Still Missing by Chevy Stevens Read Free Book Online Page B

drips of wax down the sides of the candles.
    I took inventory of whatever I looked at. I'd multiply and divide the numbers. If another thought or a feeling crept into my mind, I kicked it out and started again from the top.

    While he tried to rape me for the second time, I didn't move, didn't cry, just stared at the bedroom wall. If I didn't react, he couldn't get it up. Help had to be on the way, I just had to tough it out until it showed up. So no matter what he did to me, I counted or thought about planes while I lay there like a rag doll. He gripped my face and looked right in my eyes and kept trying to force his limp penis into me. I counted the blood vessels in his eyes. His dick got softer. He yelled at me to call him by his name. When I didn't, he pounded his fist into the pillow right next to my ear, screaming, "You stupid, stupid bitch!" with each blow.
    The pounding stopped. His breathing slowed. On his way to the bathroom he started to hum.
    While he showered, I clutched the pillow over my face and shouted into it. You sick fuck! Y ou limp-dicked asshole! You picked the wrong girl to mess with. Sobs went into the pillow next. The second I heard the shower shut off I flipped the pillow over, placed it back under my head dry side up, and turned my face to the wall.

    Unfortunately, failure didn't discourage him. Each time it started with the same routine, bath time--which was when he liked to talk the most--followed by shaving, a lotion rubdown, then the dress. I felt like a Broadway performer: same stage, setting, lighting, and costume night after night. The only thing that changed was his increasing frustration and what he did about it.
    After his third failed attempt, he slapped me twice in the face so hard I bit my tongue. This time there was no satisfaction, bitter or otherwise. I muffled my sobs with the pillow, sucked on my bloody tongue, and dreaded the end of his shower.
    The fourth night he punched me twice in the stomach--my breath whooshed out of me, and the pain shocked me as much as it hurt--and once in the jaw. That pain was excruciating. The room dimmed. I prayed for everything to go completely black. It didn't. I stopped crying into the pillow.
    The fifth night he flipped me over, knelt on my hands, and ground my face into the mattress so hard I couldn't breathe. My chest burned. He did this three times, always stopping right before I passed out.
    Most nights ended with him getting up, his face expressionless, and then I'd hear the shower run for a while. After he got back into bed, he'd cuddle me and talk about something trivial--how natives cured meat, what constellations he saw on his nightly patrol, which fruits he liked or disliked.
    But one night he lay down beside me and said, "I wonder how Christina is. She's so calm and self-possessed, isn't she? I wonder what it would take for a woman like her to lose control."
    I struggled to catch my breath as he wove his fingers through my stiff hands and softly rubbed his thumb against mine.
    As he snored beside me the idea of his hands anywhere on Christina, or of her feeling one second of the terror I was feeling, tore at my insides. I couldn't let that happen. My current plan wasn't working, unless my goal was to get myself, and possibly Christina, killed. It was taking too long for me to be found, and he wasn't going to turn to me one day and say, "This doesn't seem to be working out, so I'm going to take you home now." I might have gambled longer with my own life, but not Christina's.
    I was going to have to help him rape me.

    Understanding his behavior was critical. I dredged up everything I'd ever read about rapists, every TV show I'd ever seen about them-- Law & Order: SVU , Criminal Minds , a couple of A&E specials--mostly focusing on what rapists like and under what circumstances they kill their victims.
    I remembered that some rapists need to think the victims enjoy what they're doing to them. Maybe The Freak was able to delude himself into