Jon Reskind - The abducted wife

She didn't answer. His stomach sank as he saw her lips twist in a bitter smile.

"I hope I didn't hurt you."

Silence.

He had never seen anyone look so defeated or exhausted, and it frightened him. He picked up the towel and began massaging it tenderly over the wet streams of his cum shining in the fire-light in thin white trails down her legs. It was almost worse when she didn't flinch or suddenly jerk his hand away, and he threw the towel into the bushes, a terrible sinking feeling of guilt sweeping over him.

"It'll never happen again. Really, it won't. I promise."

No answer.

He stood up and looked down at her a moment, then walked into the bushes to get his clothes.

Jane pulled herself up to a sitting position and methodically pulled her bra, bikini panties, and shorts over her bruised body. Every muscle in her torso and legs trembled when she stood up and surveyed the tussled blanket where the brutal rape had taken place only moments before. She turned slowly from the dwindling campfire and began walking down the darkened beach. Bob was still in the bushes, probably smoking a cigarette and drinking rum until he gained his composure and returned to make more apologies about how he had acted. But it was all so useless, she said to herself as she walked toward a promontory of rock that stood out a few hundred yards from their campsite. Their vacation was now utterly destroyed, and there was nothing either of them could do to change the cold facts: she had tried being responsive to her husband's advances, but he had failed to treat her with the gentleness that a woman really enjoyed. The rest was ugliness and vicious brutality, and right now she dared not even think about it. She would walk ahead of him, taking a short cut through the woods and she'd be in bed before he returned to the lodge.

She turned up a narrow footpath and climbed a hillside into the woods. She had been on these trails many times, and tonight with a full moon she'd have no trouble finding her way back to the lodge. The forest was quite spectacular this evening with shafts of silvery light dappling the tree trunks and bushes, and Jane suddenly realized how the solitude of these North Carolina woods could bring a person back to the simple realities of life. She'd been raised in a small country town not very far away from here, and she had always found her return after several years away an invigorating experience. Although Bob enjoyed fishing and hunting somewhat, it was always difficult for him to unwind in a quiet setting and, unimportant as this might have seemed, it was yet another difference between the two of them that bothered her. He was a man of action and reveled in the fast hectic pace of the city, while she considered herself more passive and introspective by nature.

She stood at the hilltop and looked down the long ledges of shadowed rock toward the water. The lake was still and all signs of the beach campfire had disappeared in the darkness. Turning and lighting a cigarette, she gave one last thought to Bob, then moved off through a thicket into the woods. Tears welled in her eyes and she smiled and shrugged to herself at her foolishness. Yes, she was crying and she was enjoying it, and she repeated a line of poetry to herself about the woods and darkness that increased her sadness but made her feel warm and good.

The shapes of trees and bushes along the path grew dim as clouds covered the moon, and she stumbled along, missing her step, then regaining her vision as her tears dried. The line of trees and sprawling boulders became confusing to her for a moment – then she saw that she had made an incorrect turn in the darkness, and she wheeled around, trying to retrace her steps. She stopped again, looking up and sighting a sharp sloping hillside and a line of jagged pine darkening the horizon to her left.

She was lost.

She paused, looking down through a break in the thick undergrowth and scolded herself for her self-absorption. She had done a lot of hiking before and she had known that even familiar areas could become a confused maze of unrecognizable landmarks in the dark; but tonight, in her anger, she had let her mind stray from the immediate task of returning to the lodge.

She began walking down the hillside back to the lake, but after some minutes she became aware that she had wandered into a rocky gully with rims of rock jutting along its sides; she had trouble with her balance, falling from time to time onto her knees as she struggled toward the valley below.

After several hours of half-stooping and crawling, she finally reached the base of the gully. Here, the land flattened out and the dense cover of trees thinned to let in enough moonlight to make out the tops of hills and the tree line above her. She bit her lips half in anger, half in fear, and for the second time that night she fought off a flood of tears. God, Bob was probably half-crazed about where she had wandered off to, and if he was angry with her at this moment she couldn't see any real reason to blame him. Now that she had been lost for half the night she became frightened not only for her immediate safety, but wondered if she would be able to trace herself back to the lake in daylight.

Daylight came and she was still no closer to the lake than she had been that night. Her feet and legs ached and a gnawing in her stomach reminded her that she had to have something to eat. Earlier she had drunk some spring water and had eaten a handful of blackberries, but that had only stimulated her hunger. The sun rose and burned down through the branches, pounding steadily into her head. She tried to keep a straight path, guessing that the lake was to the East, and she followed the trajectory of the sun as much as she could across increasingly rough countryside. By mid-afternoon she realized that she had misjudged the direction of the lake. Her hunger was more insistent now, and she sensed that she was weakening. She slipped and fell more often, rising up more slowly each time, and still she followed the sun, assuring herself that at least she wasn't retracing her steps.

Then it began to grow dark. She stumbled on, following the sun as it settled into the hills, falling then rising up and plunging on mindlessly into the dusk. The tendons in her calves ached and her rib-cage heaved painfully as she pressed her last ounce of energy into climbing the hill in front of her. At the top she had a good view of the surrounding woods, and she lowered herself to the ground and gazed down into the darkened valley below. No familiar landmarks – no signs of civilization. She bent over, lying on the leaves and clutched her stomach, trying to force back the tears. Then suddenly she was asleep.

She awoke at dawn, aching with a hunger that had grown more intense during the night. Now she had to find food – it was no longer a matter of merely making her way out of the woods. She descended the hill and struck out across the valley floor towards a stream she had seen from the hilltop. The sun was already warm on her back and she realized that soon it would be quite hot. At the stream she ate some berries and attempted, without success, to catch some fish in her hand. Then she moved on, slapping her face from time to time to keep alert.

She rested again that afternoon and woke up at dusk. She continued walking and half-stumbling in a daze of exhaustion and hunger into denser forest. A few hours after sunset the moon rose and illuminated the landscape so that she could see more clearly where she was. She broke through some low brush and walked quickly toward a space of meadow that opened up along the edge of another stream. Up ahead, shining out of a clump of trees, she thought she saw a light. Probably a rock reflecting the moonlight, she thought, and continued on, immersed again in self-pity and deepening hunger.