Рот Уайт - 400 Days of Oppression

I don’t know why it took me so long to hang up the phone. My hand was shaking when I did and tears were streaming down my face. I should have told the police about the call. I should have had him rearrested, his bail revoked, but I just felt so exhausted and ashamed. Very ashamed. What the fuck was I doing there? Why had Kenyatta sent me there? Why was I doing any of this? I was thinking about what the asshole on the phone said. “They’ll all call you a whore. Whores deserve to get raped.” I was thinking about the trial ahead. And all I wanted to do was sleep. Where was Kenyatta? Where was my protector? I closed my eyes, and cried until the dreams faded to black.

Kenyatta could not believe what he was hearing. Someone had dared to touch his woman, his property.

“Who are they? Where do they live? Are they regulars?”

“This was their first time at the farm.”

Kenyatta put both hands on Delia’s shoulders and squeezed gently, but firmly, compelling Delia to meet his stern gaze.

“Delia.” Kenyatta relaxed his features, letting the tension out of his expression, forcing a smile as he brushed the hair from her face and caressed her cheek with his palms and fingertips. He cradled her face in his hands, gently, like he was holding something delicate, precious, invaluable. He licked his lips. Then kissed her lightly on the mouth. He could feel Delia tremble in his grasp. Cruelty she could take. She was part of an industry of staged, consensual fantasy violence. In her world, violence was something passionate, even romantic, but she knew he could see it in her eyes, she knew that the cruelty in his eyes, though passionate, would be neither romantic nor consensual. “Tell me.”

“I-I don’t know what you want.”

“Yes you do. You wouldn’t let strangers stay at your home unless you checked them out.”

“I have their name and credit card on file as well as their billing address but—”

“Give it to me.”

“King...”

“Give it to me!”

Farrad Ali sat at the bar, the same bar he and his frat brothers used to frequent in college. A table on the other side of the room was filled with young kids from his old fraternity. He didn’t know any of them and they didn’t know him. The oldest of them was probably still in high school when Farrad had graduated. Still, he felt a kinship with them. He and his friends used to sit at that same table talking about the same teachers, classes, parties, what girls he’d fucked, would fuck, wished he could fuck, how much money he would make when he graduated, how he’d buy a condo with a view of the bay, and what kind of bad-ass bitch-magnet he would drive and all the high quality pussy he would get because of it. All the shit these fools were shouting loudly back and forth to each other. Farrad knocked back another shot of tequila.

On any other day, he might have gone over to that table and showed them the Greek letters branded on his bicep. He would have told them that he was the one who’d put the brass Buddha with “Fat Fuck” stenciled on his belly in “The Fat Room” and made it a tradition to stick it outside the door whenever you were in there fucking someone you normally wouldn’t be caught dead with. Then they would swap stories about the chicks they’d done in that room. But not today. Today he sat at the bar, head down, shoulders hunched, casting nervous glances at the TV behind the bar, hoping his picture wouldn’t suddenly flash on the screen with the caption: “Accused Rapist in Sex Farm Scandal” emblazoned on the screen below it.

I can’t believe I let Michael talk me into this shit, Farrad thought. My life is ruined! “Bartender! Line up another shot!”

There was a large black man sitting across the bar facing him. He was dressed all in black; black, buttoned-down, short-sleeved shirt, black jeans, even wearing black leather gloves and dark sunglasses that wrapped around his head like The Terminator . His muscles bulged through his shirt like Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the man appeared to be staring right through Farrad, but he couldn’t be certain because of the opaque sunglasses. Farrad tried to stare back, but when the man didn’t turn away, Farrad averted his eyes. He didn’t want to be the one to start shit with a guy that huge. He had enough trouble without getting his ass kicked in a bar fight.

Farrad continued to drink, growing increasingly suspicious of the man in the dark sunglasses. He could feel his bravery increasing with each shot of tequila.

I should ask this guy what his fucking problem is, Farrad thought, but he wasn’t quite drunk enough for that. He asked the bartender for his bill and settled his tab, then staggered toward the door. He cast a glance behind him as he opened the door and stepped out into the night. The large black man in the sunglasses had turned his head toward him. Now there was no question whether the guy was staring at him.

“What the fuck are you lookin’ at?” Farrad yelled, then turned and rushed out into the street before the man could reply, fearing the huge man would come after him. Once he was outside in the parking lot, he wondered why he thought he’d be safer out here than inside where there were witnesses. He stumbled over to his vehicle and fumbled his keys out of his pocket and into his car door, looking over his shoulder to make certain the man wasn’t coming after him. Once Farrad had opened the car and slumped behind the wheel, feeling the madness of the day and the alcohol coalesce into a deep existential malaise, he let out an exhausted sigh and looked back toward the bar. His blood pressure spiked. He could feel his heart pounding in his ears.

The big black guy was standing outside the bar, staring across the parking lot directly at him. The man began walking toward him.

“Oh shit!”

Farrad jammed the key in the ignition and started the car. The man in the sunglasses reached for his car door. Farrad stomped down on the accelerator, spitting bits of gravel and asphalt from his tires as he drove out of the parking lot, flipping the big guy in the sunglasses the finger as he pulled out into the street. He breathed a long sigh of relief when he could see the man in his rear view mirror, shrinking in the distance. Farrad’s BMW Z4 convertible sports car roared down the road and he thrust both of his middle fingers into the air.

“Fuck Yooooooou!”

He didn’t see the man climb into the black Chrysler 300 and follow his vehicle down the road.

When Farrad pulled into the underground parking garage at his high-rise condominium, he didn’t notice the Chrysler pull in behind him, reversing the electric gate before it could close. Farrad was still pitying his bad luck, getting involved in an attempted rape, being arrested, wondering how he would explain it all to his employers, if he would lose his job. When he stepped from his car he was trying to think of a story to tell his fiancée, who didn’t know about his predilection for sadism, but thought he had gone on a fishing trip with some old college buddies. Then something struck the back of his head, the ground rushed up to meet his face, and everything went black.

Farrad had a lovely dream in which he and Michael hadn’t tried to rape the girl with the huge tits, but she’d willingly given herself to them instead, crawling to them with a whip clenched between her teeth, begging them to use it on her, just like he’d imagined it would be at the farm. And after she’d been whipped into submission, she’d begged them both to fuck her, and they’d taken her in both holes, double penetration, Farrad raping her asshole while Michael fucked her from the front. It was quite a wonderful dream, until Farrad was awakened by a slap across his face.