And it was from True’s instruction, given in his very clear and forceful voice, that nothing seen or spoken about in that room at the Days Inn should be discussed with anyone outside it.
Silver needle tea in, silver needle tea out.
She got past the handcart without being bitten and she went into the bathroom.
It was small and the white-tiled floor was not the cleanest in the world, but neither were musicians. It was unisex with two stalls and a pair of urinals, one sink and a mirror. The ceiling light, a simple glass bowl, was stark and harshly unflattering, as a glance in the mirror told her. She entered the stall furthermost from the door, closed the stall door and latched it, unzipped her jeans, pulled down her lace-edged panties, sat down on the toilet and went “Ahhhhhh.” She had a sudden fright and looked to make sure there was paper. About half a roll, so she was okay.
As she relieved herself of the silver needle pressure, she worked her hands, moving her fingers back and forth, getting them ready for the guitar.
There was always the guitar. And the wonderful thing was that it always waited for her.
She had to get all this off her mind and focus on the show. That’s what it came down to, no matter what. Focus on one performance at a time. Actually, it was focus on one song at a time. No, down to even smaller increments than that. One bar at a time…one note. That was how you did it, when you were troubled or anxious or scared. One note after another, and then suddenly you were free.
What was really bothering her, apart from Jeremy Pett and Connor Addison and the idea that the spirit line was lit up and the angels were very disturbed with her and her bandmates, frantic even in their disturbance, was that she hoped she could hold her next pee until Berke’s drum solo.
She heard the bathroom door open and close.
She heard the lock on that door turn.
She heard the click of a dirty switch, and the light went dark.
“Hi, I’m in here!” she called out.
No one answered.
“Hello! I’m in here!”
She heard someone walking across the tiles. The squeak of sneakers.
“Please turn the light back on!” Ariel said, and she fumbled to find paper. The roll moved on its cylinder with a metallic squeal.
Music began.
It was a thump…pathump…thump…pathump. Low bass beat, low-fi, scratchy. Maybe from a voice recorder?
Ariel blotted herself, grasped her panties and jeans and stood up. She wriggled her bottoms back on. She was about to ask whoever this was to stop playing around when the gasping, gutteral echo-enhanced male vocal kicked in, backed by a clattery rhythm of tambourine, cabasa, and drumsticks being cracked together.
“When I come ta kill ya,
I’ll come right through ya door.
I’ll bring my best man and my little midget whore.
We’ll cut off ya face, won’t it be groovy,
then we’ll sit down and watch a shemale porn movie.
That’s right…that’s right…that’s right…that’s right.”
“Hey, stop it!” Ariel said. She heard her voice quaver. “Turn the light back on!”
“When I come ta kill ya,
I think I’ll eat ya brain,
then I’ll stand with my bloody teeth out in da rain.
I’ll curse da sky above and da fool who made me,
then I’ll go kill another one, or two, or three.
That’s right…that’s right…that’s right…that’s—”
The music abruptly stopped.
He came right through the door.
It burst open in her face, propelled by a single savage kick. The door hit her and knocked her back over the toilet, she thought her nose had been smashed and her lips split open, and before she could do anything but make a soft bleat of terror he was upon her. She put her arms up for protection, as if from a whirling mass of crows coming at her through the dark. A hand flailed for her and caught her hair. A fist crashed into the side of her head. She saw stars and lightning bolts and tasted blood. Her knees gave way, and she felt something sticky being wrapped around her mouth. Around her head. Catching in her hair. Around and around and around.
She realized it smelled like Band-Aids.
He grabbed her by the neck and threw her, and she skidded out in the dark on the dirty tiles. She was on her stomach, she tried to get her knees under herself and stand up, but her arms were wrenched behind her to their breaking point. She screamed beneath the tape that sealed her mouth. He had her arms, and he was wrapping the tape around her wrists, binding them together.
He was very fast and he was very strong and he had done this before.
He grasped her jeans and yanked them down, scraping her flesh with his fingernails.
Then he started pulling off her panties.
Dazed, bleeding, her mind full of cold shock, she thought someone was going to come save her. Someone was going to put a stop to this. It was ridiculous, is what it was. She had a show to do. One note after another, and then suddenly you were free.
She felt his hard penis, pressing against her vagina from behind.
No, she said but her mouth would not repeat it. No.
His grasped her hair with both hands, and he began to push himself in.
No one was going to save her. She realized that, finally and fully. She could lie here and be raped waiting for the rescuer who would not arrive, or she could fight until this man killed her.
Ariel twisted her body away from him. He wrenched back on her hair and kept driving in. She twisted once more, and she heard him say, “You fuckin’ bitch,” and then he hit her again, an open-handed, disdainful slap swung against the right side of her head just above the ear. Hard harmonics buzzed in her brain. Tears were hot in her eyes, they were spilling over down her cheeks, but when he tried to push into her a third time she arched her body backward and flung her head up as hard as she could and the back of her skull hit something—collarbone, shoulder, chin, something—and his weight was suddenly off her.
She pushed forward, feet and knees, across the floor.
“You dirty little fuck,” he said from the dark. “You little shit.”
She heard the squeak of his sneakers, coming after her. She turned over, the weight on her trapped arms causing her to gasp with agony behind the tape, and she kicked out with both feet toward the sound.
Her right shoe hit something solid. A shin? A knee?
“Fuck,” he said quietly, a painful sound. “You’re fuckin’ dead.”
She recognized that voice, only now it was a gutteral growl dripping with snide menace. It was the voice of a thousand horrorcore and death rap songs. She kicked at him again but found nothing. He was coming at her from the side; she thought she could see the smear of his movement. She scrabbled backward and clunked her head against what felt like a metal pipe. She was up under the sink. A shoe grazed her ankle. She kicked at it and missed. She was pulling her leg back when his fingers caught her foot. He jerked her out from her little unsafe haven and dragged her across the floor, and she kicked out with her other foot, swung it wide and hard, missed on the first swing but tried again with the heel, and this time she hit bone and he made a hissing noise but held on tight. His shoe came down into her crotch and started pushing there as he wrenched at her leg, and she thought he was trying to tear away the part of her that interested him and take it home to his aunt’s basement.