Tales From The Psych Ward 3: The Mind of a Witness

Part 3: The Mind of a Witness

I guess if you are going to have a catatonic episode, there is no better place to have it than in your psychiatrist's office. Especially if he doesn't really believe what happens.

Dr. Henderson had just said that he thought that we had been making a lot of good progress over the past several weeks when suddenly I was gone. He thought I was catatonic, but actually I was in an alley downtown. This sort of thing happened all the time with Kelly, but this time I wasn't Kelly. I was someone else. I think her name was Rachel. I was Rachel and I was being raped and murdered.

I could vaguely remember that my car had stalled and I couldn't get it to restart. I was in a bad neighborhood, but knew that there was a bus stop just one block over. I cut through the alley thinking that the streets weren't any safer and it was the shortest distance to a safe spot, but no sooner had I entered the alley than hands had grabbed me from behind and dragged me into a side alley that couldn't be seen from the street. That's when things got bad... really bad.

I woke up in the hospital emergency room. Dr. Henderson was next to the bed talking to one of the ER doctors. I could hear him say, "I know it is procedure, but I tell you he wasn't attacked. I was there. The wounds and bruises just appeared as he sat there in a catatonic psychotic episode. They are called stigmata.' Put that in your report."

The ER Doctor replied, "Well, Officer Mendes is here anyway with a DOA homicide, so we will just have him step into the room for a moment."

A few moments later Detective Mendez came into the room. He knew me from numerous times before when I had been admitted to the ER with unexplained injuries. As he walked over to the bed I was sitting on he said derisively, "OK nutbag, what did you do to yourself this time?"

He started to ask something else, but as he came around the bed to where he could see my face, he suddenly stopped and exclaimed, "Holy Matre Dio Shit!!!" and ran out of the room.

I could hear him yelling down the hallway, "Frank, I want you up here now!" Then he and a CSI tech entered the room. He continued, "I want close ups of his face and details of every fucking square inch of his body, and I want them compared to the vic in room 10. And I want that done NOW!"

The tech started to say something, but then he looked up at me and exclaimed, "Jesus! That ain't possible!"

"Tell me about it," said Detective Mendez, shaking he head. Then he suddenly snapped his head around so he could look me directly in the face and said with slow anger, "Now, you tell me all about it, nutbag. I want every detail of everything you can remember or make up about what happened to you."

I wondered what had caused all the commotion, but as I lay back on my bed I got my answer. I caught a glance of my face in the mirror. On my forehead, directly between my eyes, was the backward imprint of a signet ring. A large, ornate R had been embedded into my forehead and was starting to fill in with a dark purple as my skin began to bruise.

"That must have been when Rocco hit me, " I said.

"Tell me what you know." replied Mendez. His voice was strange, almost tired-like. The anger was gone. "I don't know how you know it, but tell me everything."

"OK," I replied. "I was at my psychiatrist's office when suddenly I was in an alley downtown. I was trying to cut across to a bus stop, but somebody grabbed me from behind."

"What do you mean, You were in an alley'?" he interrupted.

"It was like when I become Kelly," I replied. "Only this time it wasn't Kelly."

His only response was "Jesus, don't go into that shit. Just tell me what you want to tell me and we will sort out how you know it later."

I continued. "There were two of them. One of them pushed me into the side alley and said, I've been looking forward to this for a long time, Chica.' Then he hit me in face with the his fist - really hard. My head snapped back and then I started to fall forward. The other one grabbed my arms from behind to keep me from falling and the first one started to tear off my clothes. As he ripped my skirt from around my legs, his face came into the light and I recognized him. He was one of the mechanics at the garage where I have my car worked on. I think his name is Rocco.'"

"Rocco grabbed my blouse and pulled it open and then wrenched it down my arms. He grabbed my arms just under the shoulders while his friend finished stripping it away. Then his friend grabbed my arms again near my elbows and pulled them back almost between my shoulder blades. Rocco then grabbed my skirt and yanked hard, tearing it from my body. He did the same with my panties. I was surprised and how hard it was for him to tear away my thong. I always thought of it as just a piece of thread around the back, but evidently it is a little stronger than the butt floss that people call it. The waist band cut into my back as he tore it away."

"After I was completely naked things got really bad. 'OK, you prick tease,' Rocco's friend rasped, Let see how much you really want it.'"

"With that they threw me face first onto the ground and Rocco jumped on top of me. I tried to fight against him, but he was too strong. He flipped me over and spread my legs and plunged into me. The pain was tremendous, but somehow he slipped into me almost immediately. Thinking back on it, he must have been wearing an lubricated condom. The pain continued with each thrust."

"I had sex before but not like this. Something wasn't right about Rocco. It was like he was stretching me top and bottom and on one side. I think I was tearing because the pain became much worse. I felt like I was being impaled by a big cork screw."

"Finally he finished, but as he stood up, his friend took his place. Old bent nail probably has you torn up pretty good up front, so I'm going for the Hershey Highway.' He flipped me face down and pulled up on my hips so that my ass was slightly in the air. Then holding my hips, he forced himself into me from the back. Again he slipped in very easily. He must have been wearing a lubricated condom and must have also been very small because there was much less pain that I expected."

"I curled up in a ball and hoped that they were finished with me, but then Rocco pulled me to my feet. Did you think, little Chica, that we were going to let you go? You know who I am, don't you. I saw the recognition in your eyes. I think we will have a little more fun with you and then make sure you never tell anyone.'"

"I tried to pull away, but they dragged me further back into the side alley. There were a couple of large pipes that stuck up out of the ground to protect a dumpster. They tied my hands to rings that were welded near the top of the pipes and put some sort of tape over my mouth. Then they tied my feet to the pipes near the ground and took off their belts and began to swing them at my back. I tried to scream, but nothing came out."

"Rocco came up behind me and whispered in my ear. You think we are doing this just to have fun. Well, that is partially true, but in reality, we are concealing evidence. The coroner will be able to tell that there is something different about me by the bruising on your cunt, so we are giving him some different bruises to look at.' Then he stepped back and began swinging his belt upward between my legs. I nearly passed out from the pain as slap after slap slammed into my pussy lips. I could barely get my breath. I was wishing that they would just kill me and get it over with."

"Then Rocco stepped around in front of me and held up a small wooden baseball bat. He chuckled and said, Hundreds of these are sold everyday at the ball park. No way to trace it from just the bruising pattern. But it is the unreleased signature of The Baseball Rapist.' Then he shoved it into me... hard. He rocked it back and forth and up and down and laughed again, Hurts, doesn't it Chica. A pity you won't learn your lesson and not shake that pretty little ass of yours in everybody's face all the time. Well, maybe you have learned your lesson, but its too late, isn't it?' Then he pushed the bat all the way in."

"I could feel myself tearing inside. When he pulled the bat out it was covered with blood. I could feel blood running down the inside of my legs. I was starting to get light headed. Strangely the pain was gone. All I could think of was So this is what it is like to bleed out.'"

"Then Rocco reached up above my arms. See these rings, Chica? Isn't it a lucky coincidence that they are on these poles? There was no fence nearby to string you up on, but these worked out real well. And see this weld? It's not really a weld. The top of these pipes screw off. Frank there puts these pipes in all over town and every one of them is a perfect place to tie up whoever needs to be tied up or hide whatever needs hidden. We won't leave your body too close to the dumpster, but even if we did, no one knows they come apart but Frank and me.'"

"With that, he unscrewed the top of the pipe and dropped the bat down inside it. He next dropped in a couple of paper towels with something inside them - maybe the rubbers they had used. And finally he dropped in all of my clothes. Cops will go nuts searching the dumpsters and sewers for this stuff, and all the time it is right here with you.'"

"That's all I remember, Officer Mendez. Things went black after that and I woke up in here."

He looked at me for a moment and growled. "I'm going back down to that alley and checking out those pipes. If what you say is in there we have fingerprints and DNA to put Rocco and Frank or whoever they are away for a long time. Maybe I will check every God damned pipe around every God damned dumpster in this God damned city and clear up a whole bunch of God damned cold cases. I don't know how you know all this, nutbag, but if I find out you were in on this in any way, I will put you away forever."

Dr. Henderson, who had been standing quietly near the head of my bed spoke softly, "I can assure you, Officer Mendez, that he was in my office the entire time that whatever occurred happened, and no, I have no idea what it was that actually occurred."

Officer Mendez and Dr. Henderson then walked over to the corner of the room and spoke in whispers for several moments before they both left.

A little while later, Kelly came into my room. She was really here. She wasn't just in my head. The ER doctor could obviously see her because he stepped aside to let her come up to my cot. She wasn't dressed in her usual short black dress and there was no dog collar around her neck. "Master Wayne told me I could dress normal' to come down here," she said. She struggled to say, "I came to identify the body," then she continued quietly, "Rachel was my sister. Master Wayne said you knew what happened. I was listening outside your door. You don't have to repeat it."

She paused and cried softly for a few moments. "I told Rachel about you once. I told her that when things were almost too bad for me to bear alone, all I had to do was think about you and suddenly you were there with me. She must have remembered when things got bad for her. Thank you for helping her.... And thank you for telling the police what happened even if it means they think you are a nutbag." Kelly gave me a wry smile and a gentle kiss on my cheek and then turned and walked out of the room.

After she left I fell asleep and let the pain pills do their thing. The next morning I was watching the news from my hospital bed and saw Officer Mendez at a press conference. "Yes," he explained. "We have two suspects in custody. They thought they had a perfect hiding place for the evidence, but something about that weld just caught my eye and when I twisted hard on the cap on the top of that pole, it opened up."

The Chief of Police interrupted at that point, "And in answer to an earlier question, no, there was no tip from the public. It was just good instinct and good detective work, and we are following up on Officer Mendez's discovery. We are checking every dumpster protection pole in town to see if there is more evidence hiding, but I think that we have apprehended The Baseball Rapists."

That's the official story and I guess that is how it is going to go into the papers and the history books, but once again, they have their reality, and I have mine.

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End of Tale Three of Eight
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15.06.13

story continues in Tales From The Psych Ward 4: Cassandra

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