Her skills in the art of shutting down and zoning out were of no help as the rapist groped her. The horrendous images of his last attack wouldn’t leave her mind. In an effort to change the pictures of the past to those of the future, she tried to concentrate on what she planned to do to him.
She was physically revolted as he sucked on her breast but with his eyes off hers, she took the opportunity to look at the clock on the kitchen wall. It was approaching nine o’clock. Anytime now, the GHB would take effect and not long after, the Rohypnol would kick in. Then their roles could be reversed.
Shelley heard a knock on the door. “I’ll be back in a minute,” she said, breaking away. She swallowed down the vomit that rose into her mouth.
“No you won’t. I’m not done with you yet.” He seized her from behind as she neared the kitchen door. He wrestled her down to the sullied vinyl. “Take off your skirt.”
“I can’t...That’s my friend...We’re going out.”
“No you’re not. You’re not going anywhere.” He lay on top of her, gripping her wrists. He raised her arms above her head, pinning her to the floor.
“Stop. I’ll call Destiny for you. Dest—” Her scream was cut off as he shoved his yellow tie into her mouth. With the hand he’d released, she grappled for the tie but he snatched her wrist and threw her arm back down. Both her narrow wrists were constrained by one large hand. With his other hand, he pushed the tie deeper into her mouth.
Trapped under his heavy frame, she writhed in an effort to free herself. Her flailing arms were hampered by his grip. She kicked her legs and tried to raise her torso off the floor but she was crushed by his weight. She couldn’t get away.
“There is no Destiny, is there?” He forced his hand under her skirt and tore into her knickers. “I thought I recognised your face, and now I remember. You want some more, don’t you?”
Shelley told herself not to cry, that it wouldn’t be long until he was knocked out. The incessant knocking at the front door echoed in her ears. She pictured Nicole standing on the doorstep. If only she’d given the other key she’d had cut to Nicole and not to Angel.
When she felt him invade her, she shrieked, but her call for help was muffled by the tie. The sick that she’d previously managed to keep down crept up her throat and into her mouth. She choked as the dam of the tie forced it back down.
Her heart journeyed to her head – perhaps for its protection – and in there it thumped. The feeling of suffocation gripped her as particles of puke caught in the back of her throat and clogged her nostrils. She struggled to breathe. Her internal feeling of dying became accompanied by an external death; perhaps this is how it felt to drown. She agonised how her mother would cope without her, identify her body, and bury her only living child. Through the pain, guilt gripped her as she pictured her mother and Aunt Elsie’s faces. She felt her windpipe shut down and blackness descended.
She was startled by coughing that was confined within her chest. Her eyes opened. From her nose, vomit splattered onto the rapist’s white shirt.
“You disgusting, dirty whore.” He spat on her. She felt his saliva spray her forehead.
To avoid his baleful stare, she turned her head. She felt the tears that had brimmed in her eyes trickle across her face, over the bridge of her nose, and into her hair. In her head, she prayed to God to save her.
Ideas to escape fired in her mind. However hopeless, there was a determination inside her. From the corner of her eye, she saw a pot of paint and pictured herself ramming it into his head, his blood gushing from the wound. But in reality, she couldn’t reach the pot. She recalled the long knives in the kitchen drawer that she’d used to break out of the house. In her mind, she drove a knife into his chest repeatedly. Blood fountained from the lacerations. But she couldn’t get to the drawer. She thought about head-butting him. She could do that. She tried, but she was unable to raise her head off the floor.
“Is it hurting?” He panted.
Shelley nodded. Unable to make a sound, she screamed for help in her head.
“Good. I know this is how you whores like it, don’t you? This is what you want.”
Fighting for air, she took short breaths through her nose. Vomit stuck in her windpipe. The tie stifled her choking. Hail Mary, Mother of Mercy, to thee do I cry ... mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.
“Tell me you like it. Tell me, you little whore. This is what you want.”
Shelley shook her head. She widened her eyes. Jesus, save me. God, save me...
“This is how you like it, isn’t it? Ask me for more. Say it. Tell me, you slut.”
Will, help me. Get him off me, please.
The soulless eyes in the red, sweaty face above her rolled back to the whites. She slipped one of her wrists free. She grabbed the tie out of her mouth. The repugnant face hanging over hers received a vomitus bespattering.
“Whore,” he said, wiping the debris from his face.
With her free hand, she slapped him on the side of the head. She dug her nails in behind his ear and planted her thumb deep into his eyeball. He bellowed as he tried to prise off her hand but her grip was firmly entrenched.
Suddenly, he fell silent. His head fell, face-down next to hers on the vinyl. His body was still. She presumed he’d fainted from the shock or the pain, or the GHB had kicked in. She rolled out from under the dead weight and straddled its back. From the crown, she grasped a clump of short, brown hair and she pummelled the face into the hard floor.
***
“Fucking hell.” Angel was kneeling down next to Shelley. In her frenzy, Shelley hadn’t heard her come in.
Shelley relinquished her grip. The rapist’s head thudded on the floor.
“Oh my God. I’m so sorry.” Nicole rushed over to Shelley.
Shelley felt a coldness from the air on her chest. She realised her blouse was gaping open. She lowered her gaze to fasten the buttons. She tried not to look at her torn knickers and the savage next to them on the vinyl. “Where the fuck have you been?” she said.
“Ladbroke Grove was gridlocked. The police blocked everyone in,” Angel said.
“I dumped my car and ran here.” Nicole glared at Angel. “What were you doing sitting in the damn fucking traffic? If you’d been here—”
“I couldn’t go anywhere. I was right by the police,” Angel replied.
“Why didn’t you answer your fucking phone?”
“I would if I’d had a signal. You think I wanted this to happen to your girl?” Angel shouted. “I care about her too, you know.”
Angel held her hand out to Shelley, who ignored it and pushed herself up from the dirty floor. She stumbled to the sink. Holding onto the draining board, she put her face under the tap. Once she’d rinsed off the residual puke, she gargled with water.
Nicole came over and handed her a pack of tissues. Shelley expelled the vomit from her nose. She crossed back to the other side of the kitchen and replaced her shoes, which she’d lost during the attack. She approached her assailant and began kicking into his ribs.
“I’m so sorry, love,” Nicole said.
“It’s too fucking late.” Shelley drove the heel of her stiletto into the rapist’s ear. Blood trickled out and down the side of his head.
There was a knock on the front door and Angel left the kitchen. Nicole wiped her eyes then took her cigarettes from her bag. She put one in Shelley’s hand. As Shelley raised the cigarette to her mouth, she became aware of the tremors in her hand. Then she realised her whole body was afflicted. Though she wasn’t convulsing, this was how it usually started.
“I’m sorry, Shell,” Tara said, walking towards her. “I’ve been stuck in the station... I think someone got shot.”
Shelley stormed out of the kitchen and into the lounge. She picked up her handbag and case. She ran up the stairs on her unsteady legs and went straight into the bathroom. With the door locked and the shower running, she knelt on the cold tiles and took out her works, heroin, citric, spoon and lighter. She swallowed hard, trying to steal back the tears; a little longer and the only friend she could rely on would take away the pain.
She tried to control her shaking as she prepared the hit, but the spoon wobbled under the tap. As she added the heroin, some of the precious liquid spilt. With the spoon resting on the tiles, she put in a pinch of citric and when she precariously held it for cooking, she prayed not to spill any more.
She carefully dropped in the filter, took her syringe and drew up the elixir into the barrel. There was nothing in the room to use as a tourniquet so she selected a recently healed vein on her wrist. So what if her friends noticed? While applying pressure with her other hand, she noticed her pulse – something she’d never paid attention to before.
“Come out, love. I’ll make you a cuppa.” Nicole tapped on the bathroom door.
“I don’t want fucking tea. I just wanna be on my own.”
“I tried, Shell. I couldn’t get round the back. I’m so sorry... There was nothing I could do.”
“Just fuck off!” Shelley listened to Nicole’s footsteps retreat down the stairs; she heard what she thought was Nicole sobbing.
As Shelley had kept a tight hold on her wrist, the feeling in her hand was nearly numb. If only that numbness would pervade the rest of her, she wished.
Taking deep breaths, in the hope that she’d steady herself, she inserted the needle into her vein. Having pulled back a little on the plunger, she pushed in. The abhorrent images were purged from her mind as she crossed the threshold into the refuge rendered by heroin.