Julia 38
Jeremy is true to his word. When the phone call is done, he pulls a pocketknife out of his pants, squats down, and cuts the ties on my ankles. He looks up at me. “I’m going to cut your hands loose, but don’t do anything that you’ll regret, Jules. Because, believe me, you’ll regret it.”
I nod my understanding and he stands up, walks around behind me and liberates my sore and swollen wrists. I rub them, and my arms from shoulders to fingertips. He’s watching, waiting for me to finish.
“Are you hungry?” I ask him.
“No knives, no boiling water, no stove.”
“Okay. How about sandwiches? I have ham and cheese. There’s some leftover potato salad in there, too. If you’d prefer, I can sit here while you pull it out. I don’t need to go into the kitchen,” I volunteer helpfully.
He nods and I direct him to all the ingredients. Once he’s laid them out on the counter, I start to assemble his sandwich just the way I know he likes it. Heavy on the cheese, light on the mayo. I spoon a heap of the chilled salad onto the plate and push it towards him.
“There’s beer in the refrigerator,” I remind him. He nods and pulls one out for himself. “May I have a bottle of water while you’re in there?” He grabs that as well, without comment.
“Thank you,” I say as he sets it down in front of me and twists the cap off his Michelob.
He takes a long swig from the bottle and a big bite from the sandwich, grunting his approval of both.
“When was the last time you ate?” I prod, concentrating on my own sandwich.
“Breakfast,” he mumbles through a mouthful of potato salad.
“You must be starving,” I observe, looking up at him. “Do you want another one? There’s plenty here.”
He’s looking at me suspiciously.
“Jeremy, I’m not an idiot either, okay? You don’t think I know it’s in my best interest to keep you in a good mood? Jesus! It’s just a fucking sandwich,” I huff with some irritation of my own.
“Yes, I’d like another fucking sandwich, please,” he parrots me with an amused smile.
Amused is good. I’ll take amused at the moment.
I nod, take a bite out of my own sandwich, and start making his second. The kitchen is quiet, save for the whir of the appliances and the occasional gust of wind through the trees in the backyard. If Jeremy was concerned about the sound of the foghorn earlier, he hasn’t mentioned it. Maybe that’s because he hasn’t made the connection. It hasn’t occurred to him that Matthew will recognize the sound and know exactly where I am. That’s what I’m counting on. Even so, it’ll take time for Matthew to get here.
As I chew my sandwich, I’m making a mental inventory of the living room, dining room, music room and den. All of them are on this floor and all of them can be reached from one of two directions, giving me some options. But is there anything in any of those rooms that I can use as a weapon? There’s a letter opener on my desk; a pair of scissors, too. In the den is a trophy with a heavy marble base. Matthew’s office, the living room …
“May I use the bathroom, please?” I ask in my most non-threatening voice. “There’s a powder room in the hallway. I don’t need to go upstairs or anything.”
“We’ll see.”
I raise an eyebrow at him. “Really? You’re not even going to let me pee? Stand in there with me if you want. I’m sure you made use of the facilities while I was out cold.”
“Jesus, just shut the fuck up already!” he grumbles between bites of sandwich.
I continue to glare at him until he rolls his eyes.
“Fine, go. You have one minute. If you lock yourself in, you’re going to be so sorry,” he warns. “And don’t even think about the front door …”
I cut him off before he can continue his laundry lists of threats.
“I won’t. I’ll keep the bathroom door open, if it’ll make you feel better. And, I know – you’re faster than me. You’re stronger. I get it. I was a fool, certainly. But I’m not stupid.”
“You’ve just wasted fifteen seconds of your minute with that little speech,” he informs me, making a point of looking at his watch.
I nod and turn to leave the kitchen slowly, carefully. I go into the bathroom and turn on the faucet so the sound of the water will buy me a little time. I reach behind the mirror and feel for the small key taped to its back. Then, once I’ve stuck my head out into the hallway to be sure I’m still on my own, I move quickly and silently to the room directly across from me, Matthew’s office. I steal over to the closet, noiselessly sliding the door open on its track.
Inside, I stand on my tiptoes and grab the lockbox from the high shelf where it sits. I bring it quickly back to the desk and, with shaking hands, I unlock it, thanking God that I knew where everything was. But, as it turns out, my thanks are a bit premature. The box is empty.
Empty?
Please, Jesus, don’t tell me the one time he finally decides to listen to me and get rid of the damn knife is the one time I need it!
“Looking for that big bad knife you had in there?”
I jump at the sound of Jeremy’s voice. He’s leaning in the doorway watching me.
“Hey, great hiding place for the key, too. Behind the mirror in the bathroom. I never would have thought to look there. Oh, yeah, except, I did,” he sneers and steps over the threshold and into the office with me before he continues.
“Did you really think I wouldn’t have been through every square inch of this place before I brought you here? Not to mention your apartment. I had a lot of fun poking around your lingerie drawer by the way. Oh! And I like the little pink lacy number you’ve acquired since we were dating. I’ll bet Matty Boy got lucky when you found it in bottom of your suitcase!”
Oh. My. God.
How could I not have seen it? Of course! It was him all along! He got into the house right before David was born, too. But after that, Matthew installed alarms and cameras and reinforced doors. He thought we would be safer here than anyplace else. Apparently he thought wrong. We both did.
“And, you can forget about the knives in the kitchen and that God awful marble statue in the living room, too. I managed to disengage your alarm system and the home phone line, so you can forget about whatever other little tricks you think you have up your sleeve,” he says, watching me watching him.
I come around to the front of the desk. We’re about twenty feet apart in this large room, but he’s blocking the only way out. I don’t have to look around me to know that there’s nowhere left to go. He comes closer, but I stand my ground. This is my home.
“I’ll be paying David a visit soon, you know,” he informs me.
I don’t respond, just glare at him.
“Oh, he’s going to get to know me real well, Jules.”
I take a deep breath and try to stop my body from convulsing with the trembling that is taking hold of it. I muster every bit of power I have and channel it into my tone as I address him.
“Jeremy Corrigan, I want you to hear me when I tell you that you will never touch my child. Because, if you do, I will kill you with my own bare hands. And, if you happen to get the better of me, if you get your way and I’m dead, then you had better start praying for salvation, Jeremy, because I will be there. Every bad thing that happens to you, that will be me. I will make your life a living hell from beyond the grave. I didn’t believe in things like that until I had David. Now I know. Not even death will sever the relationship I have with my son,” I hiss at him from across the room.
He gives me a condescending smile. “Don’t you mean our son, Julia?” he croons, crossing over the threshold and moving slowly toward me.
I shake my head stubbornly. “No. He is not our son, Jeremy. He’s mine. Mine and Matthew’s,” I insist, taking an involuntary step backwards to maintain the distance between us.
“Saying it doesn’t make it true.”
Again, that galling smile. What I wouldn’t give to smack it off of his smug face. I feel my fingers twitching with the possibility of it as he pushes me further into the corner.
“You seem to be running out of floor,” he observes.
I recognize the line from the first time we made love in my apartment.
“Maybe we should take this to the bedroom then?” he suggests.
“No,” I snap.
“I’m sorry, what was that?” He clearly thinks he’s misheard me.
“No.”
“No?”
I glare at him now.
“You heard me. I said ‘No.’ No, I do not want to have sex with you. I do not give my consent. I want you to be crystal clear on this point, Jeremy. If you touch me, it will be by force. It’ll be rape.”
“Seriously?” he marvels with an incredulous smile. “Have you met me, Jules?” he laughs. “I mean, what the hell makes you think I care whether or not you consent?”
My expression doesn’t change. My eyes never leave his.
“We both know you’re better than that, Jeremy. Rape is a little … common for you, isn’t it?”
The question is a crapshoot. I’m hoping, once again, to appeal to his ego.
“And what makes you so sure that you know me so well, Jules? Hmm?”
“I loved you. I shared a bed with you. As you’ve just pointed out, I had a child with you. Yeah, I think I do know you.”
He shakes his head at me in disbelief.
“And to think we used to call you The Mouse.”
Before I can reply, he lurches forward, grabbing me by the shoulders and slamming me hard against the wall behind me. I gasp, trying to reclaim some of the breath that’s been knocked out of me, but then, his big hands are around my neck as he leans in close to my ear to speak.
“Oh, Jules, always so naive. You have not even begun to scratch the surface of what I’m capable of. But David, he’s going to know. He’s going to get a real good idea of the kind of pain I can inflict.”
“No,” I am shaking my head and gasping. “No!”
He smiles and nods. “I’m afraid so, Jules. Your boy will grow up without a mother,” he murmurs in faux pity. “But you know what? At least he has a father. And I don’t mean Matthew. I mean his real father, his biological father. Me.”
“What are you talking about?” I manage to huff out.
“I mean, a simple DNA test will prove he’s mine, and with you dead, well, Matthew won’t have a legal leg to stand on.”
“You don’t want him!” I croak.
“You’re right, I don’t. But I don’t want Matthew to have anything. Not you. Not that sea monkey you’re carrying and not sweet little David. No, I’m going to take him away from the only father he’s ever known, from the only home he’s ever known.”
“You can’t!” I object. But it even sounds pathetic to my own ears.
“I can. And then you know what I’m going to do, Jules? I’m going to throw your son away like a piece of trash. I’m going to sell him to the most deviant fuck I can find. A pedophile with a sadistic streak who will keep little David alive as a toy to be shared with all his friends. To take pictures of. To torture. And I will make sure that whoever gets him tells David every single day of his life that his mother hated him. That she abandoned him. That he was never loved.
“He will live in a hell on earth, Jules. Your sweet little redheaded cherub will suffer every single day of his short life. Because, believe me, it will be short. Guys like that aren’t interested in their toys once they get too big. And with no one to report him missing … well, even if his body is found, no one will ever know who he is or where he came from.”
My blood has turned to ice in my veins and I feel as if I’m going to pass out. I know this man well enough to know that he is not exaggerating. He’s thought this out carefully. He probably already has a plan in place, someone in mind to take my baby.
“This, Jules, is your torture. Your punishment for everything you’ve done to me, you bitch. You’re going to die knowing that you cannot save either of your children. Your last thoughts will be of your son’s pain and Matthew’s grief.”
My breath is coming in quick pants now. There’s nothing I can do. Or can I? I read once about a woman who lifted a car off of her child, trapped underneath it. She just grabbed it by the bumper and lifted it up. One woman, so fueled by love and fear and the protective instinct, that she was able to transcend the bonds of human limitations. Jeremy is the twisted wreckage of that car, bearing down on me and my family. I feel the danger to my child as surely as if he were pinned under ten tons of steel.
He’s loosened his grip on my throat, allowing my feet to slip back to the floor as he chatters on about what he’s going to do to my baby after he kills me. It’s now or never, and I have nothing left to lose. I put my hands together, just like the teacher in my self-defense class taught us, finger to finger as if I’m in prayer.
“Do you really think God is going to help you, Julia?” Jeremy mocks me.
Even as he says it, I thrust my arms upward, using the connected hands as leverage. I’m just strong enough, and he’s just surprised enough, that it breaks his hold around my neck. I only have a matter of seconds before he regains the power position. I reach up and grasp either side of his head with my hands, using the thumbs to dig straight into his eyes. He howls in pain as I push forward, away from the wall. Still with his head in my hands, I close my own eyes against the blow that I know is coming, and then I yank his head forward into my mine. Hard. Once, twice, three times. When I finally open my eyes, I see blood running down his face. I don’t allow myself the luxury of feeling the pain myself, I just let go of my grip on his head and he falls backward onto the ground. I skirt around him and run out to the hallway and toward the back door.
“You fucking bitch!” he bellows from behind me. “I’m going to fucking kill you!”
As I fly down the hall and back through the kitchen, I topple chairs and stools in his path, praying that they will buy me just a few more seconds. When I get to the sliding glass door that opens onto the backyard, I unlock the handle and pull, but it doesn’t give.
Shit!
I look down and see the broom handle that Matthew put inside the track for added security. I reach down, grab it, and drop it again. I finally get the thing out of the way and I try the handle again. This time the door gives. But, this time, I can see Jeremy’s reflection in the glass. He’s right behind me. I drop to the floor and fumble around for the wooden handle. At least it’s some kind of a weapon. But I’m not fast enough, or lucky enough.
Jeremy grabs my arm and yanks me to my feet, dragging me away from the back door. I thrash and scream and try to break things as we go. Finally, tired of fighting me, he simply picks me up and throws me over his shoulder, so that I’m hanging upside down against his back. I pound on him with my fists, screaming and clawing, but it doesn’t seem to faze him as he carries me through the kitchen, the living room and then up the stairs to my bedroom.
When we get inside, he slams the door shut behind us with his foot, stomps over to the king-sized bed, and tosses me down onto it so hard that I bounce a full foot off of the innersprings. The fury is coming off of him in waves. I make one last attempt to get off the bed, but he drags me back by my hair.
“Don’t you move!” he spits at me. “Don’t you fucking move, Julia!”
I don’t, until he pulls another pair of zip ties from his pocket. “No,” I protest as I try to sit up. “No, not again …”
The punch comes so hard, and so fast, that it knocks me off the bed, onto the opposite side of the room. I’m amazed that I don’t feel the pain at first, just the immense and uncomfortable pressure of his fist against my flesh. What I do feel is the thick slick wetness that’s running down my face. Jeremy makes his way around to where I’m lying, dazed, on the floor. He looks like a giant as he stands over me. A very angry giant. Before I can even finish the idle thought, he delivers a quick, vicious kick to my ribs. I grunt in pain and curl up into a ball on the floor.
“Please,” I cry into my hands. “Please …”
Jeremy bends over and grabs a fistful of my hair. I have no choice but to follow it upward and onto my unsteady legs. When I’m upright again, he takes my right wrist and uses it to pull me back onto the bed and all the way up to the headboard. At this point, I am in too much pain and too stunned to protest, as he uses one of the plastic fasteners to secure it to the wrought iron headboard. In a matter of seconds, the left wrist joins it. Then he is leaning over me, his face only a couple of inches from mine.
“Beg and plead all you want, you stupid cunt. All you’re succeeding in doing is giving me a hard-on. I’d kick that fucking thing out of you right now, but I don’t want to deal with all the blood while I’m screwing you.”
He runs a hand over my rapidly swelling cheek and then holds it up so I can see the bloody smudge on his fingers.
“See that, Jules? If you think that’s a sticky, painful mess, just wait until you feel your baby leaking out of you,” he taunts softly with a smile that sickens me. “You know, I was going to wait until later, but I’m thinking maybe we should take advantage of this big old bed right now. What do you think?” He’s patting the mattress next to me. “Hmmm? Still think rape is a little too common for me?”
I turn my face away from him and he straightens up with a chuckle.
“Uh-huh. That’s what I thought. I’m going to get another drink, and while I’m gone, I want you to think about how badly I’m about to hurt you. Just wait and see what I can do when I really put my mind to it.”
I still have my face turned away from him when he leaves the room, whistling a Mozart horn concerto as he moves into the hallway and down the stairs.
.