The Shattered Genesis (Eternity) (2 page)

             
“Is it an effortless thing? The way you talk, I mean?”

             
“I suppose so. I don't feel like I'm putting much effort into it.”

             
“I see.” He nodded. “So where are you heade
d?”

             
I looked at him again, raising my eyebrows slightly. I had given the idea of him trying to pick me up and trying to annoy me the appropriate amount of thought but I had never pondered the possibility that he might be dangerous. To not immediately thin
k the worst of a man was a new and very undesirable turn of events in my world.

             
“See, that was me sounding strange again. I know exactly what you're thinking.”

             
“That you're a rapist and a murderer? That's what I'm thinking.” I was starting to back away v
ery slowly, so as not to give away my plan to run should he give me a reason to.

             
“Well, I didn't think you'd immediately go to rapist and murderer.” Every step of distance I put between him and me, he immediately mimed. “But dangerous, yes. I did assume t
hat's what you were thinking.”
             
“Well, you assume correctly even if you did not correctly gauge the level of danger I believed I was in. Have a good night, dear sir.”

             
I turned away, expecting him to shake his head and continue on in the opposite direction
. Instead, he caught up with me and began to saunter along at my side as I walked.

             
“Alright, I'll admit it,” I told him as my body began to tremble and my feet carried me forward at an even quicker pace. “You're officially starting to worry me.”
             
“I apolo
gize.” He told me apathetically before turning his gaze to meet mine. With an intense warning in his eyes, he muttered, “Just go with it, okay?”

             
“No, I will not 'go with it'!” I snapped at him, stopping in mid-stride and turning around. I was going to go
back to the bar and ask one of those drunken morons to walk me home. They probably wouldn't, but I would risk rejection in hopes of gaining safe passage to my apartment. I would allow their advances to continue just until I was safely inside with the door
locked securely behind me. I would take their endless chattering about football, my physique and all the things they would like to do to it in order to avoid being assaulted by this strange man that was walking beside me.

             
“Brynna? That's your name, isn't
it?” He asked calmly. I stopped walking and turned to him.

             
“So you're a stalker, too?!” I exclaimed before reaching into my bag and rooting around for the other item I constantly kept on me: my pepper spray. Just as I was about to dump the contents of my
purse onto the sidewalk in order to find it, I looked up to see him holding the canister between his thumb and forefinger.

             
“You left your bag on the back of your chair.” He explained before placing my only possible weapon in his jacket pocket.

             
“Alright,
I want you to listen to me,” I kept my voice steadier and bolder than anyone could possibly feel in a moment like that, “I don't know who you are. I don't know if this is because you're just craving sexual contact or if it’s in some response to some famili
al crisis that you experienced as a child...” I was rambling, trying to keep him at bay with my ridiculous over-thought and unnecessary musings. “But I can assure you that I am not experienced in sex and as a result, not good at it. Okay?”

             
Leave it to me
to still be overly analyzing someone even as I faced the prospect of being horribly violated. Call it my defense mechanism. I firmly believed that I could talk my way out of anything. It was the last straw of hope I grasped at when faced with trauma.

             
I di
dn't realize it but I was backing away from him slowly, preparing for the moment that I dropped my bag and ran back to the bar. I looked behind me and my heart iced over with the unthinkably strong intensity of absolute, desperate terror. The two jocks fro
m the bar had been following in our wake like shadowed specters in the dark. The dim light cast by the street lamps contorted their features again or perhaps my own fear did that for me. Perhaps I was seeing them as appearing monstrous because I knew what
their unspeakable intentions were.

             
“Oh, my God...” I whispered softly and I tried to remember everything I knew about adrenaline rushes and the inherent, animal instinct to stay alive. Whoever said that when one is in a bind they can suddenly become unsto
ppable fighting machines clearly never experienced the fear that prey feels. They especially didn't account for when the prey had felt that same suffocating fear before...

             
“Listen to me, Brynna.” The man was walking towards me, reaching one hand out slowl
y.

             
“Do not come near me! I...” I scrambled for something,
anything
to scare him away. “I have a knife!”

             
The words tumbled out of my mouth before I could fully realize just how ridiculous I sounded. Why would I have reached for pepper spray when I had a
weapon that would end the current shenanigans in a more severely final way?

             
I've always considered myself as being of much higher intellect than almost everyone else on God's green earth. But in situations where one feels what I felt at that moment, it ju
st doesn't matter what some faulty IQ test said about you. There is nothing to do, say, or think; there is only the swelling, smothering fear in your chest, paralyzing you while mentally driving you to act. It is so frustratingly paradoxical.

             
“Just walk w
ith me.” The man instructed calmly as he reached out his hand to me. “You have no chance of outrunning them...”

             
“Oh, my God...” I muttered again. I looked all around me frantically for a way out. I couldn't go back to the bar and I couldn't run straight a
head. But there were no cars coming and I knew that if I had any chance at all, it would begin with me running across the street.

             
I turned and darted into the road, narrowly avoiding being mowed down by a cab that appeared from nowhere and went rushing by
, horn blaring and a curse word being screamed out the window by the driver. I had never been skilled at sports or any type of physical activity; I possessed the endurance of an eighty year old with chronic arthritis and spots on their lungs. But with that
adrenaline coursing through me, I ran, as some clever person who thinks up clichés once said, like the devil was chasing me, which in my mind, he was.

             
But just as that expression took a lap around my mind, I became aware of the fact that no one was chasi
ng me in reality. I stopped running, allowing myself to stand panting on the sidewalk, leaned up against the brick wall of a closed health food store and ruing the day I started smoking as it limited my already hindered capacity for prolonged physical acti
vity. I looked around, back up the street towards the music blaring out of the open door of the bar I had just left. I saw no one.

             
“Okay...” I muttered to myself, realizing that I was trembling even more intensely. I continued to walk quickly despite the
tightness in my chest that made my heart feel as though it was attempting to beat through cellophane. If there were people around, I like to think that I would have asked for help but out of fear of looking like a crazed albeit well-dressed drunk on the st
reet, I probably would have just barreled on past them as though I was just in a big hurry. In the city, no one would think anything of a twenty-two year old speed walking down the sidewalk. No one would ask questions.

             
I was alone and looking over my shou
lder almost against my will, expecting to see those three men following me. I tried to stop myself from picturing their motives but unfortunately, my brain stirred up horrendous scenarios that played inside my head like cheap, exploitative B-movies at a 19
70's grind-house.

             
I do apologize for all the similes. But sometimes these figures of speech are the only way to truly convey an emotion. They are the last ditch effort of those who cannot make sense of things, even years later.

             
I reached around in my bag
, looking for my cellphone as I continued to power-walk home. I avoided shrieking in frustration when I found that it was missing. What else had that man taken from my bag? I didn't have the time to stop and check. I just had to get inside. I just had to l
ock myself in the safe confines of my apartment, where I would immediately begin trying to forget the awful turn of events my first night out in months had taken.

             
I had only seen civilian cars pass by for the duration of my trek. A cab hadn't passed since
the one that nearly left me pancake-flat on the asphalt. If I saw one and was able to get inside, I contemplated throwing my arms around the driver and thanking him for being in the right place at the right time. I imagined the relief that would flow thro
ugh me as I crawled into the warm cab and began
to put as much distance between me and that bar as possible. I would even kiss the driver's cheek just to show him how thankful I was for his arrival and rescue. I'm sure he would have already experienced str
anger things than that in his career.

             
But no cab rolled down the street and I was left walking alone. No one passed by me, either. I looked at my watch and rolled my eyes; it was almost two A.M. and everything was beginning to wind down in our fair city.
Leave it to me to lose track of time. But then, how could I ever have imagined that something so terrible would happen? Several years earlier, I had stayed out until well past two in the morning many times and never once encountered a group of demented sad
ists.

             
When I finally came around the corner and my building came into view, I could have cried. I would have, if I had been physically able to do so. My reprieve was short-lived, however; with another strong dose of supreme horror, I realized that the sam
e two jocks were lurking outside my building, their athletically hefty forms sitting prone on the bench just across the street.

             
I mumbled a rare expletive and ducked into the alleyway beside the building that was four over from mine. After I had cussed on
ce, a whole stream of colorful words and terms spewed out of my mouth. How did they know where I lived? What could they possibly want? It couldn't just be to assault me at that point, and honestly, was my insult really so damaging to their already far out
of proportion egos that they had to hunt me down and harm me over it? I cursed myself and my big mouth. I cursed my own over-inflated ego. I cursed the day I realized I wasn't normal.

             
Throughout all of that cursing, I didn't think about where the third ma
n, the one who had spoken to me, was lurking. As I stomped and kicked like a child having a particularly contemptuous tantrum, I didn't hear his footsteps approaching behind me. But even if I had been completely silent, I still wouldn't have heard him. Jus
t as I poked my head around the wall, I felt his hand wrap around from behind me and hold firmly to my mouth as he pulled me backwards.

             
Forget all human tendencies. Forget the thought processes and emotions that elevate us above other mammals. The moment
I felt him pulling me back into the darkness of the alleyway, I fought like any other animal in a struggle for its life. At first, I just thrashed around wildly, attempting to weaken the painfully strong grip he had on me. Quickly, I realized attempting so
me actual defense was my only hope.

             
I opened my mouth and sunk my teeth down into his hand while simultaneously kicking my foot back to nail him perfectly between the legs. He suppressed a cry of pain by just grunting like a wounded hippopotamus, which I
would have found hilarious had I not been in a fight for my life. After his hand released my mouth, I took in an unbelievably capacious gasp of air and
screamed
. As a child, before I decided against having friends, my companions and I used to have competit
ions to see who could scream the loudest. I always won. But those screams were nothing compared to the real thing; I was sure that everyone in the metropolitan area had heard me.

             
But just as the last bit of air was exhaled from my lungs, his hand was clam
ped over my mouth again.  When I opened my mouth to bite him again, he swung my body hard to one side and slammed my head up against the brick wall of the alley. I tried to scream but the sound choked off as silver and white stars danced in shimmering pool
s of black in front of my eyes. I collapsed back against him, struggling to stay awake as the ground slid sideways abruptly, right out from beneath my feet. I was hanging upside down with nothing keeping me attached to the earth but
him
anymore. I was prep
aring to tumble head over heels into the starless black sky. I would keep falling forever...