by Mike Duke
“Wake up sleepy head,” he said calmly.
April roused slightly, cracking one eye to look at Jack. He looked like Jack. Easy going, kind Jack. No mask, no strange looks. Without giving it much conscious thought, April knew she wanted to please Jack. Keep him happy, keep her safe. That was her instinctive plan.
“Coffee!” She sat up and grabbed the cup off the cart, cupping it in both hands and blowing on it before sipping. She took a bite of the sandwich, chewed, swallowed and looked up at Jack.
“Thank you for the coffee and food.” She paused long enough to eat another bite. “So, um, what are we doing together today, Jack?” Her tone expressed a positive anticipation of something pleasant.
Jack didn’t pick up on it at first, blinded by his affections for her.
“Well, I’m going to teach you how to protect yourself against abusive guys, how to stand up against them and we’re going to make you tougher today; increase your pain threshold.”
April didn’t like the sound of that but she smiled anyway and said “Sounds cool,” before continuing to eat the sandwich.
“Alright. When you finish eating, dress and knock on the door.”
April nodded and gave a thumbs up while her mouth was full and Jack walked outside to wait.
A short time later the knock came. He opened the door and stepped back several paces. April exited and he told her to walk ahead of him, pointing her towards the mat and the wall made from bales of hay.
“Walk to the hay bales and face them,” Jack said bluntly.
April obeyed. He moved to within two arm’s lengths of her.
“Turn around.”
April turned around in a relaxed manner only to have Jack lunge forward, palms shoving her chest, driving her back into the hay wall, hard, hands immediately closing on her throat and clamping down…moderately.
“You FUCKING CUNT! Do you think you can shame me like that in front of my friends? You think you can tell me NO?!?!? HUH?!?”
April froze, arms reflexing out straight down at her side, fingers splayed, her whole body in a state of submissive paralysis, eyes terrified, afraid to act or speak even if her brain could chose words to form. His physical presence and hands locked around her throat was overwhelming and the vitriolic animosity emanating from Jack’s whole person was too much, more than anything she had ever experienced before…even during the rape.
“I SHOULD WRING YOUR FUCKING NECK! TWIST IT OFF LIKE SOME GOD DAMN CHICKEN! TEACH YOU A FUCKING LESSON, THAT’S WHAT I SHOULD DO!”
He tightened his grip slightly and stared into her eyes, letting the windows open on his pent up rage, a peek inside for her to see. He breathed in deep and blew out sharply, both through his nose, chest rising and falling quickly for several seconds.
April was in shock, and confused, clueless as to what she had done to illicit Jack’s violent explosion.
“WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU GOING TO DO APRIL?!?!?!?” Jack screamed into her face. Still no response. Jack stared in her eyes, turning off the malice like a switch.
“What are you going to do to stop me from hurting you April?” he said calmly. “Anything?”
She continued to stand there frozen and perplexed, brain knotted, trying to figure out what was happening.
Jack shook his head and let her go, stepping back. April suddenly gasped, breathing in, having held her breath even though Jack never fully restricted her breathing. She stared at him like a dog who has been beaten too many times stares at their owner when they become angry, their actions likely predictable but still unknown.
“Fuck, April. You can’t just let me do that to you,” Jack explained, frustrated. “You can’t let anyone do that to you. Don’t let the emotions overcome you. You know as well as I do that abusive men intimidate and convey the power imbalance through their physical dominance and violent emotions. Keep a level head and remember, every man is vulnerable, especially when he’s that close and has both his hands occupied. Knee him in the nuts. Jam your fingers into the notch just under the larynx, strike the larynx itself, rake his eyes or stomp his knees. All of those targets are open. Don’t let fear shut you down. Fight back.”
April was speechless but understood what he was saying.
“Alright, let’s do it again, but without all the screaming this time.”
Jack stepped forward slowly this time and put his hands around her throat gently then gave it a little squeeze.
“Knee me in the groin.”
April looked at him, afraid to disappoint him but afraid to hurt him and cause his wrath to return.
“Do it. I’ll be fine,” he assured her.
She raised her knee up to his groin. Jack didn’t even bother to shift his hips it was so weak.
“Hard! DO IT!”
The last words commanded obedience. April responded to the change in tone reflexively, sending her knee flying towards his groin. Jack turn his hips, bumping the knee off line with one inner thigh and causing it to land on his other inner thigh.
“Good.” He let go. “OK, I’m gonna grab you harder this time and as soon as I do, knee me like that again. You got it?”
As she began to nod in answer Jack lunged forward, grabbing her throat and pushing her into the hay once more.
"YOU FUCKING CUNT" he began to scream again but this time April responded immediately and landed a glancing knee to his right testicle.
Jack took a step back and bounced on his heels once to try and keep things from tightening up and hurting more, then calmly proceeded to walk her through other target options and how best to attack them. After that, they moved on to other basic countermeasures – bear hugs, hair grabs, wrist grabs, and punches. With each one he presented her with violent intensity first, then eased up, helped her get the technique right and then dialed the magnitude of force back up. Once they covered standing tactics he taught her how to escape from bad positions on the ground with a man on top of her – straddling her chest and controlling her arms or in between her legs. After that he taught her ways to stop a guy from taking her to the ground to begin with.
When they took a break to hydrate and rest he spoke to her about mindset and how she had been conditioned through repetitive abuse to be a victim.
“A Victim Mindset is easily overwhelmed,” Jack explained, “for multiple reasons. Probably the biggest one is that they don’t have any aggressive intent when it comes to confrontation. No real survival instinct that pushes back when pushed against. Subsequently, they’ve rarely prepared for conflict and if they have, they’ve never pushed themselves. Genuine violence is dangerous on one hand and a big unknown on the other. And danger and the unknown always generate fear. Some people just don’t have the will to act in their own defense or naively ‘don’t believe in violence.’” Jack chuckled at that one. “Others have no will to fight because they have no self-esteem. You won’t feel motivated to fight to protect something you don’t value.”
Jack stopped and looked April in the eye. A deadpan, you know you fit the bill kind of look.
“Sound familiar?”
Ashley broke eye contact and didn’t answer, so Jack continued.
“Many have no conception of what real violence is like…how animalistic, revolting and traumatizing it can be, so they end up shocked and frozen by inaction. For those like us, however, this part isn’t a problem. We grew up with it, were brutally shaped by it and aren’t surprised by its ferocity. But overexposure to that kind of violence can take you in one of two basic directions: either it desensitizes you, and makes you tougher and less likely to hesitate when confronted by it, like me, or…it eventually invokes paralytic fear that causes you to be submissive, to grovel in subservience and justify accepting one level of violence just to avoid something worse, but never willing to leave or avoid that situation in the first place, stuck in a cycle that is sheer insanity….like you, April.”
She knew it was hitting home but still she looked up, the words like a slap, bright red, not on her face but instead u
pon her ego. She knew it was true but was too full of fear to do anything about it. The spider’s web had caught her long ago and spun its cocoon about her, injecting its terrible venom.
April began to cry, her own memories acting the Accuser. Besides the rape, she had stayed for beating after beating, hung around for verbal and emotional abuse no one should have to receive. And yet her inaction had made her, in practice, a volunteer, a collaborator in her own demise. Recognizing her lack of esteem and worth plus the inability to act in her own self-interest brought despair that wracked her frame. But recognizing it as the core problem was the potential for change. The seed before the plant.
Jack’s heart broke for her. He slid over and wrapped an arm around her gently, hugging her to his side in silence, letting the sobs overflow till they dissipated and stopped. Then he released her and slid away, trying to put the stoic game face back on but only half succeeding.
April looked up at him, wiping her face.
“I think I snotted on you again.” She laughed awkwardly once.
Jack pulled a bandanna out of his pocket, wiped his shirt then tossed it to her.
“I’m used to it by now. Wipe your snot-nose face and let’s get back to work.”
He stood and waited for her. When she was ready they continued on.
*****
It was late afternoon when they took a break and went outside, Jack leading April over to a large pen attached to an even larger one where numerous pigs of varying sizes were contained, some small some medium but none the size of a full grown hog.
“Sooouuuuu-iiiieeeee!!!” Jack bellowed out. “Time for dinner April!”
Jack threw a deviously charming grin over his shoulder at her as he poured the charcoal into the grill and put some lighter fluid on it along with some smoked apple wood chips.
“I think we’ll start with a small one tonight. Fire up the grill, girl! I’ll skewer the shrimp for the barbie.”
Jack withdrew a very large Bowie style knife from a sheath he had strapped on his hip, twisting it back and forth in the air as he said the word “skewer.”
“You’re going to kill one of those pigs, Jack?” she asked, dropping a match on the charcoal, more than a bit disgusted.
“Yeah,” he responded bluntly. “You think that’s odd? What do you think I do for a living? I kill nearly fifty an hour sometimes. Like an assembly line, they walk ‘em up and ‘BLAM’ I bolt gun ‘em in the head to knock ‘em stiff, then stick a knife this size right through their gullet and lay the aortic arch and heart wide open. Ever heard the phrase ‘Bleeding like a stuck pig’? Where do you think that comes from?”
April’s face blanched pale.
“For the love of God, April, I know you’re a meat eater. You know how it gets to your plate even if you don’t like to think about it. Geez, sit down so you don’t fall out, but you’re about to watch it happen. Except it won’t be knocked out. I couldn’t sneak a bolt gun out of work.”
April plopped down on the ground, her head a little swimmy and pulled both feet to her butt, wrapping her arms tightly around her legs. She looked on the whole time, not wanting to upset Jack. He used a long cattle prod to shock and corral one into a small transitional area, separated from the others. Then Jack moved into the circular pen and let it out. He had to give it another little jolt to get it to move into the open space and drop the door. It ran around, somehow sensing Jack’s malicious intent.
It was funny at first to April to watch Jack chasing this small pig around the cage, cutting left and right faster than Jack could react, but then Jack suddenly changed tactics and moved ahead instead of chasing behind, cutting the ring and cutting the pig off till after a few more moves he caught him, slashing down hard on the pig’s lower spine, cutting it in half and paralyzing its lower legs. Its screams made April shiver. Human like and desperate, full of pain and blind fear at what it didn’t understand. It continued to struggle, though, pulling itself forward slowly, front legs digging but yielding little results.
Jack knelt on its lower body, pinning it in place. Its screams spiked louder. He hooked his hand over the bottom jaw and pulled the head back exposing throat and chest, flipped the blade to a reverse grip and plunged it in the sweet spot. The cries became gurgles. Jack levered the blade back and forth then down and the blood broke loose like a damn collapsed, surging forth across the ground.
April gasped at the sight but couldn’t look away as life fled its eyes and the twitches slowly stopped.
Jack didn’t talk as he strung it up outside the pen from a tree and gutted it then cut the best parts off, walking them over and spreading them out on the grill. Once the meat was cooking he walked back over to the pile of foetid viscera and unwanted parts. He threw the legs, head, spine and guts in with the other pigs, which they gladly started eating.
That was when April threw up…and Jack just shook his head.
*****
By the end of the following day April was using a blade fairly efficiently, entering rapidly and with deception as well as defeating obstructions and grabs that normal people were likely to use. She wielded the trainer with precision, enjoying the advantage it gave her over being empty handed versus a male aggressor. As evening drew near Jack took her outside and brought another small pig, the smallest one in fact, into the transitional area. He waved her over and told her to go inside. She got ready to open her mouth and Jack made the motion for “zip it” across his lips. She did and obediently entered the cage area. Jack walked around outside to where he could reach in and raise the door to let the pig in with her, then tossed his Bowie blade inside, the sheath kicking up gravel as it landed.
“If it runs from you try to hack a leg or its spine with the blade. If it comes right at you, step offline and thrust it from the side. Once you have it wounded, kneel on it like I did and stab it in the heart until it stops moving. Simple as that.”
April kept her mouth shut while Jack was speaking but felt and looked more nauseas the longer he talked and she realized she was actually going to have to do what she saw him do the day before.
“Jack. Please…” she begged. “Please don’t make me do this. I don’t want to kill an animal.”
“And you don’t want to stand up to abusive men who beat you either. Here’s where you start doing things you don’t like or want to do. Right now.”
Jack lifted the door and poked the pig with the electric cattle prod, the electric current was plenty motivation to make it squeal and run full bore ahead, right at April, startling her into action. She stepped offline and started swinging, caveman, gross motor movements taking over. She hacked its skull the first time to no effect and as it tried to turn and run around to her left she circled and just kept hacking at its body, but not with any real sufficient force to sever anything critical. Cuts multiplied as well as the amount of blood flowing. The pig screamed and squealed, every hack intensifying its cries.
“Cut a leg, April! Cut a leg!” Jack coached.
Somehow she heard him and squatted lower on her next swing, striking a front leg and breaking it cleanly in half. The pig collapsed for a second then sprung back up, hobbling along slowly now.
“Cut the back leg, now!”
April walked up now, bent down and let another swing go, this time severing the back leg on the same side. The pig fell over, unable to support itself, horrific screeching noises filling the night.
“Finish it April. Stab it through the heart!”
April looked down at the helpless creature. Its fear laden eyes staring up at her in confusion, unable to comprehend her violence and the injury and pain she had caused its body, nor what truly was happening at all. She hesitated for a long time, disgust building in her belly at what she had done to this innocent animal that had meant her no real harm. She raised the knife at last but it floated in the air for several seconds.
“It’s suffering, April! Can’t you see that? It can’t live like that, in that condition. Letting it live is a more sadistic act
than putting it out of its misery at this stage in the game.”
Jack waited to see what she would do, the blade still held high, unmoving.
“Kill it!”
April threw the knife down and stood up, stomping her feet as she bent at the waist and screamed, “I CAN’T!!! I can’t do it! I just can’t.” The last words were weak as she turned and stumbled to the fence, holding on for balance and vomiting, the pig still wailing in the background. Jack ran in, grabbed the knife and put the animal out of its misery. He didn’t like to see creatures suffer.
“Go inside, April.” Jack muttered the command. “Get a shower. Lay on your bed and rest. There’s meat left over from last night. I’ll warm it up along with some canned vegetables. I know you want no parts of this one.”
April finally stood up straight, wiping her mouth, and walked quietly into the barn and did exactly what Jack said.
*****
Night was falling but the campfire Jack had built gave off sufficient illumination where he stood by the grill, warming the left-over meat and canned vegetables up for them, frustrated by April’s refusal to finish the animal off. If he couldn’t get her to kill a freakin’ pig how could he prepare her to fight and kill, if necessary, a man who tries to abuse her? How could he motivate her?
The disconnection from his own identity with the mask and the promise of suffering had definitely gotten her attention.
“Perhaps now was the time for suffering?” he thought.
Jack looked around and found one of the rattan sticks he had brought with him, a thin one, maybe an inch in diameter, picked it up and whipped it back and forth, listening to the air displace violently. He took the pig carcass and strung it up by its two good legs, sideways and laid a smaller knife on the ground below it, something more agile than the Bowie, this one a 4 inch blade and 8 inches overall in length. Then he went and moved another small pig into the circular pen. He grabbed his mask and pulled it on before proceeding to April’s soundproof room.
As Jack approached April’s room he realized she had been so compliant he didn’t even think to lock the door.
