This story talks about rape. If that triggers you, click off.
Yes, this is me finally finding a way to talk about what happened to me. In 2009 and 2010.
EJ kept packing the boxes as Danny and the others chattered around her excitedly. Since the luck of snagging acerage for the long awaited homestead, she'd been making video content chronicling everything. When they were ready, she'd opened the doors to a few friends, family and tribe to come visit over the summer.
The response had been had been wonderfully enthusiastic. Most sent their love and celebration of her finally finding home via note card but a few hadn't passed on the chance for a vacation with access to a handful of overpopulated fishing ponds. Her big brother Chance "CJ" Parker had been the first to contact her for an address to meet up. Three friends of his came along as well, because the prospect of easy fishing was that good. One of them, Jake Rozario had taken an immediate shine to her and Danny, her husband.
Danny had been a little jealous at first but relaxed once learned Jake had someone as well. Chance's and EJ's banter kept him in a solid laughing fit sometimes for minutes. Some of the teasing comments from her friends Shawn and Rhiannon made her chuckle, but she didn't break from her packing. The endorphin rush of things finally working was what was keeping her going despite little sleep the night before.
Last of the supplies for this run back into town were finally packed away after a long game of tetris style packing. Danny took for the homestead with Shawn, Rhiannon and the other three people who'd come out. Jake and Chance stayed back EJ just in case she needed another hand with anything. They spent that evening at a campground, sitting around the fire and catching each other up while getting to know Jake better, however they still called it an early night.
Before the sun was fully up, EJ was up and working getting coffee brewed over the campfire while prepping breakfast. Chance had warned Jake to do his best to avoid startling EJ, as she had very sharp elbows according to Danny. He made a bunch of noise as he climbed out his small tent and started breaking everything down. Walking over to hand off a cup of coffee, she observed the sunrise was turning red.
"Lovely. We'll need to get going soon if it does storm. There's lots of unpassable areas when it floods."
Jake nodded as he worked quickly. Getting caught in that, was not on his agenda.
EJ finished breakfast and rather unceremoniously banged a pot in the direction of Chance's tent.
"Aw come ON!" he yelled from inside.
"Bacon, eggs and toast buddy boy. Get up and att'em before Jake eats them all."
Consuming and cleaning up after breakfast was a quick affair as EJ was anxious to get on the road. After doing a final fire check, the three headed back to the truck, EJ telling Chance about the route they'd be taking. She suddenly froze in horror as a voice came from behind them that she'd hoped to have never heard again.
"Hello EJ."
Chance's eyes widened in alarm as EJ began to tremble.
"James..."
She half turned to face him, keeping her pistol on her hip out of his sight as much as possible. Chance took a side step so he keep an eye on the intruder.
"I heard the good news," he said slowly, dragging his eyes up and down her body profile as he took a step towards her.
"You need to leave," she said, her voice almost snapping with iciness.
"Don't be that way darling" he half cooed and oozed.
Jake watched the newcomer through narrowed eyes, his instincts in full alarm. There was something not right about this that left him ready to pull his sidearm.
"You need to leave," she spoke the same words a second time, slowly gripping her pistol.
"I'm going to take what's mine EJ. And that's you. If you're lucky, you can keep your new friends..." he snarled slowly.
"You. Need. To. Leave." she spoke a third time. Chance noticed the shaking stopped and he braced himself.
James charged at her his hand going for his own gun. EJ cleared leather and put four shots into his fat sloven belly before he managed to even bring the gun to bear. He dropped to his knees, choking. He looked down at his gut at the blood beginning to flow from his wounds and then back at her.
"I warned you" she replied without emotion.
He fell over onto his side, violently coughing up blood. Jake turned to look at her in time to watch her calmly, almost too calmly, return her 9mm to its proper resting on her right hip. He looked back at the shot man and realized he'd been wearing body armor underneath the shirt. She had have known because she shot below it.
"Will you call 911 Chance? You know how to talk to those guys better than me," she asked him quietly.
He nodded pulling out his phone as EJ walked to the truck and sat down on the bumper. She looked exhausted and a little green around the gills. Jake sat down near her, being mindful of her personal space.
"Gonna be a long day," he told her.
She nodded robotically.
"If you feel yourself get sick, it's okay to let it happen," he told her.
"I know..." she responded hoarsely.
_________________________________________________________________
Three days later of long conversations with police, investigators, etc EJ was sitting at the camp table working on a small salad at Jake's insistence. Chance pulled up in the truck and hopped out, immediately making a beeline for them.
"Good news and bad news."
EJ stopped eating and looked at him.
"Bad news is once word got out about Jame's misfortune, over eight different people called into the police station wanting to know how they could add their charges to ones he was going to face. All women."
EJ started to match the color of her salad.
"There was a lot of talking done, but the DA has decided not to file charges against you."
Jake and EJ both let out a sigh of relief.
"Let's get loaded up. Also, I'm driving not you. I know how little sleep you've been getting."
She didn't argue but worked on finishing her salad.
Chance called over his shoulder as he went to take down her hammock.
"He died of his injuries last night by the way."
EJ smiled a very cold smile.
________________________________________________________________
The drive to the homestead was only about two hours long but it seemed an eternity for EJ. She barely said anything, just stared out the window. Chance had double checked the route with Danny. First question out of her husbands mouth was "Is my baby hurt?"
Chance had spent the better part of an hour on the phone with him, appraising him of everything that had occurred and praising her shooting.
"Get her home Chance. She's not gonna start to be okay until she is," Danny had begged him.
When they were about ten minutes away, EJ finally shook herself out of her stupor.
"Chance, do I tell you thank you enough for sticking around?" she asked in a quiet voice.
"Yes."
"O.k... good."
"So many hours are you going to be spending chopping wood hmm?"
"As many as it takes," was the quiet reply.
As the vehicle pulled up, Rhiannon and Danny were waiting out front for them. Though it was a small smile, the joy was palpable at seeing her husband again. The truck had barely even finished stopping before Danny was opening her side door and hugging her tightly.
Jake hopped out of the truck bed and greeted Rhiannon with a hug.
"Thanks for watching her back," she told him.
"She's pretty cool, how could I not?" he said as he grabbed the first of the boxes from the truck bed.
Danny finally let go of EJ long enough for her to climb out of the truck but kept an arm near her protectively.
"There's a whole lotta wood, food and drinks when you need them. However I think sleeping in your own bed for a change is the first priority."
She nodded, resting her head on his shoulder as they walked to the house.
_________________________________________________________________
It was probably around two in the morning when Jake found himself awake and unable to go back to sleep. He slipped his clothes on and stepped outside to stretch his legs. Off to the side, he could hear a soft thump happening occasionally. Curious, he went to find the source. He found the wood pile and an EJ wielding an axe into pieces of logs. Rhiannon and Chance were with her, but Danny was absent.
EJ glanced over her shoulder almost as if she had sensed him.
"Hey, I didn't wake you did I?"
He shook his head as he joined Rhiannon on her log bench.
"Nah. Where's Danny?"
"He's got a case down in the big town and has to be up early. Else he'd be out here too," Rhiannon drawled.
Chance set her up with a piece of cherry wood.
"Seriously?"
"Given some of the questions I have, yes."
"Fire away" she said before slamming the axe halfway through the extremely knotty wood.
Jake got his question in first.
"Who was he?"
EJ didn't answer right away as she worked the axe free.
"I'm going and grabbing hard ciders," Rhiannon said. She was quick about it too handing them out to everyone. EJ waved hers off for the time being.
"Let me finish this piece and then I'll be done for the night."
She made eye contact with Jake.
"James was one of two of my rapists from close to ten years ago."
Jake blinked several times as Chance growled. Rhiannon being a fellow and older Witch, had heard bits and pieces already over the years.
"Down brother."
Jake leaned forward, listening intently. She gave him a sad smile.
"To those on the outside looking in we were dating. In reality, I was just the female roommate he was fucking. One night after coming home from work I was half asleep, getting out of my uniform when he suddenly got out of bed and threw me at the bed. Forcing me to bend over it, he damn near ripped my pants, not bothering to pull them all the way off even before violating me. Now, we were engaged in a little bit of bdsm but at that time it was more violence than I had ever agreed to. I think I bled for three days straight afterwards."
Chance exhaled a slow controlled breath. EJ went back to the piece of cherry and finished it off in six straight through chops.
"That was the night I knew the lie. Thing started to go south as it had sunk in what I was to him. Slept with someone else twice, wasn't cheating though. Though I think at that point, it was a kind of jacked up survival mechanism damn near. The guys I chose were mistakes mind you but they at least didn't treat me like a meat sack."
EJ sat down on the ground with the smaller chopping block and hatchet after putting the axe away, and began to whittle smaller chunks of cherry out of one of the pieces.
"After we parted ways, he wrote a blog entry, back when LiveJournal was all the rage talking about me. You can ask Shawn, I let him read it. When he got done, I asked him if my impression of the article being along the lines of him talking about a prized hound having slipped it's collar and run away was okay. He said that it had been his exact thought too."
She kept steadily working on the piece of cherry while talking to them.
"Later that year I met Daniel Collins. He was his own bucket of crazy. But he distracted me from all the drama James kept trying to cause. I think at one point he even tried to get me banned from several of the cons I used to go to back in the South East. Many of those idiots for years afterwards would just wink, wink, nudge, nudge when it came to his behavior."
She finished with the first piece and moved onto a second.
"And Collins?" Chance gently pressed her.
"It wasn't until we were done with each other that I realized how much a malignant narcissist he was...among other problems. Like when he was sober but on his meds he was himself. A shy boy who loved to wood burn. Off his meds, he was second more violent leaning personality. When he would drink, he was a third and when he slept walked, a fourth. Drunk and over indulged in his meds, a fifth."
Jake and Chance grimaced at almost the same time from the note of brittleness in her voice. Jake waited until she had put the hatchet down before gently taking on her hands in to his own.
"You know that may be why I had such trouble with the liquor for so long..."
Chance raised an eyebrow.
"The first time at Collins' hands, we'd been partying with friends that evening. Kinda hard. I woke up in the middle of the night on my stomach and with him on top of me. He was just laughing quietly in this maniacal way. I blacked back out and in the morning, he did his damnedest to convince me it'd only be a dream."
Jake's gripe on her hand tightened a little bit as he felt himself get a little sick to his stomach.
"It was only three weeks later that it happened again. I can still hear his laugh in my ear as he almost broke my wrist as I reached for my pistol. After that night, I started drinking more...just so that I wouldn't wake up at night if anything happened again."
Chance grimaced.
"It's almost an autopilot response that you've been having to work to re-write," he observed.
"Yeap."
Everyone sat quietly for a few moments.
"So you were grateful then James gave you an opportunity for..." Jake asked.
"Grateful?"
Her voice and face lost all emotion.
"I was ecstatic. I just wish I could have seen the life leave his eyes. I wanted to say so much to him before shooting him but it wouldn't have done any good for me. I wanted to shoot him with every last round in my gun."
Jake felt his hair stand on end. The lack of anything in EJ's voice was unnerving.
"However, I have won in the end when it comes to James. Sadly I'll have to find out who betrayed me to him. He shouldn't have been able to find me without that or, a private investigator and he was always too much a cheap fuck to pay someone to do something. Though I'd like to stop wondering if it's my fault they went on to hurt other women after me given at least Collin's patterns."
Chance growled.
"No. You're not responsible for them. In the end, you are your own first responder and you're responsibility is to take care of yourself. Their other victims aren't on your head and I hate every idiot that tries to make it about collective anything," Chance spat.
Rhiannon and Jake nodded in agreement.
"Now you said something about his patterns?" Rhiannon said, putting the conversation back on track.
"Ah yes... his hunting style. He had a knack for seeing a relationship on the rocks. He would present himself as a willing ear, a shoulder to cry on. He put forth the golden effort of everything right to make a girl feel better," her voice dripped with contempt.
"Usually he'd start working his way towards sex after only a few days, but sometimes all he'd have to say was that he was a better fuck than their current husband."
She sighed in disgust.
"Once divorce proceedings would start coming to a conclusion he tend to start to look for excuses not to hang out or see them. He'll get rougher, more demanding and more defiant of her wishes during sex. Once the proceedings are finished, he's already found a new girl and is plying her heartstrings while the prior girl finds herself never hearing from him again. To the point that even his friends, will close her out of their circles, despite having taken a shine to any of the girls."
Jake said something under his breath about proto human sacks of shit.
"What do you think pushed James over the edge to come hunt you down?" Jake asked.
"I'd rather not know" was the answer.
"All right, I'm still not tired. I'm gonna go stoke up the fire if we're gonna keep sitting out here spilling dark secrets," EJ said with a dry laugh.
"I'll get the food and new drinks," Rhiannon said.
Jake and Chance helped the ladies up and headed with EJ over to the fire pit.
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