She heard his voice, close but disembodied.
“Don’t try to move. Don’t struggle. Just try to relax.”
She moaned again.
She blinked her eyes open, thinking that she must not panic, though fear was quickly overcoming the sensation of pain and covering her like a shroud. She gasped in air, hyperventilating. She heard the voice again.
“Try to remain calm. I know that seems difficult. But try. It’s important. Think of it this way: If you remain calm, you extend your life. If you panic . . . I know you’re about to be hysterical . . . well, that would be hard for both of us. Take a deep breath and stay in control.”
She did as she was told.
She opened her eyes and tried to assess her situation. There was only a small light, in a corner; the room was mostly dark. She could not see the man, but she could hear his breathing. She became aware, slowly, that she couldn’t move; she was lying on her back on a bed, her hands roped together and fastened to the headboard, her feet tied to the baseboard. There was a little play in the bonds; she shifted about as much as they would allow, trying to see where she was.
“Ah, curiosity. Good. That shows you’re thinking.”
She was suddenly overcome by two swift emotions, one following the other without hesitation. First she felt an abrupt absorbing despair at her vulnerability, and she sobbed once. It was as if she had fallen from some great height and was tumbling downward, faster and faster. Then, as quickly as this sensation came, it retreated and she felt a burst of anger. I will live, she thought. I will not die.
Then, as this internal declaration suffused her, it was broken by the man’s cold, even voice.
“There are many kinds of pains in the world. I am familiar with most of them. Don’t test my skills.”
She could not stifle the sob. She felt tears welling up in her eyes. She started to wonder what was about to happen, but managed to stop herself, thinking: Nothing good. But the words came out of her mouth as if spoken by someone else, some lost child.
“Please. Please let me go. I’ll do whatever you want. Just let me go.”
There was a silence. She knew he was not considering her request.
“Please,” she said again. She was struck by how useless the very sound of the word was.
“Tell me what you want from me,” she pleaded. Her mind raced over the possibilities, but she refused to put words to visions. She heard the man breath out slowly. It was an awful sound.
“You are a student,” he said. “You will have to learn.”
She felt for an instant as if her heart had stopped.
The man hovered for the first time into view, just stepping past the shadows into the periphery of her vision. She craned her neck to see him. He had changed his clothes, replacing the seersucker jacket and khaki slacks with dark jeans and a black sportshirt. It disoriented her, and she had to look twice to make certain it was the same man. His face, too, seemed different; gone was the easygoing loose grin. He suddenly seemed to be all edges and angles. His eyes grabbed hers and she had the sensation of being tugged forward, helpless, by the rigidity of his gaze. She swallowed hard.
“Don’t fight things,” he said.
He paused.
“If you fight it only prolongs things. It’s smarter to go along with the program.”
“Please,” she said. “Don’t hurt me.” She listened to herself speak. The words simply emerged, unbidden, plaintive, impotent. “I’ll do whatever you want.”
“Of course you will.”
He did not take his eyes from hers. The absolute certainty of his words struck her a blow.
“Whatever I want.”
He hesitated again.
“But that is a learned response. Conditioned. And the lesson has just begun.”
He held up the small rectangular device so that she could see it. She twitched involuntarily, shrinking from the man. He pressed a button on the side of the device and she saw an electrical current jump from one pole to another. “You’re already familiar with this,” he said. She was suddenly acutely aware of the pain in her body. She let out a half-groan, half-sob. “Do you know that you can buy a stun-gun without a license in the states of Georgia, Alabama, Missouri, Montana, and New Mexico and at least a half-dozen others? They are also available through mail order, but that is more easily traced. Now, what reason would anyone have for one of these?”
He answered his own question.
“Except for inflicting pain.”
She felt her lower lip trembling, and the quaver in her voice was new. “Please, I’ll do anything, please.”
He put the device down.
“It would hardly be fair,” he said again, “after letting you experience it once, to use it again.”
She sobbed, almost thankful.
Then she gasped as he thrust his face down close to hers.
He hissed: “But imagine. It was on its lowest setting when I hit you with it before. Imagine. Imagine how it would feel if I turned it up. Consider that pain. Did it feel like someone had reached for your soul and torn it from your body? Think of it.”
She had a sudden vision of black agony. It swept over her. She heard the little-girl reply:
“Yes, yes, yes,” she said. “Please, God.”
“Don’t pray,” he said quickly.
“No, no, I won’t. Whatever you say. Please.”
“Don’t plead.”
“Yes, yes, of course. Yes.”
“Just think.”
“Yes, yes, yes.” She nodded vigorously.
“Good. But remember. It’s never far away.”
“I’ll remember, I’ll remember.”
His voice changed suddenly. He was solicitous.
“Are you thirsty?”
The word made her realize her throat was parched. She nodded. He disappeared from her sight. She heard a water tap running. He returned to her side with a dampened towel. He began to caress her lips with it. She sucked at the moisture.
“Isn’t it fascinating how we can get so much relief from such a simple thing: a towel doused with water . . .”
She nodded.
. . . “But that the same thing which gives us relief can terrify us?”
As he spoke the last word, he suddenly pushed the towel down over her mouth and nose. She choked and gasped, trying to scream out, stifled by the wet towel. Oh, God! she thought. I’m dying! I can’t breathe! She realized she was drowning and she had a sudden vision of her brother waving across the ice toward her. Her lungs felt as if they were being ripped from her chest. Her eyes rolled back and she twitched against the bonds, as her mind became a single black sheet of panic.
Then he released her.
She struggled for breath, filling her lungs desperately.
“Now relief,” he said. He used the towel to dampen her forehead. She sobbed again.
“What are you going to do to me?”
“If I told you it would remove the mystery.”
Sobs took over her body and she cried freely.
“Why?”
He ignored her, letting her cry for a moment.
The tears stopped and she looked at him.
“More questions?” he asked.
“Yes. No. I can’t . . .”
“It’s all right,” he said gently. “I expected you to be curious.”
He thought for a minute. Time seemed to hesitate with him.
“Have you ever read a story in the newspaper, a crime story, that suggests that maybe this thing or that thing happened to someone, but that it isn’t quite clear, and your imagination has to filter through the euphemisms and analogies in order to come to an understanding? Have you?”
“Yes. No. I guess so. Please, whatever you want.�
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He looked at her angrily.
“Well, that’s what’s happened to you. You’re caught up in one of those stories. You’re a news event . . .” He laughed. “Only it isn’t all written yet. And the headline remains to be invented. Do you understand that? Do you understand what I’m saying?”
She shook her head.
“It means you have a chance to live.”
She sobbed. She did not know whether to be grateful.
Then he slapped her hard across the mouth and the room spun. She fought unconsciousness. She could taste blood on her gums and one tooth seemed to be loose.
“But it also means you might not. Keep that in mind.”
He waited for a moment, watching the effect of the words on her face. She knew she could not hide the terror she felt. Her lip quivered.
“I don’t like that,” he said matter-of-factly.
Then he struck her again. His hand moved as if in slow motion toward her face. She was surprised that she felt the pain. She relaxed, wondering how she was able, and then this time she gave in to all the agony and passed out.
When she emerged from the nighttime of unconsciousness she was cautious to bite back the sound of hurt that was her involuntary response to the return of her faculties. She could feel how swollen her lip was and taste dried blood. She was still bound, and the pain in her joints and muscles had returned less sharp but with a throbbing energy that she feared.
She could not hear the man, but she knew he was close.
She breathed in slowly, fighting the pain, and forced herself to assess the surroundings. Without moving her head, she let her eyes scan the ceiling. There was a single overhead lamp with an exposed bulb, but it was out. She could tell that the room was small and she guessed that she was in a small apartment or motel room. Rocking her head slightly from side to side. she could see a few tacky furnishings and a window with its shade drawn. There seemed to be a small corridor just beyond the scope of her vision, and she thought that was probably the entranceway. She could not see where the meager light in the room came from, but guessed that there was an adjoining bathroom and that he’d left the light on. She could not tell what time it was or how long she’d been unconscious.
She realized with a sudden pang of despair that she could not remember the day or date, and she quickly tried to recall. I was working, she thought, on a Tuesday in the library. It is July. It is the end of July. The last week. There are only three more weeks in the semester.
Or is it four? She bit her lip and felt tears well up in her eyes. Remember! she screamed to herself. She could feel her mind spinning in agony over her inability to recollect the date.
How long have I been here? she cried to herself.
And then, as if he had been listening to her thoughts, the man answered:
“I control time from now on.”
His voice seemed to carry a blackened finality to it and she could not fight off her tears. One sob slipped from her mouth, then another, until finally her entire body shook with despair.
He let her continue. She did not know how long she cried, whether it was minutes or hours. When she stopped, she heard him sigh and he said, “Good. Now we can continue.”
Her body stiffened reflexively.
Out of the range of her vision she heard him rustling through a bag.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
Immediately he was at her side.
“No questions!” he whispered savagely.
He slapped her.
“No questions!”
He slapped her again.
“No questions!”
He slapped her a third time.
It had happened so quickly that the pain and surprise seemed to meld together. “No, no, no, I’m sorry . . .” she said.
He looked at her.
“Any questions?” he asked.
She shook her head quickly.
He laughed briefly.
“I didn’t think so,” he said.
Again she felt her heart plummet with despair. She fought against a sudden rush of hysteria.
She heard a small clicking sound and craned to see what it was.
“It’s exposure time,” he said.
He held up a pair of surgical steel scissors.
The sensation of the blunt metal was cold against her skin. She shuddered, then listened. Then she moaned, thinking it had to be, Oh, God, I knew it. He was gently but steadily slicing through the denim of her jeans.
He cut first up one leg from ankle to waist, then the other. He carefully folded the pants back, exposing her legs. She shivered. She felt his hand reaching underneath her, pushing up on the small of her back, lifting her buttock off the bed, then releasing her as he removed the jeans. She heard him toss the tattered pants into a corner. She closed her eyes and felt the scissors working with a terrible steady precison on her shirt. She felt her bra being removed and then the sensation of steel on her hips as he cut off her panties.
Again she sobbed.
In her mind she was filled with agony and embarrassment, exposed, trussed, and lost. The inevitability of what was about to happen to her seemed too dull, so obvious, so unavoidable; it was almost without fear for her. She thought, Just do it, please, get it over with.
She waited for him to cover her.
Seconds rolled into minutes and she became aware that she was cold. She shivered, her eyes still closed.
She could hear nothing except his breathing close by.
She was aware that the minutes were building.
She had a terrifying thought: My God! Suppose he can’t? Suppose his frustration . . . then she bit her thoughts off and opened her eyes slowly. He was simply sitting next to her. When he saw that her eyes were open, he let his track down her body.
“You realize, of course, that I could do what I want?”
She nodded.
“Spread your legs.”
She pushed her legs apart as far as the bonds would allow.
She heard the whirring sound of a camera motordrive, and behind her squeezed eyes the world suddenly went red as a flash exploded. There was another explosion, then a third. She opened her eyes slowly.
“All right,” he said. He was returning his camera to a bag.
She tried to pull her legs back close, nervously.
“Are you going to . . .” she started, but her words were lost in the sound of another slap across the face.
“I thought we had learned that already,” he said.
He hit her again.
She could not help the tears.
“I’m sorry, sorry, sorry,” she said. “Please don’t hit me again.”
He simply looked at her.
“All right. You may ask your question.”
She sobbed.
“Ask!”
“Are you, are you, are you going to rape me?”
He was silent.
“Do I have to?” he replied.
He put his hand on her crotch. She felt her skin shrink beneath his fingers.
Then he slapped her again. She gasped.
“I asked you a question. Don’t keep me waiting.”
“Oh, God, no, yes, I don’t know, whatever you want, please.”
“Good,” he said.
He stood up and moved to the foot of the bed. She lifted her head off the pillow to watch him. He held up something small and it reflected the little light.
“Do you see what this is?”
She groaned. Her mind darkened.
“I have always,” he said, “been fascinated by the simple razor blade. It could cut your throat with such subtlety that your first awareness of its work would be the lifeblood gurgling in your gullet.”
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Her eyes opened wide in fear.
His glance met hers. Then he slowly, carefully, lowered the blade and ran it along the tough skin on her big toe.
“Please,” she started, but stopped when his eyes flashed at her. He moved to her side and touched the edge of the blade to her hip. She could not feel anything, but saw a small line of blood an inch or two long appear on her skin.
“Think of me as a razor blade,” he said.
He moved up her body and slid the blade along her forearm, just on the edge of her peripheral vision. She could just make out the sight of another streak of blood. She felt herself spinning dizzily, trying to keep alert, in control, to scream, to do anything. Suddenly he was next to her face, and she could see the blade in his fingers. He slammed one hand down over her nose and mouth as he hissed:
“Shall I rearrange your face?”
And she spun into oblivion.
Anne Hampton woke gently, thinking to herself that she would make herself a slow breakfast, and a large one, indulging in eggs and toast and bacon, coffee, perhaps a Danish roll, and a leisurely reading of the morning newspaper. She thought that food and hard news would serve well to rid her of the nightmare that had plagued her, a dream vision of razors and madness. In half-sleep, she tried to roll from the bed, only to feel again the limit of the restraints that bound her. For a moment she felt confused, as if she could shake the sleep from her eyes and be done with this vaporous intrusion of nightmare on the solidity of day-to-day life. Then the tension in her wrists and ankles became real, and she realized that the thoughts of morning were the dream and she sobbed once in admission and defeat.
And then she thought of her face.
Her hand involuntarily shot toward her eyes, only to be stopped by the bonds. She tried to bend toward her hands: I need to feel! she screamed to herself. What has he done?
She felt an unruly, uncontrollable terror. Am I still me? her mind roared. She craned to look at the razor’s cut on her forearm. To her immense fear, she couldn’t feel a thing, though she could see where the blood had clotted into a thin brown scab. No pain, no sensation whatsoever. My face! What has he done to my face? She tried to segment her visage into parts: She twitched her nose, and it seemed to respond normally. She arched her eyebrows slowly, trying to feel the telltale hesitation in the flesh that might mean parted skin. She pushed her jaw forward, stretching the skin over her chin and lower lip. She was unsure, her lip was still swollen. She ordered her mouth into a smile, then a wide grin, feeling the flesh on her cheeks tighten and contract. She tried to wrinkle her forehead at the same time. Then she held this grotesque position, searching as if from behind, in the dark, like the blind man in a familiar room, aware suddenly that someone has shifted all the furniture from the positions he has so carefully and painstakingly memorized.
The Traveler Page 11
