WARNING: This chapter is rated M for violence, rape, and other nastiness.

Chapter Seven: The Lay of the Land

TeddyFebruary 26

I still cannot believe what I did. I had resolved that I was going to be as civilized as possible when I went to knock on Stacey's new door. I had gone over it a thousand times as I drove to her house. Every single time it had gone just as I wanted it to go. Whoever answered the door would be hesitant at first, until I told them how much I adored my ex-lover and would then allow me inside to meet with her.

All of my daydreaming and planning went belly up the moment Stacey's friend opened the door. I didn't even get the chance to explain myself because she was so busy trying to shoot me down and too busy trying to kick me out of the house.

I somehow managed to keep myself under control until she launched herself at me. The tiny girl flew at me with rage and fierce protection, qualities that I normally would've found very attractive had I not been the one she was trying to beat down.

The moment she went after me, that frayed and crumbling wall between right and wrong burst apart with a spectacular boom. I had struggled to keep in control, but I wasn't strong enough to stop it.

It was like I was watching a movie. I sank back down into my own brain as someone else emerged from the other side of that wall. I wanted to call out, to shake myself free of what I knew was coming, but it was pointless. Nothing I could ever do would deter what was behind that wall.

The poor girl, Mary Anne, became his punching bag and even though I screamed as loud as I could to make him stop, he just kept one punching and striking out at her. He didn't even stop when she started to cry.

The worst part was the rape. I didn't black out this time, during the rape. In fact, I found myself staring down at her while she tried to struggle away, sobs catching roughly in her throat and sheer terror in her eyes. I wanted so badly to look away, but I couldn't. It wasn't until I felt myself floating once more to the foreground that I could look away from the mess he had made. Sure, I had gotten into trouble for being violent, but never like this.

Perhaps a visit to a shrink was in order?

SEVEN

The motel room that I was staying in was hot, of all things. It was a late February night and I had stripped down to my boxers and a t-shirt. I considered opening the window, but didn't want to chance having snow blow onto my bed, which I had pushed up against the wall with the window, to make some more space in the room. I had only been staying there for a couple days so far, but I planned on staying for a while longer.

Sheer luck got me away from the Stoneybrook PD in time. They couldn't have been more than a couple of minutes behind me, but somehow I managed to make it to the hotel I was staying, clean out my suite, and drive the forty miles outside of Stoneybrook to this dumpy little motel. On the way, I made the decision that nobody would see me without my disguise on from here on out. I just couldn't risk it.

I sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled out a picture of Stacey that my private detective, Jackson, had taken for me. It was before the rape and she was smiling with her friend, Mary Anne, and looking so adorable, all bundled up in her hat and mittens. I studied her face for a long time before sighing and setting the picture down on the bed beside me. I flopped down backwards onto the bed beside it.

The heat in the room and the late hour where easily putting me to sleep. A yawn escaped from my mouth and I closed my eyes in defeat. I'd think more about what the hell I was going to do now tomorrow, when I wasn't about to pass out.

SEVEN

"Help me! Please, Teddy, come help me!"

Her screams were ringing through my ears and piercing into my brain. I knew all at once whose voice I was hearing, but I didn't know why she was screaming. I had never heard my sister scream like that before in my life. She had never had a single reason to scream like that, not even a bad nightmare. She was a good enough kid and had led a fairly charmed life.

"Teddy!"

It was louder this time and I cried out in pain, too, as the sound pierced my ears once again. Shocked at the pain, I covered my ears with my hands and began to run towards where I could hear her sobbing and begging. It didn't take very long before I found myself in front of my baby sister.

She was sitting in a chair, her hands and feet bound to it. There was even a thick rope around her waist, holding her trapped. She began to scream my name again as she saw me and I reached out to her.

"Jenny!" I dropped to my knees before her and started to fumble with the thick bundles of knots. "What happened? Why are you here?"

"Funny you should ask that." I looked up. His face was familiar, but I couldn't quite place it. "I would've asked the exact same thing had you still been in my house when I got there."

"What the hell are you talking about?" I snapped. "Get her out of this thing."

He shook his head. "Sorry, Teddy, old boy. No can do. You see, there's this little thing called retribution."

"What?" I could feel the blood rush from my face. Every part of me was screaming out that I should free my baby sister as fast as humanly possible. It made my fingers feel fat and stubbornly slow.

"You hurt the woman I love more than anything else." A knife was suddenly in his hands. How it got there, I couldn't say. "Now, I would do that same to you, but your love happens to be a friend of mine, so I'm going to have to settle for your baby sister."

"Teddy!" Jennifer screamed. "Get me out of here!"

"Who are you?" I demanded. My teeth were chattering. He played with the knife for a minute before answering.

"Logan. You raped the woman I love. Remember, Teddy?" An image seemed to flash before my eyes. A broken brunette, lying in her own blood. "Remember her? Her name is Mary Anne, you son of a bitch."

"Teddy?" Jennifer whimpered. "Please… let's go now."

"Oh, shut up already," Logan groaned and the knife slid down my sister's cheek, leaving a bleeding red line. She began to scream again and I jumped to my feet.

"You bastard!" I yelled and ran at him. Only, I got two steps and something grabbed hold of me and held me firmly in place. Looking down and around, I saw that nothing was holding me. I struggled a bit, but couldn't break free. Jenny continued to scream.

"Did you like listening to my girl scream, too?" Logan asked. Jenny snapped her mouth shut, her chin trembling. "Did you get off on that?"

"Shut up!" Logan held the knife to the Jennifer's skin again and I shook my head. "Please, no! Please, don't touch her. Take me, all right?"

"Sorry it have to say it again: no. Can. Do."

This time, he bent over and plunged the blade into Jennifer's thigh. The screams were unbearable and I felt myself vomit.

"Oh, God," I begged. "Please, please let her go."

"Oh, sorry, Teddy. We're just getting started."

SEVEN

The next morning I awoke to find the bed sheets drenched with my own sweat and the pillowcases soaked in my own tears. Each nightmare had rolled into the next and there was no sleeping pill in my arsenal to stop them. Eventually, I gave up and tried to get as much sleep as I could, which was painfully little, given the content of my nightmares.

SEVEN

I slid a cracked red leather jacket onto my back and studied my reflection in the mirror. I looked like an idiot, my hair brushed down over my forehead and a battered baseball hat tucked down on top of my hair. I had traded in my tailored pants for a paint-splattered pair of denim jeans.

I woke up early and went to the local thrift shop and it was obvious. Still, I had stacked up a decent amount of clothing that looked like what the locals were wearing and which were an affront to the custom-made clothing that I had tucked into my suitcase and shoved under the bed. I was careful to hang a "Do Not Disturb" sign on the door before leaving, but I doubted that any maid would be coming; judging by the state the room was in when I first went in.

As I slid into my new, used car, I made sure to press on the fake mustache that did look real, but felt weird and strange over my upper lip. Lip ferrets weren't entirely cool.

By nine in the morning, I was parked across the street of the bakery that Stacey went to every morning on her early morning jogging route. I had watched her jog down the street, her breasts bouncing with each time she put a foot down. Wearing that little pink jogging suit with her hair tucked up into a white beret and her battered running shoes tied up with matching pink laces, I had to restrain myself from darting out to run to her and kiss her. A few stray locks of her newly dyed auburn hair were driving me crazy with desire.

Like usual, as she came out of the bakery, she was munching on her blueberry-pomegranate muffin and I was slouched down, pretending to read a paper as she walked up the street to the police station. The view from behind was just as good, I had to admit, watching her with a certain kind of appreciation that a man has with a prized horse or something that belonged to him that was light years above what ever other man had.

I set my paper down on the passenger seat as she went into the building. No sense in staring at a police station. It made people nervous; hell, it made me nervous. So, I switched off the radio and drove out of the parking lot and made the commute out to where my ex-lover was now living. I knew that she had to come back here sooner rather than later and the disappearance of the police tape, indicating the house was a crime scene, was encouraging. I could watch the house from a distance- I had parked my car several miles down the road in a tourist trap parking lot and had walked all the way to their house.

I had been a star athlete in high school and prison had made me lean, sharp, and fast. Today I chose to use my gifts to climb high into an old oak tree, settling down on a particularly fat branch and pulling my binoculars out of the fanny pack I was wearing. Yes, I was wearing a fanny pack to blend in with the local hicks of Stoneybrook. God, I could not wait until I could scoop Stacey in my arms and hurry her onto my father's private plan, which I knew how to fly. I'd get out to Prague and we'd stay there until Stacey was good and ready to be my wife in every sense of the word.

In any case, I had noticed that Stacey was spending most of her days to close to home. They had installed a security system since I was last at the door. Stacey, for the past couple of days, set her things down in the doorway, reprogrammed the security system before going in and closing the door. The ever so slight shift of the door suggested that she also had a new deadbolt to throw and keep everyone, especially me, away. I wanted to assure her that I would never hurt her and that I had made the stupid mistake of ever hurting her before. I wanted to tell her that prison had changed her in my mind; she was no longer just a girl I liked, but a princess, an empress that I was deeply in love with.

I snapped to alertness and out of my daydreams as Stacey's red Camry came down the door and tumbled onto her unpaved driveway. She turned the car off, but stayed inside for a little while. I tried to make out what she was doing, but with her back turned and the car blocking most of her body anyways, I gave up.

Finally, she climbed out of her car with an armful of grocery bags. I was surprised that she didn't have a little bag from one of the boutiques tucked in with her groceries. She seemed to be constantly buying clothing and I loved that sophisticated, never-settle-for-less attitude of hers. God, what I wouldn't give to shove a handful of large bills into her hands and "command" her to go out and spend the money on shoes and clothing.

Suddenly, it dawned on me that the way Stacey stuck to her home would make it very hard to approach her. That cop that lived in the house probably had his friends checking on the house and anyone in it every so often, just to make sure everything was peachy-keen. I'd have to learn their schedules, too, as well the three people living in the house, Stacey included.

I decided to daydream until she came home…

SEVEN

"No, Teddy!" Anastasia gasped, clinging onto my arm and trying to pull me back. "I am not getting a Ferris Wheel that just appears out of nowhere at a carnival."

I laughed and brushed a strand of her golden-honey colored hair. Her big blue eyes were pleading with me.

"Honey, listen. Nobody has ever been hurt at the carnival."

Anastasia shook her head and began to walk away from me and the ride. "No way. Period, end of sentence. Of course, you're more than welcome to try it yourself, big guy."

I grabbed onto her hand and spun her back into my arms before she knew what was happening. Judging by the smile that lit her face, she was pleased about that little move, as were the kids applauding and laughing at what I had just done. She shook her hair out and away from her eyes.

"Ballroom dancing moves? You must really want me to die up there, huh?"

I hugged her. "It'll be fine. I'll be there to protect you."

*

"Honey, what should I wear tonight?"

I was in the middle of tugging the blackest of my blackest socks onto my feet. I glanced over at my wife, who was holding up a floor length rose colored dress and a mid-calf high silver dress with what looked like it had diamond sprinkles on it. She was holding the silver dress slightly higher than the red. I smiled at her.

"The rose one," I told her and she laughed.

"Silver it is then!"

I watched her carefully as she changed into the gown, spun for me to see all aspects before she gracefully went to the mirror to add accessories and comb her carefully rolled curls back into their proper places. She opened her jewelry box and immediately selected the blue, heart-shaped diamond with tiny, clear and sparkling diamonds surrounding the heart diamond. The chain was platinum and had been a gift from my grandmother given just before she passed away.

Still, for all its glory, it looked shabby next to my wife's beautiful face, stunning blue eyes, touchable hair, and her fantastically in-shape body. She just looked so good…

"Stop staring at me, baby," she told me as she slipped the matching earrings on. "You're making me feel like a giant crab cake."

My favorite, she knew. Everything about her was perfect and attuned to me. Our first child, Jane, was probably neglected for all the love that Anastasia showered on me daily. I didn't see how she had time for Jane or the new baby, so I was at least happy that we had a maid and nanny to oversee the little ones.

"How I can I not stare? You're outdoing yourself in gorgeousness."

She smiled at me, that loving, understanding, beautiful smile of innocent contentment. She stood and came over to where I was and wrapped her arms around my waist.

"Teddy, I love you."

SEVEN

I sipped on my beer, feeling sullen and annoyed. Absolutely nothing was going as planned. I couldn't connect the dots together right so that Stacey would come rushing back into my life. I suppose I had only myself to blame for that. After all, I was the one who made it impossible for her to love me from the first day that I struck her in anger.

The bar I was sitting in wasn't much, but it was relatively safe, being more than a few miles outside of town. It was near the highway, giving drivers an excuse to turn in for the night and have a few beers to relax.

My beard was growing in, seeing how shaving had become a luxury for a fugitive of the law. I rubbed my hand on the stubble and sighed. I always hated having my beard grow in. I did it sometimes while I was in college, but I hate the way it itched and prickled on my skin as it grew.

"Hey, are you from around here?" a sweet feminine voice asked. I almost choked on my beer, thinking hopefully that it was my Stacey, but instead a different girl was staring back at my when I turned around. She smiled. "Do you talk?"

I nodded and she giggled. She had a certain childlike charm about her that reminded me of my sister, except in the sweet and honest Stoneybrook way. She had some kind of fruity drink in her hands and puckered her lips around the straw to take a deep drag of whatever was in the glass. I grinned back at her.

"Sure, I talk," I told her. "It just depends on if the conversation is interesting enough."

"Well," she said, tossing back a mound of curly, dark auburn hair. "We don't have to talk, if you don't want to." She raised an eyebrow suggestively.

I held up my beer and clinked gently against her glass. "That would probably a lot more interesting, come to think of it."

She nodded and her eyes that were such a dark green that they reminded me of a dark pine forest. It wasn't a sexy metaphor that I would've liked to come up with, but that was the best I could with four beers in my stomach and nothing else.

"What your name, sweetheart?" I asked, leaning in close to her ear. She shivered with the small gusts of my breath escaping with every word. "I promise I won't tell anyone else."

"Margo," she said. "I'm thinking about changing it once I hit the big time."

"Yeah? What is it you do?"

"Local modeling, but I hope to be able to cross over into bigger jobs until I become well known enough to start acting in movies," she said, blushing. "I tend to set really high goals to meet."

I looked her over. "Not with that body, you don't. Just think. I could say I knew you before you went big."

"Let's stop talking," she said, pulling away from me. "I think we both know what we need and all that's left to say is: your place or mine?"

I nodded. "Cheap motel sound all right?"

Margo laughed, her eyes twinkling. "I can settle."

SEVEN

I decided to rent a hotel room on the opposite side of Stoneybrook than the one I was living in. I wanted to keep that place a secret from Stoneybrook. The last thing I needed was to have someone be able to tell where it was I was staying. Everything would be over before I had the chance to move out and find somewhere else secluded and virtually unknown.

The room that I rented was much nicer and much sexier than the bare walls with cracked cement or the musky smelling sheets where I normally slept. This hotel actually had decent housekeeping and the king sized bed was beautifully made up with extra blankets stacked onto the end.

Of course, I didn't notice much more than that, seeing as how I was busy French kissing this young, tall, gorgeous girl. I had my tongue in her mouth and my hand fumbling with the buttons of her blouse. She pushed my hands away roughly and began to undo them herself. I decided to play it rough like she was and grabbed her ass hard and hoisted her up around my waist, slamming her back against the wall. She let out a muffled gasp, but it seemed to make her even more interested in what we came here to do.

"Yes," she breathed and I smiled. I still got it.

I moved her away from the wall, holding her up around my waist by clamping down on her thighs. I dropped her down onto the bed and we each spent a moment or two undressing ourselves. This little girl didn't need any prompting- it was clear that she knew precisely what she was doing. She laughed as she kicked her panties and bra off the bed.

I grabbed onto her hips and dragged her down to the edge of the bed. She locked her legs around me, welcoming invitation. I slammed into her body with one quick, sharp motion. She let out a cry of pain and started to sit up. I wrapped one hand around her throat and pushed her down. Margo, if that was her real name, started to claw at the arm that was holding her down, so I set a tempo that was even a little rough for me. Margo began to sob and, once more, I felt myself drifting away.

"Please!" she cried out. "Let go of me! Please!"

"Shut up," I heard myself growl. "Just lay there like a good little whore."

Margo turned her face from me and closed her eyes tightly. She didn't say anything else the remainder of the time, only cried out in pain, whimpering weakly towards the end.

When I finished, I pulled out of her sharply and something inside me relished in her final gasp of pain. I stood there for a moment and began to get dressed. I ignored the girl's whimpering as she scooted to the other side of the bed, away from me, leaving a trail of wet, fresh blood behind her. She grabbed a pillow and held it up in front of her, sobbing weakly.

"Sorry, Margo," I told her. I wasn't sorry, though. It just felt like it needed to be said. "Remember now, this is why you don't have sex with strangers."

She burst into louder, more hysterical sobs at that and I decided that it was time to get my ass out of there. I shrugged into my coat, waved at her, and slipped out of the room as fast and as quietly as I could. I just needed to get into her car, use the key that I had dropped in my pocket while she was in the bathroom, dump the car, and then walk to the bar to pick up my own car and drive it out to my rat's hole of a motel room.


AUTHOR'S NOTE: I am terribly sorry for the long wait, but I thank God that my writer's block has been broken... or whatever the term for it going away is. Anyways, I just want to tell all of my readers that I love them so much for sticking with this sorry and hoping that I would actually update it again. I sincerely hope that you all like it and don't be shy about leaving some reviews for this new chapter, good or bad.