My Name is Stab

Chapter Twenty Seven - The Laura McPherson Memorial Kick in the Balls

It was early evening when they started to get ready for their party. They'd finished a very sparse meal and cleared the area around the table and the men started to gather. Then two of them grabbed me and hustled me toward the table. As they did so, I allowed the ropes to fall off me.

"Who the fuck tied her?" Deemo bellowed when he saw what had happened.

One of their number was reluctantly shoved forward by his fellows and was smashed backwards by a vicious uppercut. He collapsed to the floor where he lay, unmoving.

I was thrown onto the table and my arms and legs held down with my legs apart. Deemo made a big show of flourishing a knife and of cutting my trousers off me. He obviously expected me to be terrified. I suppose I should have been, really, but the worst had already happened when I was made to watch them rape my little sister. He then sliced off my underwear with a similar flourish.

What is this thing they have about cutting my clothes off? I suppose the knife on my skin is supposed to make me feel even more vulnerable and terrified.

He drew his pistol from his belt, stroked it down my body and prodded it inside me. I certainly wasn't scared by that. I knew that what he had planned for me was much worse than being shot. He jabbed it in and out of me a couple of times - not too far, I noticed - he didn't want to break his toy before he got to play with it. Then he placed it on the table next to my hips.

Soldier Stab paid particular attention to the exact location of that pistol.

Then, with some ceremony, Deemo lowered his trousers and underwear. He was obviously ready for me.

"I'm sorry! I really need a toilet!" I suddenly gasped, making a big show of looking terrified. "If you... if you start doing things to me... down there... I'm really going to wee all over you." I even let a little bit out. It wasn't hard. They hadn't let me out all day.

"Oh for fuck's sake!" he exploded. "Jacko, take her out. Just don't be too long."

I was released and a junior member of the gang grabbed me by the arm and hustled me outside. He wasn't much older than me. He allowed me to squat down to relieve myself and even turned his back as I did so. I half considered killing him there on the spot and making a run for it. I could have done so easily with the moves that Laura had taught me. That would certainly cause a distraction but it was not what Mike would be expecting. No, strange as it seemed, our best chance was to go back in there.

"Is this really the life you are looking for?" I asked Jacko as I stood up.

"What do you mean?"

All the raping and killing... wouldn't it be better if we made a run for it. I've got some food cached... and I could show you a really good time... with a willing woman..."

I left the idea hanging but then heard the promised double owl hoot. Mike was in position.

Jacko delayed for a moment too long before replying. "No I can't. They'll catch us and..." I could hear him shudder through the grip on my arm. He escorted me back into the house.

"Where the fuck have you been?" Deemo exploded when we returned. In other circumstances, he would have looked comical with his trousers round his ankles but the expression on his face didn't leave any room for humour.

"We were just talking..."

"Talking... talking? Get the fuck out of my sight!" Jacko hurried from the room.

"As for you..." he turned to me. "You're going to pay for all of this!"

It was time. Death or glory. Probably death.

I wanted to kick him straight away - how I wanted to kick him - but I knew Mike would need a couple more seconds. "Not yet!" Laura seemed to be speaking to me from beyond the grave. "Use your anger! Don't let it use you!"

"Yes, Corp!"

"What do you need to do right now?" she asked in her customary calm, controlled voice - no panic.

"Delay and distract!" I answered.

"Then do it!"

"Is that all you've got?" I said, nodding to his manhood which was, in any case, not particularly impressive, certainly not in comparison to Sampson, and was starting to wilt under the pressure of circumstances. "And you've gone a bit droopy!" I wiggled my little finger and then mimed it drooping.

There was a collective drawing in of breath around the room...

And then someone laughed. I couldn't have hoped for anything more. Incandescent with rage, Deemo snatched his handgun from the table and shot the laugher.

The moment his attention was away from me, Laura shouted, "Now!"

An aspect of the situation that they had not considered when they performed their dramatic 'cutting off the trousers and underwear' thing was that they had not needed to remove my combat boots.

So there was absolutely nothing holding me back when I kicked Deemo in his exposed testicles.

He didn't even see it coming.

When I had practised this move with Laura and then with James and Sampson, they had taught me to imagine that it was Deemo in front of me so I knew how to channel every ounce of the hurt and humiliation that I had received at his hands. Laura would have been particularly proud of that kick. I practically lifted him off the ground.

There was a stunned silence, briefly interrupted by the loud clunk of a pistol hitting the floor as Deemo clutched at his scrotum. He then slowly collapsed to the ground.

And in that silence, I grabbed his pistol and rolled under the table.

At that moment, one of the guards from outside opened the kitchen door to see what the shooting was all about. He, too, froze for a moment, stunned by the scene but he suddenly came flying into the room as Mike planted a boot in the middle of his back.

Then the air was full of bullets... mostly coming from Mike's direction. There was some attempt to put up resistance but the gang members had come into the kitchen prepared for a little recreational rape rather than combat. Mike quickly shot any of them who were holding weapons and I added to the confusion, as much as I could from under the table, by shooting any legs which I could be sure weren't Mike's. When somebody headed towards the spears, I made a point of shooting them.

It was all over within a couple of seconds. Amazingly, neither Mike nor I had been as much as scratched though we both had plenty of other people's blood on us. Mike made a rapid tour of the gang members, checking their state and tying up any who had any hope of ever moving again. He didn't try to do anything with the girl who was busy burying herself into the walls in the corner of the room but he did say a cheerful, "Hello," as if she hadn't just found herself in the middle of a gun battle.

"What happened to him," he asked when he came to Deemo, who was still busy exploring new worlds of pain.

"You know how Laura told me to imagine it was Deemo when I practised the scrotal kick..." I reminded him.

He gave a sad smile at the memory.

"Well, this time, I didn't have to do any imagining!"

"The Laura McPherson memorial kick in the balls," he said with a genuine laugh. "She'd have appreciated that!"