Renée was on the kitchen floor, Volume Two of Tyler’s Educational Handbooks open next to her face, its pages bent at the biology section, the radio blaring the usual dismal news in an inappropriately cheerful tone. The man was heavier than he looked and she couldn’t move, was fully pinned down, stripes forming on the undersides of her thighs from the edges of the tiles beneath her.
‘Get off me, you bastard,’ Renée screamed as she struggled against him, but that seemed to provoke him, arouse him further, and he brought one hand down from her neck to maul roughly at her top, and then he tried to pull at her shorts, but they were denim and belted and he couldn’t get them off.
Even through her panic Renée knew this was serious, she could see the madness in his eyes. She’d read something somewhere and it came to her then, so she stopped struggling and went limp as the man pawed at her, and at first he didn’t know what to do, he had nothing to fight against – and then she started moaning, as if she were even enjoying herself, and that seemed to really confuse him, put him right off his stride. He loosened his hold on her throat, just a little, while he undid his belt, tried to get his trousers off, and she managed to move enough to get her hand down there and he let her although he didn’t much like it, it was all rather odd, he preferred it when they were scared shitless, and soon her hand was free enough for her to take hold of him, and she caressed him, as if he were precious, and he released his grip still further – and then when her hand had just enough freedom she started to twist, hard, until he was screaming in agony, and she twisted further and harder, with both hands now, and once he was in too much pain to be able to stop her she got to her feet and kicked him between the legs, repeatedly, like she was kicking a door in, and then she grabbed her book bag and fled from the house.