Goliath

[mark sessnatz]

June 10, 2041, 11:05 AM
Legal

Goliath Chemical executive accused of “horrifying” sexual assault by former employee.​

by Barbara Moore, for Geuters



ON MONDAY, Jason Wexler, 38, a Senior Vice President at the international chemical engineering firm Goliath, was accused in a statement to this organization of “harassing” and sexually assaulting his Administrative Assistant. The accuser, Alyssa Morales, 29, of Santo Palo, contacted Geuters’ tip service anonymously on Saturday night. When approached for comment, Morales admitted to having sent in the tip herself.

In the full email, Morales, who until last week worked as Wexler’s personal Administrative Assistant, describes how her former supervisor “stalked” and “repeatedly [and] increasingly aggressively” propositioned her when they were alone at the office. The pattern of behavior allegedly culminated in an incident in which Wexler “cornered” Morales in a private meeting room after hours, struck her and sexually assaulted her. He then allegedly left her alone in the building “so he wouldn’t be late for his dinner date.” Morales received her notice of termination in her inbox the following morning.

“It was the most horrifying…moment of my life,” Morales said, when speaking to Geuters Monday morning. “He had me trapped…I didn’t know what he would do next. I didn't know if I was going to die…and I sort of wanted to.”

When asked if she would be pressing charges against Wexler or Goliath Chemical, Morales seemed uncertain.

“I don’t think I can really afford to. That’s why I came to the press…something needs to be done about [Wexler]. People need to know.”

At a press conference on Monday, Wexler’s personal attorney, Egon Schmitz, 64, gave a brief statement, in which he downplayed the severity of the crisis.

“We are aware of the vicious rumors circulating right now concerning Mr. Wexler,” Schmitz said. “We would like to make it clear that this is a personal vendetta that has…escalated to a vain and opportunistic campaign of slander. Rest assured, we and legal team at Goliath will be taking swift and decisive action to address the situation.”

Wexler, whose father Gordon Wexler Jr. founded Goliath in 1995, has temporarily stepped away from his administrative duties at the company. He was unavailable for comment.

---

“For fuck’s sake, son, you couldn’t have capped that bitch before she shot her mouth off?” said Gordon Wexler Jr, slamming the IPad contemptuously down onto the sofa cushion. “Thought I raised you better than that!” He took a swig of gin from a crystal glass. It was 12:30 in the afternoon, and they were in the airy mid-century sitting room of the Wexlers’ rural Montana summer home.

“I thought she’d be too scared!” shrieked Jason Wexler, sweating through his polo shirt. His voice cracked.

“No, you didn’t.” barked his father. “You didn’t fucking think. Not with your brain anyway.” He coughed sonorously.

“I’m sorry, Pop.”

Gordon grunted into his glass.

“Are you gonna demote me?”

“What?” said Gordon. “Fuck no. No. Lay low for a bit. I’ll handle it.”

“She’s dead, right?”

“Not exactly. We’ll need to better content out of this. Make a real example out of her. Scare the rest. I’ve got this judge—”

“Got…?” Jason blinked dumbly.

“Look, you’ve made enough of a mess. Quit asking dumb fucking questions. The less you know right now the better for all of us.” He drained the glass and began to refill it from the decanter on the end table. “Me and Schmitz and some other guys will put it together. Those freaks in the legislature have opened up some real possibilities. We’ll loop you in when we need to. Don’t talk to any journalists.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

“Get the fuck out of my den.” Gordon was already dialing his phone.

“I love you, Dad.”

“You should have stayed on fucking Twitch.”



TBC

 

[prtn]

many captivating details on this one (clever title, good setup, intriguing tags and author...).
I'm in for the ride

 

[mark sessnatz]

Despite spending the last forty-five minutes in the shower with the heat on full blast, Alyssa felt neither warm nor clean. She sat on the floor, her bare back pressed against the tiles and her knees pulled up to her chest, staring at the swirling black void of the drain. She startled at a soft knock on the door.

“Lyss? Need anything in there?” came her mother’s muffled voice from the hall.

“No,” Alyssa called back. She had been staying at her parents’ house since late Saturday night. She had sent that email to the news, then, on impulse, packed a bag and fled her apartment in the city. It felt automatic. She didn’t know what she hoped to find there. Not even comfort, really. She just couldn’t be anywhere near the city or her (former) job for a while. It was past one in the morning when she arrived without warning, the door answered both of her parents, looking understandably alarmed to see her. She went straight to bed.

When she came downstairs the next morning, they had both seen the news. She looked from her mother, Cara, a soft-spoken Irish Catholic lady from whom Alyssa had inherited her slim build and pale complexion, to her father, a normally jolly little Mexican gnome of a man, who everyone knew as Juanito, and who had given Alyssa her thick, wavy dark hair. She started to tell them, then cried for ten straight minutes before getting any words out.

She couldn’t tell them all the details of course, and they didn’t ask her to. They waited in patient, sympathetic silence through all the long pauses as she remembered the stench of Wexler’s expensive-but-not-that-expensive cologne, the cold weight as he pinned her against the desk with his body, his hand closing around her wrist. They sat and rubbed her shoulders comfortingly as she struggled to banish, long enough to speak, the memory of his four successive stinging backhands to her face when she tried to run, the tearing of her club-store panties, the shock of his hand raking up her thigh and forcing into her…

Half an hour and a few meager bites of breakfast cereal later, Alyssa had somewhat composed herself, when the reporter woman called her. She was able to be cordial, though she hated having to talk about it all again. Couldn’t she have just read the email? The reporter, for her part, was polite and sympathetic, though very chatty. After Alyssa provided a few vague quotes that backed up the claims in the tip, the lady cut her off with a thank-you and hung up.

* * *

Alyssa dragged herself out of the shower and into an old pair of sweats. Another day passed in a haze. She mostly lay on the sofa, leaving her phone upstairs so she wouldn’t have to deal with the avalanche of messages, calls and notifications as the woman’s tight little article did the rounds among people she knew. It was bad enough she had to hear her mom and dad fielding calls all day long from the other rooms (in two languages.) In the evening, her mother came in and sank onto the sofa next to her. She looked tired.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” Alyssa said.

Cara sighed.

“You didn’t do anything wrong, honey” Cara said, tears in her eyes. “Men like that…He was bound to do this to somebody. It isn’t your fault.”

Alyssa sniffled.

“I understand why you didn’t go to the police. I do wish you’d gotten a lawyer before going to the press about it.”

“Yeah,”

“Or at least talked to us first. You know we’re on your side, honey.”

“I wasn’t thinking straight.”

Cara leaned over and patted Alyssa’s bare foot affectionately. “I get it. Whatever happens now, we love you.”

Before Alyssa could reciprocate, there was a sharp, firm knock at the door.

“Sounds like cops,” said her mother.

Alyssa padded to the door, with Cara close behind. She tapped the pad on the doorframe and looked at the camera feed.

“Doesn’t look like cops,” she said, and opened the door.

A sallow blonde man, roughly in his forties, wearing khakis, a shiny polo and a dark blazer, cleared his throat.

“Alyssa Morales?” he asked.

“That’s me,” she answered, a lump in her throat. “What’s up?” She tried to sound unperturbed.

The blonde man thrust a packet of papers toward her.

“We’re here,” he gestured to two other stiff and graven men on either side of him “on behalf of Schmitz Legal LLC and the Ninth Magisterial Court of the Eastern Prefecture. You are being served notice that you are to report to the enclosed address on Friday, fourteen June two-thousand and forty-one for a criminal tribunal.”

“Criminal?” shouted Cara, pushing past Alyssa. “She hasn’t broken any laws!”

“She will have the opportunity to make that case on Friday, then,” said the man calmly.

“This is twisted! This isn’t how the law works!”

The man smirked. His eyes flicked to Alyssa.

“Have you been served notice?”

“Y-yes?” Alyssa said incredulously, taking the packet and holding it as though it might bite her.

“And what happens if she doesn’t show?” Cara demanded.

“Then we can and will very swiftly obtain a warrant for her arrest and detainment,” the man replied. He nodded to his accomplices. “We’re through here. Have a pleasant day."

TBC

 

[mark sessnatz]

Alyssa had to leave at four-thirty in the morning, then take two trains and a ride share just to reach the address she’d been given by noon. When she arrived, she wasn’t even sure she was in the right place. The address was correct, confirmed the four enormous fiberglass numerals over the covered entryway, but it didn’t look like a courthouse, or even a police station. Instead, it was a shiny, black, featureless office block of concrete and glass, stretching over one third of a whole block of nearly identical featureless office blocks. The lack of lights and activity suggested the place was abandoned. Always cautious and thorough, she quickly Googled the building on her phone, which confirmed it was an unused property, owned by the Goliath Corporation. So that was it, then.

Clutching her shoulder bag a little tighter, she stepped under the breezeway and through the opaque glass door, emerging into a surprisingly cramped, gray lobby. There was no sign of anyone else around. She felt anxious butterflies in her gut, and not the good kind. Moths. Sighing, she went to the only other door, which was as gray and featureless as anything else, and locked. There was a dusty metal call box on the wall next to the door and she pressed the button, wincing at the violent static crackle.

“H-hello,” she said sheepishly. “It’s Alyssa Morales…here for the…meeting.”

The static churned for several seconds, then a man’s voice came through.

“Door on the left at the end of the hall,” it said, and there was a mechanical ‘click’ as the door unlocked.

Alyssa noticed her hand was sweaty as she opened the door. She had always hated places like this; lifeless institutional traps that made her feel like a rat in a maze. Every Goliath campus she worked at had been like that. Just going to her office felt like navigating a prison. She wondered if they deliberately collected buildings like that.

The door at the end of the hall opened into a brightly lit, windowless conference room. The air smelled stale. A wall calendar in the corner proclaimed the year 2017. Three long tables had been arranged in a ‘U’ shape at one end of the room, with a fourth on its own at the other. Sitting around the three were an array of stern faces she didn’t recognize, and one or two she didn’t want to see. One in particular, actually, that she extremely didn’t want to see.

Jason Wexler turned red the moment he saw Alyssa enter, and a vein popped out in his neck. He leaned over and whispered to the wizened man sitting to his left, who Alyssa clocked as Schmitz, the lawyer from the press conference. She wished again she could afford not to represent herself.

Beside them was a be-suited woman of, generously, late middle-age, with garish red lipstick and her (dyed) hair arranged in a bob that didn’t move when she did. She sat at the head of the arrangement, shuffling papers. There were also two other grey-faced corporate lawyer types to the right, and four tall, fit silent types who were probably private security around the edges of the room.

As Alyssa approached the table, two of the security guards intercepted her and, without a word, began an aggressive pat-down. She gasped at the suddenness of it and squirmed a bit away from their rough hands but didn’t protest. She didn’t understand the exact contours of this seemingly underground and ad-hoc “legal” procedure, but it was clear to her she had no control in this space. That thought terrified her, but she forced it aside. She only had to get through a few hours.

She did cry out in protest when one of the men grabbed her bag away and started sifting through it, but they ignored her. They also kept the bag. With Alyssa humiliated, rattled, and determined to be harmless, the woman in the suit motioned for her to sit down at the lone fourth table. She did so and folded her hands in her lap.

The older woman cleared her throat.

“This tribunal of the Acting Magisterial Court is in session,” she said. She glanced down at her notes. “Bear with me,” she said sideways to Schmitz, dropping the formal demeanor. “This is an irregular procedure for me.” She found her place. “Alyssa Rosemary Morales, you have elected to represent yourself in your defense?”

Alyssa hesitated until she was sure it wasn’t a rhetorical question.

“I didn’t exactly get a choice, Your Honor,” she said, somewhat indignantly. “I don’t have the money for a lawyer, and as I was never formally arrested or charged with anything, I wasn’t offered a public defender.

The Judge blinked.

“That’s a ‘yes,’ then,” she muttered. “Ms. Morales, you are being accused of making fraudulent and slanderous allegations against Mr. Jason Wilbur Wexler. Additionally, you are being charged with causing willful damage to the public reputation of the Wexler family and to Goliath Chemical Engineering Incorporated. How do you plead to these charges?

Alyssa’s heart plummeted into her stomach. So that’s what this was. She wanted to cry again.

“Not guilty, Your Honor,” she said, suppressing the vitriol in her voice, but unable to hide her flushed face.

“Very well,” said the Judge. She peered at Alyssa over the top of her reading glasses. “Listen, honey, before we go further, I personally feel like I should advise you to play nice and cooperate here. The Prefecture system is pretty new to all of us, but basically the legislature has empowered the corporation to act as an independent judicial district in this instance. Your legal leverage here is pretty, well, slim.”

“You mean this is some kind of rigged kangaroo court?” Alyssa shot back. If defendant’s rights were out the window, she figured, procedural decorum might as well go out with it. “This is an Inquisition! I am Not. Guilty. Of any of this,” she folded her arms and sat back.

“Noted,” said the Judge, sighing. She turned to Schmitz and Wexler. “Does the prosecution wish to make any statement?”

“She’s a lying bitch!” squealed Jason, spittle flying across the table. “She flirted with me and strung me along the whole time she worked for me! And now she’s trying to ruin my life!” Schmitz put a hand on his shoulder and shushed him as one would an upset toddler.

“Can we keep that off the record?” asked Schmitz.

“Whatever,” said the Judge, shrugging.

“The statement we would like to make,” said Schmitz, nudging Jason in the ribs, “is as follows: It is the opinion of the prosecution that the perpetrator, Ms. Morales, acting in pursuit of a personal vendetta (possibly of a sexual nature) did knowingly incite a media campaign designed to deliberately attack and undermine the character of the victim, Mr. Wexler. As a result of her actions Mr. Wexler has experienced extreme levels of psychological trauma, as well as a financial burden due to being unable to perform the duties of his employment. Furthermore,” he took a sloppy sip of water before continuing.

“Furthermore, the actions of Ms. Morales inflicted financial hardship to the corporate entity known as Goliath Chemical Engineering, due to a drop in the company’s share value as a result of the harm her statements caused to the public’s trust in the corporation.”

Alyssa stared into her lap the whole time Schmitz was speaking, twisting a fistful of her chocolate-colored slacks in her hand. This whole thing was just a clown show to save Wexler’s whiny ass and salvage the company’s PR. She didn’t matter at all, except as a scapegoat. She was hurt and furious. What would she do after this? Who would hire her?

“Right, well,” said the Judge, “that all checks out to me. All that’s left is to record the defendant’s confession and we can be done for the day.”

“Confession?!” Alyssa shot out of her seat. “What do you mean? I’m not confessing to anything! I haven’t done anything! You haven’t even given me a chance to defend myself!”

“You had your chance at the start, Ms. Morales,” said the woman. “You chose instead to mock the authority of the court.”

“Because this is a stunt and a farce!” She walked around to the front of the table. “Give me my things back, I’m leaving.”

“Sit down, Ms. Morales. We’re not through.”

“Give me my phone. I don’t care anymore. I want to call a lawyer!”

The security guard who had taken her bag picked it up and pulled Alyssa’s phone from inside. Without a word, he dropped it on the floor and stomped on it, shattering it completely. Alyssa recoiled in shock. If the point of that was to emphasize just how powerless she was, it worked.

The Judge pulled a stapled form from within her stack of papers and slid it across the table toward Alyssa.

“We have your confession prepared already. All you need to do is sign and initial, then read the thing into a camera. It’ll take ten minutes. Please just do it so we can go have lunch.”

Alyssa shrank away from the Judge’s table, starting to panic, her breath quickening.

“Im not signing that!” she insisted. “I’m leaving. Now.” She turned and went straight for the door.

She heard the Judge sigh again.

In an instant, the security guards were on her, seizing her arms and dragging her roughly away from the door. She thrashed against them, which hurt, and shouted, her fight-or-flight kicking into high gear.

“Get off! Don’t fucking touch me!”

The men were much stronger than she was. With little difficulty, they dragged her back to her table, hoisted her off the ground and slammed her facedown on top of it. Her face made painful contact with the artificial wood grain, splitting her lower lip. She grunted.

“One more time, Ms. Morales,” said the Judge, her voice now muffled by Alyssa’s own racing pulse, “none of us will be leaving here until you sign this confession. None of us, including, I’d like to emphasize, you.”

One of the men forced her arms down around the sides of the table, and she heard and felt zip ties closing around her wrists, binding them securely to the table legs. Meanwhile, the other guard raised her ankles in the air and divested her of her discount pumps, then her no-show nylon socks. She squirmed in the men’s grip, but still to no avail. She felt like a helpless child being held down by them.

What is happening?

With difficulty, Alyssa turned her head to watch the guards. The one who had bound her hands unclipped from his belt some sort of tactical weapon consisting of about a foot and a half of braided steel cable attached to a handle. He then stepped out of Alyssa’s limited field of vision, as the other man firmly held her ankles together.

No, No, please no…

“You can’t do this! You can’tdothisletmego!” Alyssa whimpered inarticulately. She tugged uselessly at the plastic ties that dug painfully into her wrists.

She felt a sudden swish of displaced air and heard a gruesome meaty, impact which, a second later, she identified as the source of a white-hot thunderbolt of excruciating pain that exploded across the soles of her feet and lanced up the rest of her body. She heard a strangled scream like a wounded child echoing around the room. The voice sounded like her own.

Writhing as much as her bondage allowed, she turned her head to look pleadingly toward the Judge. Tears gushed from her hazel eyes. So much for maintaining composure.

“Please,” she squeaked, “Don’t—” but before she could get any more words out the Judge nodded to the guard, who dispassionately brought the steel cable down onto Alyssa’s bare feet a second time. Then, without waiting for a response, a third time. Then a fourth, and a fifth.

Alyssa buried her face in the crook of her arm, bit down on a mouthful of her sleeve, and wailed deeply and desperately through each stroke, no longer thinking of anything except coping with the pain. She had never been hurt like this in her life. Each blow felt like an acid-soaked sword stroke across the soles of her feet, the pain multiplying each time he hit her. And almost as awful as the pain itself was how deliberately and dispassionately they were doing this to her, as though they were in a staff meeting while she was in a medieval torture chamber.

When she had taken half a dozen strokes the guard rested. Alyssa gulped for air between sobs and tried to act human, wincing as her feet throbbed with each heartbeat.

“We’re not enjoying this any more than you are, Ms. Morales,” sighed the Judge.

Bullshit, you pigs, Alyssa thought.

“We will gladly wrap this up as soon as you agree to sign this.” She tapped the confession form with a blood-red fingernail. Her whole speech was underscored by the sound of Jason Wexler’s conspicuously heavy breathing. Alyssa felt a wave of nausea to join the pain. She was grateful she couldn’t see him. She tried to block out the sound as she fixed her eyes on the Judge.

“F-fuck you,” she spat, her voice shaking.

The Judge made exactly the sound Alyssa knew she would and motioned to the guard, who took a ready stance.

Alyssa’s defiance immediately melted into despair. She closed her eyes and bit down again on the same damp clump of her sleeve, resigning herself to more unimaginable pain.

* * *

To Alyssa’s great shame, it took only two more rounds of beating to finally break her down. She was disgusted with herself, but more than that, she was near delirious with agony and terrified that she might never walk again. So, through a chorus of sobs, she agreed to their terms. The guards cut the zip ties off her wrists and stood her up. The second she tried to put weight on her bruised and tender feet, she collapsed onto the ground and retched up what remained of her breakfast. The Judge wrinkled her nose at the sight.

“Disgusting bitch,” muttered Wexler.

Humiliatingly, she signed their papers at the places they pointed to while lying on the floor, her hand shaking so much that her initials were barely legible. Once the carbon copies were distributed amongst the parties, the guards lifted her up and sat her back in her chair. They didn’t restrain her, as she was too hurt and weak to resist them.

While she sat there, her tears subsiding, trying to process the waking nightmare she now found herself in, one of the guards and the two anonymous lawyers set up a small portable tripod with a ring light and a digital video recorder facing her. They set the confession she had signed on the table in front of her and turned the camera on.

“Now, Ms. Morales,” said the Judge. “There’s just one more thing we need from you, for the record.”

To Be Continued...

 

[Barbaria1]

by Barbara Moore, for Geuters

No relation … honest

 

[prtn]

wow, this is really good! Is this your first time writing?

 

[mark sessnatz]

wow, this is really good! Is this your first time writing?

Haha a perusal of the stories Archive will reveal its sadly not my first time

 

[mark sessnatz]

“Juan!” Cara called from the den, eschewing her husband’s nickname to emphasize the urgency. “Honey, come quick! Look at this!”

Juanito bounded into the room, where his wife sat rigid on the very edge of the sofa cushion, her face white, eyes glued to a news broadcast on the television screen.

“…developments in the story of the sexual assault allegations against Goliath Chemical executive Jason Wexler. A video has just been released showing the accuser, Alyssa Morales, apparently confessing to having fabricated the allegations.”

Juanito sank onto the sofa and gripped his wife’s hand as the broadcast cut to a video clip that looked for all the world like a hostage tape. It showed his daughter, framed in a static medium shot, seated on a stiff chair in some kind of dingy, bare conference room. Her hair and clothes were disheveled, her face looked drawn and pale, and her eyes were visibly red from crying. She addressed the camera directly, speaking slowly in a flat monotone.

“My statement to the press was an irresponsible and inexcusable attack on the character of Jason Wexler. I acted purely out of vindictive anger toward Mr. Wexler and the company for terminating me. There is no—”

Her voice caught and she blinked away tears.

“—There is no truth in the claims I made. I’m recording this now, in a more sober state of mind, because I want to apologize to Jason and the company for slandering their reputation and to the public for attempting to deceive them.”

Alyssa was visibly shaking even in the highly compressed video. The broadcast cut back to the anchorwoman.

“The eyes of the whole region are watching this case closely, as it will be the first stress-test for the provisional Prefecture Judiciary system. The measure, which passed last year, aims to relieve the overtaxed legal system by allowing sufficiently large private entities, in this case the Goliath Chemical Company, to design and operate their own independent legal jurisdictions.

“If Morales is convicted, the legal board of the company, working with an assigned licensed judge, will sentence and discipline her according to their own statutes as opposed to any state or regional legal codes. Legal experts across the world are watching the outcome of the case closely, to determine the effectiveness of this experimental system.

The full confession video is available to stream on our mobile app. For CCN, I’m Kathy Tramp.”

Cara pulled her husband close and buried her face against his shoulder.

“How can this be happening?” she said despairingly. “How can they do this to our little girl?”
Juanito rocked her in his arms. He had never been a cynical man. He had always believed that, for all the world was flawed, on balance, there was justice. He wasn't so sure anymore. Lately it seemed that all that mattered was power. He closed his eyes, letting his wife's words hang in the air. For the first time in his life, Juanito Morales couldn’t think of anything to say.

TBC.

 

[mark sessnatz]

The senior Mr. Wexler took one last drag and stubbed out his cigar in a $3500 ash tray. He leaned back and turned to Judge Spinelli.

“Bit medieval,” he said gruffly.

The judge snorted into her G-and-T.

“Don’t tell me you’ve suddenly grown a heart, Gordon,” she said drolly.

“I didn’t say I don’t approve,” Wexler countered. “I just think on the surface it’s—you know—melodramatic.” He coughed.

“If you ask me,” chimed in Schmitz from across the mahogany table (though of course, no one had), “Things out there are already pretty medieval and it wasn’t us who let it get that way. People see this, theatrical though it is, well, maybe they’ll start paying us—paying you—a little more respect again!”

“It’s like you said, Gordon,” Spinelli continued, tapping her glass with a crimson fingernail, “the point isn’t just to punish the girl. We could do that in any number of easier ways. The point is to get a message across to anyone else who might try something.”

Wexler grunted.

“Yeah, yeah, none of that’s what concerns me,” he said.

“Then what?”

“It’s just that the boy is going to be insufferable when we tell him. He’s got no fucking couth. What time is your flight out tomorrow, Alicia?”

“Eleven.”

“Okay, then we’ll do the sentencing at eight, press conference at nine.” The three stirred to get up from the table.

“One more thing,” said Gordon.

“What?”

He pointed to the final paragraph of the sentencing document.

“How about we keep this last part a surprise?”

__


The first thing Alyssa noticed as she woke was that she had a pounding headache. The second thing she noticed how parched her mouth and throat felt. The third thing she noticed, as she moved to rub her bleary eyes, was that her left wrist was handcuffed to the bed frame. It was only then that she sat bolt upright and began to comprehend her whereabouts.

She wasn’t at home. She wasn’t in any room she recognized. It had a concrete floor, yellowish plaster walls, and a high ceiling with a single dim incandescent light. Two of the walls were lined with shelves piled with bulk cases of various canned foods and a mop and bucket sat in the corner. It looked very like a pantry, into which had been crammed the aluminum-framed cot bed she lay on.

She took stock of herself next. The handcuffs hurt her wrist, but only the one was restrained, allowing her a limited range of movement. She was still wearing the blouse and brown slacks she had last left the house in, so disheveled now that they looked like she’d toured a warzone in them. Her shoes were nowhere to be seen. She felt gross and sweaty all over.

Scooting herself up into a seated position, Alyssa reached down and gingerly felt the sole of her foot. Immediately, her touch on the tender, bruised flesh activated a stabbing ache and she winced, sucking a hiss of breath in through her teeth. She could feel a number of still-swollen welts on her soles.

So that was it, then. It had really happened. They had tortured her. The memories exploded behind her eyes. The trial, the steel cable, the confession and the video. The pain and shame and humiliation. She remembered more. How after she had recorded her confession they had grabbed her again, restrained and sedated her. The last thing she remembered before waking up here had been the musty taste of floor as the drug claimed her senses.

Feeling a wave of despair crash over her, Alyssa lost it. She tugged furiously against the handcuffs until her hand went numb. She screamed up at the dusty rafters, a long, piercing shriek of anger and pain. She didn’t scream for help. She expected none. She just screamed.

Until her screaming was interrupted by heavy footsteps and muffled voices outside. She heard the scrape of a key in the insides of the solid wooden door. For a millisecond, she felt a spark of hope, before it was swallowed by a much more rational flood of terror.

The door scraped open and her fear was immediately justified by the entrance of Jason Wexler, dressed in shapeless weekend loungewear, flanked by two of his security goons. She instinctively shrank back from him, despite being unable to meaningfully go anywhere.

Wexler smirked at her and waved his security outside. They closed the door behind them.

“Locks from the outside,” he said smugly.

“You’re really proud of yourself, aren’t you, you fucking pig?” Alyssa said venomously. Her voice trembled with anger and her eyes were wet with fresh tears.

“I should ask you the same,” he retorted, “given where you are.”

“And where am I?”

Jason took several steps closer. The single lightbulb backlit him from above, shading his face from her view.

“Within easy reach,” he said.

“How long are you going to keep me here?” she said. He seemed surprisingly chatty, so she figured she would try to get as much out of him as she could.

“Not long. Maybe a week or so. Sentencing will be tomorrow morning.”

“Sentencing?”

“You confessed, remember? You didn’t think we were done…”

“You’re sick, Jason. You and all your pervert family and friends! You’re all a bunch of sick fucking ghouls!”

Immediately, Wexler’s doughy face flushed an angry purple. He stepped up to Alyssa and slapped her hard across the face with his open hand, stunning her. Then, before she could even react, he repeated the slap, harder, splitting her lower lip.

“Don’t talk about my fucking family, bitch! Don’t you fucking. Dare.”

Seeing black spots in her vision, she spat a pink mist in his direction.

“Your Daddy must be so fucking proud of the man you are,” she whispered bitterly. A moment later, she yelped as he seized a handful of her hair and leaned in closer. She felt his body heat and smelled that disgusting cologne again. She felt nauseated. It was just like before.

“I can’t wait,” he hissed into her ear, “to see how mouthy you feel like being when you’re getting your lashes!”

“What are you talking about?” she demanded, trying to squirm away. “Lashes?”

“Like whipping, you dumb slut,” said Wexler. “You’re getting whipped. In public. Understand? Did I hit your head too fucking hard?” He was getting so worked up that his voice cracked. He always sounded idiotic when that happened. But what he’d said…

She swallowed audibly, her pulse quickening. She felt that surreal, out-of-body feeling she’d had in the tribunal again. This couldn’t be really happening. She started shaking.

“Why tell me if I’m getting sentenced tomorrow anyway?”

“Because I wanted to see the look on your face.” He grinned.

“Why?” she wailed, beginning to cry openly again. She didn’t care what he thought of her anyway. “Why are you doing this? Why not just kill me if you hate me so fucking much?”

He shrugged.

“I dunno. It was Dad and Spinelli’s idea. I’m not a lawyer. More fun to watch them beat the piss out of you, though.”

You’re a monster, she thought, but didn’t bother saying it. It wouldn’t mean anything to him.

“Maybe you would have turned out better,” Jason continued, “if your folks had beat your ass a few more times in the first place.”

She refused to react to that one.

“I’m thirsty,” she said flatly, staring fixedly at a point on the far wall.

“Oh,” he replied, “Me too.”

Without warning, his hand closed around the back of her head and shoved her brutally forward, pinning her down onto the thin futon mattress. She struggled and thrashed, screaming into the upholstery, soaking the polyester with her tears, but she was too weakened from the beatings, lack of sleep and dehydration to fight him off. With his other hand he violently dragged the waistband of her slacks down around her knees. She felt the cold cellar air on the bare skin of her ass.

“You’ll get yours, Lyss,” he growled. “But I’m getting mine first.”

She sunk her teeth into her wrist to muffle her scream as his cold, coarse and fat little fingers entered her passage. It felt like being stabbed. She tried to clench her thighs, but he forced them apart, pinning her legs as he climbed on top of her.

“Scream all you like,” he said. “Everyone in a five-mile radius works for my father.”

Then it was no longer his fingers.

TBC