AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is the ninth chapter of a multi-part story. Please read the first eight chapters before this one to understand the whole story. Please enjoy.
*
After a long time, he stirred.
'Where am I?' he thought. Then a more pertinent question came to him. 'WHEN am I?'
How long had he been asleep? Days? Weeks? Months? 'Rip Van Winkle's got nothing on me' he thought.
He opened his eyes. His brain couldn't keep up with the flood of sensory data. He was so dizzy he nearly vomited. He waited a few more minutes and took several deep breaths to steady himself before trying again. At first the surroundings still swam before him, but eventually he was able to focus his sights.
Only then did Paul Ryback realize where he was. He was at home, in his living room, lying down on the couch at a very strange angle.
Paul tried to sit up. "Oh FUCK!" he yelled out loud. His neck was killing him, screaming in pain after being subjected to such an awkward position for so long. He went to reach one arm up to his neck to start working out the kinks.
Both arms moved together. It was as if they were... connected.
Curious at the unnatural reaction, Paul looked down at his hands. The sight startled him. A set of police-issue handcuffs were clamped on to his wrists. He panicked and struggled for a moment before his higher reasoning kicked in and reminded him how useless those efforts would be.
He struggled to get up, took one step, tripped on something and crashed down to the floor. He bellowed and swore repeatedly at the pain now racking his body. He took stock of himself and felt relief when he concluded he hadn't seriously damaged anything. He thought it was only because his legs were asleep that he was clumsy enough to fall.
He soon saw that was partly true... but only partly.
Paul's living room was a disaster area. The rest of the furniture was overturned, and items were strewn all over the place, including where he took his first step. That provided another part of the explanation of why he tripped... but it sure didn't explain the set of leg irons attached to his ankles.
'What the fuck is going on here?!' he asked himself, now fully alert after his long strange slumber. 'What kind of shit did I get myself into?!"
He racked his brain, trying to remember what he was doing before... whatever this was. It finally came to him.
Paul recalled he was about to fuck Anita.
Everything was all set. All the preparations that would tie her to him completely were made. Her little punk kid was asleep. No one was going to interrupt him. He was going to have what was denied to him for so long... and he was going to have her again, and again, and again.
The last he remembered, he had her stripped down to her skimpy lingerie and he was feeling up her exquisitely tight body, until, inexplicably, he became drowsy. She started to sensually massage his neck and shoulders.
Then... nothing. Until he woke up.
"Anita?" he called out. No response. "ANITA?!" he tried again, louder this time. Still no answer.
Paul grunted, fought again to stand up, and shuffled towards the guest bedroom. It was empty and, moreover, looked to have been completely cleaned out. Confused, he searched the rest of the house. It was a laborious process, shackled as he was, but he eventually completed it.
There was no sign of Anita or her son anywhere.
Even worse, the rest of his house was like his living room: completely trashed. It looked like a tornado had blown through it, leaving nothing but destruction in its wake. The only room not subjected to ruin, strangely enough, was the guest bedroom.
Where Anita and her son stayed.
Was this a sign? A coincidence? Paul shook his head in frustration. He couldn't figure any of this out, and thinking about it made his head hurt.
Anita couldn't be capable of such behaviour, could she? Certainly she couldn't have done this alone. Where would a fearful single mother, a woman he so easily had under his thumb, find the courage, strength, and resources to do what was done to him?
So the question then became: Who did this? Or, who helped Anita to do this? He had no idea. Paul didn't scare easily, but this situation definitely unnerved him.
It angered him, too. The gall, the very nerve of these people... how dare they?! How dare someone steal Anita, his rightful property, right from his grasp, while violating him and his home in the process?! Paul vowed that whoever was responsible would pay for this, and they would pay dearly.
He stumbled to his phone and called his friend Derrick, a cop on the city's police force. Several minutes later Derrick showed up and saw Paul and the house, and his eyes went wide.
"Holy fuck, dude, what the hell happened to you?" he asked.
"The fuck if I know! Just get me out of these damn things!" Paul angrily replied.
A universal key for all types of cuffs and shackles that Derrick had with him did the trick. Paul sighed in relief and rubbed his sore wrists and ankles.
"Derrick, I need you to help me find out who did this to me," Paul said.
"I'll radio in for a crime scene team to go through the place and look for evidence," replied Derrick. "Don't touch anything in the meantime. One... other thing..."
Paul frowned at Derrick's hesitation. "Go on."
"I assume you haven't been outside yet?"
"Of course not! Why?"
Derrick made a motion to Paul that he needed to go and check it out. When he did he saw a crowd of his neighbours looking at his house with curious and suspicious looks on their faces. He turned around to get his own look and shouted in shock and outrage.
The word "RAPIST" was spray-painted in large, ugly red letters on the garage door.
"Derrick, get these fucking people away from my house!" he growled through gritted teeth. Derrick noted the obvious rage his friend was barely containing and dispersed the crowd, saying "Go home folks, nothing to see here, show's over!"
When everyone left Derrick said, "I'm calling in for that team now."
"Good," Paul answered quietly. The anger bubbled inside him. "You find whoever did this, Derrick. Find out if it's the last goddamn thing you do!"
********
She was getting tired of the constant rejection.
But she did have to admit that she understood why it was happening.
Anita stepped outside and braced herself again for the cold, slate-grey day. She was exhausted after yet another day pounding the pavement with no results. She started the car and headed for home.
It was about four months since she and Johnathan had escaped from Paul's clutches and gone back home. To her great relief her mother, Colleen, welcomed her back with open arms and forgave her for everything she did wrong before she left. She also happily reconciled with her sister Jan. Her sister and mother doted on little Johnny and showered him with love and attention. Furthermore, Jan's son, David, was thrilled to have a new cousin to play with, and he and Johnny hit it off immediately despite the five-year age gap between them. David was growing up to be a good and smart boy himself, and Anita wondered how she had ever considered him to be a brat in the first place. It was just one of many dumb things she thought and did back in what she began to think of as her former life.
One night, about two weeks after her return, and after the boys were put to bed, Anita sat her mother and sister down and told the whole story of her nightmarish experiences with Paul. She held nothing back, starting right from when they first met until the night of her daring getaway and how the kindness of Dr. Wainwright and her mysterious access to resources allowed her to make it all possible. She showed them the physical scars he left on her, and she bared her soul to describe the emotional scars he inflicted as well. The women hugged and cried again until there were no tears left. Then Jan said something unintentionally funny that set them off, and they laughed long and loud until their sides hurt. Anita went to bed exhausted, emotionally drained and sore that night, but totally happy and peaceful as well, feeling how good it was to be home.
Anita's mother was kind enough to let her and Johnathan stay at her house for as long as she wanted. She also helped her daughter to enrol Johnathan into junior kindergarten at the nearby school to start his education and get him used to interacting with kids his own age. Anita accepted the gracious offers of assistance, and told Colleen she wanted to earn her keep and find work as soon as possible.
"You don't have to rush into this, you know," Colleen said that day. "Relax your mind for a bit, it will do you some good. Take all the time you need."
"Thanks Mom, I appreciate what you're saying," Anita replied, "but I'll feel like a freeloader if I don't do this. I'm fine, and I don't want to sit around doing nothing all day. Let me do this."
"I do have a favour owing to me I can call in..."
"Mom, thank you, but not yet. Let me try on my own first. Please?"
"Oh Anita, you've always been my feisty and independent one. OK, I hope this works out for you. Good luck!"
"Thanks Mom."
That had been in the summer. It was now fall, with winter closing in fast. All that time had passed and still she had not managed to find meaningful work. Even if she understood most of the reasons why, it only intensified the feelings of inadequacy she was having due to not being able to properly provide for her son.
Being unjustly fired from her previous job thanks to Paul's sabotage meant she both could not and did not want to use it as a reference. So her resume was quite thin as before she concentrated on her curling career and relying on her unique persuasive powers to convince others to get for her what she wanted instead of working in the real world. The state of her resume, however, was only one obstacle in her way.
Anita knew in her prior life that she was often selfish and mean-spirited. But if she ever for some reason doubted that, her fruitless job search really drove home the fact that she used to be a first-class bitch. It also showed that her hometown, large by the province's standards, was in many ways a small community. More times than she cared to count, she cold called a business to leave a resume and ask about the prospects for employment, only to find the manager or decision-maker was someone she had angered before, either through an encounter in a curling match or, at least just as often, due to Anita having slept with the woman's husband or boyfriend. One look at the person's face in those cases and she knew she didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of getting what she needed. Anita never used to believe in karma, but it was difficult not to do so now.
When Anita got home Johnathan rushed home to greet her. "Hi Mommy!" he said happily.
"Hi Johnny!" Anita replied. Thank goodness for him and the rest of her family, she thought, without them she was sure she would completely fall apart.
Colleen heard the exchange from the kitchen where she was starting dinner. She said hello to Anita and heard the disappointment and weariness in her daughter's voice. She decided to talk to her about it tonight.
