The Only Constant is Change Ch. 10B

"My sister was kind of a bitch, though. She and a couple of her friends decided to mess with this guy because he was different. The problem for me is that they used me to do it. They started leaving little messages for this guy, supposedly from me, telling him that I thought he was cute, and that I thought we should try to get together. It became this elaborate thing. They gave him her cell phone number, and when he'd call, she'd pretend to be me. They even started sending him sexts and pictures of them in their underwear or topless, with strategically placed hands or arms."

She looked at her friends and pleaded, "You've got to understand. I didn't know any of this was going on until it was too late to do anything about it."

"Of course, we believe you," Ava said, taking her hand. "I can't believe that the woman I know would do something like that. Your sister sounds like a real piece of work, though."

"She is," Taylor said, shaking her head sadly. "Aurora's a year older than me, but because of the way our birthdays fall, we were in the same grade. We actually look enough alike that we got asked if we were twins a lot growing up. But as far as I'm concerned, our similarities stop at the physical. My sister was spoiled, cold, and mean. I hated her growing up, and I hate her today. But," she hesitated, obviously remembering something she wasn't ready to give voice to, "she paid a price."

With a shiver, Taylor said, "Where was I? Oh yeah. The teasing. It went on for months. Finally, just before we all graduated, I guess Aurora and her friends decided to destroy Rudy. That's the only way I can think about what they did. They convinced him to meet 'me' at this makeout spot that lots of people went to. They knew that I was going to be with another guy there and they wanted to see what Rudy would do when he saw us together.

"So, they and their boyfriends, along with me and my boyfriend, we headed out together. Apparently, I was the only one who wasn't in on the joke. Looking back, I can't believe that I didn't suspect anything, but I guess I was just naïve.

"I remember that night like it was yesterday. We had smuggled some beer and wine coolers out, and someone even had a small bottle of peach schnapps. The others had done some pre-partying, and I think they had maybe done a little more than the weed they were trying to get me to join in smoking. But I wouldn't do it; I was the only one not getting high. We were all sitting around this campfire, drinking and smoking, listening to music, and things were getting a little more heated between the different couples, when all of a sudden, there's Rudy standing there. He'd obviously cleaned himself up, and he was wearing decent clothes. He was holding a single red rose in one of those little test tube vases, like the kind you get at a gas station or something. He's got this shocked, crushed expression on his face, but his eyes are moving back and forth between me and Aurora. I got the impression he hadn't realized that we were different people.

"Everyone there except me just broke down laughing. I couldn't understand what was going on, and I didn't say anything. Why didn't I say anything?" she asked herself pensively. "Then they started to tease him. He tried to walk away, but the guys were ready for him. They grabbed him and tied him up. And that's when they basically tortured him.

"They made him watch while my sister and her friends took turns giving blowjobs to the guys as they sat right next to him. The girls opened his fly, and he was a little on the small side, which just gave them more ammunition. The girls made fun of his dick while they were sucking the other guys off. And when the guys shot, they drooled the spunk all over his face and hair," laughing about it and saying he probably liked having real man cum on his face.

"Oh my God," gasped Ava. "That's horrible." Jeremy was appalled. What kind of person would do something like that? To have a whole gang of them at once? Impossible to imagine.

Taylor was nodding. "Once they got going, I tried to stop them. They just wouldn't listen. My sister slapped me and told me if I didn't shut up they were going to tie me up and have the guys take turns on me. I didn't know what to do, and I just broke down and cried. Something must have snapped in Rudy, because the next time I looked at him, he was just staring at me with these dead eyes. There was nobody home anymore.

"Nobody saw Rudy after that night. They cut him loose once they were done, but he didn't move from the spot before we all left. As far as I know, he didn't come back to school or graduation. I left the area a couple of weeks later to get a head start on school for the summer, but everyone else stayed at home. Since that night, every single person that was there has been attacked and hurt badly, except me. The girls have all been raped violently. Aurora," Taylor sniffed, "she had her, um, he...he cut her clit off. He sliced her face up and cut her clit off. She said he told her that she'd be lucky to ever have sex again, but she damn sure wouldn't enjoy it.

"One of the girls, he raped her anally and tore her so bad that she had to have surgery. The other one, the one that did most of the talking, he cut out her tongue."

Ava asked, "If you know it's this Rudy guy, how come the police haven't caught up with him?"

"Actually," Taylor replied, "no one knows for sure that it's him. The guy doesn't rape them himself. I mean, he doesn't put his penis in them. He uses dildos, objects, whatever he wants I guess. There's no DNA to link him to the crimes. Whoever it is always wears a mask, so his identity is concealed. But even if they did, no one knows where he is. It's like he vanished off the face of the earth.

"Every one of the guys has been drugged and kidnapped. They've all reported being put through some sort of gay slavery night, forced to service men orally and swallow or have their cocks cut off, and raped anally. Two of them have committed suicide, and the other two were castrated at the end of the night and dropped off at local hospital emergency rooms. No footage has ever captured the assailant. When police investigated the events, they've found what looks like evidence that the guys solicited strangers in chat rooms to help fulfill a rape fantasy. The contacts are all made anonymously, and none of the DNA samples have matched anyone in the databases, so there's nothing to investigate."

Listening to the story, Jeremy could scarcely believe that real people were involved. It seemed like something out of a horror novel. "And now you think this guy's after you?"

"It's the only thing that makes sense," Taylor said and burst into tears. "I'm so scared! I don't want to die!" she wailed.

Jeremy thought about it for a second and made a snap decision. "Come live with us. We'll watch over you and keep you safe."

Ava looked at her husband with pride. It was exactly what needed to happen. "Yes, sweetie. We have a spare bedroom. Move in with us."

Taylor looked skeptical. Under other circumstances, she'd jump at the opportunity to fulfill the fantasy she'd been nursing for weeks now. Now, in light of the possibility that Rudy was hunting her, she didn't want to put her friends in danger. But, she realized, it's not like I have a lot of options. She looked at them with tears in her eyes and said, "If it's really not too much trouble, I'd love to stay with you guys."

Jeremy spent a restless night envisioning the terrible things that Taylor described. He couldn't imagine the evil that would have to be in someone's heart to do what had been done to this Rudy guy. In a way, it was difficult to blame the guy for taking his revenge on the people who had tortured him like that. Hopefully, after they spoke with the police, they'd catch whoever was threatening Taylor before anything happened to her. Or to them, he supposed. After all, if the guy were so unstable as to do the things he'd apparently done already, what was there to stop him from going through Jeremy or Ava to get to Taylor?

The next day, Jeremy escorted Taylor to the police station to make a report. They met with a detective, but he didn't offer much hope of capturing the guy. Unfortunately, without a firm identity or known address for the man she suspected, there wasn't much the police could do except offer to step up patrols in their neighborhood and around the hospital. Neither Jeremy nor Taylor felt much better after the meeting.

After kicking around some ideas, the three now-roommates made some definite plans. Taylor got a new phone number. Ava and Taylor were both outfitted with emergency whistles and pepper spray. They even began taking self-defense classes together. Whenever possible, they travelled together. If, for some reason, Ava was not available, then Jeremy stepped in to escort Taylor.

Over the next four months, things slowly returned to a state of normalcy. Taylor hadn't heard from the mysterious caller or received any other packages or notes for the whole time. Despite the circumstances that had brought them together, Ava and Jeremy really enjoyed having Taylor in the house with them. For the first couple of weeks, it had been a little awkward to be intimate while trying to be respectful of their guest. Taylor picked up on it and promised them that she had noise-canceling headphones and they could get "as freaky as they wanted." So, they did.

It was only another week before they welcomed Taylor to their bed again.

Once that levee broke, it became a semi-regular thing. Ava felt, and Jeremy agreed, that what happened when the three of them were together was more than just sex. There was a genuine desire on the part of each of them for the others to be fulfilled. Jeremy began to push a little harder to be the dominant man that he sensed that Taylor desired; Taylor responded to it so strongly that Ava began to push her a little harder as well. Taylor was living her fantasy.

Reality crushed them all.

Ava stayed home from work for a few days, sick with a nasty virus, weak and vomiting. That left Jeremy pulling double-duty as Taylor's escort, on top of his school work and drills. The pace was taking a toll on him, but he didn't mind. He'd really grown quite fond of the beautiful redhead. He and Ava had even begun to have discussions about how to handle things in a few months when Jeremy graduated. He'd receive his commission and take orders to his first command. Would Taylor want to come with them? Did they want her to come with them? If not, how could they ensure her safety?

If they hadn't both been exhausted when he collected her, just after her shift ended at midnight, they might have noticed the light out in the parking lot. If they had paid more attention to their surroundings instead of slipping into the blissful ignorance of routine, they might have seen the man who emerged from the shadows just as they passed his hiding spot. As Jeremy opened his door he turned, laughing at some little joke that Taylor had made. The last thing he saw before a searing pain caused his entire body to go rigid and his synapses to shut down, was the terrified face of the woman standing next to him. He heard part of her scream just before the world went dark.

The smell of an ammonia capsule breaking beneath his nostrils startled Jeremy awake. His attempt to evade the aggressive odor was prevented by the plastic wire ties binding his wrists behind him, and his feet crossed at the ankle and affixed to the legs of the folding chair upon which he sat. Several loops of duct tape held his upper body firmly against the back rest. As awareness of his condition bloomed in his mind, Jeremy struggled against his bonds but quickly found them very effective at keeping him right where he was.

"It's no use, you know. Struggling, I mean. I've gotten very good at restraining people." The voice came from close behind Jeremy. A man stepped around his captive and into his field of vision.

There were bright stage lights illuminating the room he was in. The man who had apparently captured him was backlit, and so his features were indistinct. Jeremy was still blinking his eyes, trying to draw them into focus against the glare. Looking away from the intense brightness, he took stock of his surroundings. It appeared that he was in a sort of old warehouse. From his position in the darkness at the edge of the pool of light, he could see a bed in the center of the room.

A video camera was pointed at the bed and on it, Taylor was tied down, wrists and ankles. She was still clothed in her hospital scrubs, and she'd had a strip of duct tape placed across her mouth. She didn't seem to be moving, but as his vision adjusted, Jeremy could make out the rise and fall of her chest. So she was probably still alive.

In addition to Taylor, there were several sex toys on the bed. Looking them over, Jeremy could make out a double-headed dildo, a harness for a strap-on dildo attached to the biggest fake cock he'd ever seen, a string of plastic balls with some sort of pull ring at the end, what appeared to be nipple clamps, and a number of items that he didn't recognize and whose purpose he couldn't even begin to fathom.

"So!" The man said, clapping his hands. "Are you ready to begin?"

In a daze, Jeremy barely registered that the man was speaking to him. "Whuh?" Swallowing to lubricate his throat, he tried again. "What do you mean?"

"Tonight, I complete my revenge against the bitches who destroyed my life and the men who enabled them...and you're going to help me," the man said with the wicked grin of someone far too happy under the circumstances. Then he giggled like an evil version of the cartoon doughboy in those commercials.

Even in the fog brought on by whatever had been used to subdue him, Jeremy wasn't about to help this evil creature do anything. "You're out of your mind," he said. "I'm not helping you with anything."

The grin abruptly disappeared from the man's face. In its place was the feigned sadness of someone attempting to cajole an intransigent child into doing what he'd been asked. "Awww. That's so cute. You thinking that you have a choice, I mean." He came and knelt down next to Jeremy's chair and murmured harshly, "You'll help me, or I cut your dick off and watch you bleed out. Then I'll still take my revenge, but you'll be dead."

For the first time in his young life, Jeremy was confronted with his mortality. You'd think that joining the military would have brought that to mind before, but like most young men, Jeremy trusted in his invincibility and hadn't given it much thought. He was a computer guy, for crying out loud. He'd been bunkered down in an office building that last time he'd been active, and there weren't a whole lot of threats to ROTC students on campus. The principle of sacrifice, however, was one the he'd understood and respected as a part of a man's character; he'd learned that from his father. If his last act on this earth was to save a life through his sacrifice, there were probably worse ways to go out, he thought.

Still, there was no sense in dying if there were another way. Maybe he could cut through the madness of man before him. There just had to be a spark of humanity, however tiny, remaining within him. Jeremy just needed to find it.

"You're Rudy, right? Rudy Martino?" he asked.

The surprise was evident on the man's face. "How do you know that name?"

"That woman that you have tied to the bed over there? Taylor Sims? She told me about you. She told me what those bitches did to you."

At the mention of Taylor's name, Rudy became angry. "Don't you dare say her name to me! It's because of her that I'm...the way I am," he finished, stalking a few steps away. Quietly he said, "If she told you what happened to me, then you know why I have to do this."

Jeremy was elated that the man was talking, because every moment he spent in conversation was another moment that he, and presumably Taylor, lived. How to keep it going? He decided to offer commiseration in the hope that he could adjust the man's course of action. "Honestly? After I heard what happened to you, I was sick in my soul. No one, no man," he emphasized, "should ever go through something like that. I don't blame you a bit for what you did to the others."

Rudy jerked to look at him in surprise. "You don't?"

He shook his head. "Nope. I don't have a bit of sympathy for them. They got what was coming to them." He feigned nonchalance, hoping like hell that Rudy couldn't hear the pounding of his heart that sounded so loud in his own ears. With a shrug he added, "I think those guys got off easy."

The unstable young man's face once again shifted to the overly excited psychopath and he hurried to Jeremy's side. With that sick grin re-plastered to his face, he knelt down and excitedly said, "I knew you'd understand! That's why I took you too. I needed for someone to see that I didn't give up, that I made them all pay for what they did. So, are you ready?"

Jeremy was so nervous he thought he might piss himself. This was such a delicate moment, and clearly the man before him was completely delusional. One wrong step could be the death of them both.

He took a deep breath and assumed a sad countenance before shaking his head at Rudy. "I can't do it. I'm sorry."

"What!" exclaimed Rudy. "Why not?"

Jeremy looked him in the eye and said, "You're getting revenge on those evil people who were guilty of humiliating you and ruining your life, right?"

The man before him simply nodded, curious where he was going.

"When Taylor told me the story, she said that she tried to stop them. Is that true?" Jeremy stared at the man intently, hoping to make him appreciate the gravity of the question.

For the first time, Rudy looked uneasy. "She was there. She watched it all. She had to know what was going on."

"Did she ever spit on you? Or make fun of you? Did she even laugh at you?" Desperately, Jeremy needed Rudy to follow this train to its logical conclusion.

Rudy didn't say anything for a minute, maybe two. He was clearly replaying the events of that night in his mind, trying to find a hole in the argument Jeremy seemed to be making. Finally, he sullenly admitted that he didn't think she had. "But then why was she there?" he whined.

Jeremy shook his head and said, "I don't know. My understanding is that the others used her as a weapon against you, and they made her a victim at the same time. She told me she was there with her boyfriend, but she didn't know about what they were planning. And she said they threatened to rape her if she interfered." Jeremy turned his head to look Rudy in the eye. "My dad once told me that there are sacrifices worth making, and sometimes a man has to accept pain to protect those he cares for. He said that was the mark of a real man, that he would stand up and be the shield for those who can't do for themselves. To me, it sounds like you gave up yourself in that battle so that Taylor would be spared. You're a hero in a way, not a victim. You won all the battles after that.

"I'm begging you, don't taint the victories you've won by destroying the precious thing you sacrificed yourself to protect." With that, Jeremy fell silent, praying with everything he had that he had made an impact.

For the first time in a long time, Rudy felt something besides shame and anger within himself. He remembered that night, not in the fevered nightmares that had plagued him ever since, but with a critical eye towards the actions each person there had taken. As he played the film strip in his mind, it was as if he could maneuver the camera's viewpoint to zoom in on each face. There was Aurora, laughing at him as she opened his pants and bared his penis. There was Tyler telling him that if he was a good boy, maybe Tyler would let him clean his dick after he fucked Mackenzie. And on the other side of the fire, there was Taylor with a look of horror on her face, tears streaming down her cheeks as she pleaded with the others to leave Rudy alone.