“I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul.” - William Ernest Henley
Zorie
The trill of the phone penetrated my daze and I jerked into a sitting position, horrified by something unknown lurking in the room.
Reality arrived and it was worse than any nightmare. I had done bad things. Clamping my eyes shut, I thrust away the memories and summoned some calmness. Then I lunged for the bedside phone.
“Hello.”
“Ma’am the tour organizer wishes to advise you they will be leaving in five minutes for the scheduled day trip to Kakadu.”
“Oh.” I blinked and cleared my throat. There was no possibility of me going. “I’m sorry. I’m not feeling well. Please tell him I’ll not be coming today.”
There were people out there who thought the world was the same as it had been yesterday. Not me. I’d broken through a barrier into some alternate time and place where I wasn’t Zorina, the respected lecturer; I was a broken sexual thing.
“Thank you, ma’am, I’ll pass on that message. If there’s anything I can help you with?”
“No. Thank you.”
When I hung up, I stayed there, propped on my elbow, staring at nothing across the room. The urge was there. In full force. Today, he’d said. But sleep had brought some clarity, some newness, and some distance. I could feel an edge of uncertainty and resistance. It was a weird, but there, like a solid object, like a piece of paper I could lever off the ground at my feet if I wanted to do it enough.
What if...
I switched gears and thought elsewhere. My forte. My strength. Thinking outside, around, anywhere else but inside the box. Stay away from the nasty.
Be me.
And I am not a broken thing.
No man would do that to me again, ever.
I sat up and dug my nails into my palm, watching my skin go pale around them.
I needed to return to Sydney today. Yes. To prepare for next semester. So many of my students needed me there, like, in full helper mode. I lectured and I was there for the ones with the need for more – students like Cherie Wolfe. I latched onto that detail, needing a solid fact to anchor to my new-found determination. Such a great student and a lovely person who tried so hard. I wanted to drag the girl through exams any way I could, as long as she learned the subject well.
The urge nudged me.
Shut up.
The airport? I found a seat returning to Sydney, in two hours. Booked it. Told the hotel receptionist I had to go back early due to an emergency. Excused myself from the tour. All done.
I packed on automatic, fast, efficient, not thinking about...anything else. Breathing, packing, breathing around the panic that threatened.
In the plane on the way back, I had too much time to think.
They’d held me down across the car’s hood.
I remembered the cold smoothness on my stomach as one of them hauled back my hair, painfully. The heat across my ass from someone smacking me there before, while they laughed again, their cocks out, thrusting into my mouth, one after the other. The burn as a cock slid into my asshole, made slippery with my own juices. They’d laughed over that too, how wet I was. He’d said dirty things like my little whore and how pretty I looked being ass-fucked with my mouth wet with cum. All this, after he’d pulled out of me. He’d come inside me seconds before. He’d made me open my eyes and look at him while he talked, while a second man fucked my ass, and while the side of my face was cum-stuck and sliding back and forth and the other one grunted and swore and shoved into me.
It had hurt. It had made me climax. All that and now, here, I was squeezing my thighs together in this plane seat and desperate to masturbate on the spot.
My pretty whore.
And I couldn’t remember his face.
The need to go back to him struck full force and I clawed my nails into the arm rests until my nails hurt from the pressure. Something had to bring me back to the now. I wrestled my mind into thinking elsewhere. Even so, wanting the impossible taunted me for the rest of the flight.
Disembarking was a foggy exercise. I barely remembered to collect my bags.
The taxi ride home brought contempt for what had once happened, once upon a time, as the streets wove by. It was fairytale. A bad fairytale. The sounds and smells of Sydney settled in. Big cities exuded traffic smells and people smells in some subtle and not-so-subtle ways. The skyline filled with buildings, like friends crowding around, wanting to hear about where I’d been. Grains of familiarity cloaked the past, smothered what pulled at me. The urge was sinking and distant.
What I’d done, no...what I’d let done to me, it was gone. An episode of madness.
I should call the police but knew I wouldn’t and couldn’t. I wasn’t to tell anyone. That part of him had stayed strong even if I’d managed to sidestep that urge he’d somehow installed in me.
Hypnotism, it must be something like that. Maybe when it wore off, I could call the cops.
Maybe.
I unpacked at my terrace house and lay awhile on my quilt with the pattern of seashells and postcards from the sea, then I went out to my little wall-cozy mini garden, with the topiary and the art-nouveau-style fountain. I sank into a wicker chair. And I wept.
The tears gave me room to lose the last of his influence.
Or so I thought at first.
It wasn’t quite true.
There was a tendril of remembrance and perhaps I’d never lose that. A mere slender tendril that tugged less and less as the hours went by.
I made the rounds of my neighborhood, letting mundanity sift in by sipping coffee in my favorite café among the laughter and sounds of people chatting and eating. I walked through the park and stood under the old fig tree marveling at the birds flitting to and fro, from branch to branch, chiding each other. Late spring, so the mating dances of little creatures were in full fling.
I went to sleep that night with a smile on my face. Tomorrow I’d catch up with friends, maybe think about the course plans. It was work but I needed that.
From the edges of sleep I remembered...
Fucking.
That made me roll over and blink at the ceiling, in the darkness. The wind strengthened outside, throwing shadows on the timber louvres and rattling the windows on this upstairs bedroom. It would be a while before I was brave enough for sex again.
Would any man ever match...that? Scared, manhandled, fucked into oblivion.
I squeezed my thighs and knew my clit was swollen enough to nudge at my panties, knew the crotch was damp, already. The caress of cloth teased my nipples. Where had this wildness come from?
Sleep. I turned over and dragged my second pillow over my head, ignoring the call of my body.