Page 14 of Biker's Conquest: Property of Rage

Ishouldn’t be surprised that Amanda offered advice. I’m more surprised that she didn’t have me committed. She acted like it wasn’t even a crisis either. The day after our phone call, I got myself a job at a small bookstore – the owner was in the same sorority as Amanda – and bought the book she recommended on reconnecting with what makes a healthy relationship.

That’s it – focus on building a new life for myself and a healthy view on relationships. That would be a lot easier without bruises on my ass. I didn’t expose my cousin to all the gritty details (or any details at all) but that doesn’t take away from the constant agony of the bruises. It’s like he wanted to make sure I remembered him for weeks. It’s the most fucked up way of being possessive I can think of.

But I’m thinking about him. Almost constantly. I can’t even focus on the stupid book when I get off work at six in the evenings. I try going for long walks because sitting hurts too badly, but then I can’t get his voice out of my head. He said the most fucked up things to me. But every word he said made me wet.

My bruises don’t heal for another week. My first week of sitting on my ass without pain on a Monday afternoon, I spot a red haired man in the cafe across from my job and I nearly break my brain with anxiety trying to see if it’s him. He’s too far away and the thought of getting closer scares the fuck out of me. I grab my coworker – a college student named Julia utterly addicted to her phone – and beg her to take a surreptitious picture of the red head in the cafe.

(I lied and said he was a famous YouTuber in the gardening world.)

She came back with the iPhone picture that confirms me as both paranoid and obsessed. This man is a sex freak who uses people like paper towels to clean the cum off his dick. There is nothing to romanticize there. Nothing special. How badly my brain is fucked up might be special, but that’s about it. It’s not him. He’s nowhere near me.

I’ll never seeRage again.

The worst partabout being new here is spending all weekend alone. My first weekend without bruises is the absolute worst. The bruises gave me something direct to address. They reminded me of how painful it was to submit to this "Rage" guy. Now that they're gone, I just have the shameful memories of how hard I came while he fucked me from behind and how good it felt to have him tend to my bruises after he brutalized my ass.

I had honestly never seen grey eyes like that up close before and now that I'm alone and it's a dark Friday night... I can't get them out of my head. No amount of meditation and manifesting a healthy relationship has worked for me yet. Ifeel stuck. And my apartment feels unusually hot for Chicago, so I crack open my bedroom window, hoping to catch a break from the dark thoughts and the suffocating tightness in my chest. Immediately, I feel better. I look through my text message thread with Oske one last time. It's been days since her last reply to me and there are still no updates. With her? No news is good news. I plug my phone in on the other side of the room and climb into bed. It's cool. It's comfortable. If I keep working and spending as little money as possible, I can afford to live here until I can get a steady stream of income going.

I just need to settle down and get a real life here. That's all. God brought me here for a reason and I just have to figure it out. With that hopeful thought, my body releases enough tension for me to fall asleep. I don't even think about those steel grey eyes. Thank goodness. I just drift off...

My window slides open slowly.I acknowledge the noise in my half-sleeping state before I wake up more and realize that my window sliding open means there's someone climbing into my room. I scream and then remember. Burglar bars. No way anyone is getting in through those. Still... who the fuck is trying to climbing through my window?

I propel my body out of the bed towards the light switch, but turning on the lights only makes the man outside my window more invisible -- and he doesn't even flinch.

CLUNK. CLUNK. CLUNK.

My stomach twists into a knot. He's holding something that looks like a pair of pliers, but easily slides through the metal burglar bars, breaking the metal as he squeezes the arms of his machine together.

"HEY!" I yell. "I'm calling the cops."

CLUNK. CLUNK. He ignores me.

"I have a gun," I yell at him as I shuffle around my dresser drawer, pretending to look for a pistol. "I'm broke as shit, so robbing my ass really isn't worth getting shot."

I hear the burglar bars fall to the ground. The pieces clatter against the concrete. The man slides the rest of my window open and I just freeze. He's so damn big, I'm surprised he didn't rip the burglar bars off with his bare hands. Other than his size, I recognize nothing of his features. He could be white, black... from a blue alien planet.

Black fabric covers every inch of him. He takes a step towards me. The ski mask even covers his mouth. He's too tall for me to look into his eyes and memorize the shape of those, but at least the mask has eye holes. I throw my phone at him like a dumbass, my primitive brain telling me to just slow him down because I won't have time to call the cops. He catches my phone and crushes it with one hand.

I scream. It's my last resort. I scream and that breaks the seal on my panic response. I dart for my bedroom door, my sweaty palms incapable of grasping the handle gives the intruder another advantage. He grunts and grabs my hair from the back. Pain sears straight through me. I scream and fall to my knees as he drags me back.

I can throw my weight around and use that against him. I can at least do that to fight back... but I underestimate his size. Once he has me on my knees, he reaches around my waist with one arm and throws me over his shoulder. He's so tall that my head smacks against the ceiling. I cry out in pain and he adjusts my position on his shoulder as he walks towards my bedroom door.

"You're going to go to prison!" I shriek, beating against his back. It feels like I'm hitting a thick slab of bison meat. The futility of my actions hits me immediately. I'm just gettingtired. The man ignores my kicking and screaming. He just walks me out the front door of my new place and throws me in the back of some big ass car -- either a Tahoe or an Escalade. I can't tell which. He locks the back door as soon as he tosses me in. I keep screaming, but I can feel the insulated walls of the vehicle blocking out the sound.

He hasa vehicle designed just for kidnapping women. What the fuck. What the fuck. There's a little window between the back and the driver's seat. I hear him get into the front seat of the car and I start banging on that window.

"LET ME OUT. LET ME OUT!"

He turns on some truly terrible music. It's some truly annoying white guy screamo music that just drowns me out. I can't breathe. I can't get him to stop. The panic just gets to be too much and I don't have enough fight in me. I scream as long as I can, but my body collapses after about an hour and I slip into unconsciousness.

Chapter Nine

Rage

Once she passes out, I pull over at a Flying J gas station and fight every urge to drag her unconscious ass into the bathroom and fuck her awake. I warned her about what would happen if she ignored my text messages. I’m going easy on her compared to what I really want to do. Nothing isreallystopping me either. I can do whatever the fuck I want to her.

She must have known it was me too, which makes her fighting and carrying on even worse. How many other men does she know who are about my height? Unless she fucks every guy who crosses her path. I get a few basic supplies from the Flying J, high on a mixture of rage at Keyshawn’s possible slutty past and euphoria from how easy it was to get into her apartment. When I get back to the car with my duct tape, nylon ropes, and a microfiber cloth in case she starts screaming her ass off again, she’s still down. I tie her up, duct tape her mouth, and pay the Shaw girl working at the counter $100 to shut the hell up about anything she saw.

“I didn’t see shit,” she says. “Bye, Tanner.”

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