Total pages in book: 57
Estimated words: 54836 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 274(@200wpm)___ 219(@250wpm)___ 183(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 54836 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 274(@200wpm)___ 219(@250wpm)___ 183(@300wpm)
“His eyes were a dark brown. He was average height and build. And he had a tool kit attached to him,” I said.
“Can you explain that better for me?” Detective Vaughn asked.
Right.
Details.
That’s what he needed. My brain needed to start working right if I wanted to help catch this guy.
“He had a belt on, but it wasn’t in his belt loops. It was too wide. He had things hanging from it. He had carabiners attached. One was holding this circle thing. I don’t know what it’s called. I’ve never seen one before, but it was holding zip ties for easy access,” I told him. “Another carabiner had the knife attached to it. It must have been a hunting type knife or something because it had a hole at the end. And there was duct tape attached to one of the carabiners with a zip tie.”
“Okay. This is good. Was there anything else?”
“There were pockets, one on each hip, but I don’t know what was in those.”
He was nodding, and I waited for him to catch up before I spoke again.
“He had on gloves. Really thin ones, but not medical gloves,” I told him. “They were skin-tone, though. I didn’t notice them until he hit me.”
My hand went automatically to my face. I couldn’t feel it. I knew that was the shock. That once I got a chance to process this, the pain would set in.
“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 silent thank you to 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.”