th13rteen hours

UNDER THE SKIN

By Terryll Preston

The Sixth Hour…

Rachel sat on the bed with her tear-slick face pressed hard against uncovered, upraised knees. Memories whirled like glittery shards of broken glass in the black of her mind. Memories of torment. Memories of voices. Memories of dreams that perverted into dark and terrible nightmares. A man. A flash of silver in the gloom that had surrounded her. Cold steel sliding across her skin. Screams. Tears. Pain. Pleasure. The wetness growing between her legs, the abysmal shame gnawing at her heart. Had…had any of that been…real? Was all of it just some…some kind of drug-induced lie? Was she a lie?

Slowly, one of those dancing slivers of memory flitting about in her head came to life.

“You’re not a nun, Rachel. You never have been. I…I’m really sorry that you had to learn this…that you had to learn this way. You’re a prostitute who is addicted to ‘high def’. And that is all you’ve ever been since the moment you were brought here by the paramedics.”

Scrunching her face up tightly in a vain attempt to keep any more tears from escaping her closed eyes, Rachel wrapped shuddering arms around her legs and hugged herself closer to them. The warmth generated by the skin-to-skin contact offered no comfort; to neither a body that seemed as hollow as an empty glass nor a mind that hovered on the tenuous edge of a beckoning madness. She was teetering on the brink, precariously balanced on a precipice that threatened to crumble out from under her feet; dropping her into the waiting maw of an endless nightmare from which she would never be able to awake. What was real? The prostitute? The nun? Which was the truth of her reality? Which should she believe? Which should she accept?

W-What am I, she questioned shakily to herself, once tight arms beginning to slacken around her legs. A Servant of God? A servant of p-perversion? I-If I…if I am the prostitute…then…then why do I r-remember m-my kidnapping so clearly? Why is…why is the pain so sharp, so vivid in my mind? H-He cut…cut me…hurt me… I hated him for that! But why? Why do I hate him? Sh-Should I…? H-He…hurt…me… But…but… I…wanted… I needed… More…? NO! What am I saying?! That man – that bastard! – raped my senses for his own perverse fantasies! I HATE him! I will always hate him! But…no…I…I… I can’t hate him, can I? As a Servant of God, I am not supposed to hate. I’m supposed to hold true to my convictions and my faith. But…but where was God when…when that man was…was hurting me? Where was He?! What did my faith grant me then? How did it help me?! I-It didn’t…did it…? I was…alone. At his mercy…forced to feel…things… Desires… Urges… I wasn’t supposed…supposed to like…them… But…but I did… No… I-I hated w-what he did to m-me… Didn’t I… A…A Servant of God would not lose faith so easily. Would…she…?

Rachel felt a strong sensation of longing roll through her body. She tried to shut it out, tried to block it. But it was harder this time. The desire welled up in her like a flooded river behind a dam. Why was it harder to push those unwanted urges back? Memories in her mind glittered darkly, whirling meticulously through the infinite black of her disorganized feelings. The knife. She could feel her skin tingling, burning lightly with a yearning to be slash open. His voice. Filled every crevice, every inch of her pounding heart with an untamed lust; wild and overpowering. His words. Sent long, vibrant shivers of ecstatic joy racing up her spine, caused spasms of nearly orgasmic pleasure to pulse between her legs. Rachel could feel that familiar sticky wetness growing again. Her fingers twitched. Her hand fumbled. In a panic, she clasped them both together and tightened her arms around her legs, burying her face as deeply as she could against her upraised legs. Tears flowed freely down her face and onto the pale flesh of her bare thighs. Why couldn’t she push back the feelings?! Her heart was racing. The dampness between her legs was growing. She wanted to touch it, feel it. She wanted to bury her fingers into that wetness, feel the pleasure – the release – it would grant her. She wanted to. She wanted to…resist. She had to resist! She wasn’t a prostitute! Wasn’t she? She was a woman of God! No she wasn’t! These feelings meant nothing to her! Yes they did! Her life was the Church and Christ, her Lord and Savior! Her life was on her back and on her knees, servicing the men who paid her until they filled her with themselves. Her life was righteous! Her life was perverted, and she loved every minute of it! That was her reality, not these ungodly desires born of one man’s twisted torture! That was her reality, not these pious thoughts of false praise to a God who probably didn’t even exist! That was the truth of who she was not the other!

The quiet hydraulic sound of the room door opening brought her tear-streaked, haggarded face up from those damp legs. The wetness between them teased her relentlessly. She wanted to touch it. She had to touch it! She had to feel it! Just…one…more…time…

Before Rachel even could register what she was doing, she had grabbed hold of the sheet and pulled it over her arched legs. Without thinking, she reached down between them and used a finger to pull her damp panties aside. The tender flesh beneath that soaked fabric burned with sensation as the chilly air trapped under the sheet kissed those moistened lips lovingly. Realization of what she was doing dawned painfully in her mind, but something else pushed it back. Her heart was pounding with unrestrained anticipation. Her finger twitched to press into the loose seam that separated the lips. But still, something held her at bay. Why couldn’t she do what she knew that she craved to do in her heart? Why did she seem at war with herself? If she was the prostitute, then why couldn’t she do this one thing that stood so starkly against the supposed lie of her righteous life?

A voice called from before her. She should have been startled. She should have been ashamed of what she was doing under the sheets. But she wasn’t. The longing within was just too strong for her to fight. But…I…have to…

“I’m sorry to just barge in like this,” the rough, gravelly tone of the police detective spoke out against the silence of the room. He paused for a moment as the door behind him hissed shut, doing what he could to adjust the three thick folders tucked under his arm so that they wouldn’t slip and cover the linoleum with their contents. Not once did his eyes touch Rachel’s. “That damned doctor finally gave me permission to speak with you, so if you don’t mind I would…” he looked up from the folders and cast a glance at the woman sitting up on the bed, then halted in his words when he saw her reddened and tear-streaked face. “Are you okay? You look like you’ve been crying. Maybe I should come back later and…”

Rachel’s hand never moved away from where it was poised. But her mind whirled madly. Why did this seem so familiar to her? Why did it seem as though this had happened before? But, why did it also seem so…different…?

The lips on her mouth parted, and a voice too sultry and too seductive to be her own spoke out. “No,” she crooned, an excited edge riding her tone. “Please stay. I-I just needed…needed some time to collect myself. That’s all.”

The detective gave Rachel a sympathetic look as he again struggled with the folders under his arm. Grabbing at them with his opposite hand, the heavy-set man maneuvered himself over to a nearby desk and the chair that was positioned beneath it. Taking a moment to pull the stack of folders from under his armpit, he spoke out at the woman on the bed behind him; unaware of the struggle that was taking place beneath the wrinkled linens.

“Perhaps,” he began earnestly, opening up one of the thick folders quickly before pulling the chair out from under the desk’s small frame, “that’s for the best, Rachel. Afterall, you’ve been through quite a lot, more than any woman – no matter who they are – ought to endure. Truth be told, I’m kinda surprised that you seem as…stable as you do. Especially considering the disturbing nature of what happened to you.”

In that instant, Rachel’s probing and searching finger froze. What…what had he just said? Her hand became motionless and her mind whirled dizzyingly. Stable? Stable? The finger that had been holding her soaked panties aside slackened absently, allowing the exposed flesh of her womanhood to again be covered. The disturbing nature of what had happened to her? Was…was he talking about…about her kidnapping? Did he believe that she…she was truly a woman of the cloth? Slowly, guilt crept into her desire-filled heart. Shame followed closely behind.

“I find myself impressed by the amount of resolve you’ve shown,” the detective continued as he rifled through the paperwork contained within the folder. “To go through the things that you went through and still show yourself to be a pillar of strength? I wish I had your resolution, your determination.”

He…he wished he had her resolution? Her determination? The words echoed distantly in her mind, striking feelings and memories that had become mired in an endless web of deceitful and deviant thoughts. Stable. Resolve. Resolution. Determination. Aspects of willpower, willpower that she thought she no longer had. Pillars of strength against temptation. Things she had let doubt steal right from under her nose. Doubt of her faith, doubt of her place in the Lord’s Grand Design, doubt in the truth of who she was, doubt in the Almighty Himself! She could feel her hand twitch lightly as her fingers curled away from that sacred spot between her legs so wet with her sin. So stained with a nearly irresistible temptation. What had she almost allowed to happen?!

The sound of the chair lightly scraping against the linoleum tiles of the floor drew Rachel back to her harsh reality. Quickly, she yanked her hand away from her crotch and pulled it from beneath the covers. The wetness of a sin almost committed glistened faintly in the dim lighting of her room. The tears welled up in her eyes at the sight of what covered her fingers. Her heart pounded with a mad desire to replace them where they had been. Shame ate away at the edge of her frayed thoughts. Lust burned between her legs. Rachel Shelby bowed her head and closed her eyes, doing what she could to stifle the tears that were threatening to roll down her reddened cheeks. A small prayer to a Lord she hoped was still listening stole away from trembling lips. A heavy sigh of resignation and impatience slithered from swollen lips that begged to be touched in a way that would make her shiver. The woman sitting on the bed wept both tears of lust and shame.

Suddenly, the detective addressed her, his gravelly voice cutting through the thick silence that had settled upon the room.

“Excuse me for asking this,” he stated in an odd tone that seemed to grow higher in pitch as he continued to speak. “But, who are you?”

Rachel’s head rose from it’s lowered position as she looked over at the detective seated at the small writing desk and frown at his back quizzically. What did he mean? Surely he knew who she was. Deep within her, that lust continued to squirm like a serpent trying to escape entrapment. And somewhere in her shifting mind, she thought she heard a scream.

“Ex…excuse me,” Rachel stammered as she clasped her hands together to keep them from being drawn back to the temptation lying beneath the sheets. “W-what did you just…just ask me?”

“I’m sorry,” the detective stated again, voice seeming to lose almost all of its earlier gruffness. It hardly sounded the same as before. It sounded completely different. Different, yet eerily familiar to her ears. A forgotten fear began to bubble in that back of her mind. And that scream among her lost thoughts grew louder. “Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear.”

As the detective turned around to face Rachel, she felt her body grow cold and empty when she saw what sat before her. Her dark eyes were opened as wide as they could go. Her lips trembled with undisguised terror. Her hands tightened around one another until the bone beneath the skin began to creak menacingly. And the scream that had once been in the back of her mind now seemed to be lodged in her throat.

“I asked,” the habit-clad woman now sitting where the detective had once been and bearing her face reiterated politely. “Who are you?”

06 : 58 : 13

Author’s Notes: And so comes and goes the Sixth Hour of Rachel’s nightmarish dilemma. I’m sorry for the extreme lateness of this chapter. I’ve been undergoing some…family issues as of late. So, allow me to apologize if this Hour isn’t up to par with the previous five. As well, also excuse any grammatical and spelling errors that may be in this chapter. I didn't have the time or wherewithal to do a proper 'debugging'. Hopefully though, the suspense is still intact and the interest is still there. I’d hate to think that I lost readers because of this crap going on at home. Of course, I just want everyone to know that I will finish this story. This isn’t a boast or anything. I just want the fans of this story to know that I’m dedicated to finishing it…not for reviews, but for those of you who are enjoying it. It is my sincerest wish that this tale reaches a conclusion that will have you talking for weeks after I’ve completed it. Afterall, that – not the reviews – would stand as the greatest achievement for me and my skills as a writer…