Chapter Text
It had been about seven months. She was painfully aware of the time. She never spoke about the incident because she knew it had been her fault. She had broken her own rules, so she had no right in her own mind to blame her being attacked on anyone but herself.
Not that mattered if you did report things like this. It didn’t. Too little evidence. Your word against his. You were asking for it. She was sixteen the first time it had happened. She was far more wild then. Growing up in a small, blink and you’ll miss it, town, in the middle of cornfields, rape was not talked about. Well, it was talked about, but it was all about how these girls were just running around asking for it. So when she had been out too late goofing around with her small circle of small town questionable kids, she had it coming. When she walked home alone after trying the beers her friend Sami had stolen from her dad’s special fridge and smoking not one, but two whole cigarettes by herself, she had it coming. When she chose to wear a denim mini skirt, flip flops, and spaghetti strap top that afternoon, she had it coming. She had promised to call Sami in the morning, they were going to go to the lake the next day and laze around in their brand new two piece suits that their mothers hated. It was such a lovely day and a clear night. She had no idea that she had it coming.
He was older. Having dropped out the year before at 17, moving into one of the “skeevy” apartments on the east side of town, just down the block from her house. They were only skeevy because they were apartments in a town that was so small it barely had a grocer. The highlight of the town was the methodist church, so the small block of four apartments that sat uncomfortably close to the train tracks were considered the “wrong side of town”. She had vaguely remembered him from school, but since their town was too small for it’s own school and they all were bused into the high school in the bigger city about 10 miles away, she wasn’t familiar with him. He wasn’t from here. This little town was a bubble. It was easy to miss that they had been in school together. That he had watched her once or twice. Thought she was about the prettiest girl he’d ever seen. He remembered her when he had moved in, so close to where she always walked. Because everyone walked here. Why drive your car a couple block when everything was in walking distance that you needed and you knew everyone in town, making a walk to the market a social event. He had watched her earlier that very day, first walking past his apartment on the way somewhere, then back again with her tall gangly friend who always seemed to wear too much eyeliner, he guessed to distract from her rail thin and shapeless body. His girl, though, she didn’t paint herself up like that. His girl didn’t need to distract, she was perfect just as she was. That is how he had started think of her when he started watching her so long ago, His girl. Then there she was, walking through the gravel lot by his building, she took the shortcut on rare occasions when she was out late. He smiled seeing her. It seemed like the right time.
He popped the door open and spoke to her through the ripped screen door. “Hey, You’re Janey right? Where’re you off to this late?”
She started a little at the voice but half recognized him, “Hey, you’re Nicky right? I think we were in school together.”
He chuckled, “Yeah, before I left. So what are you doing out so late?” He stalked slowly out into the lot and toward her. She shifted a little but largely stayed still. Something felt off but she also knew that nothing bad ever happened here. He was just being friendly.
“I was out with my friends, time got away with me,” she chuckled too, feeling a little brazen after her acts of rebellion with her best friend. “I should have probably just told my parents I was staying there, but her dad was a little hot tonight, so I thought it best to leave.”
He had slowly moved closer and closer, almost herding her. “You’re gonna be in trouble then, huh?” She felt the hair on her arms stand up and a tiny flutter in her chest. “Come on in with me and have a beer, if you’re in trouble anyway you may as well make it worth it.”
She didn’t have much time to react “No, I bet-” He had shut her up quickly, wrapping an arm around her waist and covering her mouth as he carries her into his apartment.
“Oh, my girl, that wasn’t a request.”
She had shut off after all of that. Kept her head down. That was when she wrote her rules.
- Stay where you know. There is safety in routine.
- Don’t worry about being social. Friends lead to bad decisions. Friends leave.
- Don’t show off.
- Don’t talk about it.
- Don’t be out alone after dark.
- Stay safe. Always. If it feels wrong. Run.
When she ended up at a small college in a town almost as small as hers, she felt safe, she stuck hard and fast to those rules. She focused on her studies. She avoided what the locals called “pervert park”. It was easy and she moved through her degrees and settled into a comfortable job, alone, without incident.
She was happy in her routine, some would call her boring or distant, she called it safe. She happily settled into her life as a forensic researcher, working at the university where she’d gotten her PhD. She was perfectly content to live the rest of her life there, with her books and silence. In her safely controlled life.
But the world is hardly ever so kind. So now she was here, in a new country, in a new job, coping with the aftereffects of having broken her own rules the very night she had come to this crazy city. She would run over which rules she had broken whenever she felt uncomfortable or sick. She was not somewhere she had known. She was alone after dark. She was being social with a stranger. Half the rules out the window because she had stayed a little too late at the small bookstore that she thought was near her new apartment but ended up being much farther than expected, she shouldn’t have walked back, but there were no cabs. She shouldn’t have trusted the nice enough seeming man who offered her help when she got turned around. It was all her fault. She didn’t talk about it and went back to following her rules. She didn’t even tell the sweet and reserved pathologist she would occasionally share a table with at lunch. She couldn’t hide everything from her lunch friend, but she hid as much as she could. It was all her fault after all. She had it coming.
Her lunch friend had asked her if she wanted to go out and grab dinner. She thought about it as they walked through from the lab into the small lounge. She was confused and almost ran into her friend’s back when Molly stopped suddenly, her jaw dropping at the image on the screen. The face of the man who had taken her, tormented her for first two weeks in this country, just seven months ago. She instinctively put her hands protectively on her expanded belly.
“How?” Janey asked.
Molly turned to her, “How is he alive?”
Janey’s confusion grew, “No, how do you know who he is?”