Tumbleweed
by Nymph Du Pave

A field of golden grain teasing the eyes.  A silver Porsche with a tiny dent in the fender that only the owner would notice.  A black stereo playing Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon.  A puppy Scottie with gray-brown eyes and a scarecrow with none.

This was her favorite place.  And she was so far from it at the same time that she struggled to be there the most.  She needed it more than she’d ever needed anything.

She gritted her teeth and forced herself to concentrate.

In the moment.

In her mind, her world now, the air was hot but there was a slight breeze coming from the South where the old mill was, just around the trees.  The ground was warm and crunchy beneath her feet, the soil in between the grain cool on the pads of her toes.  She had discarded her flip-flops so that the feel of the earth could calm her.

“Oh, yeah.”

Anything for a story.

The grunt following his words broke the already weak hold she had on her reverie.  She wanted to be there right now.  Oh, God, did she ever, but instead she gripped the edge of the chilly porcelain sink and took the pounding.

Anything, Castle.

She could do this, she could take this, she just couldn’t look into the mirror.  It was cracked in at least three dozens places and missing several pieces.  She had looked at herself as soon as she’d reached the public bathroom, only ten miles from Smallville.  Her eyes, all hundred of them, had stared at her, and a cruel, sharp coldness had slipped past her usually well guarded emotional wall.

Now she knew why.  Foreshadowing.

“You like that?  Oh, yeah, you do.  I can tell.”

She tried to block out the voice that was whispering harshly into her brain, but it was like trying to ignore the sound of someone whistling slightly out of key while also trying to concentrate on a story you had to post for deadline in fifteen.  Or maybe the sound of a married couple screaming like they didn’t know they had a kid in the next room that could hear every threat, every slap, every harsh accusation.

Her field.  It was where she had gone whenever she needed to think, to cry, to be alone.  It was her childhood citadel, her teenaged temple.  She’d even had a little chantry in her room for whenever she couldn’t actually get out of the house.  A proxy alter, representing her need to escape.

“oh,shit,shit,shit-”

He was filling her from behind and no condom would protect her from whatever his slime may carry.  At least the pounding had stopped.

The last thing she could do to hold onto any semblance of sanity was to ignore the words coming into her head.  Slut.  Tramp.  Whore.  Accusations that other reporters never had to resort to this sort of tactic.  That other journalists kept the fucking separate from their reporting.  They didn’t use their bodies as a bargaining tool.

She liked to tell herself that other journalists didn’t have the stories that she was on to, that her strategy was the safest and the quickest.

But she knew it was a lie.  She needed to be fucked by men with information to supply some sort of internal void that demanded it.  She could have easily paid them.  She had the money.  But there was something about luring them.  There was a dark tint to the world when she offered her body for information vital to her stories.  Often, she found herself going to sources that she knew would demand a little R&R in trade, and it excited her.  Being forced, being pushed.  Being made to do it.  It took away any feeling of responsibility.  She didn’t actually want to do this, after all.  No, no.  They were making her.  It was the only way that they would cooperate.

It didn’t matter that she couldn’t orgasm unless she was being forced into sex.  Either that or masturbating to the thought of being raped.  No.  The only thing that mattered was her story.

Right.

She felt him stiffen and press himself to her, hard.  Now it wasn’t about releasing.  Now it was about letting her know he was there.  That he was still in control.  Her belly was pressed into the sharp edge of the counter and she bit her lip, refusing to cry out in pain.  The pain, though, as much as she tried to ignore it, brought out the reality.

This time it wasn’t about a story, no matter what she told herself.  She couldn’t look into the mirror because of her eyes.  That wasn’t the problem.  She just didn’t want to see the truth.

She didn’t want to see the knife pressed to her throat.

Karrie hadn’t met a source in some little random bathroom pit-stop near Smallville for a quick fuck and information.  She had stopped here on her way back from her fifth Smallville encounter with Lex Luthor.  She’d had to pee and change her clothes.  Then in walks Mr. Tuff N’ Gruff, the asshole with the wife-beater and sweat stains that look like whole continents.

~”This is the little girl’s bathroom.”~

She’d negated the tag-on ‘asshole’ when she saw the look on his face.  Angry, sick and hungry.  The raw, perverse kind of look that mass rapists seem to have a patent on and she knew then that she was in trouble.  Her cell phone, her pepper spray, the brass knuckles that Lex had given her as a joke just forty-five minutes ago…  They were all in her car.

“Did you like being fucked?”

He had caught her midway through undressing.  She’d had the heels, thong and tiny skirt from her visit to Lex’s, but had taken off the starched shirt just as he’d entered.

He’d come for a piss and gotten a lot more.

“I said ‘Did you like it?’, bitch?”

“Yes,” she whispered, not telling the truth.

He backhanded her and grinned.  “You’re lucky I’m in a good mood.” 

And, with that, he left the building.

She gritted her teeth.  She hadn’t liked it.  She had loved it.  And this bothered her more than anything she could imagine.

That was it.  The truth was now beyond obvious and beyond her ability to ignore.  She liked to be raped, used, abused, forced and ruined.  She’d screamed and yelled with him and for once in her life they were for real.  They weren’t faked, and neither was the orgasm she’d had to bite back from sounding off.  He was here to ruin her.  Had he known he was bringing her pleasure, he might have killed her.

The tears that were falling were from her guilt but they served to convince her rapist that she was scared and hurt.

The only way she could come was if she was raped.  Oh, God.  What did that say about her?

She felt she already knew.  She slipped her tee-shirt on and her skirt off.  She would be leaving it here, along with the heals.  She went back to the stall to clean the mess her rapist had left, put on her sweatpants and sneakers and then climbed into her Sebring convertible.

She sat there in the heat of the late afternoon, amazed at how empty she felt.  How absolutely desolate her soul was now that the ugly man in a nasty tank-top had screwed away the last semblance of humanity she’d been able to convince herself was real.  She should have known the guise would not last.

She slid on her sunglasses and pulled onto the road.  As she drove away, she tried to ignore the symbolism of the deserted road, the storm coming from the northeast, towards Metropolis, and the long expanse of nothing but barren fields.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

FIN
 
 
 

* WARNING: While not rated for description, the above deals with the subject of rape in a disturbing manner.  Please don’t read if this topic bothers you.