Susan's Christmas Eve Ordeal
Corporate executive's gold-digging trophy wife surprised by Christmas Eve
burglar.
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Susan opened her eyes in the growing afternoon gloom. Drowsily she turned her
head toward the glowing digital numerals. 4:37 p.m. She closed her eyes and took
a deep sigh.
They had fought bitterly and he had left in anger. Christmas Eve, and they were
both dressed and ready to go to his sisters' for the holiday, when he announced
his promise that they would be spending the night at Claire's. This was
completely unexpected to Susan, and she had made her opinions known.
They had met 12 years ago at university, she a political sciences major studying
for her undergraduate degree, he working on his masters in business
administration. Over coffee in the Student Center, they coyly revealed a bit
about themselves in between outrageous flirtation. Within an hour, Susan knew
that Mike was the man she wanted to marry. Even then, he was hungry for business
success and power. He was from an affluent family. Susan's family was
comfortable by middle class standards, but she had known since high school that
it was just as easy to fall in love with a rich man as a poor man. They had
married within one week of her getting her degree.
His analyst job in Cincinnati soon led to a junior management position in
Pittsburgh, a middle management position in Dallas, another mid-management gig
in Chicago, senior management in San Diego, another senior position back in
Dallas, and a v.p. position in Indianapolis. Now he was a division president,
stationed at a manufacturing plant in Wisconsin. She had supported each move,
faithfully packing then unpacking, setting up attractive households in each
town, making social contacts, lunching with other management wives, staying
active in charities (literacy was her favorite) then tearing it all down for the
next move. She exercised with a mania, keeping her tall frame trim. Her skin was
flawless, hair always perfect. She read all his business magazines and kept up
with global current events. She was the model trophy wife.
The house creaked and she cautiously opened an eye. House settling, maybe? The
home was only about 9 months old. One benefit of his upwardly mobile career was
that each raise offered larger and better housing. This home was palatial by her
parent's standards. Livingston Hills was the most elite community in their small
town. Their three-story home stood over a large lake. Other Livingston Hills
patrons included doctors, lawyers, and other business owners and executives in
their small city.
While the house was wonderful, when it came to this move, she hatred it. While
Mike went off every day to his office at the manufacturing plant, he received
the respect and admiration of his 250 workers. She, on the other hand, had few
opportunities to shine. The social environment here was nothing short of
sterile. Other executives' wives were backwater losers compared to her. They got
excited about high school hockey. Basketball. The damn Green Bay Packers. She
loathed their interests.
Mike was more content than she was. Not only did he have is job, but his
sister's family lived about one and-a-half hours away. He liked being near them.
Susan raised her hands over her head and stretched leisurely. She was, of
course, dressed to go out, in a cobalt blue strapless dress that ended
three-or-four inches above her knees. She wore her hair up, pinned and clipped
in place. Heavy diamond earrings tugged at her lobes. A heavy diamond necklace
graced her throat. She wore shimmering glossy nude-colored pantyhose. Her high
heels were kicked off somewhere in the room. After their screaming match and her
refusal to pack an overnight bag, she had hastily summoned tears then fled to
collapse on their bed sobbing. For once, he had not acquiesced to her demands.
When she heard the garage door opener activate and his German-made automobile
fire up, her tears turned real and she began to sob. Abandoned on Christmas Eve!
She soon cried herself to sleep.
Susan heard another creak or groan. Had Mike returned for her?
She looked toward the doorway. A man stood there, dressed in dark jeans and a
black ribbed sweatshirt.
Susan screamed.
He was on her almost instantly. With powerful hands and arms, he turned her
over, pushing her face into the mascara-stained pillow. She continued screaming,
now muffled by the heavy down pillow. She tried to fight but could only reach
weakly back behind her, or push forward at the mattress. His full weight on her,
sport shoe-clad feet holding her legs down limiting her vicious kicks. She
fought like a tigress and screamed over and over, her heart rate escalating.
She struggled for breath, her face pushed into the pillow by the strong hand at
the back of her head. She pushed anew with arms and kicking legs, trying
desperately to breathe. She felt lightheaded.
As her struggles lessened, she heard his baritone voice for the first time. "Are
you going to fight?"
She shook her head slowly to the left and right. She felt the pillow next to her
move away, the bed shake a little, then he released the pressure on the back of
her neck. She rose up with a gasp and in an instant, he pulled the silken
pillowslip over her head, cutting off her vision.
She felt his heavy hand on her back pushing her into the mattress as he fumbled
with his other hand. "What the fuck are you doing here? You're supposed to be
gone!" he snapped.
She panted inside the dark pillowcase. "We had a fight," Susan gasped.
"No doubt your fault, you supercilious bitch," he fumed as he pulled her arms
directly behind her and she felt him bind her wrists. Later her fingertips would
identify a leather web braided belt, cinched to a tight grip right above her
hands.
"Oww, my circulation," she whined. His heavy hand shoved at the back of her
head, and she worried that another angry move might break her nose.
"Please, please don't hurt me. Just take what you want. We won't even report it
to the police. Please don't hurt me," she pleaded, her pulse now pounding in her
throat.
"Ha." An ugly sarcastic laugh. "You bitch, you are not supposed to be here!" He
hissed in her ear.
She felt his weight rise off her thighs, and she rolled onto her side, away from
him. "Please," she whispered impotently, panting in the dark, increasingly hot
pillowcase.
"Lay there and be quiet, cunt," he ordered. She nodded meekly under the
pillowslip.
A moment later she heard cabinets and drawer slamming in the kitchen. She wanted
to work her head out from under the linen, to draw a fresh breath, but she was
paralyzed by her situation. She raised her head slightly, feeling the trim of
the pillowcase touching her bare shoulders.
His hand gasping her ankle made her give an involuntary shriek, which she
quickly stemmed. A ripping sound followed by his wrapping her ankles with tape.
Packing tape for the recently shipped Christmas presents, she thought.
"You want to scream? Scream your fool head off," she heard him say with an
exasperated tone. "No one in the house to hear you, other houses a half-acre
away, and all of them empty. You dumb bitch, its Christmas Eve."
She was turned onto her back, lying on her hands as he tugged her knees upward
and began wrapped them with tape. Her hemline slipped immodestly upward. He
thoroughly wrapped her legs below the knees, as well as trapping her thighs
together.
He twisted her back onto her chest, wrapped one wrist with several winds of
tape, then the other, leaving a small margin of tape between. He loosened his
belt and pulled it away.
She felt him get off the bed, heard him in the closet, and then sensed him
towering over her again.
"Close your eyes tightly, and don't move. Don't make this rougher than it is,"
he ordered her. She nodded meekly, squeezed her eyes shut and lay still.
She felt him raise the pillowslip over her throat and then her mouth and nose,
wrapping the material behind her head, effectively blindfolding her.
Fabric was shoved at her lips and she involuntarily opened her mouth, accepting
the cloth packing into her mouth. She probed at it with her tongue, trying to
seat it in her mouth and not retch. He packed a second article in her mouth,
then pressed sticky tape across her lips and cheeks. More ripped sounds and two
more pieces of tape reinforced the gag.
A different tearing sound now. "Alright, now keep your goddamn eyes shut," he
demanded, turning her sideways away from him. She whimpered behind her gag. The
pillowslip was pulled away, and her eyes quickly masked with some strip of silky
fabric; she later found it to be the tattered remnant of an expensive Victoria's
Secret nightgown. He knotted it behind her head.
Then his hands were on her again, undoing the clasp of her necklace and pulling
it from her throat. Then probing fingers at her lobes as he undid first one,
then her second earring. She reddened as she finally came to realize that the
man was a thief, and he was taking her personal things. She understood how
violated victims of crime could feel, their personal treasures taken from them.
Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes into her silky blindfold.
"Lay here. Lay still," he ordered as he got off the bed. She sensed he watched
her to see if she complied. She wasn't sure when he left the room, but soon
heard him in other parts of the house.
The inch or two of tape between her wrists gave her very little play, but she
worked at it. The worst part was the gag, the packing in her mouth. She probed
it with her tongue, rewarded with an acrid, musky taste. Was it poison? The
fabric didn't seem knit, it was more silky. There had been two pieces... She
wailed aloud as she realized she had been gagged with soiled panties drawn from
the laundry hamper.
She felt tears well up again as she had another emotional spike, but forced
herself to cool down. "If you cry, your nose will run and then you really won't
be able to breathe," she reasoned. "Don't kill yourself."
As she thought about her predicament, she reasoned, perhaps it wasn't so bad.
After all, he repeatedly had berated her for even being home. Her presence had
scared him as much as he had scared her. He had told her to keep her eyes shut,
so she couldn't identify his face. Just let him take what he wants and he'll
probably leave without harming you, she told herself.
She tried to recall his voice, or even his appearance in the doorway, before he
had accosted her. But she couldn't remember anything but that black ribbed
pullover. Were his jeans black or dark blue? Was he dark haired? The room had
been filled with shadows. Something about his voice haunted her, but she didn't
know from where. And again, he had been so surprised and angry, that emotion
certainly would have affected his voice.
Was he there? She lifted her head, turned toward the doorway and listened
intently. She tugged harder on the tape between her wrists.
The phone rang.
"Shit," his voice from somewhere in the bedroom, and she sensed him running out.
She froze, listening intently as the phone rang a second, then a third time and
the machine picked up.
"Hi, you have reached Mike and Susan. Sorry we can't take your call. Please
leave a message." Then the beep.
And the same voice as the recorded one. "Susan if you're there, pick up."
She squealed and mmpphhed as loudly as she could, pulling on her bounds,
flopping on the bed like a landed fish.
More speech from the machine, "Look, pick up the damn phone." A pause. "I just
wanted to call to say I'm sorry for what I said." Longer pause. "Everybody here
is asking after you, wanting to know if you're o.k. Look, I know you were pissed
off, but it's Christmas Eve." More pause. "O.K., think about it, and call me on
my cell phone. Think if you want me to come home and get you." There was noise
at the other end, nieces and nephews running in the hall. "Look, just call me
and we'll figure this out. I miss you. Bye."
She collapsed, ceasing her struggles as the answering machine gave its final
beep.
"The old man misses you, and here you lay," came her captor's voice as he
entered her bedroom...
