Neon Angel: A Memoir of a Runaway (40 page)

 

The spanking that Daddy gave me for playing with Winnie took less than five seconds. When Derek raped me and I fought him off, that lasted for around ten minutes.

 

This nightmare went on for six hours.

 

I can’t even begin to explain what I went through. It’s hard to tell another person some of the things that man did to me. What I will say is that the terror, the horror, and the humiliation that he inflicted upon me were even worse than what I imagine hell to be like. He hurt me with his fists, and with his body. He did it again, and again, and again. He thought nothing of hurting me. Every time I screamed, and I cried, and I begged for mercy, and I bled or I passed out, he seemed to grow stronger, more hateful, more crazed by the lust and the sadism that fueled him. As the night dragged on and my hellish ordeal continued into the breaking dawn, I came to the realization that this man was going to murder me as soon as he was finished torturing me. I did not doubt for a second his boast that he had killed six others. This subhuman creature did things to me that night that proved that he was incapable of pity.

 

There was blood everywhere, and the more he hurt me the more euphoric he became. Violence was his drug and he never seemed to get enough. A part of me prayed for it all to be over, but I knew that at the end of this I would die and there was so much I had to live for. When I wanted to give up, something far more powerful pulled me back to my reality, to think of other ways to end this. To end him. He was destroying me, he was tearing me apart, but I kept telling myself that I could take it. It was my life and I had no intention of giving it up.

 

At one point, he heard me muttering, half insane with fear and pain, about Marie. I was still somehow hoping that my whispered prayers to her would be heard. He snapped, “Give it up. Your fuckin’ sister is dead. I got to her before I got you,” but I knew deep down that this was a lie. He kept talking about how we had lived together in Dallas, telling me that I had just up and left. He really believed this.

 

Sometime in the early hours of the morning he left me lying there while he lay next to me, exhausted and panting for breath. “I need to go to the bathroom,” I said in a tiny, trembling voice.

 

He looked at me suspiciously, through slitted eyes. Then deciding that I was telling the truth, he grunted and pointed to a door. I hobbled over there, naked and bleeding, and closed it behind me. Desperately I looked around. There was a single, tiny window above the sink. There was no lock on the bathroom door, so I quickly clambered up onto the sink and tried to squeeze myself out of the window. My head and shoulder were outside when he burst in, screaming at me, and dragged me back inside by my legs. “You fucking cunt!” he screamed, smacking me in the face a couple of times. Then he dragged me back to the bedroom, and the torture continued.

 

In a moment of clarity, I remembered the knife. The butter knife by the jar of peanut butter on the counter. I knew I had to get to that knife. I asked to get a glass of water. He was very stoned by then. I don’t know what he had taken, but the pill he had forced down my throat might as well have been an aspirin. It could have been a horse tranquilizer, but my adrenaline had pumped it clean out of my system. I was as sober as a judge, and his drooling mouth and heavy swollen eyes gave me an advantage. If I could get that knife, then maybe I could save myself. I’ll bet he thought I had nowhere left to run to, so he allowed me to go to the kitchen by myself. I hurried over, figuring I only had moments before he arrived to check up on me. I went over to the jar of peanut butter and grabbed the knife, wiping the excess off the blade onto the countertop. Then I waited in the darkness for my chance. Seconds later, I heard him coming. I stood there beside the refrigerator as the moon cast an eerie, cold light through the kitchen. I was trembling with the dirty kitchen knife in my hands. He came around the corner naked, the hellish silhouette I’d been waiting for. He called out to me. He saw me standing in the shadows and walked toward me, raising his arms as if to hug a long-lost friend, his eyes almost shut now. I thrust the knife upward into his gut with all of the strength I had left. My eyes were closed tight. I wanted to kill him; I wanted to gut him like an animal. I screamed as I thrust the blade into him, and he screamed as he felt it puncture his flesh. He staggered away from me, holding his hand to his belly. The knife was still in my hand, the tip slick with his blood. His eyes widened, his face contorted in incomprehension and rage.

 

“YOU FUCKING BITCH!” he screamed.

 

Everything began to move in slow motion as he looked down at his belly in pain and disbelief. I saw the wound. He touched it with his fingertips, removing the blood that started pooling in his navel. I realized that although I had cut him, the knife didn’t go in deep enough to do any real damage. He reached out and grabbed the knife from my hand. I didn’t even run. It was over. I dropped to the floor and covered my head with my arms, waiting for the knife blade to pierce my body. He screamed out, then I heard the knife smash against a far wall. And the blow to the back of my head turned my whole world black. It sent me sprawling to the filthy floor.

 

I lay there, dazed.

 

I knew that this was it, my final moments.

 

He grabbed the hair from the back of my head and, with one hand, dragged me, kicking and screaming, back to the bedroom.

 

I was going to die in this house, at the hands of this man, and nobody would know.

 

I would never see my family again.

 

He threw me on the bed, and straddled his legs on my arms so I couldn’t block the blows. Then he began to beat me. He hit me again and again with his fists. With each blow my world spun. I felt my jaw go numb. Again. Again. His fists pounded against me until I couldn’t feel my own face anymore. It was as if my pain threshold had been reached, and my body could no longer process the agony it was experiencing. I could hear him in some distant place screaming at me: “You fucking STABBED me, you fucking CUNT! You’re DEAD MEAT, you FUCK!”

 

I’m dead, I thought. I’m going to die now.

 

When I let go of any ideas of surviving this, of escaping, suddenly a strange calm descended on me. I almost felt at peace. My consciousness was fading. I was outside of my own body now, and although I could hear the brutal blows as they landed against my face, my shoulders, my head, somehow I didn’t feel them anymore. I was outside of my body. I realized that this is what death must feel like.

 

I could hear a voice, a voice I didn’t recognize at first.

 

The voice was pleading with him, telling him to stop.

 

From some foggy part of my brain, I realized that the voice was mine.

 

Stop, James, please!

 

Please, baby!

 

You never used to hit me like this!

 

For a second, everything slowed. He wasn’t hitting me anymore. He was looking down at me, with a strange, confused look on his face. Then he started again, but with a little less vigor than before.

 

“You never used to hit me when we lived together back in Dallas,” the voice was saying. “I was only playing! We used to play like this all the time . . . I didn’t mean to hurt you . . . Don’t you remember, James? Don’t you remember . . . back in Dallas?”

 

As this strange, disembodied voice came from inside of me, the blows became less and less powerful. Finally, they stopped. There were a few seconds of silence in the room. I could hear him panting from the sheer exertion of beating me within an inch of my life. I opened my eyes, slowly. They were almost swollen shut. He was sitting over me. He brought his knees off my arms and grabbed my wrists. At first I was puzzled by the strange scene in front of me. My assailant was crying.

 

I didn’t know who spoke those words, but I knew that they had come from some other distant place. They could only have been channeled through me. Looking back, I know it was some kind of guardian angel. Whoever it was, they saved my life.

 

“I’ll go back with you,” I said in a weak voice. “I’ll go back with you . . . back to Dallas. We can start over . . . Just please. Please don’t hit me anymore . . .”

 

He smiled as he was sobbing. Bawling like a baby. “I’m sorry,” he blubbered. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it. I really didn’t. Would you really come back with me?”

 

Sensing a chance to make it out of there alive, I managed a slight smile. “Of course,” I whispered through my busted lips. “Just take me . . . take me back to my apartment, I’ll pack a bag, and we can leave tonight.”

 

I hoped and prayed I was convincing enough. If I didn’t convince this guy that I was for real, I was dead, no doubt about it.

 

He smiled, as if nothing had happened. As if we had just had a silly lovers’ quarrel. “I knew you’d come back!” He was beaming. “I love you, baby!”

 

I smiled weakly through my swollen, bloody lips.

 

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go . . .”

 

I stood up unsteadily and started to dress. James was pulling on his jeans, running his hands through his hair, whistling to himself. I dressed slowly, terrified of arousing his suspicions. As I dressed, I caught sight of myself in the mirror. I had to stifle the scream that threatened to tear out of me. I looked like I had just been dragged from the wreckage of a three-car pileup. I was covered in my own blood. My eyes were black and swollen. My lips were split. My hair was matted with congealed blood. Yet James seemed not to even see this. This crazy bastard seemed to think that everything was just A-OK.

 

On the drive home, he opened up his wallet and started showing me pictures of himself. He talked to me about the imaginary old times we shared back in Dallas. My mind was reeling. Wasn’t he aware just from looking at me that he had beaten me almost to death? Wasn’t he scared that a police car was going to pull alongside us, that a cop was going to peer in and arrest him on the spot? At a red light a car did pull up next to us. The driver was a young woman. I saw her look over to me, and then she threw her hand to her mouth in horror. She turned, and started telling her passenger to look at me. The light changed and we tore away. I fought the impulse to look at myself in the side-view mirror. I knew I looked like a monster. But I didn’t. I remained calm and silent. I prayed to God that we could get to where we were going as soon as possible.

 

I was taking him to Andy’s apartment, the friend I was with the previous night just before the limousine showed up. It was almost daylight and I was afraid he would be out looking for me. With my purse left behind, they would all be looking. I needed Andy to be there. It was my only chance. When we got to Andy’s apartment building, James pulled into the underground parking lot. “I’ll be right back,” I told him. He just smiled at me, and from his eyes I could tell that he was just . . . lost. He was so wrapped up in whatever fantasy world he was in that he really believed that I would come back in a few moments with my bag, and we would leave for Dallas.

 

I made it into the stairwell. Once I was out of James’s sight, I collapsed. I managed to drag myself up to the second floor. I staggered to my feet and pounded on Andy’s door. I wanted to scream for Andy, but thought James would hear and reappear so he could finish the job. As if in answer to my prayers, the door opened, and I saw Andy’s face turn white. I fell into his arms. All I could say was “He’s downstairs. He’s downstairs in the green limousine . . .”

 

Andy brought me over to the couch, and then ran to his kitchen. He emerged with a large knife and a flashlight, ready to do battle with the monster waiting downstairs. “Stay here!” he yelled, before he ran out. The tears really came then, and I lay there sobbing in pain and humiliation until Andy returned a moment later.

 

“The bastard tore off as soon as he saw me! But I got the fucker’s license-plate number . . .”

 

I have foggy memories of what came next. The ride to the hospital. Andy was crying, too. The nurses’ horrified faces as Andy helped me through the doors of the emergency room. When I saw the way they looked at me, I knew I was in bad shape.

 

I felt one of them hold me in her arms, calling for a wheelchair. I collapsed against her, my mind drifting in and out of reality. I heard her say, “Dear God! What happened to you, girl?” but I couldn’t respond. Then finally, mercifully, the blackness came. Perfect, peaceful blackness as I sank into unconsciousness . . .

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 26

 

Killers and Clowns

 

 

 

 

You want me to do what?”

 

“Punch it. Kick it. Anything you want.”

 

I looked at the clown again. They’d told me that his name was Bobo. His body was shaped like an egg and weighted at the bottom, so the idea was that no matter how hard you hit it, it would always pop up at you again. I had supposedly been sent to the Santa Monica Rape Clinic to help me deal with what I had suffered at the hands of James Lloyd White. Now I found myself staring at this stupid clown, feeling utterly ridiculous.

 

There were several women in the room, all of us victims of rape and sexual assault. The others listened intently to the instructions of the counselor. I stood there unable to move as everyone around me started beating the crap out of the clowns.