Heart of Ice

didn’t want to pass out. Not like before.

She remembered his hand reaching around her as he held her from behind. He had what looked like a dirty T-shirt balled up in his fist. At that moment, she knew she was probably going to die.

He pinched her neck and pressed the smelly cloth to her mouth and nose. Tequila? Cleaning fluid? Acetone? She felt the wooziness that comes with too much to drink and maybe too little sleep. She felt her knees starting to bend, though she commanded them to stay locked. The world around her started to grow fainter. She couldn’t even hear his breathing, at once so labored and hot against the back of her neck.

“I don’t want to die. Why are you doing this to me? Who…What are you?”

Of course, no words came from her bloodied lips. Amy’s interior monologue was screamed through the fear in her eyes only. She was falling. The lights were going out.

“Help me. Please someone.”

Then nothing.

Her last thoughts were the darkest that had ever gone through her mind.

I hope he only rapes me. Yes, only rapes me.

Her wits were nearly gone, but she knew the ridiculousness of her thoughts. She had a friend who’d been raped in college. It was nothing to wish for, but in that moment it was the only hope that she had.

Amy wanted to live.

He wanted to smoke, but not there. Diesel fuel had splattered the steel floor. Hydraulic lines ran from the engines through the lazarette where he stored spare parts, a cooler, rigging, and, of course, her.

He tucked a Camel straight between his lips and pondered his next move. The timing, like the tides, had been with him. She’d been the perfect victim. He even smiled at the thought of her packed away in that cramped compartment. Her terror was a rush; a vibration that stimulated. She was his Magic Fingers. She was what he considered a lucky catch—a girl just begging to be a victim because of her trusting nature. He preferred those who fought a little harder or wore their skepticism like a shield. Despite her whining about her baby, the bookstore clerk had been like that. She’d fought hard.

Like a lioness fighting for her cub, was the thought that came to his mind. But he was stronger, and even if he wasn’t, he could summon help.

He started for the light of day, cigarette dangling, his fingertip rubbing across the silver Crossfire lighter that felt so good in his palm. He pushed open the hatch and a flood of cool evening light drifted toward his handsome face.

She was waiting for him as he emerged.

“Everything in the engine room all right, baby?” she said, her dark eyes full of a mix of worry and excitement.

“No problems I can’t fix after chow. Going back down there tonight. Be a late one.”

She smiled. “Need any help?”

He shook his head. “Got this one handled. Thanks, baby.”

Belowdecks, in the confines of the vessel’s lazarette, she woke once more. By then she’d figured out that she was not in a car trunk, as she first imagined. There would be no way she could fiddle with the emergency latch as she’d seen a young woman do on the Today Show when she reenacted her own escape from a rapist.

Or killer.

The diesel smell, the shaking of the floor, the slight bobbing, gave her an awareness that she was on a boat of some kind. Rolling on her side, she could better take in the smells—fish, water, fuel. Her eyes traced a pinprick of light that bore through the steel walls, weeping with condensation. The light led to a couple of fish scales on the floor.

A boat, yes, she was sure.

Amy wriggled some more, panting, pushing, trying to break the tape that kept her strong body constricted. She did not want to be raped. She wanted to get the hell out of there. She twisted with all of her strength and somehow rolled herself on her side, her hands still behind her back. She wanted to scream from the pain emanating from her shoulders, but it wouldn’t matter.

Her mouth was bound, too.

Again she followed the light. She could see better now, both eyes in play.

The boat’s engine’s roared.

If only she could scream. At no time in her life did she ever think she would die like this. Die, yes, die. No rape. No way out. Lying on the floor in the pool of light was the proof that she’d not been the first young woman in that space.

There were three of them in that small space on the wet steel floor, and they weren’t fish scales, after all. Again, she wished that she could scream. Tears rolled down her sticky cheeks. She needed to pull herself up and get out of there.

Fingernails, in a color different than her own. The entire nail. Not fake press-ons, but real nails, bloodied at the quick. Torn from fingers.

Fingers like her own.

The door swung open and a blast of light came at her all at once. A shadowy figure moved toward the cot where she’d pinned herself against the wall, screw tips clawing at her back. She pushed away from him as he moved forward. But there was nowhere to go.

“Please, God,” Amy said to herself. “Please don’t let him kill me.”