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“He hit me three times,” I recalled, touching each of the spots on my face. “This one,” I explained, touching near my eye, “temporarily blinded me with tears. That was when he lifted his weight, so he could roll me and pin me on my stomach.”
Rape position,I’d once heard a martial arts instructor call it. Because it was almost impossible to get an assailant off of you when they pinned you from behind.
“He yanked back my arms to zip-tie them,” I told him. “I, ah, I tried to hold my wrists as far apart as possible, thinking I could create some space to wiggle free. But he tightened them until they cut in.”
Looking down, I could see the bloody rings around my wrists like bracelets.
Those didn’t hurt, either. But they would. In time.
“What happened then?”
“Then he rolled me back again, and I heard the duct tape.” I still wasn’t seeing clearly then, but everyone knew that sound when they heard it. “I kept my lips parted slightly when he put it over my mouth.”
“And then?” he prompted.
“Then he climbed off of the bed. I don’t remember seeing it on his belt, but he had a camera with him, and he was taking pictures of me.”
As absurd as it was even to think this, I remembered being self-conscious about how my body might look in those pictures. My tank top felt askew from the rolling and struggle. For all I knew, some parts of me were on display that I definitely didn’t want on display.
“He took a long time doing that,” I told him. “Then he was reviewing the images for a while. That was when I was kind of letting the spit from my mouth spill out, trying to loosen the glue from the duct tape.”
It worked surprisingly well.
And I only thought to do that because of some other survivor story I’d once heard.
Those girls whose bravery had likely saved me as well.
“And then?” the detective asked, voice even more soothing then. Because he knew this was where the story was supposed to get worse.
And, I guess, it did.
“Then he came to the bed again, and pulled the knife from his belt, and started cutting my clothes off with it.”
The panic was at an all-time high then as I felt the cool air bite at my skin, as I knew he was seeing parts of me that I didn’t want him to see.
“I was trying to get the zip ties off then. He seemed to enjoy that struggle,” I added, remembering the way his thin lips spread into a smile. “The tip of the knife traced down my stomach,” I recalled, shivering at the memory of the cold tip on my skin. “But then he got up again. I think he was going for the camera.”
“Think?” the detective asked, brows raised.
“That was when I remembered a video I saw once about getting out of zip ties,” I explained.
You had to be standing.
Then raise your arms up as high as your shoulders would allow, and slam your arms down as hard as possible into your butt. If it didn’t work the first time, you should keep trying.
“I rolled off the bed.” Doing so, I said a silentthank youto the universe for the fact that I’d just changed out my noisy mattress and box spring for my new, bouncy mattress. Because the movement was silent. Using my shoulder, I pushed the spit-saturated duct tape off my mouth. “I raised my arms up as far as I could,” I told him, remembering the way my shoulders screamed in objection. “Then I slammed them down.”
“Did that work?” he asked when I didn’t go on.
“Yes,” I breathed. “I think I was in shock when the pressure eased,” I told him. “Because I stood there frozen for a moment. Long enough for him to turn around,” I added.
“And then?”
“Then he charged at me,” I told him. And at that moment, my fight instinct kicked in. “I remembered the knife I’d been trying to get when I heard him come in. I grabbed it then I just… stabbed with everything in me,” I explained.
A shiver coursed through me at the memory of the way the blade sliced in. Easier, yet also harder, than I could have imagined. It was even harder to pull it back out.
“I, ah, I screamed then as I pulled it out, then in and out again,” I told him. It had been a deep, guttural, animalistic sound. “And I charged at him again as I was screaming,” I added. “He… he, ah, he ran,” I said, shaking my head. “I followed him all the way to the door,” I explained.
