Personal Protection

by Tracey Shellito

  Tori whimpered. The blow torch was perilously close to her burned shoulder.

  “I grow tired of asking, so I’ll just command. If you don’t want Vicky to suffer put on the collar. Which means more to you? Pride, or the safety of the woman you profess to love?”

  I brought it down. It would be a tight fit. I unfastened the bow tie and the top button of my shirt, then fastened the thing around my neck.

  “Good dog! You can be reasonable! And to prove I mean what I say…” She unhooked Tori’s wrists from where they were secured. She was still bound hand and foot, but it was one step closer to freedom. Cecily covered her with the blow torch, but tossed her the ice pack. With a fumble, Tori caught it, pressing it awkwardly to her shoulder.

  “There now! Isn’t it much better when we’re civilised?” Cecily indicated a leash hanging over the table’s edge. “I’m sure you know what to do next. I promise you I’ll reciprocate.”

  She didn’t give me time to think about it. When I didn’t move immediately she sighed and swung the blow torch back towards Tori. Tori’s gasp was enough.

  “Don’t! I’m doing what you asked! Look at me! Don’t hurt her because I was slow.”

  “You see? Just right. Not a hint of fawning. Even with your health and safety at risk, on her knees, she’s still fighting me. I like that.”

  I snarled and snapped the choke-chain leash on to the metal clip at the collar and held my hands away from my body. It wasn’t surrender. I wouldn’t give her that. It wasn’t what she wanted.

  Cecily smiled, as close to happy as I’ve seen her, then kicked a lever on the floor.

  You’ve seen retractable vacuum cleaner cables. That’s what happened to the chain leash attached to the collar around my neck. Whiplashed by the action, I was yanked back.

  My head smacked against the table edge.

  Fighting against blacking out, feeling blood from my opened scalp trickling through my hair, I was dragged up and back on to the surface of the table. To avoid being garrotted I went with it.

  I clawed the collar, trying to slide my fingers between leather and skin. I gulped air into my labouring lungs. My neck made sickening popping sounds.

  The speed and torque in the winch were too strong and fast for me to turn or get the collar off. I felt a wrench when I finally came to rest, sprawled across the table on my back. I wondered if I’d be going anywhere if I did get the collar off.

  I was scrabbling at the leather, trying to remember how to breathe, when Cecily appeared above me. I felt a jab through the suit jacket and shirt into my arm. She smiled into my eyes with all the warmth of winter. Anoxia and whatever she’d stuck me with started to have an effect.

  “I’m going to do it right this time,” she assured me.

  Then everything went black.

  16

  I opened my eyes to blood and handcuffs. I was spread-eagled over the scrubbed oak table, the way she’d once fastened me to my bed. Alone.

  Low lighting and the drip of a leaky faucet somewhere added authenticity to the dungeon Cecily had created. I wondered how many people had sampled her hospitality while she formulated her plan to get me here for her pièce de resistance. I shuddered.

  Shuddering hurt. Gingerly I began flexing muscles and joints to see whether I’d be able to escape if I got free of my bonds.

  A mixture of drugs, suffocation and the crack on the head made my skull ring with jackhammers. Every time I moved it felt like my worst hangover. My stomach roiled with nausea. I’d have thrown up if there’d been anything in it. But none of it was fatal – nothing I hadn’t had to deal with – and work through – in my worst moments of excess following the break-up with Gina. I probably had concussion, which was more serious, but again, nothing I hadn’t had before. I’d just have to move slowly and carefully for a while.

  Luckily, nothing seemed to be broken. Whatever had wrenched in my back as I’d been hauled up on to the table was quiescent for the moment. I’d cross that bridge when I came to it. It was important not to waste any more time. I didn’t know how long I had before Cecily came back. I couldn’t afford to be lying here helpless when she did.

  I explored the handcuffs’ mooring and wondered whether she was keeping her promise to take Tori home. Another reason to get free. If she hadn’t the sick bitch would get more than the taste of pain she craved. Thinking about the way she burned Tori made my blood run hot. Thinking about her raping Tori added fuel to the fire.

  I had no picklocks. The chains were welded and bolted too firmly for me to pull loose, even with the fires of my anger warming me. I would have to try something else.

  Acutely aware of time passing, I flexed my hands and shaped my fingers into points that would have been familiar to any practitioner of vaginal or anal fisting. I am blessed with double-jointed thumbs, and I can narrow the diameter across my knuckles to about the width of my wrist. Losing a couple of layers of skin was a small price to pay for freedom.

  Next the collar.

  The ankle cuffs weren’t so easy. The chains weren’t long enough to let me reach the floor. The best I could do was sit, legs dangling over the edge. Not enough. Unless…

  This was going to hurt. I grabbed the edge of the table and rocked violently to one side. The bugger was well balanced. It took three tries to tip the thing over and spill myself on to the floor. As well as cutting into one ankle deeply enough to draw blood, bruising the hell out of the other and spraining the wrist I landed on, I hit some of her other equipment on the way down. I probably did more damage to myself than Cecily had. At least I could derive some pleasure from wrecking her fetish room while I cursed the pain and fought against passing out again.

  When I recovered, I crawled to where I’d thrown my keys. I dragged the table behind me, and left a trail of blood from the cuffs cutting into my ankles. I got close enough to knock the keys off the plinth to the floor before the pain got too much.

  I’m sure the Swiss Army suppliers who made the penknife on my key ring never intended it to be used to break out of handcuffs. But it worked. A mixture of the saw blades, knife, screwdriver, toothpick and corkscrew had me free of one binder and working on the other before I heard someone above.

  I was still attached by one leg to the table. If Ashley was in on this I couldn’t hope to fend them both off without freedom of movement.

  There were footsteps on the stairs. I was out of time.

  I switched the attachment to knife blade and dropped it – open – into my jacket pocket. Then I stood as best my hobbled state would allow and began kicking the table leg I was still attached to. It hurt. It hurt my tethered leg. It hurt my bleeding ankles. It hurt my aching head. It hurt my screaming back. But I couldn’t stop. My only hope was to break the damn thing off. Dragging around a table leg gave me a fighting chance. Dragging around a table did not.

  The sound of splintering wood covered the opening door. I stepped clear of the wrecked furniture, broken table leg dragging beside me, before I confronted my captor.

  “You couldn’t wait, could you?”

  Mad as a stirred hornets’ nest, Cecily coiled a length of bullwhip over one arm.

  “I prefer to play games by my rules. Without a handicap.”

  She glanced at the length of wood dangling from the cuff around my ankle. Eloquent reminder that I hadn’t completely succeeded. She looked at my skinned knuckles. The handcuffs still attached to the table. Back to the abraded flesh. Her expression was wistful. “You always were good with your hands.”

  Then she unreeled the bullwhip in a crack that laid open my right leg through the pants. I’m not proud. I howled.

  “I don’t suppose they teach you to defend yourself against something like this,” she mused with cold academic curiosity, reeling the whip in, coiling the thing for another attack. I backed up, dragging the length of table leg.

  Her second cut laid open my arm. She’d been aiming for my face. I’d moved just fast enough to cover it. Blood soaked through the slashed shir
t, turning the white to crimson, making the wool mix of the jacket heavy. If I didn’t do something quickly, I’d be in no shape to do anything at all.

  How do you fight something as archaic as a bullwhip? My instincts screamed Run! But there was no where to run to. Cecily was between me and the door. A whip is a distance weapon. I should step into her space, so that she couldn’t unleash it. Take it away from her. But the damage I’d sustain in trying…

  She caught me a third time while I pondered. It sliced a fresh cut across my uninjured arm. I snarled with pain and snatched at the length coiled round me. By now both whip and hands were so coated with blood that it slipped through my fingers. She yanked it back for another strike.

  Off balance, I lurched into something that chinked, dangling from the ceiling behind me. As she launched a fourth cut of the whip, instinct made me grab whatever it was and leap upward. Her weapon hissed by beneath me and clipped the swinging length of table leg. Cecily cursed and snatched the coils back.

  My saviour had been a length of chain with manacles attached. The outfitters of Cecily’s playroom built to last; it supported my weight without a creak.

  That gave me an idea.

  While she re-coiled her weapon and aimed higher, I flipped my legs back, hit the wall, pushed off and swung. I aimed right at her, feet out to kick.

  I hadn’t calculated for the table leg.

  It swung out and caught her a blow that felled her like a slaughtered ox. I landed badly because of that same hunk of wood, but that hardly mattered. When I limped over to kneel beside her, Swiss Army knife in my hands, she was out for the count.

  “I told you she wouldn’t need saving twice.”

  Craig.

  I looked up to find the three of them clustered at the bottom of the stairs. All were in their party clothes, Dean with a baseball bat, Craig with a candlestick, even Tori, shoulder swathed in a burn dressing, wielding a can of pepper spray. I’ve never been happier to see anyone.

  Tori dropped the pepper spray and flew over. Covering my face with kisses.

  “I’ve never seen anything braver. Taking my place. Letting her hurt you so I could be free. Wait till I get you home. I’ll make love to you like you’ve never known.”

  “The only place Randall’s going is A and E,” Craig told her. After he’d finished skinning back Cecily’s eyes and checking her pulse, he left Dean to cuff her with some of her own toys while he looked me over, what bits of me he could get to with Tori in the way.

  “Those cuts need sewing, your wrist needs strapping, your ankles need bandaging and they may recommend traction for your back.”

  “Can’t you..?” Tori began.

  Craig shook his head. “Way beyond what I can do. And you should have that burn looked at properly. There may be something they can do to stop scarring. It’s not really my field.”

  “What about her?”

  “The hospital for her too,” I said. “The psychiatric wing. This goes way beyond kinky sex. She needs professional help. Either she voluntarily sections herself for psychiatric evaluation, or the police arrest her for the murder of Lisa Moran. I’m telling them everything in the morning, no matter what she decides. It’s either prison or an institution.” God, I was tired. And aching. “Tell me you came in the Range Rover?”

  “Of course!”

  “Then bring her. When she comes to I’ll explain her options. I’m fairly sure I know which one she’ll choose.”

  I looked at Tori.

  “I know this isn’t the way you imagined this ending.”

  She looked at the unconscious Cecily.

  “I can live with it. Knowing who did it so that I don’t have to be afraid any more. Seeing you free under your own power, knocking the bitch out, was enough for me. I think it’s laid a few of your demons, too.”

  I couldn’t argue. Dean heaved the unconscious woman over his shoulder and started up the narrow stairs, Craig close on his heels. Tori and I followed more slowly.

  “At least I’ll have something positive to tell your parents,” I mused as we trooped out of the house. Craig opened the car rear. Dean dumped Cecily none too gently into the back. Waiting on the road side for her door to be opened, Tori stood aghast, hands on her hips.

  “Randall McGonnigal! Don’t you dare ruin Christmas dinner with this horror story!”

  “Joke, Tori. Even I wouldn’t be that crass.”

  She broke into one of those smiles that lit up her whole face. I’ll always remember her like that. Then the drunk driver careered round the corner and wiped her away.

  17

  It was not the Christmas I’d planned.

  I don’t remember screaming as Tori went down. I recall my raw throat as I ebbed and flowed between consciousness and the quiet place the drugs had created where there was no pain.

  I don’t remember Dean’s speed-limit-breaking drive to the hospital. I recall him and Craig singing Christmas carols at my bedside while I was in traction.

  I don’t remember being admitted to hospital. Yet I recall Tori’s mother holding my hand, tears running down her face as she kept vigil at my bedside.

  I missed Tori’s funeral.

  I missed New Year’s Eve.

  I hated myself for the former. I couldn’t bring myself to care about the latter. All the joy had gone out of my world without Tori. I willed myself to die. Yet I didn’t.

  “It wasn’t your fault. You did what you promised. You found the maniac who raped her. You protected Tori from her,” Tori’s mother said to me, in one of my moments of lucidity.

  “Then why does it feel like I failed?”

  “You can’t fight fate, Randall,” Craig said, fluffing pillows, straightening sheets on his rounds. “It was her time.”

  “Nothing personal, Craig, but fuck off, will you? It was not her time, it was not fate, it was a fucking drunk driver. Go and play nurse to someone who appreciates your platitudes.”

  Ashley came to visit.

  “I know I’m probably the last person you wanted to see.”

  “You’ve got that right.”

  “You have to understand I didn’t know anything about what she was doing.”

  “And I’m supposed to believe that, am I?”

  “I didn’t think you would; that’s why I’m leaving. I’ve submitted my intention to quit to the executors. I think it will be better for all of us if I move away.”

  An adult thing to do. I wasn’t in the mood for adult. Still, I forced myself to be polite. “Where will you go?”

  He looked sheepish. “Cecily’s place. I’m looking after it for her until she gets out.”

  “You still think she can be cured?”

  His eyes were shadowed. “Yes. I do. At least I hope so. I love her, you see, so I have to believe it. I’m going to work with her therapists, see if there’s anything I can do…” Then, sensing this was not what I needed to hear, “I’m really sorry things worked out this way. I like you. I liked Tori. But I love Cecily, for all her faults. I have to try.”

  They tried to give me grief counselling. I told them to fuck off, too. It wasn’t grief counselling I needed. It was anger management.

  Drugs and pain had seen me through the grief, numbed the edge the way booze had with Gina. Now overpowering rage boiled in me: frustration at my helplessness, my inability to do anything about what had happened. There was only one thing that would ease that.

  The gym. I had to be back on my feet to take advantage of it. Since death didn’t seem interested in me, I decided to live.

  Sammi and the girls came by, causing uproar. Dressed in skimpy Miss Santa suits they put on an impromptu show that stopped the ward. But their clowning was cover for something more serious. They all shed a few tears with me for Tori before they left.

  “If you need us, you know where to find us,” Joy told me hopefully.

  Liu didn’t say much, but she made it clear she would be happy to step into Tori’s shoes. Flattering, but too soon. I couldn’t consider th
at part of my life while the aching void of Tori’s loss ate at me.

  “Don’t you think you’ve seen the last of us. You and I still have my little problem to sort out,” Sammi reminded me.

  “I hadn’t forgotten. It’s my new year’s resolution.”

  “I’ll hold you to that.”

  Their visit was the real start of my recovery.

  They released me on January 3rd.

  I got home, thinking I’d find an eviction notice. I found myself owner of the building.

  Of course I called Tori’s mum. It took me three tries. Her father wouldn’t speak to me. Though the traffic accident wasn’t my fault he held me responsible. After two hang-ups and an earful of abuse, I got through to the woman who’d sat by me as if I were her daughter. I hardly knew what to say. She made it easy for me.

  “It’s the house, isn’t it? You got the deeds?”

  “Yes.”

  “I came to deliver them myself. That nice young law student, Ashley? He let me go up and put them through your door. He was just going out as I arrived. He’s moving, he tells me.”

  “Yes.”

  “Her insurance paid off the mortgage and paid us back. She wanted you to have it. I’m sure she never imagined it would be this soon. She made a will when she bought it. We won’t contest.”

  “You’d be well within your rights if you did.”

  “No. Victoria made it clear you were to be regarded as her next of kin if anything happened. She had documents drawn up in case she had an accident dancing or something.”

  I wondered if the ‘or something’ came about before or after her rape.

  “It’s going to take Rafe a while to deal with this. Me, too. Would you mind if...”

  She was going to ask me not to call or write. The house was my pay-off. I interrupted her. She’d been kind to me. It was the least I could do.

  “You have my number. If you need me. And the keys if you want any of Tori’s things.”

  “Thank you, but no. I’ll pop them through the letter box when next I’m passing. I know she’d want you to have everything. We have all we need to remind us of her here, in her old room.” Where she belonged only to them, and was still an innocent child. A person who hadn’t made a choice to have girlfriends instead of boyfriends, dance in what amounted to a strip club, get raped, or run over, in a world where they couldn’t protect her. I understood.