Lap of Luxury

by Lisa-Ann Carey

  “The flowing waters of the Nile water your melons and help them to grow. Your sweet pea has sprouted from the ray of the moon. I want to be buried with you in an old gold coffin, with you on top of me,” the voice growled like an erupting volcano.

  A curlew’s screech drowned out the verbal hallucination, she faced the wall scrubbing her back with one hand and supporting with the other, the perfect opportunity for her attacker to slip in through the window. He snuck over to the door and locked it from the inside. Still, she did not hear the click over the running water and the gurgling down the plughole.

  John was out like a light in the bedroom next door.

  The man reached in behind the curtain and slipped one hand over her mouth and switched off the taps with the other then blind folded her after he gagged her. She struggled and struggled, he lay her down in the bath, reached into his pocket and pulled out a bottle of PT-141 and his up and coming erection. He sprayed his nostrils then hers. He had heard her partner’s voice before therefore it was easy for him to mimic the sound. For a good hour he teased her with his sexual desire, speaking to her in a caring voice like John would. Her brain sent messages to nerves in her sexual organ. She was turned on as he stroked her with his hard log telling her over and over it was a game of cowboy and indian girl, so she did not fear.

  He was a man of many moods.

  Screaming down the entrance to her vagina, a high-as-a-kite cocktail of the love drug in his begging sex system, his grunt and her glamour was like the rev up to the Indy car race. He feverishly worked his grotesque toy into Miss Indy.

  “As they say on the Gold Coast in mid buzz, it doesn’t get better than this honey,” he joked. “A pretty impressive pump hey baby, I must have cum eight times in the last hour. Now a chance to meet your greatest fan.”

  She attempted a muffled scream. She knew it was not her lover.

  He removed the blindfold. Her eyes swelled in their sockets at the sight of him. Immediately she knew who he was.

  “One more lap,” he rammed it down the fast lane then oozed his sex-cream all over her breasts, rubbing it in with his cold clammy hands. He did up his fly and leapt out of the window after tying her hands to the towel rack and her feet to the taps, turning them on full blast, the bath slowly filling with water.

  Beethoven’s religious composition Missa Solemnis influenced a humming Pastor Amos, deeply, praising him, in his inner sanctum as he lay back on his ensemble, embracing excellence, dressed impeccably as optimistic joy, amidst the dim and the grim of the spirit of the composer, altering the pattern of the masterpiece with striking complexity, steeped in mystery towards its end, leaving the devoted listener with increased faith and great power to conquer all adventures.

  When…the semen demon pelted along the dusty path, bruising the leaves of aromatic herbs underfoot, stopping only to irrigate the tweed twine that twisted its way round an ancient terentius tree behind the log cabin. The glow from the outdoor lamplight lit up the broad mountain man.

  “Have you come over for a visit?” Pastor Amos asked.

  “Yeah, yeah you might say that.”

  His peppery nature bordered on the sociopathic evident in his whacky brutal egoism. Pastor Amos picked up on his brazen impudence and unyielding rebellious attitude.

  “Why does your mood change?” quizzed the Pastor.

  “I’m frustrated. I’ve lost my sense of honour.”

  “What have you done for that to happen?”

  “Carried out a brutal sex attack, just now. I used a sexually arousing substance called PT-141 to attract her to me.”

  “Are you sure you are not just spinning some remarkable tale to me?”

  Guilty over the sex offence, he stumbled over his restless and unstable thoughts. Once Pastor Amos learned of the victim, sympathy for her was aroused in an instant. He managed to trick the offender into waiting in his room for him and promptly locked the windows and the door from the outside and raced through the rainforest towards the cottage.

  His bashing on the back door startled John out of his dream-time, he threw on his robe and jumped down the steps. Opening the door he questioned his visitor about the time and reason for his presence. Pastor Amos took off; leaping up the steps to the bathroom door frantically trying to open it, calling out LisaAnn’s name as loudly as he could, John following him as fast as he could.

  Water seeped from under the door onto the bedroom carpet. John feared she was drowning herself.

  “What is she doing Pastor Amos?”

  “She has been sexually attacked,” he bellowed. “I can’t get the wretched door open, he must have locked her in.

  “We’ll get in through the sliding window, hurry,” John screamed.

  They ran with great speed out of the back door up the back steps along the back porch to the sliding window and raced into the bathroom.

  “Baby, no, not my Leesy.” John switched off the taps and lifted her lifeless body out of the water after untying the knots. Her clotheless body shivered after her stomach was pumped as she lay on the chilly wet tiled floor, her pale skin regaining a rich colour after his breath of fresh air filled her aching lungs.

  He opened the door, dried her damp body and carried her to their bed. As she lay in the bed she tried desperately to cover the hurt by covering her head with the sheet.

  “Don’t come near me, don’t touch me,” she cried.

  John hid his hands in his street shorts and marched briskly around the room, barking the order to fetch the invader.

  “Bostin, Bostin,” LisaAnn squeezed out his name.

  John sped to her side, removing the sheet slowly from her face. Her eyes blinked at every object in the room, as if she were estimating, without calculation, schizophrenics in need of examination, she figured they were laughing cynically at her, verbally abusing her. “It’s too dangerous working with psychiatric patients, he raped me, I can’t believe it happened again. I need a bodyguard with me all the time!” she screeched.

  The face of Pastor Amos hardened, his eyes rolled then blankly stared at the saturated carpet. He felt frost-bitten between the shoulder blades, an instantaneous trepidation dashed to his head, fright tangling his mind with the horrific thought the schizophrenic could have drowned her. With an open-mouthed stare, she sat tranquillized in circumspect. He popped a mint into his dry mouth and tossed it around with his tongue slowly, swallowing hard from time to time.

  The insecurity unsettled her as she watched him.

  “Bostin Bardot did this to you?” John questioned her. “The schizophrenic you wrestled with last year at the clinic?”

  “Yes, but we must understand he feels very much unloved and misunderstood,” she described.

  “That may be so, but he didn’t have to take his joy-ride with you. He must be still lurking around the island,” John told her.

  Feeling tired and washed out, LisaAnn cried herself to sleep with John right beside her.

  Pastor Amos closed the bathroom window and informed John that he’d locked the patient in his room in the log cabin and to let him deal with the man’s troubles with steadiness and confidence, and that he’d used a sexually arousing substance called PT-141 on his victim.

  “Yes you deal with it, we won’t tell the authorities, but give him some St. John’s Syrup first, that will calm him. He must have forgotten to take it. He needs help, poor fellow.” Soon Pastor Amos was gone to lend a listening ear.

  When a small bird topples out of its nest high in a paperbark tree to the thorny ferns below would it be noticed? Would anyone attend to its needs if it were injured? Could anyone feel its pain or even sense its hurt? Shades of doubtfulness blocked out any treasured secrets stored in LisaAnn’s thought realm that were between her man and her.

  Infused, deep into the core of her mind, seeped bitter burnt offerings of unfair experiences no fragrant oil of sweet remembrances could neutralize.

  Eyes wide open in the middle of the night, brain drain from disentangling a baker’s doz
en of prickly crises at the clinic before her midday meal on the day previous, house cleaning, cooking for a team of hungry men, organizing fun activities for a toddler whose muscles scream to move, changing dirty nappies, thinking up ways to entertain a set of twins that just won’t dry up on one of those whingey days, and then there’s the deadly shower invasion that nearly finishes you off completely, all before the washing dries on that cloudy day.

  She craved the old body cloggers, or to say it more delicately, comfort foods: hot chips, choccy chips, crispy chips, savoury dips and dippin’ chips, gallons of ice-cream spyders with gallons of soft drink, knowing full well what really impelled her to stuff her mouth in the first place – full blown FEAR!

  After James and the boys heard the bad news they served her up three huge bowls of her favourite, Sesame Beef. They’d slept like logs and had not heard the episode.

  The next morning was overcast. LisaAnn lay on the lawn casting her eyes over a colourful floral patch her uncle had created just for his baby niece. It was a half-hexagon shaped bed with a stained timber partition in the background. LisaAnn had chosen the mixed colours of the artist’s palette and for a tiered effect the flowers were planted in rank of tallness, contour and tint.

  The quiet colours of pink, mauve and white are so pretty, she thought.

  Towards the back the Queen Anne’s Lace stood sublime, so impressive, that they inspired a magical effect of awe and wonder in her heart as a light breeze tickled their petalled crowns. She reacted quite differently after the sexual encounter this time. She wanted so much to become very, very dependent on the man upstairs whom she trusted with all her heart.

  Baby pink Cleome graced the space between the Queen Anne’s Lace, it attracted flying jewels to its abundant supply of nectar, as they flitted from flower to flower in spars and spats, they really did put on a show for the bird watcher.

  Then a fatherly voice burst from above saying, “You are not forgotten in the eyes of your God.”

  “His eye is on the sparrow and I know he watches me,” she sang the verse she had remembered from Sunday School.

  A row of star bright Cosmos had her mind floating back to her childhood. Her childhood was like a deep chasm she always feared tumbling into. She seemed to always be the reason for every blunder her father had made. There were endless social receptions around the pool in the back garden of her father’s house. It was an enormous house with many ornately decorated rooms. But LisaAnn’s was a pokey, unpainted room in the dull-coloured and dirty-looking storey sunk below ground level amongst the rats and cockroaches. On the nights he entertained he would lock her in her room clutching her security blanket, she climbed the indoor steps to a room above hers and she watched her father pour his big business friends drinks, laughing and lecturing through a sealed glass panel on the wall. She wished she could eat the fancy fare that was being passed around, but instead he would tell her to chew on her little blanket. Her tummy was often empty and sore.

  In the attic, her mother lay on her bed, a cripple from Multiple Sclerosis. Every day she begged her husband to let her be with her little girl, but he would tell her she was not to spoil her and that she should have been born a boy not a useless girl, now they both would have to pay the price – separation and suffering.

  One particular reception evening he had forgotten to lock her door and she crept outside and squatted behind a dense Gardenia hedge, she can still recall the sweet perfume of the flowers mingled with fear she’d be caught. The explosive tone her father used made her shiver with fright she thought she’d heard him rubbishing her and her mother. To him, they were a pair of bad jokes nobody would want.

  She wondered if she were ever hurt would he shed a tear for her. She had seen him cry over a full pedigree dog getting hit by a car and losing a leg, but all he felt for LisaAnn was pure hatred to the point of persecution and rejection. He seemed to find enjoyment and satisfaction spitting on her behind her Mother’s back. “Trash never turns to treasure,” he would say. Her heart sank, her eyes often watery, stung, as if she’d been attacked by wasps.

  To the shorty Petunias she’d given the title “Niagara Falls”, the various shades of blue and foamy white cleansed her intellect. As she looked up to her heavenly Father with prayerful heart, asking him to wash away the evil stench of her abused upbringing, immediately her thoughts were purified with His thoughts. Again she heard a loving voice from the heavens. “Whatever things are true, noble, just, pure, lovely, of good report, meditate on these things.”

  The pretty blue hues captured her spirit in a paradise where rivers of living water flowed from the heart of the believer freeing her from the drought of doubt and the gain of pain.

  Where once she thought I can never love again, she now thinks she can’t get enough of that wonderful stuff – the love of a faithful husband and the love of a perfect God.

  Cheery Phlox in sweet shades and angel white Alyssum spilled over the rocky edge completing the moving portrait of her life. Her family and friends heard her glorious voice in song, like John had taught her, ending the meditation in praise:

  “God, you showed me your strength through John

  Who saved me after my day ended with disaster.

  Like you God John never stops loving me

  I will always stay close to you and John

  Keep holding my hand like he does.

  My mind and my body will never grow weak

  For you and John are my power you both are all I ever need.

  Thank you God!”

  What a blessing, God had brought this couple together and it was seen at first glance that their love ran so deep it refreshed the hearts of those who came close.

  Bostin about to attack LisaAnn

  Chapter Five

  During the whole time Pastor Amos was counselling Bostin, Bostin wept. He paced back and forth and round and round in circles. It annoyed him that Pastor Amos observed and eavesdropped on his heartburst. But when asked why he behaved the way he did towards his Doctor he bowed his head and thumped it.

  There were times the Pastor cried especially when he heard how Bostin was treated when he was a boy. He explained how he was, in a way, trying to get his mother back for sexually abusing him between the ages of twelve and sixteen. He tried to keep it a secret, but his act of desperation gave it away.

  “I was hoping my Doctor could cure my emotional pain, she told me one day she couldn’t take away my source of pain. I wanted her to stay with me, mother me in all the right ways, shelter me.” Pastor Amos understood his words.

  “There is nothing more annoying to an easily broken child than being sexually interfered with.” The answer Pastor Amos gave lessened the frustration and stress the young man felt.

  His mother would temporarily abandon him when he started getting on her nerves, she told him he needed a lot of help with his behaviour, when she’d return she would physically force herself on him telling him he had to play the role of his father who walked out when he was just eight. This of course stressed him severely.

  “She tried to keep me close as long as possible it was a strong emotional bond, I couldn’t break the tie, because somehow in a small way I needed her satisfaction and pleasure.”

  “A good idea to note is that God is your pattern and God is your power.” Bostin was so moved by the Pastor’s precious words he no longer felt like giving up in his deep despair. He wanted to become like God, he wanted to grow toward spiritual maturity and apologize to his Doctor for his big mistake, but he doubted what God could do for a man like him.

  Pastor Amos felt a lump in his throat as tears streamed down his cheeks. Bostin patted the sides of his cheeks and wiped his tears away.

  “Thank you sir, I no longer feel awkward.” Bostin hugged Pastor Amos and spent the night chatting and drinking heaps of cappuccinos.

  Mid-morning the next day Bostin saw to it to apologize for what he termed a cruel blow and how it must have been suffocating. She accepted his apology but warned that
he must be under strict supervision ensuring he take the St. John’s Syrup every day and seek counselling with Mark and Myer on a regular basis, after his discharge from a month’s stay at Sunnyvale Psychiatric Hospital.

  Dashing Doctor John Wright, the medicine man, with as much healing power as God himself, was worshipped by the weak and the strong, and to LisaAnn he was her star attraction.

  The chum with the heart of gold and the candied tongue rebuilds broken lives with the power of his heart-rending rosy songs and his fond fraternization with the idea of resurrecting old-fashioned self-esteem through self-exaltation and self-importance leading to self-sufficiency, the beginning of the story of sprightliness. Nobodys became Somebodys, the dull became the fresh.

  Through all of these achievements he became the world’s richest man, the world’s hottest man, and the world’s most wanted man.

  “You are the vine, the needy’s vital support and your patients the branches who cling to you for strength, and as they sojourn with you they pick up tips on how to last the entire journey through life, with perseverance they bear much fruit,” were the wonderous words from the lips of Marshall-Justus for John.

  “His heart becomes their home where their needs are met and their concerns dealt with,” LisaAnn tagged on refreshingly beautiful truths about her reason for success a minute before he walked out the door for work.

  Just as mother and babes entered the living room the telephone rang. She had just hung the nappies on the line and was wondering who it could be calling them at seven-fifteen Thursday morning, the babies clung to her shoulders, gurgling and repeating “da, da.”

  “LisaAnn darling, how are you, it’s Aunty Ruth?” Her heart pounded inside her chest from sheer excitement. Just after the babies were born, her aunt, had taken off on a flight overseas to the electric city of Singapore with a group of church ladies.

  “You must have a wonderful story to tell about your labour, remember you were too exhausted to say anything?”

  “And too sore, boy did they rip out of me, but it was well worth all the pain.”