This is an abduction tale with non-consensual themes.
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Abigail sipped her tea out of the thermos lid. Blonde hair touched with a hint of rose shimmered in the sun falling the gaps in the tree branches above. She had braided it today instead of her usual ponytail. One tuft over her forehead stuck up in a cowlick that she could never tame. Green eyes the shade of freshly polished emeralds lazily peered out behind cheap wire rimmed glasses. On the e-reader left opened in her lap was a page of the physics textbook she had been trying to read.
It was too painful. There were too many bad memories. So she had set the pages full of equations aside to enjoy the view. She had found a lovely spot just off a trail in the park on Telegraph Hill. From it she could look over the twisting streets of the small New England town where fate had brought her. She avoided looking at the campus of the local community college. Instead, her gaze traced a path from the lively downtown to the tourist-haunted docks with their souvenir shops and bars.
She heard someone come through the bushes obscuring her spot from the trail. Tilting her head, she caught sight of a short figure dressed in a fine tweed suit. Something about it seemed familiar. Right now she was too lazy to think. With amusement, she sensed the newcomer was staring at her. She had dressed conservatively for this autumn day in a green turtleneck sweater and blue jeans. Still, she had bought them when she was still messed up. A few months of healthy eating and yoga had filled it out with an hourglass figure that--if not a supermodels'--was nicely curved. After growing up being called a chubster, someone admiring her was sort of nice. Just as long as he was just looking.
A match scraped. Abigail sighed. God, some people. There were no smoking signs posted at the entrances to the park for a reason. She was debating about whether to be polite or nasty when the scent of pipe tobacco made her gasp. Blood drained from her cheeks as her head snapped to one side. It was him. There was more white than gray in the cropped hair that was receding into a widow's peak. It contrasted nicely with the dark hue of his skin. His face was a bit more lined than when she had last seen him in her final year in elementary school. But it was still the same kindly face that she remembered gazing at her in pride when she solved a particularly difficult problem. And he still had that meerschaum pipe he liked to smoke when she had gone with him at night to stargaze.
She wanted to run. She couldn't. Please, don't notice--
"Miss Argil?" Mr. Bettel did a double-take when he saw her.
"Sir." Abigail could not help it. She knelt as she had long ago in his backyard when listening to his lectures. "I didn't mean to disturb you. I'll go."
"No, don't be silly," Mr. Bettel said. He stepped back a bit. "You were here first, after all."
"I don't deserve to be around you," Abigail scrambled to her feet. At five eight, she towered over him. "You gave me all that money, and I ended screwing it all up, and I--"
"Sit." Mr. Bettel's voice whipped out like she remembered when his class got too unruly.
Abigail knelt.
"Miss Argil, it is I who should be apologizing to you," Mr. Bettel said. "By the time I heard about...what had occurred, it was far too late to intervene. Then you disappeared before I could visit."
"The clinic wouldn't have let in visitors." Abigail bowed her head. "And I wouldn't have wanted you to take time to see a failure."
"Miss--Abigail." Mr. Bettel relit his pipe. It was a habit of his when he was frustrated. "I do not call a young lady hailing from the foster system and managing to enter university at fourteen for a physics degree a failure. Nor completing a bachelor's degree by the time she was seventeen."
"What about ending up taking all the Ritalin so she could keep up?" Abigail's fingers jittered on the denim of her thighs. "Or worse. God, I wasted all that money of yours on dealers. The only reason the D.A. didn't put me away for having enough to sell was because the university convinced them I was the pity case I was."
"I should have taken the time to counsel you." Mr. Bettel laid a gentle hand on her brow. Abigail relaxed into the touch. "That inheritance was the worst thing that ever happened to me. Having to leave my job, my time taken up with boards and idiotic sycophants."
"Hey, don't sell yourself short--" Abigail winced. "Uh, phrasing?"
"One gets used to such jibes," Mr. Bettel said. "My nickname on the market is the 'Big Short'."
"Big time angel investor, on a dozen corporate boards." Abigail grinned. "Arbitrating for fairness in labor disputes. I think you had more on your plate than some orphan girl who kept pestering you."
"You were never a bother," Mr. Bettel said. "Are you living here now?"
"I have enough left from what you gave me to rent a room in town." Abigail shrugged. "Glorified attic. But it's enough. I do programming work online. And you? Here for a visit?"
"I own a house on Captain's Row," Mr. Bettel says. "My ancestors have old links here as freemen. I purchased the mansion where they served as servants to a prominent abolitionist family."
"Fancy! I've gone past those mansions."
"Well, if you'd like to have a room." Mr. Bettel coughed. "Er. That was...inappropriate."
"I haven't been your student for a long time." Abigail raised an eyebrow. "And I turned eighteen last week. So all you'd be accused of is being a dirty old man shacking up with a pretty young thing."
"Yes. Yes you did." Mr. Bettel sucked his pipe. "Have you made any friends, Abigail? Any special someone?"
"No, I keep to myself," Abigail said. "Not up for dating. Frankly, I could disappear and nobody would really care."
"I would." Mr. Bettel looked at her for a while. "Well. I should go and let you be. Perhaps we might meet up to chat."
"I'd like that." Abigail fidgeted. "Maybe we could come up here to stargaze, for old time's sake?"
"I will always make time for you." Mr. Bettel took out a business card from a case. He scribbled a number on the back with a fine pen. "This is a number that will bypass all the various secretaries and busybodies. Call me if you need anything."
Abigail cupped the card in her hands for a long time. She had the urge to tear it up. Mr. Bettel did not need to deal with her problems. She had been clean for a while. She could handle things herself. Eventually, she tucked the card into a back pocket. It was a gift from him. It would be wrong to destroy it even if she never intended to take advantage. Still kneeling, she looked to the north to where a ridge coming off Telegraph Hill was clustered with the small mansions of the rich merchants and captains who had built them when this town was a successful center of trade and whaling. She idly wondered what it might be like to live there as Mr. Bettel's guest. Although it would be unfair to mooch off him. She could do housekeeping.
She could be his maid.
Abigail's peaches-and-cream skin flushed crimson as the image of herself in a costume serving him his breakfast filled her mind.
She downed the nearly-cool tea to soothe her suddenly dry throat. Okay. Time to stop having weird thoughts. Abigail shuddered. The hallucinations from the stimulants and the sleep deprivation that had led to her very public meltdown in the quad after her last exam had been done were all too raw. She couldn't afford any twisted fantasies in her brain right now. Abigail closed her eyes to meditate. Breathe in, breathe out. Sink down into calmness. Think of her happy place. It was a classroom full of sun without anyone else save Him scribbling equations on the chalkboard that made her psyche ache with the beauty inherent in the universe they revealed.
Abigail smiled.
Then she sensed someone behind her. Leaves crackled under a heavy tread. She briefly opened her eyes to see that the isolated ledge that she had chosen for her special spot was in shadow. Then a thin wire tightened about her throat. Her head was jerked back as frantic fingers fought to rip it off. Vision tunneling, she saw a huge man with a bearded face smirking at her. He dragged her onto her stomach with the garotte still choking her. Booted feet kicked the ground as a second figure came into view. The compact woman barely taller than Mr. Bettel had hair dyed an electric red. There was a stud in one eyebrow and another through her nose. She wore a leather jacket and gray combat pants. Doc Martens crunched as the woman squatted beside her.
Abigail whimpered as calloused hands forced her wrists behind her. The sleeves of her sweater and the blouse beneath were rucked up to expose her wrists. She dimly heard the zipper sound of a plastic tie-wrap tightening around her wrists. The restraint cut into her flesh without compromising her circulation. Abigail tried to remember some of the martial arts training she had taken on a whim as a college electrive. Everything the green-haired instructor had said indicated to avoid being taken by this in the first place. A croak escaped her panting lips when what felt like wire wrapped about her arms just above her elbows. Even with the sweater, it was agonizing when her elbows were forced to touch. More wire tightened about her upper thigh and above and below her knees. Her short boots and socks were stripped off for a cable tie to cinch around them.
The woman tightly gripped the corners of her jaw. The man sadistically tightened the strangler about her neck. Abigail sobbed when she saw the foam ball with the cable tie run through it approaching her face. It was firmly forced into her protesting mouth, filling it. The cable tie was jerked tight at the nape of her neck; the plastic sunk into her puffed-out cheeks that was more misery topped on all the others. The garotte disappeared. Abigail had a brief moment of respite before foam pads backed with white medical tape were smoothed over her eyelids by the woman. Around her face wound something like a bandage that stuck only to itself. It tightened over her gagged mouth and eyes until she could only moan pitifully as her world went dark.
It had been so fast.
They had done this before.
Abigail sobbed as she felt the fly of her jeans zipped down.
"What the fuck are you doing?" the woman said.
"Hey, gotta test the goods. The client wanted a virgin or close to it." The man chuckled. Abigail writhed when his rough finger probed her. "Mmmm, nice and tight. No cherry, though. Think we'll get dinged on the price?"
"Nah, as long as they're tight, they do hymen reconstruction so the buyers can get their rocks off busting a virgin in," the woman said. "Some sheikh or businessman gets a red sheet so he can say his manly cock took a white Christian slut. I hate those assholes."
"I hear they circumcise their girls." Where the man rubbed her both made her moan and spiked Abigail's terror. "Yanno, make sure they can't enjoy it or anything. And they also--"
"Shut up. And get your filthy finger out of her before I break all of them." The woman leaned close to whisper into Abigail's ear. "Honey? Just relax. It's over. Now, we're going to sack you up. I know you want to try to get someone to save you, but we've both got silenced pistols. Any witnesses go pop pop."
