“Please don’t do this. Don’t do this!”
The back door opened and Michael began to cry as the huge black man with a very large knife wrenched up his door and dragged him out of the car by his hair, punching him in the face repeatedly as he pulled him down into the dirt. Michael’s face cut, bled, bruised, and swelled.
“Please. Please. Please. No. No. No. Noooooo!”
The punches weren’t the worst of it. Once out of the car, the man began cutting off Michael’s clothes. Michael tried to resist, but each attempt to protect himself was met with punches that made the world spin. Michael blacked out several times. The last time, he awoke to find himself naked, face down, duct tape around his wrists and ankles, the huge black man violating his anus with the hilt of the huge buck knife. Michael screamed as the man rammed the leather-coated knife handle deep in his bowels without any lubricant but his own brute force. It felt like his anus was being cored out like an apple. Blood squished from his rectum and ran down the sides of his buttocks as the man continued to rape him with the knife. The duct tape around Michael’s mouth muffled the sound of his agonized screams, not that anyone would have heard him this deep in Golden Gate Park.
The man dragged a large duffel bag out of the car and withdrew a baseball bat, then he reached back in and took out the bottle of Grey Goose Michael had brought with him from his father’s bar. He withdrew the knife from Michael’s anus and replaced it with bottle of Grey Goose, easing it in deeper and deeper, using Michael’s own blood and feces as lubricant. Michael’s guts cramped as he felt the cool, glass, bottle fill his vandalized rectum. Then the man rose, placed a foot on the small of Michael’s back for leverage and to hold Michael in place, then lifted the bat. Michael screamed and tried to squirm away, knowing what was about to happen next. The man swung the bat down hard, hammering the bottle into his colon and shattering it.
What felt like a hundred shards of glass embedded themselves deep in Michael’s hemorrhoidal tissue. Then the man used the business end of the bat to grind the glass in deeper, putting his shoulders into it and grunting audibly with the effort. He shoved the bat in as deep as he could, managing to get nearly six inches of it into Michael’s anus, rupturing blood vessels as jagged shards were embedded deep into his rectum. Before climbing back in the car, the man urinated all over Michael, taking care to aim the warm stream at Michael’s face.
Michael was still conscious, screaming in a hell of indescribable pain, when the man leaned down and whispered in his ear. The man’s face was all shadow. Eyes and a mouth surrounded by darkness that bled into the surrounding night. It took a moment for Michael to realize what he was looking at. A ski mask. His attacker was wearing some sort of black Lycra ski mask.
“I could have castrated you permanently. I should have castrated you. You will not fight this in court. Even if you tell the police what I did to you. Even if they catch me, one of my dear friends will come to visit you, and they will take from you, whatever I want them to take. Cut it off and bring it to me. Do you understand?”
Michael nodded, still sobbing and sniveling.
“If you fight the charges in court. If you try to make Natasha out to be some kind of slut who asked to be raped. I will be angry. I will come for you again. Do you understand?”
Again, Michael nodded.
“Now, when you get to a phone, I want you to call the hospital, ask for Natasha, and I want you to apologize to her. I want you to beg her to forgive you. If you don’t, I will come for you again. You understand, you piece of shit?”
“Yes! Yes, I understand! Don’t hurt me again! Don’t kill me!”
The man in the black mask climbed into Michael’s car and drove away, leaving Michael naked in the park with the baseball bat still protruding from his bleeding asshole.
XV
The phone rang and every nerve vibrated in sync with the chime. I wanted to scream. My head was cloudy from the pain meds, but the pain was still there, pounding like thunder between my ears. A migraine the magnitude of Mount St. Helens.
I remembered where I was. Why I was there. Attempted rape. It was an old story, but one I thought I’d put behind me. Meeting Kenyatta was supposed to mean the end of drunken date rapes. He was supposed to keep me safe, but he hadn’t been there to protect me.
Hours passed. Nurses came and went, checking my vitals, asking me how I felt and whether I needed something for my nerves. I watched soap operas and game shows. A psychiatrist came in, looked at my chart, then asked me if I was having nightmares, trouble sleeping, if I would be afraid to leave the hospital and go home, and then, finally, the big question: “Have you had any suicidal thoughts?”
I laughed. I don’t know why. I just thought it was funny. Almost every day of my life, the idea of suicide had been there. I even found it comforting to know there was always a way out of this madness if it got too rough. But not now. As crazy as it might seem, Kenyatta had given me something to live for. I had a goal. The idea of checking out before achieving that goal was the furthest thing from my mind.
The psychiatrist left and I tried to sleep. My dreams were all fantasies as I drifted in that twilight between waking and deep slumber; I dreamed of Kenyatta coming to rescue me, taking me back to his house and bathing me like he did that night before the slave auction. Treating my wounds, rubbing me with lotions and scented powders and dressing me in furs. I smiled and wept. Then the phone rang. I snatched it up quickly, hoping it was Kenyatta. I almost said his name until that loathsome voice came whining through the phone. Only this time it was less unctuous, devoid of all threat. It sounded weak. Wounded. It was barely a whisper, but I still recognized it.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I—we—didn’t mean to hurt you. Please...tell him to stop. Okay? Tell him we’ll confess. Okay? Tell him...we’re so sorry. Just call him off. Don’t...don’t let him...don’t...”
I hung up the phone. There was no question who it was, the same asshole who’d called and threatened me before. Only now, someone had threatened him. He sounded completely broken. Terrified. And I knew who had done it. I smiled. I even laughed. Tears of joy ran down my face. Kenyatta still loved me. He was still looking out for me, protecting me. Sleep came easy now. I rolled onto my side and curled into a fetal position. I think I was still smiling when I fell asleep.
“Kitten? You okay?”
He was here.
I woke up and there he was, smiling down at me. I hugged him, pulled him down into the bed with me, and cried on his chest.
“You’re here. I thought you weren’t coming. I missed you so much.”
“I missed you too, Kitten.”
I held his hand to my chest, then I looked at it. The knuckles were bruised and swollen. I kissed them and whispered to him. “Thank you.”
He smiled back and nodded.
“They are discharging you. They said you didn’t suffer any major injuries. Just some minor bruising. No broken bones or anything. They didn’t find any evidence of rape either. No vaginal or rectal bruising or tearing. Delia must have gotten to you before they could...”
“Take me home, Daddy. I want to go home,” I whined, holding Kenyatta’s hand to my face as I wept.
Kenyatta recoiled, snatching his hand away from me. The look on his face was one of shock and disgust. He was looking at me like he’d caught me spreading my legs for another man. I could feel his body tense up. The atmosphere in the room changed. It felt like all the oxygen had been suddenly sucked out. I felt confused. My body trembled.
“Are you quitting? You’re giving up?”
“I—”
“Then say the safe word, if you want it to be over.”