Locking my door I slipped my keys into the back pocket of my bright red fanny pack,
zippered it closed and set off. I lived directly across the street from Omand’s Park, I
crossed the street and headed into this at an easy lope. It was a quarter to eight on a
Saturday morning and the paths had plenty of joggers like me; many of which I knew by
name, and all by sight.
Picking up my pace a little I jogged past others, returning nods and smiles with
nods and bright smiles of my own. I knew this path well, and saved my energy for a part I
soon reached, a small wooded area near one corner of the park. The path here ran along a
deep, steep gully covered in brambles and thick choking weeds. It also began to go up and
down a series of slight hills. About halfway through this section, I happened to be alone
not having encountered another jogger for several minutes, my pace slowed by the dips and
rises and currently at the bottom of another steep climb, a man crested the top of the
next rise.
He was about five nine and seemed to be a bit skinny, dressed in jeans and a light
jacket of some brown colored material; a brown felt hat hid his face in shadow. I was
still sure he was a Stranger, someone I’d never seen before on my morning jog or
elsewhere. With the instinctive caution of our times I slowed my pace slightly (already
slowed by the uphill struggle) and took a closer cautious look at the man, questing for
signs of danger. As if sensing and understanding my caution he stepped over to the far
side of the path, the side opposite the one bounded by the gully. He actually stepped off
the path as far out of my way as he could get, pressing himself against the bushes beneath
the trees by the path and slowly, unthreateningly he removed his hands from his pockets;
but as he did so several pieces of change and a few crumpled bits of paper fell out,
scattering upon the grass. I distantly saw the slivery flash of at least one twoonie
(that’s a two dollar coin for you Americans) as it fell, and heard the dull ring of a
loonie hit the pavement.
Still unable to see his face I nevertheless sensed the man’s frown of
consternation, and heard him hiss ‘shit!’ under his breath. I was still about ten feet
from him as he took a short step forward, turned and squatted down, face lowered, eyes
gazing intently at the ground as his hands swept through the grass gathering up change and
bits of paper. Some of it was his posture, relaxed, calm in general, the indifference
toward a stranger on the street whom you had no business with so common these days, some
was his actions the obvious intent of which had been to show his harmlessness in a place
screened from prying eyes, where tensions between an unfamiliar man and woman passing each
other could run high, and a genuinely harmless guy could get a faceful of pepper spray
very easily. And some of it was his physical position, squatting with his back to me, head
bent in concentration as he searched for his stuff; he suddenly almost seemed to radiate
harmlessness, to embody it. Still not really having an idea of what he looked like, I
flicked my eyes off him and almost instantly forgot about him as I jogged slowly by.
In books, even when the hero is temporarily felled they got a moment's
warning, a dragged footstep, a flicker of motion out of the corner of the eye. I was taken
completely by surprise, didn’t even get a chance to scream. He shoulder-checked me almost
gently from behind and to the side, sending me careening head over feet down the steep
sides of the gully. It wasn’t much of a fall really, and although I landed twisted half on
my side with my legs pointed one way and my body another, with one arm trapped painfully
under me, most of the force of the impact was absorbed by the thick carpet of weeds and
grass at the bottom of the bush filled, weed choked ditch. Still the breath was driven
from my body, leaving me gasping like a fish plucked neatly from the bottom of a still
pond, and the force of the fall knocked me silly for a moment. In fact for several moments
I was dazed and confused, unsure of who, what, or where I was. Behind me I heard someone
half walking half sliding down the steep embankment toward me. At this point I still
didn’t know who had pushed me, the man squatting in the grass, or a blind jogger head
down, running all out, whom I hadn’t heard approaching. I didn’t know whether the incident
was an attack or an unfortunate accident. I didn’t know who was coming, and I didn’t even
know if he was coming to assist or to renew his assault.
Still not quite sure who I was or what was happening, I rolled onto my belly,
groaning softly as I straightened myself out, face down on my stomach. Painfully freeing
my trapped arm; which tingled as if it had been asleep for an hour, only then it began
throbbing as if it had been struck with a baseball bat. I braced my other arm against the
ground and mentally prepared myself to struggle to my knees, while working on forcing air
back into my forcefully deflated lungs; but before I could do anything else, the question
as to whether or not I was being assaulted answered itself.
A heavy weight dropped onto the broad middle of my back, driving me hard against
the ground and once again blasting the breath from my body with a whoosh. The man grabbed
my hair hard as he leaned low over me and jerked my head back painfully. My thoughts grew
suddenly crystal clear as I felt the seemingly razor sharp, strangely warm steel of a
knife blade pressing against the pulsing artery of my throat. Not quite breaking the skin,
not yet drawing blood, but it could I knew, with just a little more pressure.
His voice hissed sibilantly into my ear. “Don’t you dare struggle you bitch!”
Despite being suddenly clear-headed I was too … incoherent is the wrong word, un-coherent,
disorganized, to offer any resistance as he spread himself over me, covering my body
beneath his suddenly massive own. His one hand released its grip on my hair, although the
knife was still at my throat, and his free arm moved down and grabbed a fistful of my
jeans at the waistband. Then he hissed again into my ear, “Crawl forward you fucking
bitch! Right the fuck now!”
Using his grip on my jeans he urged me forward, half pulling half guiding me as he
forced me deeper into the concealing bramble. At his urging and with the blade tight
against my neck I belly crawled forward on my elbows half a dozen feet, he rode me but
used his knees and feet to add to my momentum, possibly knowing I couldn’t have moved an
inch with his weight on top of me otherwise.
Despite the fact that the brush seemed a solid mass of strangled weeds and
undergrowth from above, it seemed amazingly easy to crawl under it; in fact it seemed as
if a man-sized creature had already cleared a path before me. A path invisible unless you
were down on your belly crawling along it. At his urging (he thumped his knees into my
sides like a rider on a horse) I moved a dozen or so more feet, the path curving slightly
and I with it, eventually coming to a little hollowed out place in the gully. This space
was made of soft crumbly earth and seemed to have been swept flat and cleared. Above and
all around interlocked branches from several bushes formed a dense concealing mat of
vegetation some four feet above the ground, meaning a person couldn’t stand but could
crouch or kneel. The interlocked bush was more than dense enough to make this hollow,
perhaps ten feet in diameter, invisible from any vantage point outside of its concealing
sphere. A perfect little concealment, but still enough light filtered though to allow a
person to see clearly. In fact I could see, see that this place had been prepared.
Besides obviously having been swept clear of debris, several items had been stashed
here, namely a brown leather briefcase, closed; and beside it a black backpack, ominous in
their very innocuousness, here, in this concealed place. In the middle of this clearing
were four orange plastic tent pegs, driven into the ground as if someone had begun to set
up a tent and never finished; except that the thick pegs were clearly meant for something
else. A gleaming steel pair of handcuffs lay curled beside each one, one cuff locked
around an eyelet on the peg, the other open and gleaming like the jaws of an unsprung bear
trap.
He leaned near my ear again, and this time spoke in a normal and suddenly polite,
almost jovial tone of voice. “Keep crawling lady, we’re not there yet.”
As I crawled I saw with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that he guided
me closer and closer to the tent pegs and handcuffs, but he kept the knife feather-light
yet noticeably against now, the side of my neck. I thought (I looked it up later and I was
more than right, I was correct... think about it) getting an artery sliced would probably
kill me faster then getting my actual throat slit, so I had little choice but to crawl
amongst the scattered restraints. Once I was among them I quickly realized they had been
spaced so that a person lying at the center of the rough square they formed, would be
perfectly positioned to get handcuffed spread eagle; and that is exactly what happened -
although something else happened first.
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