Monster by Steve Jackson Read Free Book Online

demanded as he pulled up her shirt and grabbed a breast, asking if her boyfriend did the same and whether she liked it. When she didn’t answer, his rage boiled over again. “Bitches. Whores.” The curses rained out of his mouth as he hit her again and again. He shoved her against the door and demanded that she remove her pants. Wanting only to survive, she complied.
    A moment later, she screamed and grabbed his arm as he shoved his hand inside her. “Let go,” he ordered and hit her in her already bloody face again. Unzipping his pants, he tried unsuccessfully to masturbate. Frustrated, he ordered her to help, but he still could not get an erection, which only made him angrier.
    Mary Brown would later write in her police statement: “I asked if he had done this before. He said yes, several times. That’s when he picked up the hammer. I thought he was going to hit me with it.”
    Luther had grabbed a wooden-handled carpenter’s hammer. Brown saw it and cried out, “I’m going to die. I know I’m going to die.” He punched her again and pushed her back. He ordered her to insert it into her vagina. She began to do as told, but when her attempts were apparently too tentative for him, he grabbed the handle and rammed it into her body, raping her with the tool.
    Mary braced herself—her blood-smeared head against the passenger window, her bloody left hand pressed to the back window. She tried not to scream, aware that her screaming only seemed to incite him to further violence. But he shoved the hammer harder, and she cried out in pain despite her fears. He struck her in the eye with his fist.
    “My eye,” she cried. “My eye is gone.”
    “No, it isn’t, bitch. Shut up!”
    Luther continued raping her with his hammer. Every time he pushed, she screamed and grabbed at his arm, only to be punched. And every time he punched, her blood sprayed onto the windows, the dashboard, the seats.
    The torment seemed to last forever, during which she urged herself not to pass out—God only knew what would happen if she did. Then Luther stopped and removed his hammer. “Turn around,” he said. Believing that he was about to kill her, Brown fought back.
    “I didn’t want to die,” she later recalled. “I wanted to get out. I remembered reading something about defending yourself and poked my thumbs into his eyes.”
    It didn’t work. Instead, it enraged Luther more, and he began beating her over and over with his fists. He grabbed her by the back of her hair and slammed her head into the windshield of his truck hard enough to crack the glass. All the while, Mary, repeated to herself, Don’t pass out. Don’t pass out.
    Finally, Luther grabbed her by the throat and began choking her. She could hear her neck bones crunching, but beyond the pain and terror, she suddenly found herself thinking of her family and friends, how much she loved them. She didn’t want to be some nameless, faceless body left to rot somewhere in the Colorado mountains, her loved ones never knowing what had become of her. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. She hadn’t done anything to deserve this.
    Angry, Brown reached up and ripped at her attacker’s face with her fingernails. He screamed with pain and rage and stopped choking her, but began hitting her again until she slumped against the door. He picked up the hammer he had dropped and ordered her to turn around.
    Resigned to death, Mary complied, turning her beaten and naked body, preferring not to see the hammer as it made its deadly arc toward her head. But he had a final act of terror to perform first; he shoved the handle into her again, this time raping her anally.
    Brown found new strength to scream. After what seemed like hours, he finally stopped. She waited for the death blow. But there was nothing.
    Hesitantly, fearfully, she looked around. Luther sat motionless, looking down at his bloody hands.
    “Can I put my clothes on?” she asked, hoping that, his rage spent, he might let her