Chapter 2

Man, it was a good thing I wasn’t home when the cops came to get me; I was watching from the ridge as they did the whole show, kicked in the door and rushed the place, they even fired their guns. Luckily, they didn’t hurt each other.

After three days hiding in the forest, I walked into town and turned myself in.

I sat in my cell thinking about what I’d done. I didn’t feel bad about it, but it was pretty dumb. Why didn’t I just kill the bastard later, when no one was around? Now I’d have to face the music.

I had screwed young women, even girls I guess, Theresa had been 16 when we first had sex, and I was 53; so was I better than the 45ish doctor I’d killed for trying to get it off with a 12 year old? Who was I to judge? Anyway, I hadn’t judged, I’d just reacted. Like the animal I accused him of being.

But Theresa was a mature female, she had big breasts and pubic hair.

Ok, here’s how it was.

The girl and her mother moved in when she was 15. Her mom was the typical overachieving medical person the clinic hired in, trying to get some research done between clinical practice and her daughter’s needs.

They’d moved out to the sticks because they needed to get away from where they were before; because Theresa had been raped by three boys from her school. The boys got 10 months juvenile detention each. Then they would be back in community again.

Theresa was a lovely girl, taller than her mother. She had a striking face and a killer smile on the rare occasions she used it, dark eyes and long dark brown hair.

She used to hang around with me when she got home from school, talking to me as I worked in the yard or did some painting.

As I said, I like kids, and that was what she was at first. Just a kid, but with longer legs. And full breasts. And a great ass.

We talked about everything you could imagine; what was on TV, the neighbors, politics, war, peace, human nature, sex.

She wanted to know about men, why they did the things they did. I tried my best to tell her what I’d figured out so far.

“So those boys who attacked me, they needed to do it?” she asked.

“They needed to get their rocks off, they didn’t need to assault you.” I said, “They chose to assault you.”

“I hate boys.” She declared.

“What about me?” I asked.

“You’re not a boy, you’re a man.” She said.

“Men are worse.” I told her.

“But you’re not. You’re nice; and anyway, it’s boys I can’t stand being around. I get nervous, it’s an association thing.”

When winter came and I wasn’t working outside anymore, she would come look for me. Sometimes I’d be looking after some of the younger kids [like Sherry’s little boy, Freddy].

“What do you get in return?” she asked me once. “I just like to do things for people.” I told her, which was partly true.

Sometimes I’d be up in an attic or down in a cellar, checking the utilities, or in my workshop. Or alone in my house, watching TV.

“Hank, how come you aren’t married?” she asked me.

“I need to be alone a lot.” I told her, “I’m not an easy person to get along with.”

“I don’t think that’s true.” She said. “I think you’re very easy to be with, and you’re good looking too.”

She looked embarrassed suddenly, and no more was said.

“Hank!” I heard her shouting one afternoon. I ran outside; there was a note of panic in her voice.

“There’s a man...” she said breathlessly as I came outside.

It was just some young guy asking if I let short term [which I don’t].

Theresa was sweating and shivering.

“Are you ok?” I asked her, we were still in the yard behind my house.

“It’s so stupid!” she said, “I didn’t see him coming. All he did was ask for you, but I just panicked.”

“Flashback?” I asked gently.

“Yes.” She said, looking at me with surprise.

“It’s normal.” I said, “Some people get over it in a year or two, but for others it never completely goes away.”

“That’s what the shrink told me.” She said. she looked so vulnerable, so innocent. I opened my arms and she came to me. I held her.

Now look, she was just a kid to me; one of my kids, my friends. Sometimes, we’d all go up into the woods for hikes, or I’d take them all to the beaver dam.

“I understand, Theresa.” I told her, “It happens to me too.”

“You?”

“Yeah, and those damn shrinks are always telling you how you should react. They tell you to relax and be “normal”; but who are they to tell us what normal is? they’ve never been brutalized. They can enjoy their illusion of safety, but we’ve experienced reality. We know, they don’t.”

“That’s exactly how I feel.” She agreed, clutching me tighter.

I took her inside and made some tea while we talked. She needed to, and I guess so did I.

I had been captured, and held for 2 days before my unit stumbled across the enemy camp. I’d been totally sure of my imminent death, tied up on the ground amidst these men who hated me with such passion; who had reason to hate me too. To them, I was the enemy. The foreigner who came to their country to kill.

Such an experience never leaves you. “normal” people don’t understand; but Theresa and I knew. We knew that paranoia is not necessarily a disease, but a state the human mind switches to in response to danger. That danger is not the exception, but the rule.

Every day, billions of people live under threat to their lives, in Africa, Asia, and east LA. Who are these pampered academics to tell us what “normal” is?

We talked for hours about these things, a bond of shared experience forming between the young white girl and me. We might have been different on the outside, but the grey matter between our ears had the same patterns of thought running through.

We talked about things that were difficult to say to others, naive innocents who had never experienced trauma. I told her things I’d never told anyone except a shrink, and she responded in kind.

She’d had a date, she told me; a nice fellow from her school had taken her out. Afterwards, he wanted to kiss her goodnight;

“I had a terrible flashback. I panicked, I pushed him away and ran! He hardly talked to me again.”

“Did you want to go out with him again? If he’d asked you?”

“Not really.” She said.

“Why? You said he was nice, you liked him.”

“I was never really comfortable though, not when we were alone.”

“You didn’t trust him.”

“No. I don’t trust anyone. Any man. Except you.”

I laughed; “Me?”

“Yes; you’re not like those boys. You would never hurt a girl.”

“That’s true.”

“You’re always kind and gentle. I always feel good when I’m with you.”

“You feel safe?”

“Yes; that’s it, safe. I know I have to get over it, I have to learn to trust people again, but it’s hard.”

“I know.”

“He just wanted to kiss me. I’ve never been kissed.”

“Never?”

“Not like that. By a man.”

She was sitting close, my arm was around her slight shoulders. She was looking up at me, the longing in her big brown eyes so sweet, so irresistible. I bent my head closer. She stretched hers up. Our lips met.

She was so young, so pretty, so lovely; but I thought I could handle it. I was Hank, big, tough, hard as nails. I wouldn’t be seduced by this kid; I could hold her, talk to her, even kiss her, without being affected I thought. I was just helping her through, it was therapy.

It was Pandora’s box.

Her body seemed to melt into me, first relaxing and then tensing up. Her mouth opened after a few seconds, and her hands moved, one on my shoulder, but the other creeping behind my neck.

The kiss only lasted a minute I suppose; but it was a wild minute, a minute of a lifetime. I hadn’t kissed a 16 year old girl since I was a teenager myself.

“Wow.” She said. “That was completely different.”

“Different to what?”

“I wasn’t afraid at all, well, not in a bad way I mean.”

“That’s good; progress as my therapist would have said.”

“Could we try it again?” she asked.

“Sure.” I said. it seemed harmless enough, and it was definitely pleasant. Of course that would change if her mother ever found out...

I held her tenderly, like the delicate creature she was. I felt so fond of her, so sorry for her trauma. She was a good kid who didn’t deserve what had happened to her.

At first, we would just kiss and cuddle a bit, but day by day, things escalated. She wanted me to touch her body; my big rough hands on her smooth delicate flesh made her stretch and shiver in pleasure. One day, she took off her shirt and bra. Her white breasts so young and new, bulging out from her chest, were irresistible. I kissed them, held them, tasted them, as she held my face in her hands, her little fingers curling into the back of my neck.

I knew I’d gone too far, that I had to tell her no next time. But when she looked at me with her big young eyes and smiled with her pretty mouth and pulled her top off to expose her gorgeous young tits, I found myself fondling and kissing her again.

At some point, she would always have a flashback or something, and pull away from me. Which was a relief, because I knew it wasn’t right for me to seduce her. I couldn’t and wouldn’t fuck her, that would be wrong.

I know people won’t believe me; you reader, do not believe me. I did those things with her because it helped her, it was therapeutic. Sure, I was enjoying the pleasure of holding her gorgeous body, of kissing her young mouth. That was the limit though, I wasn’t going further than that. I was getting plenty of sex at the time, I didn’t need to stick my old dick into sweet young Theresa.

I could just hold her a little, I thought, kiss her once or twice; that would be harmless. It would be good for her, she needed to know the feel of a man against herself, to feel pleasure instead of fear, affection instead of violence. I was probably the only man she trusted, who else could help her through her trauma?

Sure.

We kissed and cuddled as my dick expanded down my pant leg. Theresa was sitting on it for a while. Well, it was just anatomic reality. Part of it all you know.

I wanted to get her off of it, because it was an escalation that went too far; I rolled over her so she was seated on the sofa and I was above her. Suddenly she seemed to panic.

“No, stop!” she gasped. I sat back and she stood up.

“I’m sorry, I have to go.” She said as she straightened her blouse.

“You have nothing to be sorry for.” I said.

Slowly, one day at a time, we went further. I let her take off my shirt and stroke my broad chest.

“I love the way you talk.” She said, “That deep voice and the southern accent makes me go all funny.”

“Well I think you’re about as funny as you can get darling.” I said, stroking her head affectionately.

We would do an exercise of sorts where I would hug her tightly for a few seconds, before she’d have to break away, breathing hard with primal fear. The idea was to get her used to intimacy, and it seemed to work too.

“I want to be normal!” she insisted, holding my large half naked body in her arms.

“Normal is over rated.” I said, “Hopefully we can succeed in faking it though.”

“There is something I keep imagining, but you’d never agree.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“I think I just need to feel in control.”

“But you are.”

“Don’t be silly. You could kill me with one hand.”

“You know I would never hurt you.”

“That’s not the point. I want to ... tie you up. Like I was tied up. Like you were too.”

“How will that help you?” I asked.

“I don’t know; it’s just, I think it would, and who will ever trust me enough for that?”

So I let her tie me to the bed, striped from the waist up, as she had been tied. Helpless, vulnerable. It was my turn to fight the panic, to trust her.

“Oh shit, I’m not sure about this.” I said as she crawled over me, touching, squeezing, poking, kissing. She pulled off her shirt and scraped her nipples over my chest, she pushed her tongue between my lips. She laid herself out naked on top of me, and at last I felt her begin to relax there.

“This feels good.” She said. “Is it ok for you?”

“I’m feeling a little better now.” I told her, “Only, well this sure is weird, Theresa.”

Actually, I was terrified. It brought back memories of my capture. Yet this time instead of facing violence and pain, there was this sweet teenage girl kissing me. It was really mind bending.

She laced her little fingers behind my thick neck, and just lay on me for a few minutes. Her big young tits pressed against my chest through her clothes and her thigh was pressing between my legs. She lifted her face over mine and gently kissed me. Her hair fell alongside and I have to admit, it was nice. After a while, my fear eased; I was not in danger at all, it was just little Theresa fooling around.

Then she opened my shorts, and I felt her hand take hold of my penis.

“Wow, it’s really big.” She said.

“Uh, yeah.” I gasped, because her young hands felt terribly good on there. “You shouldn’t do that though, it sort of crosses a line.”

“We crossed that line long ago.” She said, “Besides, it’s therapeutic. I’m still really afraid, at the same time I like holding it. And you like it too, I can tell.”

“Well, sure.” I conceded, “It’s just, well you know I could get in big trouble for this.”