Dinner, and a room.(lock)

Rachyl sighed as her body expanded from the restricting confines of the corset, then raised her hands to loosen and untie Meegan's. As she pushed the garment off Meegan's body, she wrapped her arms around the waist in front of her and placed a soft kiss between the shoulderblades. Turning Meegan back around, she smiled and said, "Where're these robes?"

"On the bathroom door." Meegan forced her breath to slow. She didn't really want sex with Rachyl tonight, but her body couldn't help but respond to her. While Rachyl got the robes, Meegan stepped out of her skirt, and walked to the bar. She bent over to look into the mini-fridge, her black lace-clad bottom wiggled in the air in time to the music in her head.

"What music are you dancing to?" Rachyl had felt the almost reluctance of Meegan to hold the embrace they just shared.

"And when are the masseuses coming? Do we have time to talk now? I'm sure you can tell I'm really not used to having actual schedules all the time."

"Oh!" Meegan stood with two diet sodas in her hand, a light blush pinking her cheeks. "Um...When Doves Cry...heh."

She handed one of the colas to Rachyl, regaining her composure. "Not until eight. You're not going to need,"Meegan glanced at her watch. "Three hours and fourty-eight minutes are you?"

"Well..." Rachyl took the soda and looked around the room. "That all depends on how much I cry."

She turned to the bathroom and disappeared through the door, then came back out shortly with a box of tissues. "Couch, bed? Chairs?"

Her gaze bounced around the room. "Couch would probably be best, no?"

'She went and got a box of tissues. This is not going to be comfortable for either of us.' Meegan slipped the robe on, juggling her soda from hand to hand to do. She tucked the flaps over each other.

"If talking is what we want then the sofa is best."

Meegan crossed to the elegant sitting area and curled into one end of the couch leaving Rachyl to choose the middle or the other end,Which ever felt more comfortable. She sipped her soda, before setting it on the glass topped endtable.

Placing her soda on the floor, she sat on the center cushion of the couch, then turned away from Meegan, and kicked her bare feet up onto the far end, her head coming to rest in a cloud of crimson on her thigh. She held the box of tissues on her belly, robe slightly parted but not showing a whole lot of anything.

Rachyl cleared her throat. "What I'm going to say takes into account a lot of assumptions based on the revelations we've shared today about how much you've researched about me, but I still need to share it, you're the only person who will have heard it pass my lips who wasn't getting paid to do so."

She sighed, and yanked a tissue from the box, balling it in her fist.

"You may know that I stayed out of college for two years after high school to work and save up some money. Did a fair bit of unofficial interning, decorating, remodeling for my mom's office. Started college as a Lib Arts major but changed over to Real Estate and MBA quite early. Those were some interesting classes."

She leaned to pick up the soda and sipped from it then belched petitely. "Excuse me. Anyway. October two thousand one I was preparing for my own Sho-Dan examination... First rank black belt in Aikido... when I was struck with appendicitis. Lucky me, the natural gas refinery in town decided to blow up that night, and I nearly died because of a lack of medical assistance. I was finally able to get to the hospital via a neighboring town's ambulance who just happened to go past our house."

She wrinkled her face, licked her lips, took a deep breath, and paused before continuing...

Meegan ran her hands through Rachyl's hair, hoping the touch would be soothing and help her friend get through what she needed to say. 'Something that requires an entire box of tissues.'

Rachyl leaned into Meegan's soothing touch for a moment.

"Three months I spent in bed, combined hospital and at home. Of course, I got up to pee and take care of incidentals, and really, staying in bed for a full week at a time was too much for my tender nose, you know?" She snorted derisively.

"So, I was able to get up and half crawl half walk to the shower, and sponge bath myself, and sometimes at the beginning, then more often as time went on, even sit on a little stool my mom picked up from a handicapped medical supply place. Anyway, gross stuff aside, three months. My muscles atrophied pretty badly; I had trouble picking up a gallon of milk where previously I was benching over a hundred twenty."

She rubbed her nose, then peeked up over her forehead at Meegan. "It was only last week I started doing seventyfive again. But I digress. Pee-tee, er, physical therapy, was rough. I've always had strong legs, but the weakness caused by the appendicitis really threw me for a loop. It takes a lot out of you, almost dying. I could walk by the time I was so-called discharged from home care, but with difficulty, and I couldn't carry anything.

Since I got thrown so far behind by the unfortunate incident, my school allowed me to defer my classes and payments til the next semester, and I gained access to their brand new gym facilities. So I started swimming."

Rachyl's chest tightened as her recollection started to move deeper, grow more detailed. Her free hand moved up above her head and rested palm up in her hair.

"Even though I lost a good forty pounds when convalesced, I made sure I kept active. I swam two, three times a day. In the morning, in the afternoon, before I went home. Just because I'd lost weight didn't mean I'd gain it back, not to mention my muscle tone was pretty much destroyed.

I became good friends with a couple of the lifeguards, one of whom started originally in school as a physical therapist, and he gave me a few good pointers of additional exercises to do while swimming or cooling down from laps.

I started to draw a few companions when I moved from backstroke to doggy paddle... I just couldn't do a trudgeon right at the time, and sidestroke put too much pressure on my belly. We'd swim laps, chat about nothing at all, ogle the guys or girls, and it was just good fun.

One of the guys eventually invited me to a party, right around the Fourth of July, as kind of a pre-summer semester bash." Her lips pursed again, and she sighed quietly, her fist clenching in waves, the crushed tissue wiggling.

"I accepted. I hadn't been out of the house except for school, doctors appointments, and swimming, in almost ten months. You could imagine I was going through quite a bit of cabin fever.

And by then, I was feeling pretty decently. I was walking straight, carrying my books without a problem, and I could even carry a case of soda or a gallon of milk from the car to the garage if Mom needed help after shopping.

She'd had her friends from the office visit me at least once a week, you know that? I don't think she knew I'd known she'd asked them to do it, but they did, since none of my friends visited; all of them had gone away to school really. The EMTs who found me visited me a couple times, but stopped when they saw I was doing better than I had been - that is, near death's door."

She shook her head gently, dislodging the tangent.

"The party was at this house on the edge of town. Apparently it was a frat house, mostly remodeled with just a few rooms unfinished on the third floor. I found out later that one of my mom's officemates had sold it to them.

There was drinking, loud music - which, oddly enough," she said with a giggle, "I could feel rather distinctly inside me, you know, in my belly. I wiggled in a corner, since I couldn't dance, I hadn't retrained those muscles yet.

One of the guys supplied me with water or fruit juice, I honestly don't remember now, throughout most of the night. I ended up sitting at the bar, tuckered out from all my 'dancing', and sipped of my drink. I'd wanted to go home, but I was so happy to not be there, I didn't listen to myself.

I ended up talking to two of the guys, there at the little bar they had, comfy in my chair and all. One of them started rattling off my drivers' license number... which I knew was in my pocket. The other rattled off my address, birthdate, bra size, my Mom's maiden name... And I was just a little wigged out. I played it off, you know. 'Good research boys,' or some trite answer like that.

So when that Star Wars-y feeling of 'I got a bad feeling about this' crashed over my head, it was too late.

One of the last drinks I'd been given was spiked with a sedative. The two guys apparently carried me upstairs to the unfinished floor. I remember waking up, laying down to the two of them snapping restraints on my wrists, then my ankles."

Rachyl's heart, already racing, didn't match the breath that caught in her throat, then her voice cracked as she carried on. "I don't remember seeing their faces. They might have been wearing masks, they might not, I'm not sure. It was mostly dark, though little pinpoints of light around the room might have been candles. I just remember I was scared to death by whatever I saw, and tried to break free... But I couldn't. I didn't have my strength back. I felt like Superman probably does on Kryptonite.

I heard voices... Mean voices and felt things touching my body. Something entered my mouth.

I bit down." Rachyl's eyes closed at the memory of that moment, the hot iron in her mouth, the uncontrollable urge to gag, to vomit, to bend over and fall. She clamped her jaw shut for a moment, then resumed.

My face was slammed as if I'd been hit, then I felt something near my hand. I grabbed it and twisted. The scream of pain was like icewater over me, and I felt... more awake. Something else was near my feet. I kicked out; the little bit of range of motion earned me a grunt, then I felt a searing, crushing pain on my right side. My knee spasmed, and I heard a squeal. I somehow got a hand free, then undid the other one. Someone stood over me; as I saw the flash of metal my hand shot out, took control of it, and I heard another scream. Something at my back caught my attention, and I swung that direction only to hear a thud."

The tissue finally raised to Rachyl's face, dabbing at tears running freely down her cheeks.

"Undid my feet. Tripped over something, felt hotness running down my side. My clothes were gone. I realized later they'd been cut off with a knife.

Out in the dark, empty hall, I fell to my knees, my stomach emptying itself of everything I'd had that night, and then some.

I found the stairs down. I got down just a few, then tumbled all the way down to the first floor."

Sobs wracked Rachyl's diminuitive frame as she haltingly, doggedly continued.

"I woke up in the hospital again, with two policewomen over me - the only two on Millville's force - and a gaggle of nurses and doctors. I was rather clinically informed that I'd been drugged, brutally assaulted, raped, and beaten... But I found my voice. It was raw, I do remember, and I remember quite clearly saying I hadn't been raped. Then I was asleep again."

Rachyl stopped, blowing her nose, and paused for a few moments as her breathing came under control.

Rachyl opened her robe, then reached for Meegan's hand, still entwined in her hair. She pulled, guided Meegan's fingers down to the short scar, just above her left hip. "I slept for three days straight; I was in surgery twice to repair the torn scar and damaged intestine from one of my... assailant's... fists slamming into me."

She let go of Meegan, and brought the robe back across her body. "After I woke up, one of the doctors, in the presence of a policewoman, told me what had happened to me.

I had been drugged with Vicodin, very well more than is prescribed, but since I had been on Percocet for almost ten months on and off, it didn't take as strong as a hold as it should have. Plus, my previously-strong metabolism helped, as did my recovering body.

I had been strapped to a table in the frat house and at least four men were... planning to... torture and gang rape me.

I never did find out most of what happened, but I know now that I broke a few bones, knocked out a lot of teeth, crushed two noses, severed an artery, and bit off... a portion of a rather sensitive male part. I wasn't even allowed to hear it in the courtroom..."

Rachyl turned onto her side, and curled up, her head still in Meegan's lap, the box of tissues falling to the floor, narrowly missing nearly-full soda. Her body convulsed, almost as if she were going to vomit, but it was merely the force of her sobs torturing her so.

With one hand Meegan lifted Rachyl's head and with the other she grabbed the couch cushion. In one mostly smooth motion she slid down the couch behind Rachyl and put the cushion under their heads. She wrapped arms and legs around her friend, pulling into a full body hug, making sure as much of their bodies touched as possible. Her mind raced, she was beyond glad she had not pried into that file, this was something only the victim can tell. She held Rachyl and pressed a light kiss to her neck, her voice a whisper.

"I'm so sorry, baby. So very sorry that you had to endure such a thing."

Gasping sobs tore at Rachyl's throat as she felt herself enveloped in Meegan. "I found out they'd killed four other girls. I must have missed all of the news and reports when I was in the hospital and recuperating.

They called me a hero. What's heroic about doing every thing possible to save my own life? The mayor. The dean of students. The student body. Mom. The police. The judge. So many people wanted to know what it was like to fight for my life... that began in such a horrid, disgusting place."

Rachyl's body slowed somewhat, and her voice came closer back to its normal tone. "They bulldozed the frat house. I was given the key to start the bulldozer to do it, but I just dropped it back in the guy's hand and turned away. I didn't even watch as I heard the first crunching sound of the blade going through the front porch. They start there, you know, less to collapse...

I've never even learned names. I didn't want to learn names. I discovered the rage, the hatred, I had in me from what happened, really would not have been something safe for me to carry around. So I went to therapy. She helped me, she helped me a lot, helped me realize it wasn't my fault, that everything that I did - as far as getting out alive - was what every woman who couldn't, wished she could have done during, or in her last moments. She helped me get back on my feet as a woman again, but she wasn't able to turn my mind back around as far as not liking men. Well, not 'not liking,' but finding myself more in a mindset of mistrusting them for silly reasons, than not..."

Another body-wracking sob coursed through Rachyl, and a quick honk of her nose clearing. A rattling sigh emanated from her as her breathing slowed, finally, her pulse slow and steady.

Meegan reached up with her hand and swiped at tears pooling on the bridge of her nose. Her heart ached for this woman in her arms and she didn't want to trivialize her trauma by giving advice.

"I think you are a brave woman. I would not call you a hero, I would call you brave and strong. It makes me humble to know you survived that. I do not think it is wrong that you can not trust men, it makes so very much sense." She lifted her body so that she could look into Rachyl's eyes. "I will help you in anyway that I can."

She placed a soft kiss on Rachyl's cheek then reached over her head and picked up the phone receiver. She managed to blindly punch zero and smiled when Reagan's voice came on the line.

"Can I help you Miss Masters."

"Yes, I'd like to cancel everthing I've requested, excepting our laundry, however I would like that delivered at seven a m instead, please."

"My pleasure ma'am."

Meegan hung up the phone. Her lips found the tender flesh of Rachyl's neck as her hands began to remove the robe that covered the once abused body. They stood together, and moved to the bed. It was there that Meegan showed this small, brave woman, just how much she respected her.





((Rachyl and Meegan fade to black, lock please))