EXTRACT FOR
Perspectives
(Slave Kala)
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.