“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, if each of you believes that the prosecution proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant killed the three men and that the killing was not justifiable as ‘a sufficient level of counteracting force of violence’, then you should find the defendant guilty. But if you believe the prosecution did not prove any one of these things beyond a reasonable doubt, then you must find the defendant not guilty.”
They had waited for her, on her way home from the library where she had studied. She could still remember every detail, how the night reeked of the rain that was imminent and how she had hurried to get home before it started pouring. She remembered the way they grabbed her and pulled her into the alleyway. How she froze and wanted to scream but could not. And she still was not sure if it was the hand that had closed over her mouth or the fact that her throat had cramped up, refusing to produce any sound, regardless of the hand.
There were three of them, three men. Two were somewhere in their thirties, one was still young, about as old as she was, maybe even younger. And they were strong and she was not. She had never been strong, never into sports. She liked books, games, computers. Not good with people and at 5’7 and 120 pounds, fairly small for a young woman her age. She was not particularly pretty, never got on well with boys. She was the kind of girl that nobody noticed.
They had half carried, half dragged her up in the alleyway and brought her to an abandoned house. It was boarded up, graffiti all over the wall. Not the kind of graffiti you could admire for its artfulness, just tags fighting for space on the wall to show that somebody had been there with a spray can in his hand. One of the man pushed some of the boarding aside and just before they took her into the building she could feel the first drops of rain falling on her face.
It woke her up. Up till now she had been frozen. Whether it was from shock or fear she did not know, but now she realized she was in serious if not mortal danger. Her mind started racing. As a student she had no money worth mentioning, she had no enemies, or any real friends for that matter. This wasn’t a prank, a scare or even a robbery, they were going to rape her and probably worse. They had done nothing to cover their identity, they would silence her after the rape, she was sure of this.
The realization, the thought process to reason out what was going to happen, was instant, in a flash. Panic grabbed her with intensity that made her head ache. Now she started screaming, trying to get loose from the men. But the hands held her without much effort, including the one that covered her mouth. It made it hard to breath as it also somewhat closed over her nose and all her screams were muffled into nothingness. She could feel a hand finding one of her breast, groping it, hard and heard a laugh.
Her panic was rising with every step they took her into that building her headache soared. She knew she was well underway for one of her famous migraines and she felt her stomach turning. Normally when things got this bad, she would take her pills, find a quiet, dark place to sleep or meditate and wait for the 30 minutes for the medicine to kick in. She called it PPQ. Pills, Peace and Quiet. That is what she needed to bring down the migraines that had been troubling her ever since she was 12.
There were no pills, certainly not peace and quiet. The situation was probably as far from ideal as it could get and her head felt it had caught fire. Especially behind her eyes it felt her brain was being seared with flames. And her screams of panic started to mix with the screams of pain. He skull felt it was at the brink of bursting and her stomach heaved.
Diner was coming up and the guy who held his hand over her mouth pulled it back with a “Hey”. And she started to throw up. Waves of convulsions followed, one after the other. Even after there was nothing left and her diner was all over the floor, it would not stop for at least a few minutes.
And while she was puking her guts out, she could hear the comments of the three men. “I fucking hate it when they do this”.
“Just hold her so she does not puke all over herself. We will take her to the next room when she is done”. He almost sounded business like.
And the puking only made the migraine worse. With every heartbeat is seemed that somebody had taken a hammer into her skull and was hitting it with all their might. The feeling of her head bursting grew stronger with every beat of heart that pumped blood through her brain. The men had taken a step back, trying to not get hit by the puke that was spewed all over the floor. But they had her surrounded. The room they stood in was mostly empty, some old, broken furniture lined the walls. Dust and god knows what else had gathered for years and had grimed the walls and floors of this building
She stood, bent over with her hands leaning on her knees, vomit around her feet and some of it over her shoes. But for the first time since she had been taken she could take a full breath of air and while her head exploded from pain, she screamed. She screamed as she had never done before. All her panic, her pain was in that scream, it was something primal and it cut through the evening.
In the room next to her, she could hear glass break and from the corner of her eye one of the older men, the one who seemed to be their leader pulled his hand backwards. Time slowed down as she saw his fist coming her way and there was nothing she could do but scream while the pain in her head became unbearable, the one hammer in her head had become an army of hammers and she could feel her skull cracking under the weight of their combined force. As the fist, that was going to hit her, was just inches from her head, everything went dark…..
