First of all, I want to thank you for your warm words, I really didn't expect that :-)

Also, I would like to give a warning here. In this chapter, it's a bit graphic. I didn't go too much into detail, though, but maybe it's already too much for some of you.

Still, I hope you guys find this installation okay.

Once again, thank you.

T73.

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12 years earlier ...

Maura watched through the window as Michael walked slowly to his car, dismissed, head hanging. She gave him a half-hearted wave, and when he waved back, she deliberately drew the curtains. Another message.

Alone, she stood in her living room and looked around. The apartment was silent, lonely, and unbearably hot. The small feeling of triumph evaporated as quickly as it had come. Now Maura almost regretted sending him away.

Who was she kidding, anyway? Of course, she wasn't going to get up at six in the morning to go to the gym. That really was the flimsiest excuse in the world. And since she wasn't going to face the question of what was to become of her and Michael for the next two weeks anyway, what harm would it have done if he stayed over?

You were angry that you didn't get what you wanted on this wonderful anniversary, and therefore he shouldn't get what he wanted either. Great, even her schizophrenic conscience now thought she was being a bitch. But even if Michael had spent the night with her tonight: she would have just had the discussion with her conscience at three o'clock in the morning, in this case, because she was acting like a spineless puppet. No matter what she did, she always got the short end of the stick. The whole thing was just exhausting and depressing, and she hoped an aspirin would at least soothe the throbbing in her head.

Inside her apartment, it was hot as an oven. The windows had been closed all day, and even the furniture still radiated heat. She grabbed the mail stuck in the slot in the apartment door and went to the kitchen.

When she flicked on the kitchen light, the glaring brightness blinded her. Maura sighed when she saw the mess on the dining room table, this morning's breakfast plates, the dishes from the night before, feathers, and budgie seeds. The light blinded Pete, the budgie, too, and he fell off his perch onto the cage floor with a plop.

Maura cleared the plates into the already overflowing sink, squirted green dishwashing liquid over them, and ran water over the mound of dishes. Pete, meanwhile, had puffed himself up gracefully and was squatting on his perch again. He angrily berated Maura and twirled tiny green and white feathers through the cage bars onto the table. Maura gritted her teeth and threw a towel over his cage.

She looked at the kitchen mess again and decided to turn out the light and just call the Merry-Maids emergency room nursing service the next morning. She took two aspirin and washed them down with a swig of Maalox, then finally retired to the air-conditioned oasis of her bedroom.

She tossed the mail on the bed, set the air conditioner to full blast, and searched the dresser for her favorite pink flannel pajamas; she pushed aside the lace-trimmed thin negligés Michael had given her over the past two years. In the bottom drawer, she found what she was looking for: Cotton, oversized, and not a bit sexy. Outside, the branches of the bushes scraped along with the window with a hopeless whimpering sound, and the rain drummed against the pane. The weather forecast had called for heavy thunderstorms tonight. Maura stood at the window for a moment, watching the trees bend in the wind like straws, then lowered the blinds and turned on the TV. An old episode of Brady Bunch was playing.

Maura made herself comfortable on the bed, picked up the mail, and pressed the answering machine button. Bills, bills, ads, the new People magazine, more bills. There was no end to it.

The female computer voice of the answering machine sounded: You have no new messages.

Strange. The number 3 lit up on the display, which meant that three new messages had come in. And before she had left the house, she had deleted all the old messages. She pressed play.

You have three saved messages.

First saved message: today, 7.19 p.m. Her mother's tired voice. "Maura, it's mum. You're probably with your study group right now." Promptly, a guilty conscience turned Maura's stomach. "Call me when you get home. I want to talk to you about our visit next month. Your dad and I think we'd better stay in a hotel, your apartment is just too small. I needed the addresses of a couple of nice hotels in Manhattan. You know, money doesn't matter. Call me."

Great. Of course. She turned her attention back to the mail. Where had she found the time to buy all the stuff she was now getting the bills for?

Advertising for a credit card. Wonderful, she needed it badly, so that more bills would come flying into the house.

Finally, under the mountain of bills, a cream-colored envelope with her father's familiar handwriting. Maura smiled. Since she'd moved to New York from Boston to go to law school, her Dad had been writing her reliably at least once a week, and his dear funny letters were always a welcome respite. Sometimes he wrote by the page, other times just a few lines, but each letter began with the same salutation, "Hi, Beany! How's my big girl doing in the big city?" Beany was the nickname he had given her when she was five, a tender reference to her fondness for jelly beans. Today, at twenty-four, she was still his little girl. She saved the letter for later and flipped through the People magazine.

Second saved message: today, 8:10 p.m. It was Marie. "Thanks for standing us up tonight, Maura. It was really a blast. You missed our hot discussion on the law against inalienability. Certainly a lot more exciting than crappy musicals. Oh, and don't forget we have the federal law test tomorrow, I'll be by your house at 8:30 a.m. Don't oversleep! Well... maybe I should have said eight. Oh well, see you tomorrow."

Damn. She had totally forgotten about the test. Yet another reason to be mad at Michael.

Third saved message: today, 23.32 p.m. A long silence. In the background, Maura heard a rustling, like the muffled sound of paper being torn. Then a male voice whispered in mocking singsong, "Maura. Maura. Where are you, Maura?" Rustling again. For a brief moment, Maura heard heavy breathing, then the caller hung up.

Eerily. She stared at the device.

No more messages. It had to be one of the guys from her study group. They always crammed late into the night. Probably Rob or Jim, just playing a prank on her. They probably thought Maura was already home enjoying herself while the others were working and wanted to get back at her by bugging Maura with a message like this while she was possibly in a compromising position. That had to be it. Maura pressed the button.

Messages deleted.

Then she slipped under the sheet and stuffed a pillow in her back to read her father's letter. She was an only child, and it had been hard for her parents when she left home to study at St. John's Law School in New York City. It was even harder when Maura recently told them she wouldn't be coming back. They both disliked New York and were filled with worry. Maura had grown up in Boston. For her parents, walking a dog on an asphalt road and living fifty stories above the ground was as exotic as living in an igloo. And given the choice, they probably would have chosen the igloo. Her mother called two or three times a week just to make sure Maura hadn't yet been robbed, raped, assaulted, or plundered because she thought the big city was a den of thieves with three million thieves, rapists, burglars, and looters. And Maura's father, of course, wrote his letters.

She tossed the rest of the mail to the study notebooks on the nightstand. Turning the letter over, she frowned.

The envelope had been carefully opened. The letter was missing.

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Maura sat up in bed, a cold shiver running down her spine. Goosebumps crept up her arms, and Marvin came to mind. She stared nervously at the ceiling, as if the walls had eyes, and pulled the sheet tighter around her.

Marvin was the odd neighbor who lived in the apartment just above her. The unemployed misfit had lived here forever, long before Maura had moved in a few years ago, and Maura knew something was wrong with him. Everyone knew it. Every morning, he stood at his living room window, surveying the yard. Sticking out of his open plaid bathrobe was his big, bare, hairy, aging belly and God knows what else. But that mercifully covered the windowsill. Thank heaven for that. Marvin's thick, bulging face was always covered in gray and brown stubble, and over his narrow-set eyes, he wore black plastic glasses. In one hand he held a black coffee mug. What he had in the other, Maura preferred not to know.

The rumor in the laundry room was that Marvin was emotionally disturbed and lived on his elderly mother's welfare. Behind his back, the housemates had christened him Norman and speculated what had happened to his mother, who hadn't been seen in a while. Maura had always thought him strange but harmless. Every now and then she would run into him in the stairwell or in the hallway. He never smiled, just made a grunting noise as he walked past her.

Two months ago, Maura had made the foolish mistake of waving at Marvin from the courtyard during his morning watch at the window. Then that same evening he had waited for her at the door with her mail. He smiled wryly at her, bared his short yellow teeth, and mumbled something about the mailman having mixed up the mailboxes. Then he had shuffled back up the stairs to his living room lookout, from which he guarded his empire.

Since then, the incompetent mailman apparently mixed up the mailboxes at least three times a week, and Marvin had a new hobby, watering the plants in the entry hall, conveniently whenever Maura came home from college. When she walked to her car in the morning, she felt his gaze fixed on her, just as she did in the evening when she met him at the mailboxes. Then his egghead would start to sweat and bob like the wiggle on a dashboard, and Maura would feel his gaze wandering over her body. Lately, she had been using the back exit in the laundry room to enter and leave the house.

Then two weeks ago, the strange calls started, the phone would ring, and as soon as she picked it up, the caller would hang up. Each time she hung up, she heard the ceiling above her creak, Marvin pacing up and down his apartment. Maybe it had been Marvin on the answering machine tonight, maybe he had finally found the courage to say something.

And just last night, she had left the laundry in the dryer for a moment to get a few more coins from her apartment. In the stairwell, she ran into Marvin, who was pretending to water the flowers. Later, when she folded the laundry in her apartment, she noticed that two pairs of panties were missing.

And now someone had opened her mail and taken out the letter. The idea of Marvin fingering her panties and reading her letters while he satisfied his fat body in his bed above her head made her feel sick.

After her exams, she would have to look for a new apartment, not exactly a piece of cake in New York. In any case, she could no longer live in the same house as this Peeping Tom. Until tonight she had thought about moving in with Michael, but now ...

Too many thoughts were racing through her aching head. How long did she have to wait before she was allowed to take another aspirin? She got up and walked through the living room to the apartment door to see if it was locked. Glancing through the peephole, she almost expected to see fat Marvin squatting naked outside her door, a coffee mug in one hand, a potted plant in the other. But no one was standing outside, and it was dark in the hallway.

Maura made sure the door was double-locked, then taped a strip of parcel tape over the mail slot from the inside, lest Marvin's sausage fingers force open a crack through which his greedy gaze would find its way into her apartment. First thing in the morning, she would nail a board over it and request a post office box.

She hurried to get back to the coolness of her bedroom. Once there, she closed the door. Then she searched the ceiling again to make sure Marvin didn't have a new hobby, home improvement, for example. But after she couldn't find any holes in the ceiling or anything else unusual, she zapped through the channels some more until the throbbing in her head subsided. Thunder rumbled outside, and the lights flickered. The thunderstorm sounded violent, maybe there was another power outage tonight. She turned off the TV and the lights, curled up in her bed, and listened to the drops slapping against her window. The rain was still drumming gently, soothingly, but Maura guessed that torrents would be pelting down in a short time. All the better. Maybe a downpour would cool things off a bit, this heatwave had been unbearable.

Physically and mentally exhausted, she finally fell into a deep sleep. She was in the middle of a strange and complicated dream about her exam when she heard the husky, muffled voice above her:

"Hello, Beany. How's my big girl doing in the big city? Shall we have some fun?"

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It had been so easy to climb into her apartment through the living room window with the broken latch. By now it was pouring rain, and he had gotten soaking wet. In the pitch dark room with the curtains drawn, he couldn't see his hand in front of his eyes. No problem: He knew his way around the apartment very well. The kitchen clock two rooms away was ticking loudly. Carefully, he felt his way past the sharp-edged sideboard of wood and glass and the low coffee table on which lay the newspapers of the last three days.

He had been here many times. Had stood in her living room, read her newspapers and magazines, picked up her law books. He had gone through her mail, looked at her bills, and even knew that the sideboard from Pier One Imports had not yet been paid for. He also knew she wore a size 34, had touched her clothes, touched her silk blouses, smelled her laundry that smelled delicately of fabric softener. He'd sneaked a nibble of leftover pizza from the fridge, her favorite toppings: sausage and meatballs with extra cheese. He knew she used Pantene shampoo and that Chanel No. 5 was her favorite perfume. He had stood in front of the mirror in her pale green and yellow bathroom, naked, gleefully slathering himself with her freesia-scented body lotion, imagining how it would feel when it was finally her hands on his cock. For days he hadn't washed off that scent; a heady constant reminder of her. He also knew that her mother's maiden name was Constance Mason and that her father was Arthur Isles who worked at a university. He knew everything there was to know about Maura Dorothea Isles.

Now he stood quietly in her living room, breathing in her scent. He let his fingers slide across the couch, touched her sofa cushions. He picked up the jacket she had worn tonight and thrown it on the couch afterward, felt it, smelled it, through the tiny air holes in his mask. Very slowly, he made his way to her bedroom down the short hall.

Suddenly, Pete fluttered his wings in his cage in the kitchen, creating a hollow echo that reverberated through the silent apartment from the metal bars of the cage. He froze in mid-motion and listened, drops of sweat collecting on his face beneath the mask. His breathing was quick and clenched now, but he had himself under control.

The surprise effect was important. It wouldn't work if it came out now. It wouldn't be in accordance with the plan. The large hand of the cheap gray clock on the kitchen wall audibly ticked off every second, and it remained motionless. After about ten minutes, everything was still quiet in the apartment.

Then he finally stood in front of the bedroom door. He could hardly hold on to himself now, finally, it was here, the big moment. He heard the air conditioner humming in the bedroom, the hum deepening when it switched back. He reached for the round glass doorknob and held it for a moment, feeling the energy of this moment send a jolt of electricity through his veins.

Hark, what's coming in from outside!

Under the mask, the clown smiled, then simply opened the door with a squeak and gingerly entered the room.

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Panic ran through Maura's body. She had had an anxiety dream in which she was five minutes late for the exam and had to beg the proctor to still let her in. For a split second, her eyes wouldn't open while her brain frantically tried to reconcile the whisper she had just heard with the plot of the dream.

Then, a moment later, she felt the slick coolness of rubber on her face and tasted the chalky, bitter taste of latex on her lips. An incredible weight suddenly pressed down on her chest, compressing her lungs and taking her breath away. She tried to scream, but couldn't get a sound out. At that moment, something smooth and soft was pressed into her mouth, deeper and deeper into her throat, until she had to gag. Now she widened her eyes and tried to penetrate the blackness of the room. She ran her hands up to her face, but something grabbed her by the wrists, yanked her arms upward, and tied them to the metal headboard of the bed with a cord. The next moment her legs were held and, spread wide apart, tied to the metal bedposts to the right and left of the foot of her bed.

This can't be happening. It must be a nightmare. Please, dear God, let me wake up! Let me wake up right now!

It had all taken less than a minute, and now she was completely defenseless. Slowly her eyes got used to the darkness, panic-stricken she threw her head from side to side and searched the room for her attacker.

At the foot of the bed, a figure crouched with his head down, just tightening his grip on her left ankle for good. Maura's stomach clenched. The figure's face and head glowed wanly in the glow of her alarm clock. Two tufts of red hair stood out on either side of the head. At that moment the figure looked over at her, and now Maura recognized the wide red grin, the thick nose. It was the face of a clown, a mask. And in his right hand, the clown held a big knife.

Maybe he just wants money. Please, please, take the TV, take the stereo. My purse is on the coffee table in the living room. She wanted to beg him, but the gag made that impossible.

With gloved fingers, he stroked the serrated blade of his knife as he came around the foot of the bed. Eyes fixed on her, he watched her from the empty black holes of the mask. She felt his gaze, heard his breathing, smelled his sweat. Panicked, Maura tugged with her arms and legs at the shackles on her feet and wrists, but she couldn't get free. The cord dug in deeper and her fingertips went numb. She tried to spit out the gag and scream, but she couldn't move her tongue. Her body writhed helplessly on the bed as he crept closer and closer. At the right post of the side of the foot, he stopped.

With his finger he touched the tip of her toe and then slowly, very slowly, he slid it up her calf, over her knee, and up her thigh until it reached the hem of her pajama top. Maura squirmed under the touch. Yet she couldn't avoid him. She heard her own heart hammering wildly against her rib cage.

The air conditioner shut down and hummed lower. Outside, heavy raindrops now drummed against the window. The thunderstorm had arrived. The crack of thunder rent the air, lightning flashed, and in the light that filtered through the cracks in the blinds, the figure flickered momentarily. She saw the shaggy red eyebrows, the black outline of his grin. Strands of white-blond hair clung to his bare neck.

Suddenly he turned away from her and put the knife on the nightstand. He opened the drawer and took out two scented candles and a book of matches. She watched as he lit it, the flames giving off soft light and filling the room with the sweet smell of coconut. For minutes he stared at her in silence, his breathing rapid under the tiny hole in the rubber. In the candlelight, his shadow on the wall was huge and distorted.

"Hello, Maura." The rubber face with the gaping smile looked down at her. His words whistled through the narrow hole in the mask. She thought she saw through the peepholes into ice-blue eyes.

"I've missed you, Maura. I was beginning to think you weren't coming at all tonight." He turned, picked up the knife from the nightstand, and turned back to her. "What, did you skip your practice session just to spend the evening with your boyfriend? Bad girl, uh, uh, uh." He chuckled hoarsely.

Maura's skin grew cold and damp. He knew her name. He knew she worked out. Did he work at the gym? She tried desperately to place his voice somewhere. It was low and muffled by the rubber mask. Did she hear the hint of a lisp in there, and maybe an accent he was trying to hide? A British accent?

He bent down and knelt beside her. The rubber face was now level with her ear. He brushed a strand of hair from her cheek. She could smell the latex and a hint of Quorum, the cologne she had once given Michael for Christmas. His breath smelled like cold coffee.

"You should have let him spend the night, don't you think?" Clown whispered directly into her ear. Another flash lit up the bedroom, and she saw the knife flash, suddenly hovering over her, just inches above her belly. Her eyes widened.

He laughed and stood up. He ran a finger over her body, her arm, her shoulder, her breast covered by her pajamas. And hovering above his finger, just a few inches above, all the while, was the knife. "A pretty girl like my Maura shouldn't be left alone." Suddenly he lowered the blade and, in one swift motion, cut off the bottom button of her pajama top.

"Because you never know what can happen to a girl in the big city." The knife decapitated the next button. Almost simultaneously with the flash, a crashing thunder shook the air. Somewhere, a car alarm went off. "But don't worry, Beany. I'll take good care of my big girl. Oh, how I'll spoil you!" Another button fell off.

She shivered. For heaven's sake, how did he know her nickname?

He sniffed exaggeratedly through the holes in his mask. "Mmmmh, Chanel No. 5, wonderful. I hope you're wearing it just for me. Because it's not just your favorite perfume."

Oh God, he even knew her favorite perfume.

"What else do you have for me tonight?" The last button was cut off and slid sideways across her chest before falling to the floor. With a soft sound, it came to rest on the carpet. Now the clown used the tip of the knife to open the pajama top. Slowly, deliberately, the blade first pushed away one side, which slid sideways onto the bed. Then the knife moved across her bare stomach and belly button to the other side, exposing her breasts. He stared at her. His breathing became more violent.

He ran the knife slowly over both breasts, the fear-stiffened nipples, then up her neck. Maura felt the cold, sharp tip pressing deep into her soft skin without cutting into it. He stopped at the heart pendant resting on her throat and hesitated. Then he slid the blade under the chain and yanked it up. The pendant slid across her neck onto the pillows. He waited. Maura felt his piercing eyes as they traveled over her body.

Oh God, oh God, please don't do it.

The knife rattled furiously down her leg, shredding what was left of her favorite pajamas. Her bare legs kicked, tearing at the cord around her ankles. He stroked the knife upward over her bare skin, from her toes up to her calf, her ankle, the inside of her thigh. The blade pressed harder and deeper, but it didn't yet break the skin. Then he slid it under the laces of her thong and cut them. Now Maura lay there completely naked.

"'You're so yummy, so right to bite,' he chuckled.

Oh God, no, no, no. This must be a nightmare. Please make this be a nightmare. She heard her father's voice. Take care of yourself, Maura. New York is a huge city with a lot of different people, and by no means not all of them mean do well for you.

Maura struggled with the gag in her mouth. She felt like her heart was going to explode in her chest.

Her arms tore desperately at the cord, she noticed how she scraped her wrists.

He watched as she reared up on the bed in front of him. Then he put the knife on the nightstand and took off his black T-shirt. He was tanned and his chest was smooth and muscular, his stomach tight and hard. He unzipped his jeans, carefully stepped out of first one leg, then the other, and laid the pants neatly folded over the back of a chair. On the back of his left hand, just above the wrist, Maura spotted an ugly swollen S-shaped scar that, for some reason, reminded her of the "dangerous curves" warning sign.

"You're lucky, Maura, that you didn't get home too late," he said. "Now we still have plenty of time for each other." The last thing he did was slip out of his underwear, and she saw his erection.

Details. Remember details, Maura. Remember his voice. Notice his clothes. Scars, license plates, tattoos. Anything. Anything at all.

"Oh, I almost forgot. I have a whole bag of toys here for you! I know some fun games we can play together." He reached for a black nylon bag lying on the floor and opened it. Then he took out what looked like a bent coat hanger, a black glass bottle, and duct tape. He looked around the room. "I just need another electrical outlet."

Inwardly she cried out, her body writhing on the bed.

"Look, dear Maura, take good care, I brought you something," he whispered hoarsely, chuckling. And then the clown got on top of her and raped her until dawn.

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He whistled to himself as he rinsed the blood from the knife over the white clean sink. On the edge of the sink was a lime green porcelain cup with two toothbrushes, his and hers, on the other side her freesia body lotion. The water flowed red from the blade into the drain. As if mesmerized, he watched the swirl in the white basin slowly turn bright red, then pink, and finally clear.

He felt strong. The night had gone well, and they had both had a pretty good time. Even she had had to admit that. Well, there had been the moment when he had taken her pink silk panties from her big red round mouth, and instead of being grateful, the slut had howled and whined and begged him to stop. That had pissed him off. Very much so. But as soon as the knife was out to play again, she had given peace, even dutifully begging him for more. When she started whimpering again after a while, he had had enough and simply stuffed the panties back into her mouth.

He dried the knife with the pretty mint green guest towel and carefully put it back in the bag with the other freshly cleaned toys. He had slid the mask off his face and was now washing his gloved hands, then splashed cold water on his face and neck and dried himself with the towel. What he saw in the mirror pleased him, his firm, hard body. Then he brushed his teeth with her toothbrush and then carefully checked that they were really clean. Finally, he pulled the mask back over his face and went back into the quiet bedroom.

How peacefully she lay there on the blood-soaked sheets. With her eyes closed, she looked like an angel. He hummed to himself as he slipped into his jeans and T-shirt, stepped into his work boots, and tied them with a double knot. She still had the panties in her mouth, but now she made no sound, not even a whimper. Strangely, he almost missed it now.

He blew out the candles that had burned far down. Then he leaned over her, kissed her cheek through the slit in the rubber, and let his tongue glide over her soft, salty skin one last time.

"Bye-bye, Beany, my love. My beautiful Maura. What a night!"

On the sheet beside her lay the torn necklace with the heart pendant. He picked it up and put it in his pants pocket.

As a memento of our time together.

He blew her another kiss and quietly pulled the bedroom door closed behind him. Then he retrieved the nylon bag from the bathroom and walked one last time down the small hallway, past the kitchen to the living room. On the sideboard, he saw the small jade figurine of the three wise monkeys covering their eyes, ears, and mouths: hearing nothing, seeing nothing, speaking nothing. A souvenir from their parents' trip to Asia, he knew. It was said that the monkeys brought protection and luck to any home where they were welcome. Not always, the clown thought and smiled. Next to it was a photo of Maura and her Jerk boyfriend in front of the Empire State Building. He let his finger slide over the picture; in his mind, he was preserving his own snapshot of that special night.

Quietly, he slid open the living room window and jumped down into the bushes. The evergreens were still dripping with wetness, although the torrential thunderstorm had long since moved on. Quietly and unnoticed, the clown disappeared into the twilight, just as orange streaks began to slash the sky and day broke over the still deserted streets of New York City.