They [victims of abuse] believe they are attracted to or feeling love for their abuser, sometimes even thinking they have a special connection to the abuser, as it taps into feelings of intimacy associated with the abuse, that were imprinted at a very early ago. So when they are later abused in an intimate relationship, they perceive the familiar feelings of shame and anger as love and passion.
-Elizabeth Hartney, PhD - from the article The Cycle of Sexual Abuse and Abusive Adult Relationships
.
Chapter Eight
.
{o}-{o}-{o}
.
Suzie was eager to get the final part of her plans over with, but scared too. This was the biggie, this was do or die and all the other cliches that meant she only had one chance. She was trying to be patient, but this wasn't easy. Even worse, one night Daddy Ken asked her if something was wrong.
"What do you mean?" She said, automatically giving him one of her brightest smiles, along with a couple of bats of her lashes.
"You've just seemed a little skittish lately," Daddy Ken said.
She couldn't instantly make up an excuse to explain, so she shrugged. "I'm sorry, I wasn't aware that I was acting any different." A flash of inspiration hit her and she added, "Maybe it's because the weather has been bad lately, and I can't go out and play in the back yard. Maybe we can go somewhere, Daddy? I'll be very good."
Daddy Ken frowned, but he didn't say, "No." Instead he said, "Let me think about it." She wasn't nearly the prisoner some other kids in this situation were, like Timmy for example, but that didn't mean she got out a lot either.
But, when Saturday came around, he told her they could go to the zoo. She didn't really like the zoo very much, she always felt sorry for those poor animals being in cages just so people could gape at them. She could relate to them. Maybe hundreds and thousands of people didn't gape at her, but she still felt like she was in a cage. Still, it was much better than staying home all day as she had been doing, so she tried her best to act like Daddy Ken was just a daddy to her, not her steady rapist and captor. She would have preferred going to the movies, where she could focus on the story, rather than trying to be perfect.
Still, the outing did help, not only to take away some of the nervous energy she was showing to Daddy Ken, but also to tell her that sometimes too much patience wasn't good either. Patience wasn't limitless, and she had to get working on her plan, before the jitters took over and really alerted Daddy Ken and Uncle Sean that something was up.
As well as waiting for the perfect time, she decided she would try to see if she could create the perfect time as well. Could she distract Daddy Ken? And if so, how?
She was thinking about it one afternoon, when she was dusting. Most kids didn't like to do household chores, but Suzie never minded. It was better than doing nothing, waiting to be "needed." Daddy Ken liked a clean house, which helped too. He would be kinder to her if she did housework.
She was using an old fashioned feather duster and while using it, it brushed against her arm, making the hairs on her arms raise, as if in alarm, but it didn't feel like alarm, it actually felt kind of nice. She did it a few more times on her arm. She didn't like the dust that was falling out on her arm, but the feeling of the feathers dancing along her skin was nice.
That night she asked Daddy Ken for a new feather duster. He didn't question it, he just bought her one. And that same night, when the two of them were 'Playing" she asked him to shut his eyes for a moment.
"Why?" he asked, looking puzzled. He was lying on his back, letting her do all of the work.
"Because I want to try something," she said. "It'll feel good, I promise."
"If it's that important," he said.
Knowing he would only keep his eyes closed for a few seconds, she opened the drawer of her nightstand and pulled out the feather duster. "Keep them closed, Daddy!" she insisted. Then, she used the feather duster on him, trying to keep her hand light, so just the tips of the soft feathers were stroking him. "How does this feel, Daddy?"
He groaned and opened his eyes. "Suzie, you're using the duster on me?"
She paused and giggled. You should be lucky it's not a razor blade. "It's the new one, I haven't used it to dust," she said. "Do you like it, Daddy? Does it feel good?" She resumed using it, noting he was responding more eagerly than normal.
"What do you think?" he asked, the words distorted by a groan, but Suzie got the point.
She giggled again, doing her best to look like this was just good old fashioned "fun" as defined by Daddy Ken. "I like this game," she said. " Can we play this game again?"
"As long as you make sure to finish Daddy off when you're done," Daddy Ken said, gasping.
"Of course I will!" Suzie bent over him, to do what he wanted with her mouth. Chomp, Chomp, bite, bite, gonna make you bleed tonight.
There were no opposite days in her own inner dialog. Every sentence she said in her mind was the truth.
.
After that, she found herself looking all over the house for any interesting textures to use in their "play." A cotton ball, a small, but very furry stuffed animal she had been given as some meaningless gift. A vibrating toothbrush, the bristles too worn for its intended purpose, but the one shot battery still hummed along, textured rubber gloves, normally for washing dishes. She discovered that baby oil made some of these things work even better.
She knew she was really onto something when Daddy Ken went out one day and came back with a whole bunch of different things to try. Longer feathers, small fuzzy pom-poms, a hairbrush with those round beads on the end, a bag full of interesting textures. When she opened the bag, she squealed as if someone had given her the cutest pony in the world. "Oh, Daddy, these are going to be so much fun! Thank you!"
Suzie wasn't sure if this fell under the category of tickle fetish, she'd done a couple of movies featuring that particular thing, one when her partner wanted to be tickled, one where her partner wanted to tickle her. But it was close. A texture fetish? she pondered. She would touch Daddy Ken and Uncle Sean with various objects. Most of the time she would just touch them, and make various remarks like, "Ooh, do you like this? Does this feel good?" trying to sound as if she was getting just as much out of it as they were. But occasionally, she would suggest that they close their eyes and guess what she was using. Some things were easy, like ice cubes. Some were more difficult, like a fuzzy, craft pom-pom vs. a cotton ball. Uncle Sean would rarely shut his eyes to play, but Daddy Ken seemed to enjoy it.
She had her plan, she just needed the right time to execute it. She also realized that she couldn't plan the right time, she didn't have that much power, she had to wait for it to present itself. But she had to recognize when opportunity did come along, and know to act on it.
.
"So, when is Uncle Sean coming over?" Suzie asked one morning about a month after she and Daddy Ken had gone to the zoo. They were sitting at the table eating breakfast, and she was running her toes up and down his bare leg. It was winter and outside it was cold, but Daddy Ken kept the house warm enough so he could walk around in his boxers and she didn't need slippers.
Daddy Ken looked at the clock over the stove. "He's stopping by here right after work, so it will be at least an hour or so." Uncle Sean always tried to get some type of job, at least part time, and lately, he'd been working as a night watchman for some local tech company. "Why do you ask, my precious Baby Girl?"
"No reason," she said, still rubbing her toes up and down his shin, "I just thought we might play some games, the three of us." It had been one of those rare weeks when the three of them hadn't had much time to "play games," so Suzie knew Daddy Ken would be eager and she was right.
"That sounds good, Baby Whore," he said, grinning. "You really need it, don't you?"
"I sure do," Suzie said, beaming over her coffee cup. "It's been way too long." God, are you really that stupid? Do you really think I want this? That I like this? How delusional, you dumb fucker.
"Well, how about we start playing games and when Uncle Sean comes over, he can join us?" Daddy Ken suggested, which Suzie knew he would.
"Oh, that sounds fun!" she said, as if being offered a rare treat, instead of something they had done thousands of times before, hating every time. "Hurry up and finish your coffee, I can't wait to get started."
.
The time off really had made Daddy Ken very eager, because he suggested they start playing right in the kitchen before the dishes were washed. No, Suzie thought. I don't want that. "Daddy Ken, I wanna play the guessing game," she said with just the right pout in her voice. "And all the stuff is in my bedroom." She had managed to make it so the game of "Guess what I'm touching you with" was always played in her room, so the things she used wouldn't end up all over the house.
"I don't know if I can wait," Daddy Ken said, rubbing the front of his boxer shorts and making a low, moaning noise. "Little girl, I want you so badly it hurts."
"I want you too, Daddy," she said, trying desperately to think of how to handle this. "How about we do this... you can take me, right here first. I can wash the dishes and you can pretend you broke into the house and found me, such a naughty little girl, washing dishes." She was taking a risk. Daddy Ken was getting older and sometimes he was only good for one shot, and she needed him for more than that. But she had to take the chance.
So they played the game and it was just like some movies Suzie had done before. Suzie was the good little girl, washing the dirty dishes, Suzie was also a naughty girl wearing nothing but a nightgown. Daddy Ken was the neighborhood pedophile pervert who had broken in and sneaked up behind her. As he snaked his hand under her T-shirt nightgown, his fingers stroking her, she gasped and made some obvious fake protests. "Oh, please Mister," She cried out as he worked on her. "Please don't do this. You're making me feel all warm and tingly and that's wrong!" If only they were real protests and they stopped him.
It was so cliche and so done to death in Suzie's mind, that she was amazed it still had the power to get Daddy Ken so excited. But it did and he went at her, while she gripped onto the sink to hold herself up. You know what would be perfect? she thought, If you were to suffer a heart attack right now and die just before you had a chance to finish up.
That didn't happen, of course. Suzie had figured a long time ago that luck was never going to be on her side and if she was going to get anything in life, she had to depend on herself, not luck. But at least she wasn't having bad luck today, because after Daddy Ken had finished by the sink, he still wanted to play. So, they went upstairs to her room, her running to get there, bringing up a glass of ice cubes trying to look eager as possible.
"I love it when you want it as much as I do," Daddy Ken said, as she jumped on her bed, making sure her nightgown rose above her waist to give Daddy Ken a look, to keep him going.
"And I love that you want me so often," Suzie lied, then laid it on thicker. "I love that I have a Daddy who wants to play games with me, as much as I want to play games with him. Having a regular Dad who didn't wanna play games would be so boring." You are the dumbest person in the world.
"God, we were lucky when we took you," Daddy Ken half said, half groaned.
"And I was so lucky when you took me," Suzie said, and half expected her nose to grow with the lie. That one was hard to even justify with the opposite day approach. "Lay down, Daddy, I wanna play the guessing game and I want to make it extra special."
"Well, I know one thing you're going to use is ice," Daddy Ken said, nodding to the glass she'd put on the nightstand.
"I have lots of things besides ice," Suzie said, and batted her lashes. "Can we try something new? Pretty please?"
"What?"
She had to sell this one the most. "Can I blindfold you?" She opened her nightstand drawer and pulled out a wide, blue satin ribbon. Usually it was used for her hair when she was making a movie, most often when she had to play Alice in Wonderland, or as one movie she made called it, Alice in Wonderlust. But it was a wide ribbon, silky and smooth, and looked non threatening. "I mean, I won't tie up your hands," she said, although she would have loved to have done that. "So, you can take it off if it gets too much. But I thought it would make the game twice as exciting if it was a little harder to see what I was using. I'll do it with you, and you do it with me. Whoever gets the most guesses right, gets to tie up the other and do whatever they want with them." She would love it if the last part was true, that if she won this game, she could tie him up, but she knew he would never go for that. The closest Daddy Ken or Uncle Sean came to being tied up was with more ribbons that were tied so loosely that the slightest tug would undo them.
"That's the game you wanna play?" Daddy Ken looked at the ribbon, a bit doubtfully, but eventually shrugged as if he could see how non threatening it was.
She nodded and with a flash of inspiration added, "I was watching a movie the other day... on the adult channel and someone did this, you know, blindfold someone and touch them with all sorts of things. It got me so hot Daddy. Please let's play it, pretty please?" She batted her lashes. I spend more time batting my lashes than I do blinking.
"All right," he said, no doubt thinking of all the ways this could be fun, especially if he won and got to tie her up. "You want me to be blindfolded first?"
"Yes, Daddy," she said. "Unless you'd rather start with me?"
Daddy Ken was willing to be first, and he tied the ribbon around his eyes. "This works," he said.
"Can you see anything?" she asked. "It won't be any fun if you can see what I'm doing!" Just to test him, she flipped him the bird. He showed no reaction at all.
"All I see is blue when I open my eyes," He said, laying down on the bed. "C'mon Baby Girl, do your worst."
She got the bag of items out of her nightstand and started using them, starting though, with an ice cube from the glass before they melted. "What's this?"
"Easy, it's ice," Daddy Ken said, grinning. "Careful where you put that girl, it's cold."
She was careful not to use it anyplace that might cause him to become less excited. "Yeah, that was easy," she admitted. "Let's try something harder!" She pulled out a feather and gently rubbed it along the length of him.
"A feather," he said.
"Oh wow, you're better than I thought!" Suzie declared, reaching for another item in the bag. "What's this, Daddy?" Do you believe me? Do you really believe I love this?
"The little teddy bear I got you," he said, getting a little breathless, due to where she had put it, in that special spot that turned him on so much.
"Good! What's this one, Daddy?"
"The fuzzy ball with the sparkle threads in it."
"Oh, Daddy, that's a really hard one, but you guessed it. I'm betting I'll be the one tied up today. Now, what's this?" She leaned over him.
"Your tongue."
"Are you sure you can't see through the ribbon?" she asked. She had known the tongue would be a dead give away for him.
"Baby Whore, I know what your tongue feels like."
"I guess that's true. What about this?"
"A cotton ball."
"Very good, Daddy." She took a bottle of baby oil out of her nightstand. "Let's go on to part two." She squirted some oil into her hands and then rubbed them all over Daddy Ken's chest, his groin, and his legs. The baby oil made the game even better with harder objects, but not with soft ones. She drew the vibrating toothbrush from her bag and placed it on him, so the little rubber nubs you were supposed to use to clean your tongue were against his scrotum. "This is a hard one, Daddy," she said, then giggled. "Almost as hard as you are!"
"Toothbrush," he said.
His replies were becoming more like moans and groans rather than words and Suzie knew she didn't have much time left before he would finish and if he finished, he might want to stop playing. She turned the toothbrush on briefly, knowing it was one of his favorite sensations. "Here's your reward for being so good at this!" She took it off of him, but left, it on so a faint humming noise continued. She tossed it into the nightstand drawer, where the hum got louder. Then she quickly grabbed something else from the bag. "What's this?"
"A guitar pick."
"Wow, you are the champion, I think," she said. "But we still have part three."
"Part three?" He asked.
For a horrible moment, she thought he was going to remove the blindfold. So she quickly said, "I found some new things, we haven't tried before. I want to see if you can guess them because that will be much harder."
"Wow, you really put some thought into this," Daddy Ken said, and he was gasping a bit too, the length of him wiggling, which she knew meant she didn't have much time.
"I love this game, I want to make it the most fun," she said, as she leaned over and reached under the bed, to grab the branch, or club as she thought of it now, from under the bed. Her fingers reached for it, but kept coming up empty. Oh shit, I must have pushed it further under than I thought. Frantically, she kept trying to find it under the bed, and grab something new she could use so he would think she really did have items for part three.
"What's taking so long, Baby Girl?" he asked.
Her fingers had just touched on the edge of the club, and she tried to roll it forward, to get a better grip. She knew that she was seconds away from him taking off the blindfold, so she reached into the nightstand drawer. She had a crayon in there, sometimes they did give her crayons and coloring books to use when she was locked away so Daddy Ken and Uncle Sean could go out and leave her alone in the house. She rolled the crayon over his thigh, then held it properly and acted as if she was drawing a line on him. "A crayon," he said.
"I didn't think you'd get that one!" she said. She had one foot down, moving under the bed. She was able to find the club, and then put her foot behind it, getting it to roll forward. Again, she knew she was taking too long, so she looked for something else within arms reach. There was a small plastic vase on her nightstand, with a couple of cheap, silk, daisies in it. she just managed to reach it and pulled one out. Gently, she ran it over him. "What's this?" she teased.
"Well, this is a new one," he said. He was no longer reaching for the blindfold, but thinking. "A ribbon?" he guessed.
"No, Daddy," she said, rolling out the log from under the bed and putting it where she could reach it the fastest. "Try again," She rubbed the silk daisy along his chest and over him again. "It's something on my nightstand."
He was silent, trying to figure it out, and she reached down with her free hand, and curled it around the club, pulling it near. The weight of it, along with the length made it difficult, so she tipped it onto the end and held it up with her palm. "One of your little daisies?" he asked.
"Amazing!" She said, sounding almost shocked with amazement. "I never thought you'd guess that one! Wow, that's... incredible. I have one last thing, Daddy, then it's my turn and I'll bet I won't do nearly as good as you!"
As quickly as she could, she grasped the club with both hands. She put her other foot on the floor, to brace her then raised it above her head, as high as she could. "Here it comes, Daddy!" she said and brought the club down, squarely on his face, as hard as she could.
Blood spurted from his nose, which now was bent at an unnatural angle and she thought she'd done it, but then she saw his hands, going for the now blood stained ribbon. A gurgling noise came from his lips and blood trickled out of his mouth.
No! she thought. No, no no, I am not coming this far to fail. No! She raised the club and brought it down on his face, over and over again, bringing it down with all the force she could, over and over again, listening to the cracking sounds his bones made. She realized she should have tried to get Daddy to lay on the floor or another hard surface, the give in the mattress was causing her problems, but she wasn't going to give up. She kept raising the club, and bringing it down, over and over again, until her arms were tired, and Daddy Ken's head finally seemed to fall apart. At some point, she realized she was screaming with each hit. "Die you kiddiefucker, die! You'll never touch me or some other little girl again! Die and go straight to Hell!" Towards the end, there was no coherent thought behind her words, she was just screaming "Die, die, die!" over and over again.
When her arms finally tired out and she put the bloody club down, she realized that the whole room was spattered with blood and pieces of white and gray stuff, mostly covered in blood too. His brain, she thought. That's his brain. He's dead. He's finally dead and I'll never have to touch him again.
She wished this was all she had to do, but she knew she wasn't done yet. I should have saved some energy, she thought. My arms hurt now. But, I'm not done. Her nightgown was splattered in blood and she knew some of it had even splashed onto her face. She thought about running to the bathroom, then realized she heard something downstairs. Cocking her head, she heard the door open and footsteps coming into the house, and then a voice. "Ken, Suzie, I'm here!"
It was time for part two.
"Uncle Sean!" she screamed, sounding as upset and scared as she could. It wasn't very hard, even though she had killed him, the sight of Daddy Ken, face obliterated was distressing. "Uncle Sean come quickly! There's something wrong with Daddy Ken! Please hurry!"
She heard him racing up the stairs and went and hid behind the door, which was shut but wasn't locked. She heard the knob turning and brought up the club like a baseball bat. Uncle Sean was taller than her, so she knew this was going to be difficult.
He burst into the room and paused when he saw all the blood and saw Daddy Ken, lying on the bed. "Wha-" he began.
She swung the club as hard as she could, right into the center of his back. As she hoped, he pitched forward. What she wasn't expecting, but was a nice bonus, he hit his head on her nightstand, which served to daze him. He fell to the floor, in a face plant.
There was no hesitation, Suzie ran over and started hitting him on the back of his head, shouting the same things about how he'd never touch her again, never touch anyone. The floor being hard was a huge help, and she saw his head began to cave in faster than Daddy Ken's had, even though her arms were tired. She knew that her arms were going to be so sore, but she didn't care. She just drove that club into his head, over and over again, until she and the room were now splattered with the gore from both men.
She knelt on the floor, gasping for air, still holding the club. I did it, she thought. I really did it!
Her first reaction was to run as fast as she could, but then it hit her, there was no need. The house was a distance from other houses. Nobody was going to come over, because neither Ken or Sean could bring them over. She was alone in the house.
A calm overtook her, and she dropped the club to the floor, letting it roll until it was stopped by Sean's body. I never have to think of them as Daddy Ken or Uncle Sean are Ken and Sean and they are dead and I am so glad.
She went over to Sean and pulled his wallet out of his back pocket. He had a drivers license, but she barely looked at it. Instead she opened the cash area and looked. He had a nice assortment of bills. She got up and pulled a clean t-shirt from her dresser, which she used to wipe the gore off of her. She had an extra set of linens in the room, and she grabbed a pillow case. She removed the money from Sean's wallet and threw it in the clean pillow case, along with a pair of jeans and a t-shirt.
Ken's wallet was harder to get, because he was lying on his back. But, she managed to flip him over, her already tired arms protesting further. She emptied all the cash into the pillow sack.
Still feeling that strange sense of calm, she left the bedroom, shutting the door behind her. She went to the bathroom and took a long, hot, shower, washing all the blood and mess from her. Then, she changed into her clean clothes and went to Ken's room. She poked around in his closet until she found a small, plain duffle bag, then returned to her bedroom. Careful to avoid looking at either of the men, careful to avoid getting any blood on her, she took her "normal" clothes out of the drawer. A couple pairs of jeans, a few t-shirts, a couple sweatshirt. She packed them into the duffle bag. then went to the bathroom and grabbed her toothbrush, some toothpaste, her brush and comb.
She put the money in the duffle bag too, counting it. There was over twelve hundred dollars and to her eyes, this looked like a fortune.
She went into the kitchen. She suddenly realized she was hungry and looked in the refrigerator. She hadn't cooked much in her life, Ken or Sean not trusting her with things like knives or heavy pans, but she had watched them cooking. There was a package of ground beef in the refrigerator. She found a fry pan, and started frying it up. She found a can of diced tomatoes in the cupboard and threw that in. She boiled up some noodles and threw the whole thing together in a big mixing bowl, then ate some of it then put the rest in the refrigerator for later.
When she was done with that, she realized she was tired from the day, so she went upstairs and slept in Ken's bed with its superior mattress. When she woke up, it was dark out. She went back to the kitchen and ate some of the ground beef and noodles left, that she had put in the refrigerator. It tasted fine cold, too.
Part of her wanted to grab her duffle bag and go right this second, but something told her she needed to do more. She went through the house, looking for every scrap of paper she could find. Paper bags, bills, magazines, all of it, she tore apart and crumpled, scattering it everywhere in the house she could. She went outside and gathered up small sticks. Looking in the shed, she found a can of lighter fluid probably someone had a bbq grill at one point, and a can of gasoline, no doubt intended for the lawn mower.
There was a bag of dried leaves leaning against the garage, raked by her and Ken, there to put into the trash next week. She took that and scattered those in the house with the paper.
She put her duffle bag in the bushes in the front of the house. Then she went back to the house. She squirted the lighter fluid all over her old room, making sure at least half of it was on the two men, again being careful not to get any filth on her. Then, she made a trail of gasoline going down the stairs. At the base of the stairs she made two trails, one leading to the kitchen, one leading to the front door. You were stupid, Ken, she thought, humming as she worked. You let me watch violent movies, not realizing I learned from them. She turned on the gas in the kitchen, grabbing a box of "Strike anywhere" Diamond matches as she left. Then, she went to the front door and opened it.
The final thing she did to the house was to light a match, using the front stairs to strike it, and put it to the gas on the living room carpet. To her delight, it started burning a trail almost instantly, that raced to the stairs and also raced towards the kitchen.
Then, for the first time since the two men had died, she hurried, running to her duffle bag, picking it up and running down the street as fast as she could, putting as much distance between her and the house as possible. Fortunately, it was all downhill.
She made it all the way to where the neighborhoods of multiple houses were, before she heard the explosion. Even though she was far away, she could hear it, roaring in her ears and swore she could feel the heat. She knew it was likely to attract the attention of someone in one of these houses, so she made sure she was standing in the shadows where she wouldn't be seen. She turned around and saw the house that not only contained Ken and Sean, but also contained all the video equipment, all the computer stuff where the movies she made had been edited, where her earlier stuff had been switched from VCR tapes to digital. All of it burning in a bright, glowing, orange and yellow ball of flame.
The houses were far enough out from the city that there were no street lights. It would be easy to remain hidden. Slinging the duffle bag over her shoulder, she made her way down the streets, grateful that she didn't hear the fire engines until she was sure the house, and thus everything inside of it, was in ashes.