Act 2: Retribution

Sense of “evil given for evil done” is from day of retribution (1526) in Christian theology, the time of divine reward or punishment

She hurt. Every part of her body hurt. She walked slowly to the bathroom and ran a bath, she hurt too much to stand in the shower and she needed to wash him off and out of her body. She hadn’t moved after he left and her front door had slammed shut after him; she lay where he left her until she was sure there was no one in her house.

Gingerly she lowered herself into the warm water, feeling it flow across her groin in a warming embrace. She lay quietly, composing herself, bringing herself back to her senses. She remembered most of it, she knew he had raped her and then sodomised her, and then raped her again before restraining her, her arms behind her back, tied to her ankles, she couldn’t move. She had drifted away, not really into unconsciousness, more shutting down, and came to again as he was raping her again. He had raped her mouth, he had hit her, time and time again, she knew she had retreated somewhere, but she knew not where. Reporting the attack to the police was not an option. If they caught him, there would be a very public trial at which she would be humiliated, and, if she were really lucky, he might end up with a short prison sentence, but, more likely she thought, he would get off. No. She had to resolve this her way. Her pride was that she had not given in to him. She had simply let him use her and abuse her as he wanted. She said nothing to him, she did not respond to his touches to his violence. She had wanted to cry with the pain, but had not.

She washed all traces of him off her, she needed no DNA evidence, she would recognise him if she saw him, and that was all she needed. Once she found out who he was, then she could put plans into effect; plans that would end up with retribution. She pulled the plug and lay in the emptying bath. As the water receded she felt his dominance leave and as the last gurgle sounded she was once more herself. In charge of her destiny and determined to claim retribution on her attacker. ‘How dare he?’ she thought, ‘How very dare he?’

She got her laptop out and logged onto her private webserver and accessed her CCTV folder. Trev, a previous partner and lover, had installed some discrete cameras all over her house, each uploading images every minute to her server. If you didn’t know the cameras were there, you were very unlikely to spot them, the intention being to give evidence to the police in the event of a burglary. The cameras had no little red lights showing they were recording, and each room had a lamp in with an infra red bulb triggered by a motion sensor. The rooms would still look dark at night, but bright as day to the cameras. She had never had cause to look at her recordings, she had no desire to re-watch her occasional trysts with lovers; she lived for the moments and considered watching the sex back as tacky. But now she had every cause, but these viewings were not for the police.

She found several excellent face profiles of him, and on her external camera’s she saw him arrive in a pickup truck that he had parked just up the street. Almost off camera and not close enough to get the number plate details but near enough to get the make and model. That was a start. She copied the frame grabs to a memory stick, which she would store elsewhere, just in case her home server was compromised. She wasn’t worried about it being hacked, her erstwhile lover had installed a high grade encryption algorithm. Not even the security services would be able crack it he had told her, no her worry was that it might be corrupted or stolen.

She phoned the office and left a message on Julies’ answering machine. Apologising and pleading migraine, she would be in after the weekend. She knew that Julie would be okay with that, and that having claimed migraine, knew that no one from the office would phone to see how she was. With a migraine you get left alone.

She sat wrapped in her gown and planned. She would need wigs, drugs, and outfits and none of them could be traceable. She would try the charity shops for the outfits; there was a wig place at a department shop she knew of in the next town. Drugs, well, the dark web was her friend for that.

One thing that she knew was that she had seen his face before. She did not know where from, but she had seen him. She was sure that this was not a random attack. He had stalked her, so, she decided to retrace her regular routines, albeit in disguises, to try and spot him. Once she had him spotted she would be able to begin to track him and find out where he lived. Once she had that information, she could go to the next stage.

For the longer term she needed a new address, she needed to be away from here, here where the assault had happened. Not because of the memories, but in case, after she had executed her retribution, he decided to come back and take out his own form of revenge. Her house would go on the market and she would need to find another one. She thought that she might sell this and move into rented for a while. Just in case.

She began to plan in her head her activities over the next few weeks. Get her house on the market, discretely; she did not want a Sale Board outside. Change her routine. She would do everything as normal on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, but Mondays and Fridays she would get on her train at an earlier station and in different clothes, with a wig and different makeup, making herself look as different as she possibly could, but with a mission to scan every other passenger in case it was from the train that she recognised him. On the other days she would take every opportunity to walk around the office at work in case it was from there that she recognised him. In case he was a neighbour she would spend weekends washing and polishing the car, washing the house windows and what ever other chores she could think of that would keep her out front on the street, observing her neighbours.

That took care of finding him. Then there were the actions for when she found him. She knew what she wanted to do, but how to achieve it was going to be difficult. She could not subdue him, he was bigger and stronger than her, no, it had to be some other way. Drugs perhaps, but how to get him to take them, and also, where to get what she wanted.

As she cleaned her teeth she was staring forward at her half open bathroom cabinet, her eyes looking, but not seeing. Slowly her brain focussed on what was in front of her, 6 months supply of the contraceptive pill. She had been taking it when she was with Trev, but after they split up she had decided that she no longer wanted to put the chemicals into her body and, if the need arose, would make do with condoms. The supply of pills that she had built up had remained stored in her bathroom. ‘There must be some way I can use these,’ she thought.

She was grateful to Trev who had shown her how to use the dark web. She knew that she would be able to get much of what she needed there, but as to what she needed, that would require some thought. How she could exact a telling revenge was something that would require meticulous planning. But first, she had to find him and find where he lived. Then she could strike back.

“Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned,” someone famous once wrote she remembered, “bollocks,” she said out loud, “that is nothing compared to the revenge of a woman raped. Yes, that’s it.” Inspiration struck her, “I’ll have his bollocks.”

She wore her own hair grpped up tight and put on the blond wig. Blue eye shadow and a reddish blusher. She looked in the mirror, and hardly recognised herself.

“Excellent” she said to the blond woman looking back at her.

Her clothes were a high necked blue ribbed jumper and blue jeans. She would wear these under an open gabardine. She would carry her usual clothes in a shoulder bag for later changing. As she stood back she knew that even a best friend would struggle to recognise her. She drove to the station further away than usual and parked in a street away from the station, in case he would recognise her car, and then walked the last distance, buying a day return, rather than using her season ticket. Everything had to be different from her usual routine. She usually got on at the front door to carriage C, today, she would get on at the rear door and scan forwards, looking to spot her attacker. She did not expect any success today, but had to start somewhere. She had a fifteen minute wait at the platform before her train was due.

She went to the concession and bought a Costa Americano, more to hide her face than anything else, and stood on the platform, sipping her coffee, watching the other passengers as they waited for the train. No joy. No one even looking remotely like the bastard she was after. The announcer told her that the train was coming in and she paid her attention to the train and the passengers already on board as carriage C slowly went past her as the train came to a halt.

‘Bastard’ she thought as she saw her Rapist already on the train, in the middle facing the front. She got on at the rear of C as planned, shaking a little inside, fear almost taking hold. She stood and watched the back of his head, watching him closely as the train approached her usual station. She watched intently as he seemed to bob and weave his head, looking at all the people getting on, no doubt looking for her.

‘Disappointed shitbag?’ she silently asked him as the train pulled away. She watched him as the train headed on, watched as he stayed on beyond her normal station and alighted one stop further down the line. She followed him off the train, keeping a distance from him and people between them.

“Bastard works at the Land Registry then” she said quietly as she watched him pull a pass out of his pocket and wave it at the security guard as he went in. “right then shithead, now I just need to know where you live and what your name is. Then, your balls will be mine. Bastard.”

She used the Ladies toilet to remove the wig, pop her hair down, and swap into her normal clothes before she caught the train back to her normal stop and going into work and greeting her colleagues.

“How was your weekend?” one of them asked, the usual Monday morning query.

“Same old, same old” she replied, “nothing to report.” ‘And’, she thought, ‘at least under my clothes you cannot see the bruises.’

“You need a lover,” came the response, “someone to bonk you silly and leave you too wobbly to walk.”

“Now there’s a thought,” she replied, “I’ll see if your feller is free again next weekend,” she laughed, trying to keep the banter going although inside she felt nauseous and no more wanted a lover than a turkey wanted Easter.

‘Shit’ she suddenly thought, ‘that bastard didn’t wear a condom’. Lunchtime would be a trip to the chemist and then this week would be a heavy and painful period. ‘God that bastard is going to pay.’

She caught her usual train home, no sign of him, and so she stayed on the extra stop and walked past her car stopping further down the street, pretending to talk on her mobile as she watched the few other people walking on. No. He wasn’t there, no sign of him. She walked back to her car and drove back home, planning her next move. The next three days she would go back to her normal routine, wear her normal clothes and carry on regardless. Regardless of the hatred consuming her, she would not allow him to ruin her life. He had raped her. It was sex without permission. She couldn’t rape him back; she had neither the strength nor the body parts. But she could exact a very telling revenge, one that would change his life forever. A man would never understand rape. It is something personal to a woman. You can no more be ‘un-raped’ than you can be made again a virgin. You are either a virgin or you are not, you have either been raped or you have not. Her body would recover from his assault; his body would not recover from hers. She could not undo the rape he did to her, he would not be able to undo what she did to him. The ideas were beginning to take shape in her mind, the various steps formulating. There were just a few things that she needed, and that meant the dark web. ‘God love the Canadian pharmacies’ she thought.

She would need a credit card to use online to pay for any purchases, one that she could easily cancel when finished. She searched online via her dark web browser and found a number of options. They would be in her real name, she had not the skill to create a false identity, but she hoped that masking her purchases via the dark web, and cancelling the card once used, she could minimise her exposure. The card would take around a week to arrive. She planned to draw cash from her bank and then go to a different bank and pay the new credit card using cash. She did not want any link where possible. She would use either the new credit card or cash to pay for everything that she would need that was from outside her normal life.

There was a health food shop in the precinct near work and as she looked around she noticed the vitamins targeted at men and women. She had always dismissed supplements as she considered that she had a healthy and varied diet, and therefore probably had the right mix of vitamins naturally. But, perhaps, the rapist was a vain man? Perhaps she could get him to take some supplements? Supplements that she could doctor in some way, doctor in such a way as to start the process of exacting her revenge? She bought a couple of different varieties of woman targeted supplements and one for men for later examination at home. Back at work the banter about her weekends had subsided and the drudgery of a complicated spread sheet took her entire focus until it was time to go home. As she stood on the train she was lost in her thoughts and had no idea whether she shared the train with the rapist or not.

Friday morning came and she became a redhead. An auburn wig that she styled into a ponytail; a red blouse over a black below the knee skirt. No tights or stockings and flat shoes. A black cardigan completed the outfit. Again, she looked in the mirror, no one would recognise her. She drove down to catch the train two stations further down than usual. Eventually she would find out what station he got on at, and then she could lay in wait when he got off and follow him. Once she knew where he lived, she could put her plan to enact her revenge in place. There was no hurry. Her plan needed a few months to have its full effect, and the full effect was what she wanted.

She stood on the station platform ready to get into carriage C when it arrived. She would keep going down the line if necessary, until she found the station he used. Another coffee and she scanned the passengers as they arrived. She didn’t see him, and he wasn’t on the train as it pulled in. Frustrated she alighted the train and stood seething quietly all the way to her usual station, worrying that she had missed him, worrying that her chance had gone. Her weekend would be slow as she waited her opportunity to be a blond and find her target once more. Into the Ladies at the station and another change into her usual clothes. Nothing keep seem out of the ordinary when she walked through the door into work.