Chapter 10Luck

Reevaluating a situation, in which you see no immediate intelligent options, is a very tricky business. The mind definitely has a tendency to run in circles for a long time before it settles and allows for lateral thinking. The first two days back at work were, therefore, somewhat hindered by my preoccupied mind, trying to figure out a perfect solution to my puzzle. However, with some bigger clients requiring my full attention, some much needed reprieve was gotten from the taunting troubles. As the week was coming to an end it became more pressing a matter once more to find a solution. Some things had been tempting me though, the company maintained some personal information on clients. It wasn't very common to look through those unless it was directly needed for work. Additionally, it wasn't like the company included photographs of all their clients, nor did I expected them to. Reputable companies wouldn't.

And he didn't really look like a high-roller.

During the evenings, I spent time in the public library, searching old news-clippings of the past few years, looking for rape being mentioned. The library itself held some interest with me, especially with the tense quiet of people using all their concentration for a particular story or study. A mix of classic and modern design, lighting obviously newer, illuminating paths and reading tables, but leaving the bookcases looking more classic and at ease. It meant not feeling being put in the spotlight while browsing, but having enough light to walk and read with no problems. The air in the library was a little unpleasant, making me wonder if they made it dryer so the books wouldn't rot. The clippings themselves weren't in paper but rather on a screen, including a textual search, making things a lot easier. The results it came up with on rape in and around the city were astounding. There was a lot more sexual abuse in the papers than I had thought. It surprised me that people not only found it interesting enough to write about, but giving it front page before other, probably more important issues. Bizarrely enough, the various articles provided me with a lot of insight into what moved rapists to do this kind of thing. Some of the interviews, with various experts and police officers, got quite deep into the subject matter. From explaining how some chose their victims to various methods of suppression and intent. It didn't dazzle me was what it was all really about.

Control.

Sex was just a method used to force control to a subject. All rape was about, was establishing the chain of command between the victim and villain, using fear and abuse of the victim's body. The penetration and subsequent orgasm inside was the signature that sealed the contract of command. Interestingly enough, most of the rapes were done through the threat of hurt rather than actions. Knives, guns and fists were involved, but rarely used. Almost the same thing with condoms, the difference being that they were rarely used nor involved. The culprits didn't care about the state of the victim, health or money wise, but they tended to choose someone who they thought would be easily subjected. It didn't say anything about women with rape fantasies. Presumably it was frowned upon by rapists, as it would take the fun out of it for them if the victim desired their identity destruction. The final statistic caused me to raise my eyebrows. Pregnancy caused by rape. While it wasn't a high percentage as such, a surprising amount of women did not go for abortion or adoption, but rather kept the child and raised it. Either by choice or religion, despite the source of the baby. One may wonder if those children would grow up to be rapists as well, or if their mother ever told them about their father (as much as they knew). Probably not.

My plan.

It was mostly based on the assumption that he did frequent the area based on the lighter, obviously not having been obtained on the same night, and his knowledge of the area. And it was also based on the hope that I would get lucky, asking around as subtly as I could. The less you know about a person, the more difficult it is to find them and I didn't exactly have a team of computer-savvy geeks at my disposal to break into security systems and obtain camera footage of the man, use that footage to look him up through police files and then (because I'd still want to do it myself) step by his house to pay him an interesting visit. If only. It'd leave a prodigious pile of evidence not to mention that there would be very little to do for that convenient computer crew. Nor was I planning to use company resources for such an endeavor, as alluring as it sounded.

Asking questions.

Exactly what I was planning to do.

The weekend arrived with little effort, time passes with our inexplicable inability to impediment it's course. One tiny thing of interest in the past week was left. The preoccupation with the weekend did protect me from a very dangerous situation. At work, the moments spent in the toilet can (and are) at times be accompanied by clitoral massages to help me through the day. With the thoughts weighing on my mind, however, I had done that surprisingly little which saved my respected hide when the ceiling of the toilets collapsed. The workers replacing the lights in the women's bathroom, which they had thankfully done out of hours, had apparently misaligned some of the ceiling tiles. During lunch hour, the busiest time in the toilets, it collapsed on top of me and opened the door, exposing me to my female colleagues. If I had been playing with myself, my inner area would have been exposed, with my hand obviously wandering there, instead it was just a fairly neutral image of my knees together and toilet paper in my hand. And a ceiling tile on me. Of course, everyone was more concerned with my head than any other area of my body. But those tiles weigh practically nothing and, except for some dust in my hair, I was fine.

Interesting event nonetheless.

Back to the weekend. I took great care to look a lot sluttier than normal and tried various accents until one I felt comfortable with. A hint of southern, but not so much it would be clear where I was from. Like most things, less is more. A subtle accent is more believable than a strong one, as a strong one sounds more faked. Combined with a bleach blond wig that looked like someone who desperately wanted to look younger. After some searching, I had success in finding a clothing set to match, looking suitably slutty in a haphazard way. A bit like a southern-ish girl visiting temporarily to try her luck. It was good to look a little out of place for my plan. My car waited patiently outside, looking better than I did, and purred eagerly at my demand.

Back to that neighborhood.

There is this funny thing about stories, told in any medium, that leaves out a lot of the mundane things in life. Toilet visits, morning routines, getting groceries, most things are left out for time's sake because they're not relevant. Most of our life is fluff. If you recall a day to someone, do you tell about brushing your teeth, removing that one piece of spinach between your teeth? So, normally when I talk about the weekend or going out, I don't mention tanking or the trips during the week to buy new clothes, shoes, wigs or otherwise. It's usually not important nor interesting. No one likes to read about how many red dresses you tried out before you found the right one. All you want to hear is how perfect form fitting and sexy the dress looks on you once you found it.

Anyway, me starting about this makes it rather obvious that as I went to the gas-station, not too far from where I was planning to go, something worthy of mention happened.

Not the most exciting of places, just a gas-station with four pumps, a low roof and lots of light. No customers there at this hour but it didn't look like it'd been quiet all day. Wrappers on the ground of various types of candy, chewing gum on the ground that had not yet been trampled. My heels were killing me, so to speak, it was a pair I rarely wore. They looked terrible on me, but that was kind of the point. I was glad I didn't use the really high heels because that would have irked me all night long. Tanking itself was comfortable enough, no problem there, no one smoking or frivolously spilling gasoline besides me. The store was normal too, with various tools and oils for cars and of course food of a mostly unhealthy nature. The design was as standard as it got, with some cartons displaying brands I didn't care about for products I didn't need to know about. All of this was completely unimportant to the person who was working behind the counter.

The man I was looking for.

Of all the stupid coincidence and all the accidental meetings it would be here I'd see him again. A place full of cameras, light and the likelihood of anyone finding him within an hour. Completely unprepared. He had caught me with my pants down. Again. Although, this time, it wasn't physical and control of the situation was in my hands. A major advantage on my part; he didn't know who I was.

I hoped.

It took all the concentration, all the energy I could muster, not to charge him and kill him right there. But circumstances were completely at odds with my rage. It would have been a very, very stupid thing to do. Of course having worked as a manager for years meant that moments of surprise were always hidden below a veneer layer of neutrality, patience and understanding. So instead of fright, I transformed my moment of panic to a display of indecisiveness, related to the choice of candy-bar I wanted to purchase. It was important not to look at him at all, the glance around the room was all that was required to find the portable bite-size bits of teeth-rot and oral pleasure. It took only a second for me to form a plan that would work, depending on the time I had to execute it.

As I paid for the candy-bar, I asked him when he got off work. Two hours. It was fun to apologize to him for being impatient and telling him it would take too long and how much of a pity it was. He took it well and even flirted back a little. He didn't appear to have any problems with presenting himself, making me wonder why all of it had happened last week. Did he even have his reasons? Did he do it more often? Was his mind all screwed up?

Then again, I never thought I'd be killing men for pleasure.

Two hours, it was too long to wait but not nearly long enough to go back home and change my style. In fact, even if I did have the time to change, it would have been a bad idea to join him this night. Too soon after I had been recorded flirting on camera. Waiting would have to be the game for now. Perhaps I could do the simple thing of following him, learning where he lived or went to without looking too obvious.