Three Friends

"I can't believe the bar closed early," says Lacey for the third time. She abruptly stops walking, and her companions stumble past her, almost tripping over the leg she has stuck out. "Stupid shoe," she says loudly, shaking her foot in the air.

"Watch it, ya drunk!" complains Heather. She and Amy stand at the ege of the sidewalk and watch, a little unsteadily, as Lacey tries to fix her shoe.

"What are you doing, anyway?" demands Amy.

"This little piece of padding THING keeps, like, folding or something." Lacey digs vigorously under the edge of the stylish, black shoe with her thumb, scrunching up her features in determination. "And it sticks into my..." She trails off, so focused on the alignment of the unseen padding that she falls back onto her butt. "...into my FOOT!" Her maneuver complete, she is now free to look up at her girlfriends. "And I am NOT drunk."

"What-ev-er," singsongs Heather, and she and Amy laugh. Their voices echo along the empty, friendly street.

A moment later Lacey pops up, stifling a smile herself. "Laaaay-dies," she says, offering an arm to each of her companions.

Heather springs gamely to Lacey's side. Taking on a mock-serious face, she snakes her arm through Lacey's with theatrical formality. "'tsabout time," gripes Amy, but she takes the offered arm as well. Coordinating their steps with some difficulty, and giggling all the while, the three women proceed down the sidewalk for all of half a block before halting at the streetside facade of Heather's dormitory.

With a happy sigh, Heather steps up to the door. Leaving one hand on the knob, she turns to bid her friends farewell.

"G'night, bitch," says Lacey.

"Goodnight to you too, whore," replies Heather through her laughter.

"YEAH, YOU GUYS ARE WHORES!" comes a loud, male voice from above. "Nice tits!" calls somebody else, almost at the same time. With composure, Lacey looks up at the open (but screened) den window two floors above, from which the voices appear to be coming, and shimmies her breasts between her hands. "YEAH BABY!" hollers the first voice.

"Fuuuck off!" retorts Amy, who has chosen to wave a middle finger at the window, rather than her own substantial breasts (which are nearly as visible as Lacey's). But her muted smile shows that she basically enjoys the attention.

"Don't get into TOO much trouble," laughs Heather as she steps into the dorm.

Lacey gives her a little wave, still wearing the brightly serious face with which she has faced the upstairs boys. "G'night hon." She and Amy sashay down the sidewalk toward their own apartment, ignoring the sporadic catcalls from above.

-

Inside the dorm, Heather has no cares. It's Saturday night, and tomorrow is open wide.

"Tra la la," she sings softly into the echoey stairwell, fancifully recreating a catchy electronic fill from the hip-hop song that had been playing in the bar. She rounds the first flight and then the second, with swaying, dancing steps. Here comes the door to the second floor, where she lives--and, no, there it goes again, slipping behind as she rounds the turn, only to appear again on her climb up the next set of steps. Not quite believing, she watches it sink from her view beneath the third-floor landing, leaning back even as she climbs so as to peek through the triangular space--and laughs good-naturedly, as if at a confusing joke that was told by someone very charming.

"What am I doooing," she calls out casually. Her feet carry her to the door to the third floor, which is in the middle of a renovation and presently houses no one. But the unfamiliar door does look very much like the one below it, and at any rate it receives as much tipsy glow as anything else she looks at tonight; she opens it with little hesitation, and steps through.

The smell of floor 3 focuses her mind a bit--a hint of paint, a whiff of drywall dust. She strolls, mostly in a straight line, down the unoccupied hallway. "Hellooo," she calls in a slightly silly voice, more hushed than she was a minute ago. The white-lit, silent hallway feels quite different from the familiar, echoing brick and cozy dimness of the stairwell; its starkness attenuates her mood into something approaching solemnity. And each step leaves her feeling that it's a little more pointless to be here. She marches, briskly if unevenly, toward the other end of the hall, where she expects to take the other stairway down to her own floor, no harm done. What little thought she dedicates to the question of why she might be up here in the first place diffuses as mere dazzlement at her own outrageous behavior--{What am I doing up here, I am sooo crazy!} she wonders again and again. It's still just the irrelevantly strange end of a good, normal night.

What changes as she passes room 310? The hallway there looks, sounds, smells the same as anywhere else, but just outside the cosed door, an invisible threat coalesces in Heather's beer-fuzzed perception. No one is here to see her relaxation dissolve, her steps turn subdued, just that suddenly--she doesn't even pause in her motion--and like a dreamer or an animal, she forgets the change in herself as soon as it occurs. Now this scene is a special one, deserving of her attention. Her gut tells her so. Now her thoughts are quieted by unease, and all her focus is on the heavy stair door ahead. Only every other overhead light is turned on, and her shadow arcs crazily along the walls, from one pool of light to the next.

She sees the second shadow that's joined with hers at the very moment when she feels the touch on her shoulder. "EeeAH!" she squeals, reflexively leaping about. There behind her is a slim young man, a little bit taller than her (but she is a little bit tall herself, for a girl), who grins an empty grin as he pulls his arm back.

"Holy FUCK!" cries Heather, who rarely swears. "Oh my god you SCARED me!" A friend might receive a semi-serious punch, here--she was that badly startled--but this person is a total stranger, so she keeps the sting of indignation in her voice only.

"Oh," replies the young man neutrally. "Did I?" He studies Heather, who confronts him dumbly. Her brow is furrowed, and she looks as if she'll demand, at any moment, what his problem is. But she waits, only panting very slightly through her glossed, red lips as her wild heartbeat slows back to normal.

And she waits. The two face each other, one bobbing very gently as her muscles correct and overcorrect in their effort to hold her in this off-center, going-to-give-you-a-piece-of-my-mind posture she has somehow not given up; and the other just blandly studying, with evidently perfect interest. After a time Heather's small movements become slower.

He watches in silence as her form settles in stillness. Now nothing moves. Not even his eyes--in fact, he stares continuously at one of the buttons on her shirt. Is he curious? His own jeans have lost their button; a tough leather belt holds them up. He stares and stares.

Incongruously, the floor begins to thump and buzz with the bass from some partier's stereo system. But here in the hall no one reacts.

-

The music stops, and the hall is again as it was when empty.

The young man glances up. He raises his eyebrows and shifts in place, as if to communicate that a satisfactory conclusion has been reached in this business exchange. "Wellll, I'd better get going," he says mildly.

Partway through his sentence, Heather lurches, and catches herself. "Me too," she rejoins snottily to the man's departing back. She has no clue. After straightening herself, she follows directly after him, back toward the door through which she arrived. The meeting has altogether drained away her fear. The hall is just a nondescript backdrop, now that someone else is present. For her this is once again a normal walk through the dorm, toward home.

But the two stop early. {God, why is this guy in my way,} thinks Heather as she waits for him to unlock the door to room 306. She sighs audibly through her nose, wishing she could shower and maybe relax in front of the TV. The door opens into the room, and the man steps forward first, but immediately Heather tries to pass him. When the two have nearly collided she gives him a cold look, but only briefly (it's just some stranger, and he didn't scare her THAT much, after all), and his bland smile signals her to go ahead. She walks to the center of the empty, fluorescent-lit dorm room--and stops. The man waits near the door, which he has closed, and studies the rear profile of his misguided companion. His eyes especially focus on her gracefully flaring hips. Heather's butt shifts with high visibility beneath her sleek black pants as she idles in place, trying to remember what she intended to do next.

For her part, Heather has mostly forgotten her escort--her plan was to enter her room, and be alone. Or to enter her neighbor Sara's room? And Sara's down the hall or something? Or, no--after those beers, surely she was going to the bathroom? She reaches to her shoulder and hooks a brown ringlet. She does have to pee, a little... but the implied plan refuses to come together in her mind. Outside the room's window, straight in front of her, a few distant students cross the inner campus on their way home from the library; she watches them abstractedly, half-aware that this is not a view she's familiar with. Finally she shakes her head and slowly turns about, thinking she'd better get to her own room already if she's THIS drunk.

And there is that guy again, standing patiently next to the door. "Oh," says Heather lamely. She hadn't realized she was right in the middle of somebody's... office or whatever! "I, um... I think I'm very drunk." She blushes, and half-smiles, and ducks her head in self-consciousness. But the man doesn't seem to mind. He just watches her twiddle her hair.

And watches. Heather glances to the side uncomfortably, and then back at him. She can't just walk out without him saying something, like she owned the place. But he keeps on quietly staring at her.

"I'm Al," he tells her, just when the moment seemed about to break.

"Oh." She crinkles her brow quizzically, still touching her hair.

"Why don't you sit down." She doesn't see why that would be necessary. Yet automatically Heather looks about for a chair or a bench or something. Politeness promises an antidote to her embarrassment.

"Ummm... where?" she asks softly, embarrassed that she has to ask.

Now, for the first time, Al is visibly perplexed. He opens his mouth as if to speak. Evidently thinking of nothing, he closes his mouth, and fixes his eyes on Heather's. His face empties of expression.

"I feel certain," he tells her, "that you can work this out." And he does sound certain enough, after all.

Heather nods fuzzily. She accepts this absurd charge much more seriously than she would under less fantastic circumstances. This is partly because of her drunkenness, but primarily for another reason: Something is touching her mind. Has pinned it. She looks straight ahead only, having just slipped unaware into another corner of this night's dream, one into which her body and its muscles were unable to follow. Externally this is like before--she stands in awkward stillness with a dim look on her face. But, no, this time she is trembling. And inside--

Fear, and no way out. She floats fleshless in no place at all. She can see and stare, and it seems to her that she should be able to do more than that but there is no memory of what; she thinks for a moment that she's dying, she needs to ask that guy for help, so she looks at him in dreamy panic and... doesn't know how to talk, wouldn't know the words even if she could reach her lips. And her consciousness searches for the boundaries of its unexpected new form, but finds only the terrible, growing, encompassing feeling that all the fluorescent lights of the world are shining on all parts of whatever she is now from every beige wall of this painfully airless, chairless room, whose borders now seem miles distant from her sizeless self, hidden as they are somewhere around the periphery of her view of Al's somehow very important eyes. She feels bare and lost, lost at the edge of emptiness, yet blanketed in terrifying, infinite power--until he blinks, and she remembers how to blink too.

"Oh," she whimpers. She wavers and gasps, her new, old face in a sweat. Then she sits right down, ending hunched over, upon folded legs and planted hand.

Al steps nearer, and she shivers, and cranes her neck up at him. "I don't feel too well," she says, desperately confused.

"You aren't sick," he tells her with a smile that, though it looks rather fake, is basically gentle. But a little spasm of fear comes to her, and she ducks her head.

"I'm sick," she complains again. "Could you please go find my friend Sara." She mopes at his feet, not even bothering to look toward the door, though her legs are now working fine. Al steps in again, and a stiff fold of his jeans brushes her dangling hair; she shrinks back.

"No," he states firmly. "I don't argue with you." He chuckles. "I am no good at arguing anyhow, you know?" He reaches down to her, combing his fingers into her hair, cupping her face. Her muscles tighten right away, but he persists at touching her, and soon she begins to shudder in hopeful relief. A touch is enough. Here again, the presence of another person limits her to something like normalcy. He strokes her cheek, and she trusts and accepts his comfort, and receives it and more. She has never before been the drunk girl who needs to be rescued from her own partying, but she's seen it happen, and thinks this is surely that--when she can think, in between throbs of the last moment's frigid shock. She sniffs back tears; but here is the normal ground, here is a human hand, and her gratefulness for these firm anchors wards off the sickening echoes of memory. She thinks about thanking this guy who is being so nice to her.

His cool fingers curl under her chin, and she easily tilts her head back, following his light pressure. It's like climbing through clouds; the distance is only a few inches but to her it's a long, numbing journey that separates her even from relief, leaving her simply calm. Heather can feel the sleepy, satisfied look she is giving him now, and she finds it funny. {How the fuck can this be so relaxing,} she wonders, in a way that she thinks of as sarcastic. She gazes up at Al with drowsy eyes, showing all her pretty blue eyeshadow. Her body still trembles, but only a little.

"Okay, not so sick now," says Al under his breath. He licks his lips ungracefully, gathering himself for the next effort. Heather is bearing her face down onto his hand now, like he is a pillow. "You were just hungry I think," Al declares in a loud voice, and Heather blinks groggily. His hand slips from her hair and moves with swiftness--no, in an instant--to his pants and he's unzipped and exposing his... privates, how did he do that so fast, she clumsily tries to regain her footing but knows that standing beyond a crouch isn't an option (though she doesn't know why).

So it's one of THESE things. Heather has never been date-raped before, but she knows it when she sees it (she thinks) and she knows that this guy isn't getting any, however nice he wanted her to think he was. She stares at his garishly rising, creepily uncircumcized (to her inexperienced eyes) penis. She's still very nicely relaxed, in spite of everything. Just look at that silly thing. Next he will try to push it at her or something; she smugly waits for the chance to refuse him. And... no no no there's that terrible feeling again, on the edge of her awareness, not comforted away after all--she breaks into a clammy sweat, struggling to hold onto her too-relaxed body, especially now, especially here. "Go awaaaaay," she groans through her teeth, talking to the feeling and not to the man (he'll just have to wait his turn). Amidst her distraction she hears a breathy sound from Al and glances up reflexively to see him staring down--

And his eye is the pin, and it strikes directly against her resistance. Begins to drives her open, in spite of all the will she can command. Immediacy collapses back upon her, adrenaline rises. She senses her last opportunity for flight--but she is so scared, and it isn't fair, she isn't far enough through college or life to have learned that sort of cold discipline. She is optimized for trust, for communication. So now, when her fearful discomfort has become terror, and her terror begs her to just please DO something--she obliges, by wailing quietly, just that. The sound of her misery echoes and fades, affecting nothing. Her best strength has gone with it. His blinding eyes bore down into her own, and they are impossible to look at but she can't turn away. She's beginning to hyperventilate--but no matter how she shakes, her traitorous muscles keep her looking up, locked directly onto the unseeable looming pit where there should be a guy's forgettable white face. The thing is inside her, she realizes in irrational horror. It's drowning her thoughts and there is no running away, now. There is only fighting back within her own mind while he reduces her to something that can't. She tries again and again to regain herself, and with each defense of some little bit of her consciousness, he takes an indescribable something else. She feels this and she tries anyway, needing to push back however uselessly at the power that invades her. In throbs of awareness she knows the collapse of herself, feels its agony and release. He took her skillfully enough, and it's just about over. She fought at every step, and that made it okay. Such is the intuition she is able to cling to before the trance cements her shut.

The room has barely changed. Al stands over his trophy, still as ever but now taut, maybe ready to spring. He doesn't pant or sweat. The only sign of imminent action is his unpeeled glans, which shines full and purple, just a centimeter from Heather's upturned cheek. For these few seconds he basks in his complete domination of her, and she straddles the floor in mute acquiescence. There is no more terror for her, nor uncertainty from him. This, it seems, is how creatures such as these two can truly meet, may indeed be how it's always done. Each of the two knows who owns and who is owned, and nature (or supernature) will guide them from here on.

But still there is a dance. Heather is no longer herself, but neither is she asleep; she is merely settling into her new state. And with no warning, she looks down, glimpses the closed door behind her captor, and unhesitatingly feints toward it. Very naturally his hand follows. He neatly grasps the back of her shirt and scrunches it tight, so tight that she coughs and chokes, and even tighter, until the flimsy stitching around the shoulders loudly rips and now he's holding a crumpled flap that amounts to a leash, for her collar has held. He swings her around and back toward him, onto her face, and then up up and she must kneel to support herself; there's enough left awake in her to fight for air to breathe.

Her hands scuffle at her sides. Maybe she wants to cover her slender ribcage, above which her ruptured shirt is now just a halter-top. But a powerful hiss from the mouth of Al stops her motion. She haltingly makes as if to stand, and he slaps her shoulders with both hands, hard. So disciplined, she drops back onto her knees and is still. Al examines her submissive form, giving no signal. But after a moment Heather flushes; this treatment has meant something special, to her entranced senses. Breathing more deeply than before, she lowers her face and slowly reaches for the back of the collar. She lifts it over her head, high enough to allow her rich, brown locks to flop through onto her naked upper back, and then begins to lower it. The shirt is so badly gashed that she is able to bring one of the great tears in it back down over herself and thus slide the whole thing all the way to her knees, entirely bypassing the potential difficulty of buttons. She moves slowly but smoothly, not trembling at all. When she finishes, she drops her arms to her sides and looks straight ahead, still blushing faintly.