Full dark,no stars

Now he’ll kill me for sure. And at least I won’t have to listen to any more of his awful singing. It’s the beauty part, Ramona Norville would say.

“Hey girl,” he said in a kindly voice.

She didn’t reply, but she could see him bending over her, looking into her half-lidded eyes. She took great care to keep them still. If he saw them move, even a little… or a gleam of tears…

“Hey.” He popped the flat of his hand against her cheek. She let her head roll to the side.

“Hey!” This time he outright slapped her, but on the other cheek. Tess let her head roll back the other way.

He pinched her nipple, but he hadn’t bothered to take off her blouse and bra and it didn’t hurt too badly. She lay limp.

“I’m sorry I called you a bitch,” he said, still using the kindly voice. “You was a good fuck. And I like em a little older.”

Tess realized he really might think she was dead. It was amazing, but could be true. And all at once she wanted very badly to live.

He picked her up again. The mansweat smell was suddenly overwhelming. Beard bristles tickled the side of her face, and it was all she could do not to twitch away from them. He kissed the corner of her mouth.

“Sorry I was a little rough.”

Then he was moving her again. The sound of the running water got louder. The moonlight was blotted out. There was a smell-no, a stench-of rotting leaves. He put her down in four or five inches of water. It was very cold, and she almost cried out. He pushed on her feet and she let her knees go up. Boneless, she thought. Have to stay boneless. They didn’t go far before bumping against a corrugated metal surface.

“Fuck,” he said, speaking in a reflective tone. Then he shoved her.

Tess remained limp even when something-a branch-scrawled a line of hurt down the center of her back. Her knees bumped along the corrugations above her. Her buttocks pushed a spongy mass, and the smell of rotting vegetable matter intensified. It was as thick as meat. She felt a terrible urge to cough the smell away. She could feel a mat of wet leaves gathering in the small of her back, like a throw-pillow soaked with water.

If he figures it out now, I’ll fight him. I’ll kick him and kick him and kick him-

But nothing happened. For a long time she was afraid to open her eyes any wider or move them in the slightest. She imagined him crouching there, looking into the pipe where he’d stashed her, head to one side, tilting a question, waiting for just such a move. How could he not know she was alive? Surely he’d felt the thump of her heart. And what good would kicking be against the giant from the pickup? He’d grab her bare feet in one hand, haul her out, and recommence choking her. Only this time he wouldn’t stop.

She lay in the rotting leaves and sluggish water, looking up at nothing from her half-lidded eyes, concentrating on playing dead. She passed into a gray fugue that was not quite unconsciousness, and there she stayed for a length of time that felt long but probably wasn’t. When she heard a motor-his truck, surely his truck-Tess thought: I’m imagining that sound. Or dreaming it. He’s still here.

But the irregular thump of the motor first swelled, then faded off down Stagg Road.

It’s a trick.

That was almost certainly hysteria. Even if it wasn’t, she couldn’t stay here all night. And when she raised her head (wincing at the stab of pain in her abused throat) and looked toward the mouth of the pipe, she saw only an unimpeded silver circle of moonlight. Tess started wriggling toward it, then stopped.

It’s a trick. I don’t care what you heard, he’s still here.

This time the idea was more powerful. Seeing nothing at the mouth of the culvert made it more powerful. In a suspense novel, this would be the moment of false relaxation before the big climax. Or in a scary movie. The white hand emerging from the lake in Deliverance. Alan Arkin springing out at Audrey Hepburn in Wait Until Dark. She didn’t like scary books and movies, but being raped and almost murdered seemed to have unlocked a whole vault of scary-movie memories, all the same. As if they were just there, in the air.

He could be waiting. If, for instance, he’d had an accomplice drive his truck away. He could be squatting on his hunkers beyond the mouth of the pipe in that patient way country men had.

“Get those panties down,” she whispered, then covered her mouth. What if he heard her?

Five minutes passed. It might have been five. The water was cold and she began to shiver. Soon her teeth would begin to chatter. If he was out there, he would hear.

He drove away. You heard him.

Maybe. Maybe not.