Stolen Read Free

as bark. I don’t know what I was thinking, or even if I was, but I remember needing to touch you. I remember that feeling of skin. It’s strange to remember touch more than thought. But my fingers still tingle with it.
    You did other things, too, put something scratchy on my head and something dark over my eyes. I moved slowly. My brain couldn’t keep up. There was a dull thud of something landing in a metal can. There was something slimy on my lips. Lipstick. You gave me a chocolate. Rich. Dark. Soft. Liquid in the middle.
    Things got even more confusing then. When I looked down, I couldn’t see my feet. When we started to walk, it felt like I was just walking on the stumps of my legs. I started to panic, but you put your arm around me. It was warm and solid, safe. I shut my eyes and tried to think. I couldn’t remember where I left my bag. I couldn’t remember anything.
    People surrounded us. You pushed me into the middle of a crowd of blurred-out faces and color. You must have thought of everything: a ticket, a new passport, our route through, how to get past security. Was it the most carefully planned steal ever, or just luck? It can’t have been easy to have got me through Bangkok airport and onto a different plane without anyone knowing, not even me.
    You kept feeding me chocolates. That rich, dark taste … always in my mouth, clinging to my teeth. Before you, I loved chocolate. Now even the smell makes me sick. I blacked out after the third. I was sitting somewhere, leaning up against you. I was cold, and I needed your body heat. You murmured something to someone else about me.
    “Too much to drink,” you said. “We’re celebrating.”
    Then we were crammed in a toilet stall. There was the shoot of air as the contents of the bowl were sucked away beneath me.
    And we were walking again. Another airport, maybe. More people … the smell of flowers, sweet, tropical, and fresh, as if it had just rained. And it was dark. Nighttime. But not cold. As you dragged me through a parking lot, I started to wake up. I started fighting you. I tried to scream, but you took me behind a truck and pushed a cloth over my mouth. The world went hazy again. I sank back into you. All I remember after that is the numbed-out jolt and sway of being in a car. The engine grumbled on, forever.
    But what I do remember is the waking-up part. And the heat. It clawed at my throat, and tried to stop me breathing. It made me want to black out again. And then there was the pain.

     
    At least you hadn’t tied me to the bed. Victims in films are always tied to the bed. Still, I couldn’t really move. Each time I shifted my body even a little, sick rose in my throat and my head spun. There was a thin sheet over me. I felt like I was in the middle of a fire. I opened my eyes. Everything twisted and turned, beige and blurred. I was in a room. The walls were wood: long planks, bolted at the corners. The light hurt my eyes. I couldn’t see you. I twisted my head around cautiously, looking. I tasted vomit in my mouth. I swallowed it. My throat was thick. Rasping. Useless.
    I closed my eyes again. Tried breathing deeply. I mentally checked down my body. My arms were there, legs, feet. I wriggled my fingers. All working. I felt down over my stomach. I had a T-shirt on; my bra was cutting into my chest. My legs were bare, my jeans gone. I felt the sheet beside me, then rested my hand against the top of my thigh. My skin went hot and sticky almost immediately. My watch wasn’t on my wrist.
    I ran my hand over my underpants and felt through them. I don’t know what I thought I would find, or even what I was expecting. Maybe blood. Torn flesh. Pain. But there was nothing like that. Had you taken my underpants off? Had you put yourself inside? And, if so, why had you bothered to put them back on?
    “I haven’t raped you.”
    I swung my head around. Tried to find you. My eyes still weren’t seeing clearly. You were behind me, I could hear that. I