Taken - Part One : Michael Alexander

Amelia

             She fought him, despite being bound.  Her entire body ached and the torments she had endured from the moment he had taken her had been beyond what she thought anyone, any human being, could inflict upon another.  Everything hurt and she had spent the last twenty four hours crammed into the trunk, sobbing, humiliated, hurting.  Her clothes were practically gone, cut from her petite frame in stages.  She could feel the bruises forming and she tried desperately to ignore the other sensations he had forced upon her.

            When the car stopped her heart started racing.  Each stop had brought further degradation and worse torment.  Her breasts throbbed painfully at the tips from the vicious metal clamps he had attached to her and the agony between her legs was nearly as bad.  Only the gentle, non-stop rumbling inside her made it tolerable.  Her tongue pushed against the ball gag that he had strapped around her head.  Unable to move it, she groaned and cried softly.

            The trunk lid popped open.  No light came on.  It had been broken long before.  She expected him to hurt her as he reached in, flinching from his touch.  What would he do to her next?  What horrible thing would touch her skin, pinch her, or tear her?  But instead he lifted her, his height and strength more than any girl could counter.  He dragged her out of the trunk and dropped her to the ground.

            Concrete bit into her knees and she fell over to the side, feeling the cold almost as soon as her legs reported the violent impact of her body against the unforgiving floor.  She blinked, looking around, and saw the walls of an empty warehouse, one the looked as if it hadn’t been used in years.  Rusty girders were barely visible overhead.  A few feet away, a long steel chain dangled downward, a metal hook at the end.

            He dragged her toward the hook, evidently not caring that the rough concrete scraped her legs raw.  Her ankles and wrists were bound, the former behind her back and he pulled her up into a standing position, under the chain, and hooked it through the plastic zip tie that secured her hands.  She had lost feeling in her fingers hours before, but as the clanking of the chain sounded in the semi-darkness, she felt her arms lifted and she was forced to bend over, pain shooting through her shoulders.

            His hands touched her, revulsion shooting through her as she cried out through the gag, only a muffled squeal reaching his ears.  He touched her bare shoulders, then moved his hands down to her full breasts.   He found the clamps and twisted them, sending even more pain through her, enough to rouse her fully and fight him.  She pulled away, not that it did any good, and excruciating agony blasted through her.  He opened the clamps and pulled them away.  The cuts from the sharpened metal teeth bled and not even the ball gag could keep her sobs of pure misery from echoing lightly through the warehouse.  He reached down to her loins, touching the light down of hair between her legs.  Forcing his fingers between her thighs, under the other metal clamp, he finally grabbed hold of the vibrator.  Pulling it out, he turned it off and dropped it on the floor. 

            He spun her around and she fell, held upright only by the chain and ligaments tore in her shoulders.  He didn’t care.  As she struggled to get her feet under herself again, he grabbed her hips from behind her and pulled her upright.  She screamed again as she felt his finger probing at her rear end.  He plucked the plug from her bottom without hesitation, removing the monstrous device without even closing it.  She could feel it tearing her and the burning pain actually made the hurt of her breast diminish.  There was a clatter as he tossed the metal plug downward.

            Then he raped her.   

 

            Anal sex was never something Amelia had thought of, nor been told, and the brutal degradation was more than she could bear.  His manhood speared her bottom and all she felt was agony.  The metal plug had hurt less.  His thrusts were brutal and his cock was lubricated with her blood.  She thrashed and screamed, her movement limited and her cries muted as he held her firmly.  And then when he finished, he pushed her away, once more putting her entire weight on her arms.  Red blossomed in Amelia’s eyes and she passed out.

            When she came too, it was the pain that hit her first.  Everything hurt and she could feel the blood dripping down her thighs.  She was still hanging from the hook as he walked up, a look of cold, impassive need in his face.  He pulled out a knife and she knew that there was nothing left for him to cut from her.  All hope died and she sucked in a breath through the tears and stared at him, knowing that her end had come.

 

 

Pruitt

            Jeff Pruitt sighed and scratched his head where the hat was bothering him.  He was on US Highway 295 outside of Logan running traffic and it had been a slow evening.  Ever since four that afternoon he’d watched the summer sun set off in the west, the dying light spreading across the well cultivated fields, spreading gold across the landscape.  Despite the regular traffic, Pruitt had caught only two speeders that late afternoon and as his cruiser sat on the slope of the hill just south of town, he pulled out the brown paper sack.  Every afternoon his wife made him lunch, her way of saying “I love you”, to her husband, and “be safe.”  He munched on his peanut butter and jelly sandwich quietly and watched the traffic.

            Pruitt had become a police officer four years before and he was a bit of a black sheep.  He remembered the scoffing looks of the senior officers during the interview board when he answered their question about why he wanted to be a police officer. 

            “To help people,” he had answered promptly and quite honestly, though that was only one of the reasons he wanted to become a cop.  One of the lieutenants seated across the table from him actually laughed scornfully. 

            “You realize that’s not what police do, right?” the man had asked.

            Pruitt had blinked.  He had thought, and still did, that helping people was exactly what the police do.  His whole life he had wanted to be a police officer.  When he was a boy he had joined scouts, gotten his Eagle Rank at sixteen, and then moved to a Law Enforcement Explorer post.  To him, becoming a police officer was the merely the next step up in the process.  He had been taught from an early age that a police officer would help him if he was in trouble.  Wasn’t their motto “to protect and serve?”  Unfortunately that desire had turned into something darker and more pressing during his senior year of high school.

            “I don’t understand,” Pruitt had responded, looking at the police lieutenant.

            “We don’t help people, Mr. Pruitt.  We are a negative force in people’s lives.  Most citizens, when they encounter a police officer, are in a off-putting situation.  Chances are we’ve stopped them for speeding.   If they’re calling you to report a crime, chances are they have been victimized and there won’t be that much you can do to help them besides take a report.  Or there has been a traffic accident and you’re giving them a ticket.  We don’t help people,” the police lieutenant had told him.

            Pruitt had looked at the man.  “But I believe catching speeders does help people, sir.  By not speeding, the road is safer, and so we’ve ‘helped’ the other citizens avoid danger.  If I take a report, and that report results in an arrest at a later date, then we’ve still helped that citizen. “

            “This isn’t the Boy Scouts, Mr. Pruitt.  You don’t get a merit badge for crossing the street.”

            Pruitt had nodded. “I’m aware of that, sir.”

            “Or is this about your sister?” the cop had asked.

            Pruitt stiffened and took a deep breath.  He had known that this question would come up. It’s not often the brother of a rape and murder victim chooses to become a law enforcement officer, especially a victim who was as beautiful as Pruitt’s sister, Amelia.  She had been the darling of the press for a full two weeks while the investigation into her abduction had raged on.

            “Sir, I’m not doing this because I want revenge.  If we ever catch the man who kidnapped Amelia I hope that he is tried to the full extent of the law and then spends his entire life in prison.”

            The lieutenant interrupted.  “You don’t want him dead?”

            Pruitt shook his head.  “No.  I know that the death penalty doesn’t deter crime, nor is it justified for the expenditure compared to life in prison.  But for me, making sure this person is locked up, without hope of getting out, of having a cheeseburger, or a decent steak, of spending the rest of their natural life in a cage, suffering that hell before going to meet God and answer for my sister’s death, holds much appeal.  I couldn’t be there for Amelia.  Perhaps as a New Jersey State Police Officer, I can be there for someone else.”

            He suspected that it was that answer that had caused the review board to accept his application into the New Jersey State Police Academy and eventually to wearing the gunmetal blue uniform of a New Jersey State Police Officer.  It had taken twenty five weeks to finish academy, and when he had finally donned that uniform with the gold triangles he had felt as if he were ready.  But police academy was nothing like the real work.  He had been taken under the wing of a seasoned officer and taught that the way things were presented at academy wasn’t the way things worked in real life. 

            He had taken flack a few months after getting out on his own when he had arrested a man for running a stop sign.  Usually, such a violation only resulted in a ticket, but when Pruitt had made contact with the driver, the stench of marijuana filled the car.  A quick check with police dispatch had revealed that the K-9 unit was unavailable.  Sure, Pruitt could have used the scent of marijuana as probable cause for a search, but what if the man had smoked all of it?  No pot, just the smoke.  So Pruitt arrested the guy and then in the process of getting ready to have the man’s car towed, he did a “search subsequent to an arrest.”  Surprise, surprise, he found a gallon bag filled with “a green leafy substance” that turned out to be enough marijuana to keep three hard core junkie in weed for two or three weeks.  But what had the paper reported?  That Officer Pruitt had arrested a man for running a stop sign.  It hadn’t been a good day for the New Jersey State Police when the paper in Trenton had run that story.

            Officer Pruitt had been assigned to US 295, rather than the turnpike, an action that he saw as punishment for being unconventional.  It was a lesser route, one that still needed an officer patrolling, but didn’t have the same amount of traffic as the turnpike just a few miles to his east.  He sat there, eating his sandwich, wishing something would happen.  He had no idea that a hundred miles to his north, something already was.

Penny

            Over a hundred miles away from Jeff Pruitt, just northeast of a small town called West Milford, Penny McPeek was stepping out into the evening darkness.  Her blond hair curled down to her shoulders and her tennis shoes crunched on the rocks of Ms. Vaneck’s driveway. 

“Bye Penny!  See you next week! Work on those arpeggios!”  Mrs. Vaneck called, waving from the porch.  Penny smiled and waved back, her piano music clutched to her chest.  Her mind filled with the evening’s lesson, she started down the road toward her house.  It was only a half mile away and she felt comfortable, even in the gathering darkness.  Technically she lived in West Milford, but her home was near Green Turtle Lake, off of Awosting Road, in what her mother called the “boonies.”  The late summer air was starting to cool and she felt slightly chilled in the blue skirt and white tank top that she was wearing.   Goosebumps appeared on her arms and she quickened her pace.  Summer was winding down and already flocks of starlings were starting to roost in the trees at the side of the road.  She didn’t have far to go.  She and her parents lived only a few houses up the street from Mrs. Vaneck’s place.  She walked up the road, thick green foliage on each side, and stopped when she saw the car.  It was an off-white color and looked relatively old.  Oddly enough, it was stopped in the middle of the road and there was a man standing at the trunk.  As she got closer, he glanced up.  His hands were deep in the trunk.   He jerked back from her as she approached him from behind.

            “Oh!  I’m sorry! You startled me!” the man said softly as she came into view.  He was tall, over six feet, and towered above Penny. Thick glasses rimmed his eyes and he had a narrow face. He smiled warmly.  “I didn’t realize anyone was behind me.”

            Penny nodded.  “That’s okay.  I didn’t mean to scare you,” she replied politely.

            The man smiled and sighed.  “Well, it’s been that sort of day.”

            Penny looked at the car.  She noticed a jack on the ground beside the back left wheel, but the wheel looked fine.   Evidently he had already changed it.  “Is everything alright?  Do you need help?  My parents live just down the road and my dad could give you a hand.”

            The man shook his head.  “No.  At least I don’t need help now.  But do you happen to know where Greenwood Lake is from here? I’m supposed to be meeting a friend this evening for dinner and I got turned around.”

            Penny laughed.  She had heard her mother and father complaining about the lack of signs along the Greenwood Lake Turnpike.  Her head bobbed up and down.  “Sure.  All you need to do is head back north to Awosting and then take a left.  If you continue northwest you’ll get to the lake.”

            The man glanced down the road and then lifted his arm, pointing. “You mean that way?” he said, motioning in a northeasterly direction.   Penny took a step closer and glanced the way he was pointing. 

            “No, not quite that way,” she said.  “The road curves around.  You have to turn left at Awosting you see.”

            He moved fast, faster than she could believe.  His right hand came out of the trunk clutching a foul smelling rag of some sort and he smacked it over her nose and mouth with ease.  She screamed, but all that came out was a muffled cry that could have been a whip-poor-will in the darkness.  She thrashed against him, but his left arm had wrapped around her.  She tried to suck in a breath, but the fumes of the rag caused her to cough.  Suddenly she felt weak, as if her body was going numb.  She tried to kick him and dropped her music books on the asphalt.  She blinked, trying to understand what was happening, why her body wasn’t responding anymore.  Then her vision began to darken and she slumped in the man’s arms.

            Darkness reigned.  He put her in the trunk.

Stay tuned for Part Two