it. I don't mean that I came, that she got me off. I think I could live with that all right, that I came when some woman gave me head and fucked me. Natural physiological response. Fine. And I've been pretending to myself that that's all it was.

But it was more. It was…hot. Not despite the creepy weirdness of it all. Because of it. I could have had that exact encounter with that exact woman, and if I'd just invited her back to my room with me I'd never have looked back, thought of it again. I liked being in her power. No, that's not it either. I liked…the depravity itself. Not the methods, not the sensations. The actual sick twistedness of being caught up in someone's fucked 214

up fantasy. Suddenly my whole life, my normal life where I could talk and move, where I did what I wanted to do with my time and with my body…It felt boring. Or…false.

Something.

Maybe I could have forgotten, pretended it away, if it hadn't been for Miranda and the others. But I don't think I can escape it now. With all of them—with Psycho Barbie, with the others, I liked the coercion. Got off on it. I had liked pretending I was raping that girl. I had liked coming in that man's mouth. And then, well…Fuck.

FUCK FUCK FUCK! I can’t even write it.

I didn't want to fucking know this. I was content, happy with my life the way it was. I want to go back to the way I was, back to my old life. But I don't think I can. No.

The more I think about it, the more sure I am. I'll write Edi. I'll try. But I know. It's too late.

FIVE: Jack Rocks

Devan couldn't believe it. He had been…

Of course things like that could happen to men. But this was someone she knew.

Vaughn. He had held her. Touched her. Kissed her. They had almost made love.

And he had scared her. Almost really hurt her. The way he had hoped he was hurting that other woman.

She had taken it all in with an awful sense of cold dread. Now she felt guilty. Sick with guilt. She had hoped that his frightening behavior had some rational cause. Now that she'd seen the proof, she felt almost as though she had wished those awful things on him.

And now that she knew what had happened, his paranoia, even his violence made perfect sense.

Hours had passed since she'd left his room. The afternoon light was fading. She heard his bedroom door open, his footsteps. Logs clunking onto the grate. Noises in the kitchen. He was making a drink. A glass being set on a table.

She wanted to go to him. She needed to see him, hear him. Longing, miserable, she opened her door.

Vaughn heard her door open. He took big, desperate gulps of his drink, feeling no effect but working toward a little comforting numbness. There was a soft, slow padding of sock feet over the wooden floor, drawing nearer. He should have stayed in his room. He couldn't face her.

From the corner of his eye he glimpsed her sitting down at the other end of the couch. So he would not have to look at her he stared intently, deliberately into the fireplace, watching the flames feeding on paper and the blackening remains of the small splinters of wood, threatening the yet uncharred logs.

"Vaughn." Her soft voice barely penetrated his rage of thoughts.

Just last night he'd held her. So warm, so soft, so nervous in his arms. It hurt now, so badly, to remember how happy and hopeful he'd briefly felt with her. He'd crushed it all. His hope, what little trust she'd come to feel, with the ugly thing he'd done to her that morning. By giving up his awful secret.

Never again. Never. He would never touch her again. Not brutally. Not tenderly.

He felt her move closer. Just next to him. Why so close?

He felt her eyes on him. He wished he were staring into the sun instead of the fire, wished he could burn out his retinas so he'd never have to face her, see her eyes condemn him. Her amazing grey eyes that had been filled with desire and tentative trust the night before.

She touched him. He felt her hand light and warm on his shoulder. He was losing, he felt he was losing, and he turned to her, his eyes stinging with the tears he had already cried, filling with fresh tears that threatened to fall, but which he was fighting back with all his strength.

Her look of tender sympathy wrenched him. She leaned in, pressed herself to him. Her arms wrapped around his neck, her warm cheek pressed against his. He wanted to hold her, to pull her gently to him, but it seemed profane. To touch her with those hands of his.

"Please, Vaughn. Please hold me. Just for a little."

Incredulous, he took her in his arms, choking back his tears, and pressed her tightly to him.

"Devan." God, what could he say? "I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. I’m not this man. This isn’t me."

"I know. It’s all right. You’re all right."

"I hate that I frightened you. That I did that to you. I want to promise you I’ll never do anything like that again. But I don’t even believe myself."

"Don’t promise anything. It’s okay."

He released her from his desperate, penitent embrace. He wanted to kiss her, just innocently, on her cheeks, at her temples, but such simple, tender gestures between them no longer seemed possible.

But then she reached up, combed her fingers into his hair the way she had done once before, and kissed him tenderly on the cheek. His heart ached with disbelief at her kindness.

"How can you be so good to me, after what I did today?"

"Because…"

She handed him the notebook. The double journal.

"I don’t know why, the first time I wrote in it I opened it from the back. Ever since, each time I’ve opened it I’ve opened it from the front, and had to close it and flip it around." He sounded like he was talking to himself rather than to her.

He paused a moment, steeled himself, and spoke again. His voice soft. If she didn't hear the question, he would not have to hear the answer.

"Did you read it?"

"Yes."

He heard her softly crying beside him.

"I’m sorry Vaughn. So sorry."

"God, Devan, don’t. Don’t feel sorry for me. When I think of what I did to you today…"

He shuddered, thinking how close he had been to doing worse.

"Can I tell you something, Vaughn?"

Not looking at her, trying to burn images out of his brain by staring into the fire, he nodded his head.

"I don’t say this to make you feel bad, but I want you to know. I really wasn’t spying on you today. I swear. And I didn’t read your letters. I picked them up, though.

When I first got here and I was trying to find out where I was I found them, and I looked at the envelopes, trying to get the address here. That’s all. I just want you to know that I haven’t done anything to hurt you."

He still could not look at her. He was just nodding his head, trying not to cry.

"I want to tell you something else."

He felt her watching him, maybe trying to gage the meaning of his tense silence.

"I know you’re ashamed of the things that you wrote about in that journal."

He stiffened with a little tremor. She was silent for a long while after that. She suddenly looked frightened, and he started to pull away, anxious that he was too close, that he had held her too long. She caught his hands in hers and held them on her lap.