Kindling-The beginning

Josie woke up screaming! Or at least...trying to scream. But her dry lips wouldn't open for some reason. Pathetically, the only sound she was making, "MMmmm!" "MmmM!!" "MMMM!!!", clearly was not going to alert anyone to the immediate danger of her predicament. She could feel her heart pounding in her eardrums and her head was spinning with incoherent thoughts. A strange, noxious chemical odor invaded her sinuses and burned her throat. Her tongue tried to push past the sticky barrier over her lips, but to no avail. She realized with increasing panic that she could not open her eyes either. When she attempted to bring her hands to her face, she felt a burning at her wrists and was unable to breach the space any further. When she moved her legs, the burning on her ankles confirmed her mounting fear. Both her legs and arms were tied to something. SHE was tied up! "Spread-eagle" and naked, on what she assumed to be a bed! It was then too, that she realized there was duct tape covering her eyes and mouth! The stench of whatever that smell was began building up in her lungs from her inability to breathe through her mouth. She felt nauseated. Her twisting and writhing in a futile attempt to free herself gave way to frenzied hysteria when the severity of her situation became all too clear. If she vomited now, she would likely choke to death. Terror gripped her as she tried again to scream. "MMmmM!" "MMmMM!!" "MMMMMMMMM!!!"

She felt a sharp blow to her nose. The metallic taste of blood drained down her throat. She swallowed mouthfuls to try to keep from choking, but she now couldn't breathe at all with her mouth covered and her nose filling with blood. She squirmed and screamed, trying desperately to turn her head far enough to the right or left to wipe her nose on the mattress she laid on. Each second seemed like an eternity, and any moment she might violently suffocate or drown in her own blood. "You NEED to SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!", whispered the male voice she recognized, as that of her boyfriend, Mike. He forcefully grabbed her face in his hand, so that her taped mouth pursed like a 'cupie doll’. She struggled, trying to convey that she was choking on the blood from her broken nose. Quietly, he growled, "Okay bitch. If I take this tape off your mouth and you make ANY sound, I WILL KILL YOU." She quit struggling and went lax underneath him. She wasn't prepared for the pain and shock of him tearing the tape off her face. She instinctually started to cry out in pain and he smothered her mouth with his hand. She mustered up all her self-control and bit her lip to quiet the sound of her own yelp.

"See, was that so hard?" he spat sarcastically in her ear.

Slowly he eased the grip of his hand on her face. She felt him move off the bed and heard a door open. She lay perfectly still and did not make any attempt at trying to call for help, appreciating the momentary respite of breathing through her mouth. He returned with a cold washcloth and proceeded to wash the blood from her nose and face. Although he wasn't gentle, he was thorough. She sighed in relief, but the reprieve was fleeting. She heard what she concluded was him retrieving the duct tape again, and the distinct sound of him tearing off a new piece to replace the discarded mouth gag.

"Oh no!" "Please don't cover my mouth again," she quietly pleaded. Her voice was barely audible. "I won't make any noise, I promise", she rasped.

He stopped pulling at the tape and was apparently considering her request.

"Okay. But the minute you try to make any noise, I will tape it shut. You'll be lucky if I don't tape your nose shut too, and you can just suffocate. Are we clear?" he snarled. She nodded silently in affirmation.

He returned to whatever task he had been up to, prior to her waking up. He sounded like a crazed chimp scurrying around and grunting occasionally. He was busy scraping something on glass. It sounded like nails on a chalkboard. Each time she heard the wretched scraping, her skin would crawl with goosebumps. She lay there motionless and tried to piece together the events prior to her captivity.

She vaguely remembered returning home to her apartment, after another tedious day of classes. She had graduated high school with honors and received a scholarship to attend a local Christian College in the fall. She had always loved school and never found it to be boring. But since entering college, something had ever-so-slightly changed. She wasn't sure if it was her or the curriculum, but now she had to drag herself out of bed and force herself to attend daily. She knew that she was unsettled by the hypocritical theology she felt was being shoved down her throat. However, being the daughter of parents who both worked in law enforcement, she had grown up in an extremely religious household where you learned to accept whatever authority figures said as fact. You were expected to respect your elders and their beliefs without question. Thinking 'outside-the-box' was frowned upon and theoretical "what-if's" were simply disregarded as folly. Things were always black and white. There was no gray area, nor room for mistakes. You could either do what they told you to or suffer the consequences. Herein lay her dilemma.

She HAD gone to the non-secular college that her parents had preferred. She WAS doing what she had been told to do...almost. Conversely, Mike (who was not religious or a 'believer') would most definitely be frowned upon by her parents and therefore considered to be folly. Thus, she was now suffering the consequences of her choices. Internally, her mind screamed and raged vehemently at herself, at God, at her parents. "Is THIS the consequence of a bad choice?" "What happened to the God who loves us no matter how badly we make mistakes as humans?" "Where is your GOD now?" She decided she wanted no part of that God. He was a lie created by weak fallible humans and was used to control the even weaker masses of the population. "Where was the GOD she grew up believing in?" "Where was the God who would never leave us nor forsake us?" She sobbed, silently. Her tears were caught by the sticky tape across her eyes, which gradually turned into a dam that lazily softened its glue.

Her memory seemed to be clearing from the fuzziness. The throbbing in her temples and the excruciating pain at the base of her skull was beginning to subside. She speculated these effects were chemically induced from the toxic gas that still consumed the air she was breathing. The difference now was that she was not forced to breathe solely through her nose. Although her throat was still raw and swallowing was uncomfortable, breathing was no longer taken for granted. She relished the extra oxygen and was grateful for each deep breath.

Josie recalled the disconcerting scene upon opening the apartment door, her mouth agape in disbelief. She thought she had stepped into an episode of ‘The Twilight Zone’. Every glass picture frame in the apartment had been removed from the walls and were now standing on end in her bedroom and in the walk-in closet. Many had a dry white film covering the glass. Mike was hurrying around from picture frame to picture frame, wearing nothing but his underwear! He was holding a small bowl of liquid, an eye dropper and a razor blade. He would extract a dropper full of the liquid and then release it on the top of the glass on each picture. He continued this until the glass on each picture frame was covered entirely with the contents from the bowl. Once the liquid dried, he started scraping the glass with the razor blade.

The smell! Oh, the smell was awful! At first, she couldn't place it. But then it came to her. She recognized it from trips to the dentist office as a teenager, when she had to have gas to have teeth removed. 100…99…98…you never made it past the count of 98 before you slipped into controlled unconsciousness. Having literally no point of reference to draw a logical conclusion from the insanity that lay before her, Josie did the only thing she could.

“What in God’s name are you doing?!” “You are going to blow us up!” she screeched. Then everything went black.

Now she understood that it wasn’t the gas that had caused her unconsciousness at all. Mike must have hit her in the head from behind and used the opportunity to strip her clothes off and tie her up. This revelation sent a shiver of fear down her spine. Whatever he was doing with all the pictures and the liquid had caused him to lose all sense of reality. He obviously had lost all sense of right and wrong, as well. Desperation began to take a hold of her. But she dared not move or attempt to test the ropes holding her captive for fear he would notice. On the plus side (if there was a plus side to the psychotic scenario she now found herself in), the tape across her eyes had loosened from the well of silent tears she had shed earlier. She carefully made slow facial movements to loosen the glue even further, pausing and listening for any signs that Mike had caught her facial twitching.

It seemed that his behavior was consistent with only one pattern-either an extreme low or a frenzied maniacal high. Josie concluded that this was the result of drugs of some kind. When he was quiet and hustling about from picture to picture, he was preparing the drug. The horrible razor blade scraping glass would begin shortly after that. She could distinguish the repetitive sound of a lighter…click…click……click and a muffled crackling sound. Then the grunting and heavy breathing would start. Each click of the lighter seemed to turn up the volume on Mike’s ‘crazy dial’. She determined that his low ‘prep period’ was the best time to continue her facial contortions, as his attention was entirely on the chemical process involved in the drug preparation. Once she heard the lighter flicking on and off, she would lay limp, barely allowing her chest to rise and fall with each breath.

Josie had no idea exactly how long she had been held prisoner in her own bedroom, but she was pretty sure it was well over 24 hours. Estimating her increasing need to use the bathroom, she decided it had to be closer to 36 hours. She struggled with whether or not she should ask permission to use the facilities and test his resolve about killing her if she made a sound? Or say nothing, like he had demanded, and live a little longer? In the end, she gave in to her need and just let go. She felt the warm urine trickle down her thighs and puddle at her knees and buttocks. Her humiliation gave way to tears that mutely streamed down her cheeks.

Mike was pacing back and forth at the foot of the bed with a large gun in his hands. More precisely, a shotgun. Josie tried to hide her trepidation as she didn’t want to make him aware that she could see from under the now slightly loosened duct tape on her eyes. In a flash, he was up on the bed straddling her. She squashed the scream welling up in her throat and let out a small whimper.

“Well, well, well, what do we have here?” he snapped. Josie inhaled the foul stench of his breath and fought the urge to vomit.

“How pathetic. Laid here and pissed did you?” She felt the rush of heat in her cheeks from shame.

“You are disgusting!” “You chose to lay here and pee instead of telling me you had to go?!” he quipped.

“What a pig!” “Maybe I should just do you right here, right now!” he threatened as he shoved the barrel of the shotgun in her groin. Simultaneously, Josie urinated and defecated all over the gun, Mike’s hand, and the bed.

“You filthy animal!” he yelled, forgetting his own rule of being quiet. He removed the gun from her southern region but proceeded to slap her over and over with the hand that was holding the gun only moments before, smearing feces across her face.

“You are so nasty! I think I am going to chop you into little pieces and send your parts back to your family by mail. When I get done with you, they won’t have any idea that it’s you and not sausage links somebody sent them!” he threatened.

He jerked her up by her hair, taunting, “Get up pig!” “You are going to clean up this mess!”

He began to untie the ropes from her hands and feet. But Josie could no longer feel her appendages. Days of restraint with little to no blood flow caused her hands and feet to feel like weighted lead. The blood trickled back into her body parts and the ‘pins and needles’ pricking sensation you feel after sleeping too long in one position, was almost unbearable.

Like a crazed fiend at a high-end salon for hot wax hair removal, he tore the duct tape from her eyes. Tears welled up and she winced in pain but would not allow herself to utter a sound. He forcefully shoved her head down into the mess between her legs, rubbing her face in it like he was scolding a puppy who had an accident.

“Bad piggie!” he chided. “Bad!” “Bad!” “Bad!” With each utterance he struck her bare back with his leather belt. Josie had all but given in to the idea, that he was going to kill her, but this was not how she had pictured dying. She could stand no more. She was unable to swallow down the soured contents rising in her throat. She vomited profusely and gagged from the combination of the foul odors now invading her mouth.

“Jeezus!” he snapped furiously. He pulled the sheets from the bed along with Josie. He wrapped the soiled linens around her body and drug her by her hair out of the bedroom with the dirty laundry in tow. When they reached the bathroom, he pulled her straight up in the air by her throat and tossed her into the tub with the wad of sheets behind her.

She received a sharp punch to her mid-section that forced all the air from her lungs, and she struggled to breathe. Josie crumpled under herself. Almost immediately, she felt the excruciating pain of her own flesh burning. Mike was extinguishing his cigarette on her shoulder blade with as much force as he could manage. Josie began to cry.

“You shut it up now or I swear I will shove these sheets down your throat and you can suffocate on your own shit, PIG!” he sneered vehemently.

He turned on the hot water to the shower and she tried to scurry to the back of the tub to avoid the inevitable scalding. She turned to face the wall and thought she would faint from the hot water that was pouring over the singed flesh of the cigarette burn.

“You clean up this mess and your nasty ass”. “I don’t want to see a trace of crap on those sheets when I come back in here! UNDERSTAND?” Josie nodded.

The moment he closed the door, she jerked on the cold faucet and briefly languished in its comfort. Her mind was moving a mile a minute. She knew it was now or never. If she didn’t take the risk, she was going to die at the hands of this drug-crazed lunatic. She didn't waste a second, washing her hair and body as quickly as possible. The bathroom door opened, and she dropped to her knees behind the stained sheets and began scrubbing at them.

Mike mocked her, “Good little piggy. Not one trace of anything left on those sheets, remember”, and he closed the door once more.

Josie was out of the water like a flash. She grabbed the towel hanging on the towel bar and frantically dried herself off. She left the water running as cover. She put her ear to the door and listened for sounds. She could faintly make out the sound of the lighter click, click, clicking. He was getting buzzed up again. Now was her only chance. She stealthily turned the knob. She quickly opened and closed the door behind her. She listened again. He was still busy, ferociously burning brain cells.

“Get a move on, Josie!” she yelled in her head. She peeked around the corner and was relieved not to see him standing in view in her bedroom. He must be in the closet. Perfect. She silently crept across the hall to her roommate’s bedroom. She rifled through her laundry basket and found a sweat suit that she easily donned. She didn’t bother looking for socks or shoes. Now she just had to pray that her keys would still be in the bowl on the dining room table where she always dropped them upon returning home. She listened again. He was mumbling incoherently, and sounded as if he was back in ‘prep-mode’ (as she dubbed it). So far, luck was playing in her favor.

She looked towards the ceiling and wordlessly threw up a prayer. “I don’t know where you have been up to now, but I DESPERATELY NEED THE HELP OF YOUR ANGELS RIGHT NOW! PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, GIVE ME STRENGTH TO REACH SAFETY! Amen”. She keened her head, waiting a moment longer. Then she scampered down the hall to the dining room table and as gingerly as possible, fished her keys from bowl. She exhaled in relief upon exiting the front door of her apartment without a sound.

Josie headed out of the building and to the parking lot at a dead run. She had no time to lose. She made it to her car and jumped inside. Only then did she realize that her escape had not gone undetected by her captor. He had just cleared the front door of the building and was watching her pull out of the parking lot like a ‘Nascar’ driver. He turned and ran back into the building, obviously deciding he was going to give chase. “Well, good luck with that, you demon!” Josie yelled out loud.

She didn’t remember the drive itself, only that she was breaking all the speed limits to arrive at her destination across town. She had decided to go to her roommate’s place of employment. It was a 30-minute drive under normal circumstances. Josie arrived in thirteen minutes. She had checked her rear-view mirror repeatedly the entire time. No sign of Mike.

Her roommate was an entertainer at a gentleman’s club. In layman’s terms: she was a stripper at a small hole-in-the-wall strip club in the seedy district of town. Josie clambered out of her vehicle watching for any sign that her stalker had been able to follow her. The parking lot held approximately 15 cars, and no one had pulled in behind her. So far, so good.

She sprinted inside and headed down the stairs through glass doors and ran smack into the D.J./Bouncer’s booth. A rather tough looking, well-built man in his thirties was looming over the podium and sizing her up and down.

“I am looking for Cassidy. I think she dances under the name ‘English’. It’s an emergency! I HAVE TO SEE HER RIGHT NOW!!!” implored Josie.

He smiled and his eyes twinkled knowingly. He answered in a voice that could have been mistaken for that of ‘Wolf Man Jack’, an infamous radio celebrity of a few decades prior.

“Ahhh, you must be the roommate we have heard so much about since yesterday.”

Josie didn’t understand. Why had he heard anything about her from her roommate? She had been of the belief that her roommate had not come home during her ordeal.

“Please, it’s urgent that I speak with her immediately!” Josie pleaded.

He chuckled and then announced over the microphone, “English…report to the D.J. Booth!”

Cassidy appeared from the dancer's dressing room at the rear of the dance stages. She nearly flew across the bar when she saw Josie. Her face displayed worry and disbelief upon seeing her. She wrapped her arms tightly around her and Josie buried her head on her friend’s shoulder, exhausted.

“I have been so worried about you!” she gasped. She went on to relate that she had returned home after work on Saturday night and overheard Mike’s threats to cut Josie up into little pieces. He obviously had not heard her roommate enter or leave the apartment. Nor had Josie.

“I was afraid to call the police for fear it would cause his behavior to escalate and he might kill you before they could save you!” she cried. She explained further that she was certain Mike’s mental psychosis was the result of ‘ether-basing’ cocaine. Josie still had no idea what that was, exactly, only that she never wanted anything to do with cocaine!

“We’ve been formulating a plan of our own to rescue you with the help of some friends”, she nodded in the direction of the bouncer and a table in the corner of the bar where four big, burly bikers were seated. She was interrupted by the sound of yelling coming from none other than (you guessed it), Mike. He must have deduced where she’d gone and therefore didn’t need to give chase right behind her.

Josie’s calm demeanor dissolved. She began to shake and shiver violently, unable to curb her fear. “Oh God!”, “Oh God!”, “OH GOD!!” she moaned repetitively.

“You filthy PIG!” “TRAMP!” “HUSSIE!!” “WHORE!!!” he yelled, venom dripping off every word.

“Hey PUNK!” “You wandered into the wrong club talking trash!” “This isn’t some redneck, hillbilly, backwoods bar for you to go club yourself a potential wife!” called the bouncer. “You’re outta here…NOW!”

He jerked Mike by the shirt from behind. Mike turned to swing on the bouncer but failed to connect. Josie stood awestruck watching the exchange. The bouncer returned with one blow that landed with so much power that Mike’s cheek was instantly torn open, at least four inches wide, and you could see right into his mouth! It reminded her of gills on a fish.

The bouncer then nodded in the direction of the table of bikers. They all stood up simultaneously. Each one resembled a line-backer or a small mountain. The one that seemed to be in charge and commanded the respect of the others paused for a moment to lock eyes with Josie. He smiled and lifted his cane in her direction in acknowledgement. He gave a quick wink and then followed the others out the door behind Mike.

Josie learned later that four earth angels did indeed come to her rescue that day. They followed Mike to a 7-eleven and then picked a fight with him. They forced him back into his own truck with one on each side of him and the other two followed on bikes. They drove him back to Josie’s apartment and beat him within an inch of his life. They stood by while he packed his belongings in his truck and they escorted his bloody, broken, maimed body to the state line. He was given an ultimatum in no uncertain terms: Leave the state. Never return. Never attempt to contact Josie again. If he did and they found out about it, they would kill him.