Simone
“Who are you?” I pant, knowing if I scream he’ll hit me again.
My mouth throbs from the last time he hit me. My body isn’t in too much pain except from my mouth and my arm. I try to make a fist but I can’t, not fully, just a pitiful half-fist. The masked man drags me by the shoulder through the forest, walking quickly with his gun hanging at his side. There’s something off about his breathing, about the way he takes big, deep breaths and then lets them out all shaky.
“Don’t speak to me,” he whispers. He sounds like somebody on drugs, over-excited.
“Why are you doing this?”
“Demons, Demons, Demons,” he mutters in the same spasmodic way. “Are we Demons, really, are we? Tell me, are we Demons? We’re pussyfooting. That’s the problem. Pussyfooting around our problems. Waiting for somebody else to solve ’em. No way, not me. Not me. I solve my own problems. I’m a problem-solver. Don’t speak to me. Slut, cunt-slut. You’re all the same. You’ll take it like a whore. I know you will. You always do in the end. Beg me to come. Beg, beg, and then afterwards lie and say it was ’cause you wanted it over. No way. You want my spunk. You all want my spunk.”
He digs his fingernails into my shoulder, hard. I wince, but don’t scream. I remember the way he turned on me the last time I screamed, savagely and without any hesitation, smacking me with his pistol.
“You don’t have to do this,” I say.
“I said don’t talk to me!” he snaps, but he doesn’t make to hit me again, just keeps dragging me deeper and deeper into the forest. I struggle to step over the fallen log as he drags me.
I stumble, fall to my knees. He turns on me, tilting his head like he’s deciding if this is a good enough place. My blood is cold, my heart feeling too light, like it could float away. I have to stop him, or delay him at least. This can’t be happening. Why did I drive toward the forest? I curse myself for my idiocy. I should’ve . . . No, should’ve won’t help me now.
“Get up,” the man grunts.
“Your mask is scaring me,” I say. “Take off your mask and I’ll get up.”
“You want to see my face? I saw your face last night with the big boy. The president. The big boy president. He’ll be angry, won’t he, when he finds out? Gerald’ll have no choice but to ramp up the war, ramp it all the way up. Turn it up to eleven as they say.”
“You’re using me to get at Rocco,” I say, my mouth filled with the taste of blood. It’s happening. My fears are coming true.
“Get up.”
“Take off your mask!” I snap. “If you’re doing this, be a man about it!”
I’m way more terrified than I sound, but I keep my voice firm and hold his gaze. I have to gain some sort of control.
“Oh, you want a real man, do you?” He waves his gun around. “You want a real big tough man like that Rocco fella, big wide shoulders but with a small little dick?” He cackles wildly. “You’re not worth shit. None of you whores are worth a damn. You twist and turn and get a man interested and then leave him in the dirt. Cunt.”
He lurches forward and drags me to my feet. I have no choice but to stand up unless I want him to pull my arm out of its socket. “Do you think you’re special?” he says, as he drags me deeper and deeper into the foliage. “Is that what you think? You smell like a rich girl. Just look at you, head held high. You too good for the forest?” He turns and squints at me. His eyes are the only points of humanity in his face, the only points not covered by the mask. They’re small and pale brown. “I ought to make you eat the dirt, but we’ve got plans. Come on, sweetheart.”
“You saw me with Rocco,” I say, as we skirt a wide tree. “So you know that if you do anything to me, you’re a dead man.”
He pauses for a moment. “How do you mean?”
“If you hurt me,” I say, “Rocco will hurt you.”
Is he simple? He seems genuinely perplexed by this.
“Ah, ah, ah!” He wiggles a forefinger at me. “But I’m wearing the mask, see? So your tricks aren’t going to work on me. No way, no way. You’re all the same. Tricky bitches, shifty sluts.”
If he really is that stupid . . . “Rocco has installed a tracker in my foot. For safety. Like a dog chip. They make those now.” I wish I said something other than foot. It sounds ridiculous. In reality Rocco is probably having dinner or sleeping or killing, completely oblivious of what’s happening to me.
“In your foot?” The man shakes his head. “No, you’re not getting me like that. But since you’re so dang eager to get this over and done with, we’ll get it over and done with. Bend over, then.”
“What?” I gasp, taking a step back.
He yanks me forward and grabs my throat, turns me around like I’m a ragdoll, and then pushes me firmly in the upper back. I remember last night in a flash, the way Rocco pushed me in the same way, but how I bent forward for him then. Now I try and stay standing upright. I won’t bend over for this sicko. But he’s stronger than me and he has a gun. He places the gun to the back of my head. “If you don’t bend over I’m going to decorate that there leaf red. You get me? You know what I mean by that? It’s a clever way of saying if you don’t bend over—”
“You’ll blow her brains out. Yeah, we get it, kid. Good for you.”
I crane my neck and see Rocco standing beside the man, his gun pressed against the man’s head. “It don’t take a rocket scientist to work it out. You really are a dumb fuck, aren’t you? Take that gun from her head or I’ll blow your fuckin’ brains out.”
“You really think—”
“I’m gonna count to two.”
“You’re a—”
“One.” He pulls back the hammer on the gun.
“Okay, okay!” the man whines, taking a step back and handing the gun to Rocco.
Rocco smacks him across the face so hard the man stumbles into a tree a few yards away, his face scraping down the bark. His mask rides up to his forehead in the process. I’m met with a normal-looking man, around nineteen or twenty, with freckles on his forehead and a scar on the left side if his lips. He scrambles to stand, but Rocco is there first with a kick to the gut. He coughs and rolls onto his front.
“What’d’you think, eh?” Rocco growls, kneeling down and yanking the man’s mask away. He grabs the man by his hair and stares into his eyes. I’ve never seen such rage in my life. It’s like Rocco is a gorilla claiming his territory. He pulls the man up, forcing him to climb to his knees or lose his hair, and then headbutts him in the nose. It explodes and blood showers everywhere. “You’re coming with me,” he says, dragging the man to his feet.
He glances in my direction, and then nods at a tree. “Stay there. Don’t move. I won’t be long.”
“Are you going to kill him?” I whisper, and for some reason the thought scares me. It shouldn’t. This man was going to rape me. But it’s outside of my world. If you get assaulted, you report it to the police. You don’t drag the man off into the woods.
Rocco reads my face. I can tell he knows what I’m thinking. He doesn’t reply, just drags the man further and further away until I can’t hear them anymore. I sink against the tree, elbows on my knees, hands on my face, trying not to weep. I fail. I cry violently. I cry so that my body shakes and my eyes start to sting. I cry until my face is hot with tears. I can’t stop. The idea of what was just going to happen . . .
Rocco saved me, but if it wasn’t for Rocco . . .
I kill the thought. I can’t think like this now, not when he just saved me. Not when I was so close to . . .
The tears hit me again.
I hunch over and cry for around ten minutes, unable to stop myself. When the tears have finally passed, I climb to my feet and lean against the tree, taking long, deep breaths to try and calm myself. The worst thing is the feeling of dread in my belly, like any moment I could slip through time and it’ll turn out I’m back with the masked man, his gun to my head, and really Rocco hasn’t saved me. It’ll happen and there’s nothing I can do.
“Did you kill him?” I ask when Rocco returns.
“No,” he says. “But he won’t be coming back. Now let’s get you home. Simone!”
“What?” I mutter, and then I realize.
I’m on my back, staring through leaves up at the sky.