63 Days

I saw the jeep coming toward me before I could hear it. This made it worse I think, because silence can hold your fear to you and there’s nothing to distract it. I could make out two heads inside. I was sure one was Murdock, but who would the other one be? I got down from the rock and started to set things in order around the camp. I put my water bottle and other items in a neat pile under a little overhanging, I straightened my bedroll a little and tidied the woodpile I had yet to use. Something inside me was starting to panic.

The sound of the engine became clearer and clearer until it echoed off of the tiny natural amphitheater that I was living in. The rocks seemed to yell out to me a warning. The sand seemed to respond with a blurry haze. A trail of dust was kicking up just down the hill from me and I watched it as it grew closer. It seemed almost spectral, approaching in a white cloud with the roar of a lion. Suddenly, they got to my camp, and with a hard push on the brakes, they stopped at the entrance of my tiny haven.

Murdock got out first, carrying a can of Coke. Another man got out next. He wasn’t old at all, maybe 20? He had dark hair and glasses, and he held a pocket knife in his hands. They walked over to me, Murdock with a slimy grin and a camoflauge baseball hat and the boy with his head down to the ground. Both of them were silent.

“Sooooooo, I see you’re still here. What, you can’t find yer shoes?” Murdock laughed hysterically. “Aww, that’s gotta suck, ain’t it? Poor thing, out here with the animals, nowhere to hide.”

“Animals indeed,” I thought. “The only animal out here is you.”

“So, you went to bed early last night eh? You sad or somethin’? Miss yer boyfriend? Awww, ain’t that sweet. Well I tell ya what, I brought you a new boyfriend today. This here’s John. He’s gonna be your boyfriend today. Hey Johnny boy, I told ya she wasn’t nasty. Just came from an escape, remember, so she showered a coupla days ago…see how good I am to ya?” Murdock said the last of that while looking at the boy he’d brought with him. The boy had still not looked up at me.

Murdock put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and kind of patted it slowly as if to tell him it was alright. John inched slowly forward, shuffling his feet in the sand as he came nearly face to face to me. He slowly glanced up and when his eyes met mine, I could tell that he didn’t want any part of this. He held out his hand to shake mine, and Murdock slapped it down, hard.

“WHAT? This ain’t a date, boy! This is a prisoner. She’s not a woman, ya big baby! She’s a toy. She gotta get food to get outta here, so she gonna do whatever you want. You got that? She’s the animal, we ain’t. SHE is the animal….we ain’t,” he repeated.

The boy looked at Murdock, then at me, then down at his feet again.

“Now why don’t you two go do your ‘evaluation’ for a while, I’mma go shoot at some hawks.” With that, Murdock took off over to the jeep and grabbed a shotgun out of the back and headed down the dirt path they’d come up on.

“Uh…I’m John. Oh yeah, you already knew that. So…you’re Allison? Is that right?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I replied, staring over his right shoulder at a bush, trying to be somewhere else.

“Um, ok well I have to ask you some questions, is that ok? Can we go sit down?” He walked over to the bedroll I had layed out and sat in the middle of it.

Something had changed. I suddenly didn’t feel afraid. I walked over to where he was and sat down next to him, but not against him. He pulled out a tiny notebook out of his pocket and a pencil that had been broken off and crammed into the spirals and looked at me as if he was terrified.

“So, you’re the girl who escaped…right?” he queried.

“Uh…yeah. I guess. There were two of us, yeah, we got out.”

“So, I have to ask you a few questions first, ones they told me to ask you. K?”

I nodded yes.

He continued, “Did you do any illegal drugs while you were gone?”

I nodded no.

“Did you drink any alcohol or smoke any cigarettes while you were gone?”

I nodded yes. “I smoked some cigarettes, and had some wine, thats all.”

“Ok,” he said ,”did you uh…did you um. Ok so, while you were gone, did you have, uh….sex?” When he said “sex” he said it so quickly I almost didn’t understand it, not to mention the fact that it was nearly whispered and muffled inside his shirt. He seemed uncomfortable even talking about sex, I was certain there was no way he’d try to touch me today.

My spirits lifted, I said “Yes, I did. Twice, with my boyfriend. Thats all.”

He wrote that down and putting the notebook back in his pocket, he looked up at me, for the first time smiling. He had beautiful blue eyes. His hair was almost black and I could see that he had some sadness behind his smile. He was the first person out here that I didn’t want to hide from.

“So, how’s your solo?” he asked. “You find any snakes out here yet? There’s scorpions out here too, look, here’s some tracks!” He pointed over to by the wall of the inlet where I was living. There in the sand were some tiny brushmark scratches in the sand with one long trail dug straight down the middle. “See? Its tail drags a bit while it walks, kind of like his belly touching the sand. This is definately a scorpion track. They’re EVERYWHERE out here. Keep your eyes open, k?”

He stood up and brushing his pants off, looked around my area. “Wow, you got a nice spot here. Somebody must really like you,” he said. I could see his face drop when he uttered those words. He must have known about the stuff that had been going on. “Oh, well, I mean, yeah, it seems like….the guys at the top like you or something. Nevermind,” he stammered. “So. You good on water?”

I stood as well, being extra careful to where I put my bare feet, scorpions and all running about. I walked over to my water bottle and checked it. I’d only had a sip or two of the water and I was doing ok. “No, I’m ok. I don’t need anymore.”

He reached inside his pocket of his jeans and pulled out a tiny bag of M&M’s. He looked around him quickly and pushed it into my right hand quickly, pulling my other hand over the top and holding his over mine for what seemed like ten minutes. I didn’t mind it for some reason. I could tell he was good. He didn’t want to hurt me.

“Don’t let anyone see the wrapper. Burn it, here, lets start you a fire. I was supposed to help you anyway, you won’t get matches or anything the rest of your trip.”

I gathered some wood together and we dug out a small pit for the fire. He placed some tinder and bark from the dead juniper in a teepee shape in the middle, and before long, there was a fire going. He and I sat in silence, and when we heard Murdock’s footsteps approaching, he looked at me.

“Pretend you’re scared still. Don’t let him know that we…um…well don’t let him know we were nice to eachother, you know what I mean?” He raised his eyebrows a bit, he was pleading with me. I nodded yes, and as soon as Murdock came up to my spot, I looked down into my lap and folded my hands tighly together. I could see his feet approaching.

“So, you kids have a good time?” he sneered. “Did I leave you enough time to get all your questions asked? Huh, little whore? You give him everything he needed?” He kicked some sand into my lap and laughed.

“Alright, lets get outta here. I gotta take a shit, and these kids ain’t got no TP!”

John got up and as he did, he waved a tiny bit next to his leg. I didn’t want him to leave. He got into the jeep and Murdock started the engine. Suddenly, he moved out of the drivers seat and walked over to where I was still sitting by the fire. I had those M&M’s in my lap, under my leg. He was going to find them! I didn’t want to make any sudden moves, so I held as still as possible until I could feel him over me. He reached down. Past my face, past my chest, toward the M&M’s. I could feel my heart start to race, he was going to find them and I’d be punished and John would be…fired, who knows. I closed my eyes and waited for the backlash, except he never got to the M&M’s.

His rough fingers pushed against my crotch. He pushed hard, then brushed gently, pushed hard, then brushed gently. I could feel his breath on the side of my face and neck. He was leaning in toward me and I could smell that he probably hadn’t showered in days. Musty campfire smell wafted past my face as he continued to push his shaky, filthy hands against my pants. His breathing was short and shallow and I just closed my eyes.

“You like that, girl? You like it when I touch ya? You ever had a real man before, ya little whore? You like it if I came back tonight and showed you what a man was really like? Mmmmm, thats right, thats right…”

He was rubbing his crotch with his other hand, and I could tell he was aroused. I shut my eyes again tightly and held my breath. Suddenly, with a long sigh, he stopped.

“You behave now, ‘relse we’ll have to put you in cuffs. Now that sounds fun” he said with a wink, turning around.

He got back into the jeep and backed down the hill as slowly as he’d driven up it. As I heard the jeep leaving, its engine getting quieter and quieter, I felt down between my legs. I was still shaking, my girl parts numb from fear, but the M&M’s…they were still there.