Man Hunt (13 page)

CHAPTER 7

"What… what do you mean?" Josie asked. She was completely flustered by Monica's accusation. Deep down, she had never truly thought the island counselor could see through her lies.

"I said I don't believe your story, and that's exactly what I mean." Monica's fingertips remained resting together. Her gaze was stern, unflinching. Josie stared at her, still too shocked to believe it.

"I don't appreciate being lied to," Monica continued. "It's disrespectful. You don't disrespect me, do you Josie?"

"No." She was happy to give Monica something she'd like to hear. It didn't matter if it, too, wasn't the truth.

"Good. Then all that remains is a proper apology."

"I'm sor-"

"Don't tell me that! Don't reduce yourself so easily. You're a woman. Be stronger than that. Give me a
real
apology. Tell me the
truth
."

Josie already knew the danger she was in. Nevertheless, the truth could not,
would not
be allowed to come to her lips.

Her eyes stared wide at the floor, but she didn't see the patterns there. What she saw were the men in the training area. Men who screamed. Men who cried. Men who swore and fought and made so many promises and sometimes went a little insane.

Josie's mouth moved, but nothing that came to her mind could be voiced aloud, so she remained silent and gawking.

"I can see this is more serious than I thought." Monica's voice broke Josie's little trance. She wanted to say something that would diffuse the situation. Slowly, she began stumbling an excuse.

"I…" but still nothing came. She tried again immediately and failed just as poorly. "When the…" She lapsed into silence while her jaw worked its hinge.

"Relax, Josie. You've already said enough."

"What?"

"I must say I'm quite disappointed, but if it's one thing I can't stand to watch, it's a struggling woman."

Monica finally separated her fingers as she spoke. She folded them together and leaned back in her wooden chair. The hinges squeaked a loud protest under her dense weight.

"I want you to close your eyes now, Josie, and help me to help you."

Josie settled in for the long haul and did as she was told. Behind her closed lids, she rolled her eyes. Exposed as she was, Monica's idea of help would always be a ridiculous waste of time.

The quiet that lingered thereafter was standard procedure. Monica was a firm believer in the power of the meditative mind. Silence, she claimed, helped to clear and prepare it.

They sat that way a long time, Josie's eyes closed and Monica leaned back and watching her closely. Eventually, Josie's mind slipped again to the men in their chains, of them screaming for mercy. She thought she'd go crazy if Monica didn't say something soon.

"I want you to think about Charles," the counselor said.

Instantly the men of the island were replaced by another, more powerful, image. A tall, black-haired young man with deep-set eyes and thick eyebrows stood before her. He was tall, strong, and handsome in the way that had once made her weak in the knees. His mouth was smiling at her warmly, but the eyes under the bushy brows were angry. Josie grimaced.

"I want you to think about what he did to you, Josie." Monica's voice was quieter now. Soothing.

The image in Josie's mind changed. Now the black-haired man was shirtless. He was in her living room and her parents were already upstairs in bed, just a few seconds away. Charles had quite a bit of chest hair to match his eyebrows. She was playing a little finger game with those short, curly things. In only moments they would forever become dirty places where bugs and vermin would nest.

"Do you remember what he did to you, Josie?" Fast forward several minutes. The shirtless Charles was above her now. One strand of hair had come unglued from its prison of hairs gel and clung to his forehead. His muscular left arm was swinging down hard as he backhanded her across the face. In Monica's office, Josie's mouth tightened, but she didn't speak.

"Do you remember what he
did
to you, Josie?"

"
Yes,
" she whispered, and the pain of saying that single word brought a tear to her eye. Charles hit her again and again in her mind. Each time it was the same swing of his arm, the same fresh shock of pain on her cheek, the same all-new look in his eyes.

But attached to each flashed memory was a ghostly echoing image of her own hand hitting a naked man in chains as he screamed and the look of terror on his face. Both were repeated over and over and over.

"Good," Monica said. Now her voice was smooth and effortless to listen to, like the ease of drinking warm milk. "I want you to talk to me, Josie. Tell me how you allowed him to do it. How did Charles take your control?"

Josie's mind did a flashback to a few minutes before he had hit her. He was tearing his shirt off eagerly, and she was smiling, enjoying their forbidden passion. She started playing with his chest hairs. And soon she had…

But no, she wouldn't remember that part.

"How did it
happen
, Josie?" The voice was so warm, so comforting. Josie's mouth betrayed her and she answered truthfully.

"I let him kneel between my legs. I let him think I wanted it. And I did want it, a little. But when I changed my mind… because he wasn't being gentle…" She paused, thinking of how often she had been less than gentle in the training rooms far below. How often she had enjoyed the pain she caused.

"He wasn't listening to me," she went on. "He only… whispered over and over to ‘
Just
let me. Just let me
.
I need it. I need
you.’ And then, when I got too loud… That's when he hit me."

"And what did you do after that?"

Charles was in her mind again, directly over her. Sweat dripping off his nose, breath huffing loudly. And there was pain. Lots of pain. From everywhere. And the physical pain was only half of it. The emotional pain was so much worse. A hundred times worse. Because ultimately the fault was as much her own as it was his.

"I let him screw me," she said bluntly. "I couldn't stand to have him hit me again, and I couldn't think of anything else to do. I knew it was wrong… but part of me didn't want to disappoint him." She finished the last in an embarrassed whimper that brought forth new tears. She had hated herself for that moment from the instant it began to happen. Sitting in Monica's office a full six years later, she still did.

But Monica still didn't speak, and soon enough a new image came to Josie's mind, though this one was two months old. A scrawny naked man in chains was breaking her rule and holding his hands up in protection. It was an instinct he hadn't yet learned to control. His eyes were red. His nose ran. His lips blubbered again and again, "I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry!"

And she had told him his apologies were pathetic. Told him that she was…
disappointed
… that he hadn't yet learned. She'd said this exactly the same way a thousand times before. Rhonda had taught them to pause and emphasize that one word because it was the most powerful word to a mother, and how else should they treat these men who act like children but
as
children?

However when she'd said the word this time, she suddenly understood she wasn't disappointed in the man at all. It was, after all, only an instinct. The disappointment, she realized with some horror, had been with herself.

This was the day her secret had begun, though she'd come to understand it had been festering for many months, perhaps even the last couple of years. But, yes, the sudden change in the meaning of that word had been the day she'd come to know she had changed.

Tears were slowly rolling down Josie's rounded cheeks. She didn't blink them away. They felt good somehow, and she instantly hated Monica all the more for forcing her to confront this ghost and somehow being right in doing it.

"And when you didn't disappoint him, did you like that, Josie? Did it make you happy to please him?" A stupid question.

"No." Her lack of anger surprised her, but she was so tired. So hollow.

"I want you to go back even further now. Before Charles hit you or screwed you. Before that night started, even. When did you first feel uncomfortable around him? Unnatural?"

Now the story flashed back even further. It was a few weeks before. Charles was wearing his favorite football jersey. They had been kissing heavily for the first time, and just when she was beginning to fall in love with him, his hand had found her thigh. It didn't quite feel right, not just yet, but she didn't push him away. She didn't want to hurt his feelings, and it was definitely exciting. He was the first boy to ever do that.

But in the echoing image that trailed behind it, Josie giggled another of her fake laughs to a man in a bar. She had already scouted and marked him for selection. Now she was working her easy magic. He smiled and laughed back, completely ignorant to the hell he was soon to encounter.

"It was our third date. No," she paused, thinking, "our
fourth
date. He wanted to touch me then, but I asked him not to." The story jumped forward again to when Charles' hand started to move toward her thigh. She stopped kissing him and asked, as nicely as she could, that he stop.

"The look on his face when I said stop," Josie continued. "It was anger. He tried to hide it, of course, and I ignored it for him. But it was anger. That's when I first noticed it." Her tears were slowing now. "That's when I knew in my heart he was a pig." Her mouth grimaced, and she didn't mind at all that this had always made her ugly.

In the after-image, the man in the bar was putting his arm around her and she was leaning into his chest. His body odor was strong and rank, but she ignored it easily. He kissed her neck and she giggled again. He slid his hand to her inner thigh and she opened her knees an extra inch.

"And why did you feel the need to bend to his sick desire?" Monica asked.

"I just… just wanted him to be happy." Josie's chest and throat felt the pressure of fresh tears, but she pushed them away.

"And after he raped you, was he happy then?" Instantly Charles was above her again. This time his face was red from exertion. When he'd grunted out his orgasm, she had sworn she had felt herself being planted with a demon seed. Not pregnancy– and a test administered by Monica some weeks later confirmed this– but the seed of evil itself.

There had been times in the past few years when she had remembered that thought and believed she'd been right. She hadn't felt wholesome since. In the memory, Charles looked down at her in the instant after finishing, and the look on his face was utter disgust.

In the inevitable echo that followed, she spat onto a naked man's whip-scarred back. He was crying. She was mocking him. She was disgusted by his weakness.

In Monica's office, the image almost made her smile. The scarred man had raped his step-daughter three times. Three times that the girl's mother had suspected, at least. The little girl had been only seven years old.

"Was he
happy
, Josie? Were
you
happy for having pleased him?" But Josie couldn't answer. She was drowning now. The pain in her heart was unbearable, and the tears had opened her up.

Monica didn't speak for a long, long time. Josie simply cried more tears. She saw Charles hit her, Charles rape her, Charles sneer at. She saw her own hand hit, her own boot kick, her own victims cry and beg and wail.

And on the heels of every vision– from Charles and from herself alike– was a growing rage. Rage at Charles and rage for the men who had come to the island. She had forgotten how painful a man could be, and now she did smile, thinking again of a particular, crying man. He was her very first assignment on the island. The very first man she had beaten and tortured and made to beg for his very life. His name was Charles, too. Rhonda had made sure she had known this before giving Josie her chosen weapon.

Only that man hadn't begged enough, for Josie had killed him that day. Instead of teaching him that she was strong and dominant, she had wailed on and on with the mace in her hand. Its spikes had been shortened so each woman would only bleed a man, not kill him, but Josie had managed the deed anyway.

"It's alright, dear," Rhonda had cooed at her afterwards. She had reached forward as she spoke, wiping a speck of blood from Josie's cheek and casually sucking it from her finger. "We just need to teach you a little restraint, that's all. You'll learn soon enough. Don't you give a second's thought about that piece of shit. He got what he deserved. Remember, this place is here to heal
you
as much as it is to educate these useless men."

The memory of her first kill– an unintended one, but her first all the same– was among the most powerful she knew. She hadn't thought of it for some time, and she was suddenly glad she had. She had forgotten what The Cause was really all about. The Charles she had killed– 'Charles 2.0' she had always thought of him– had been a rapist, too. Many of the men on the island were. But he hadn't been the garden-variety rapist. This scum had served real time for his deeds. Twenty-five years. Yet upon his release he had raped again. Bethany, a woman who had since retired from the island, had scooped him up during the initial police investigation. The stories in the paper that followed assumed he had fled the country.