Page 93 of Jagged Line Paradise

“Okay.” She nods. “So, I was mostly inexperienced. My first...my first sexual encounter had only just happened the night before, the night of my eighteenth birthday.” She looks down at her lap. “I think if that hadn’t happened that night, I might not have been his sixth victim.”

My shoulders instantly rise with tension. I clear my throat. “What do you mean?”

Her head raises and she meets my eyes with a nervous gaze. “When he had me, he told me that he could—” She blows out a heavy breath. “Wow, this is really hard to tell you.”

“Just say it. It’s just words, Lonnie. Your story, your truth.”

“He told me that he could smell the sex on me coming out of his son’s room, and that’s when he knew he was going to take me, that he had to have me.”

Dios mío.

I fight every impulse within me that wants to go to her, drop to my knees and beg her for forgiveness that I ever once brought her into my dad’s trailer, that I ever once let him lay eyes on her or know who she is. I have to force my stillness, my composure. She needs to tell me these things and I have to let her without letting my feelings get involved.

Her eyes are deadlocked on mine as she rushes to get the words out. “Because I chose to give something precious that night to the boy I loved, to the Canyon Carver’s son, I became prey in his eyes. He wanted what Andrés had, and he thought he had the right to take it. He took me, and over the course of a day, he stole my innocence in unimaginable ways. Except it wasn’t unimaginable for me. If you can think of the worst, most vile thing someone could do to another human being, that’s what he did to me. He did it to me and he did it to all his other victims. He didn’t just do it once. He did it over and over again. I want it known that he deserves no sympathy, no mercy. And I’m haunted every day by the fact that he’s still alive. I know he’ll never see the light of day again, that he’s imprisoned for life. But because he chose to admit to his wrong doing, to plead guilty for his crimes, he was given a deal to avoid the death penalty.”

She pauses to take a deep breath, her chest rising sharply but lowering slowly as she forces herself to calm.

“Life in prison would have been enough punishment to satisfy me if his prison were that death box in the desert. But his prison is no punishment. He’s fed, given water, clean clothes, allowed to sleep on a cot. I wasn’t even given those most basic comforts in the prison he thought I deserved. Over a hundred degrees outside, hotter inside the box, and no water was offered to me. Not once. I was left overnight strapped to—” she cuts herself off abruptly as her voice hitches. She swipes her knuckle beneath her eye, wiping away tears that are just starting to spill. “I’m sorry. I know I’m all over the place here.”

“It’s okay, sunshine. There’s no right or wrong way to do this. Just speak.”

Her head bobs, her eyes darting as she tries to focus on me, knowing she’s supposed to speak to me, but struggling to make eye contact. “Let me go back a little. To when he first brought me inside the death box. H-he told me to take off my clothes. And as a teenage girl who’d never been seen naked by anyone before, who’d only just had her first experience with sexual touch from his own son a little less than a day before, being asked to expose myself felt like the most violating thing. I didn’t understand yet. I mean, in that moment, I couldn’t have understood how much more exposed and vulnerable I would feel before the day was over. I begged him not to make me undress, but it was unavoidable. I struggled to take off my shirt because...” She holds her hands out in front of her, gripping her fingers into fists and forcing the heels of her palms together, her forearms touching. “My hands were bound like this with a cable tie. It was pulled so tight that my wrists were red and starting to bleed. Anyway, I couldn’t twist my hands the right way to pull off my shirt, so he...he undressed me.”

Every muscle in my body is rigid, tight, and tense, and I’m starting to feel nauseous. She hasn’t told me anything I didn’t already know, yet I’m already feeling nauseous.

“He pulled off my shirt and cut the thin straps off my tank top with a knife when it got to my hands. I was just wearing my pajamas when he took me, so no bra, and I was just standing there in my sleep shorts.” There’s a long pause as she stares off toward the window. She finally looks at me again. “He went down to his knees in front of me and pulled off my shorts and underwear. And when I was completely naked, he just stayed there and stared at me. For a long time. I was just standing there, naked, crying, wondering what the hell I’d done wrong in my life to deserve this.” Her eyes are glassy with the sheen of tears and I know mine will be soon, too.

“He was crass and crude. Demeaning. He was demoralizing in the way he spoke to me. I’m not the kind of person who swears much. I was never a prude or anything, I just didn’t use certain words. A lot of the words he used when he spoke to me were...new, I suppose? Not new, but things I hadn’t really heard used in the real world, other than passing by someone else’s conversation or in movies and TV. Definitely things that had never been spokentome oraboutme. I don’t care to repeat most of it. But that kind of talk started immediately when he was on his knees and it never let up. By the end, he’d made me feel worthless, which I suppose was part of the fun for him. He almost had me convinced that I deserved death before it was over.”

She looks down at her hands in her lap. “Ten minutes hadn’t even passed before he had me naked. He made me spread my legs and…he put his mouth on me.” Her lips pinch together and pull tightly across her cheeks. “The act itself was disgusting enough, but the way he talked about what he was doing, that was...that has impacted me the most, even now. He made me feel so disgusted with him, with myself, that I don’t think I ever really recovered from it.

“I’ve spent most of my adult years seeking validation and praise. I married a man I didn’t love—a criminal, at that—just because he gave me attention and told me I was beautiful. And when his attention stopped, I sold myself out just for the fleeting praise of being told that I’m beautiful, that I’m wanted. I have given myself to the company of strangers who used me just to feel like I was,” her breath catches in her throat and tears fall, “just to feel like I was worth something.”

She waves her palm at me, shaking her head. Then her head drops, and she catches her face in her palms as she cries. Her voice is muffled through her hands. “I didn’t mean to share all that.”

Shit. It’s enough. Enough of this.

I push to my feet and move to the camera, hurrying to switch it off. Then I turn and rush to her, kneeling in front of her and grabbing hold of her wrists to tug her hands from her face.

“Hey, look, it’s off. See?” I point behind me. “No red light. It’s off, sunshine.”

“Sorry. I’m sorry. I just need a minute, okay? Can we delete that last part? I don’t know if I can—” she hiccups through her words and sucks in a staggering breath, sitting up, pulling back, “I can’t do this on camera, Andrés.”

“Lonnie, look at me. Look at me, baby. It’s done. It’s over. It’s off. It’s not going back on. It’s just me and you now, okay?”

“I wanted t-to tell you. I wanted to tell you e-everything. I just can’t do this. I can’t share this with the world. What was I thinking? I was wrong. This is...it’s fucking embarrassing!”

My fingers slip from her wrists to her hands, and I grip them tight. “It’s not embarrassing. It’s just not. He did that to you. He made you think you have something to be embarrassed about, and you fucking don’t.”

“He hurt me. He’s been hurting me every day of my life since he took me. I just wanted to share how vile he is. I wanted to explain what he did to me physically and how perverse he is.” She rips her hands from mine and grabs her skirt, lifting it up to her panty line to expose her thighs. “He carved out chunks of my flesh and got off on it! I hate these scars, Ihatethem!”

“Don’t hate them. Don’t hate them, beautiful. Hatehim.Hate what he did to you. But don’t hate the strength you found. Don’t hate the marks on your body. These scars,” I draw my fingers across the inside of her thigh, over the bumps and ridges of her old scars, and her hands land heavily on the armrests, “are the proof that you won. These are the proof that he tried but didn’t break you.”

Her words are rushed. “I told him to tell you I loved you.”

“What?”

“He was about to kill me. I knew I was about to die. And I asked him to tell you that I loved you. I think that’s what saved my life.”

---