The Rapist

The sun, which had been a red disk in the west, disappeared behind the mountain as the bus came to a halt at the bus stage. Sofia stretched, yawned and picked up her bag. Murmuring ‘excuse me, excuse me’, she made her way from the back seat through the people standing in the aisle. She ignored the lewd look she got from the fat driver as she alighted.

The bus coughed several times then crawled off. She followed it with her eyes until it was out of sight like a girl watching her parents drive away. Darkness was falling fast and the mountain now looked like a crouching animal of prey about to pounce on its prey. A two kilometer bushy stretch lay between the bus stop and her home. For a moment she stood at the bus stage, fear holding her back from setting out immediately. What worried her was not the darkness or the bush but the fact that there was a rapist on the loose in the area. Five women had already been raped.

Staring at the empty road ahead of her, she earnestly wished she had informed her husband that she would be coming home today. He would definitely have waited for her at the bust stop. But then she would not have guessed that the country bus would have a breakdown. She was coming from her home village where she had gone to visit her grandmother.

She opened her travelling bag and took out a coat and woolen cap she had bought for her husband at the second hand goods market in the village and put them on. She hoped that the disguise would fool the rapist into thinking that she was a man. And even if her body structure betrayed her, she thought it would not make her a target because people said the main reason men attacked women is that women incited them by dressing provocatively. What would the figure of a woman in a shapeless overcoat and in darkness rouse in a man? That thought comforted her.

Cursing the breakdown that had delayed the bus, she slung the travelling bag across her right shoulder and set out. She walked for half a kilometer. Nothing happened. Another five hundred meters. Nothing out of the ordinary happened. The darkness had now thickened to the point that she could hardly see the tall grass hedging either side of the dirt road.

She was almost halfway home when she heard a rustle in the grass beside the road. She spun around in time to see a big masked man emerge out of the bushes into the road a short distance behind her.

Even as her eyes took in the dark menacing figure, she was already fleeing like a person escaping from a rabid dog. The man immediately gave chase.

Sofia ran as fast as her legs could carry her but the big man quickly gained on her. Her heart almost came to a standstill as the man caught the tail of her coat. She simultaneously let the bag fall to the ground and the coat slip off her. The man tripped on the bag and measured his length on the ground.

She picked up the bag and ran frantically into the bushes, branches whipping her across the body and tearing her clothes. With a suddenness that made her heart turn a summersault she found herself floating in the air. With the same abruptness, she hit the ground miraculously on her feet and unhurt. She had fallen into a gully.

Sweat run down her body in streams. The fall had deeply shaken her and she leaned against a tree trying to collect herself and regain her breath, her ears alert for any suspicious sound. There was only deep silence, not even the chirping of nocturnal insects disturbed the night.

Sharp, cold fear gripped her. Where was the rapist? Maybe he had given up. It was dark and she knew the man had just seen her shape. Why would someone want to rape someone he didn’t even know and in the dark? What made men do such a thing? Yet when they were talking about rape, men would always blame women’s dressing as the root cause. This was in the dark, why did the man want to rape her, she asked herself again. A woman he just saw moving along the road. Why? Why? Why? She agonized.

She wanted to flee into another direction but realized that she did not know the exact location of the rapist. She decided that it would be safer to stay hidden and see what happened next. Looking around wildly, she saw a clump of tall shrubs and dived into it as the rapist burst through the bushes on top of the ditch and almost over balanced. He cursed obscenely with alarm. Sofia thought the man’s voice was very familiar but she had no time to place it. One doesn’t waste time trying to think if she knows the dog that is chasing her.

Hunkering down in the shrubs, her heart beating like a drum, sweat running down her face, she desperately wished her husband was there to deal with the rapist. Joe, her husband, hated the rapist like hell and often remarked that if the damned man ever fell into his hands he would castrate him.

The rapist hesitated on top of the gulch, obviously not sure of her whereabouts. Sofia held her breath, hoping he would not jump into the crevasse. But it was not to be. After briefly searching about the area, the man leapt into the ravine, landing on his feet near her hiding place. “You’re the toughest woman I’ve chased,” she heard the man mutter viciously to himself, the voice sounding surreal through the mask. “But I’ll still get you.”

The feeling that she was very familiar with the man’s voice descended on her again. But her brain had other serious problems to worry about. The rapist was so close to her that she could feel the heavy breathing due to his want. With horror she saw the man peer at the bushes in which she was hiding. “Got you!” he screamed triumphantly in the bizarre muffled voice as he lunged at her.

She threw the traveling bag at him and rolled off the shrubs coming to rest on her elbows. The rapist landed heavily on the bushed on his hands and knees cursed vilely when he realized that he had missed his target.

A suffocating wave of panic swept over her. She knew she could neither out-run the rapist nor beat him in a struggle. And the rapist had now upped the ante; an ugly knife appeared in his right hand. She saw him unzip his fry.

But she was not prepared to go down without a struggle. With amazing clarity, she recalled what her grandmother had told her when she told her about the rapist. “A lot of women get raped because they freeze when attacked. They forget that a rapist has one big weakness when attacking. He doesn’t think with his brain but with his dick. When attacked, don’t resist or he’ll injure you. Pretend he has got you in his full control. Then suddenly attack his offensive weapon!”

Sofia allowed herself to go limp as her attacker dropped to his knees, his manhood whipping about like an angry snake, his breathing heavy. He lowered his knife so that he could tear her dress. At that moment, her hands dashed out, grabbing his prick and yanking it with all the force she could muster. The man howled like a wounded animal, arching his back with pain. The knife dropped from his hands.

But she was not through with him. Still hanging on to his phallus, she pulled it towards her mouth and her teeth sliced into the offending sausage like thing, almost dismembering it. The man rolled on the ground, wildly clutching at his crotch, blood spurting out like water out of a fountain, his putz collapsing like a pricked balloon. His screams of pain filled the night like the sound of rolling thunder.

She was looking for a stone, a piece of wood or anything to finish off the man when torch lights stabbed the darkness enveloping them in bright light.

Sofia thought she had gone mad. Maybe the frightening experience she had just gone through had unhinged her. Writhing on the ground was none than Joe, her husband of ten years. Her brain refused to believe what she was seeing. Joe, her devoted and loving husband, Joe, the father of her three children, Joe, the pious church elder, could not be the mad man who had been raping women in the area. It was impossible, her brain must be playing cruel tricks with her. She expected herself to come back to her senses and find herself continuing the struggle with the rapist.

But nothing happened. She wasn’t insane. The big figure of Joe weeping and writhing with pain before her was real and not imaginary. So were the figures of the six police men who were handcuffing him.

“But why, Joe?” she screamed at him. “Why?”

Joe’s answer was to continue to caterwaul with pain.

“We’ve been trying to catch this dog but he was always too clever for us,” one of the policemen told her. “We had set up a trap ahead. The screams are what alerted us,” he paused and aimed his light at Joe’s severely damaged pecker. “You’ve done a good job, madam. You’ve put this dog out of the raping or any such business permanently.”

Sofia looked at Joe with distaste. She kicked his bleeding groin, spat at him and allowed two of the policemen lead her away.

End