You Only Die Twice

Chapter TWELVE





With a profound sense of shame, embarrassment and rage, Patty Jennings went through the graphic and disturbing photographs of her having sex with the man who called himself “Jack” before she switched off the computer, turned away from it in disgust, and focused her attention through the window beside her.

What had she done? What would this mean for her going forward?

She didn’t remember any of what she just looked at, which told her one thing. He did drug her. He must have bought her a drink and slipped something into it. She hadn’t had enough to drink last night for her to forget him taking photos of her, so there was no other explanation. He bought her a cocktail and tainted it. Did he do the same to Cheryl? She didn’t know.

But at what point did he do it? Was it at the bar? Or was it when she fixed a drink for them when they returned to her apartment? She remembered doing that. She remembered excusing herself to use the bathroom so she should freshen up. Did he put something in her drink then? It was possible, because up until the moment they left The Grind and entered her apartment, her memory was reasonably clear. Later, at home, when he raped her, she would have remembered a camera flashing in her face. She would have remembered the strobes of light. She was certain of that.

And now, even though he had carefully concealed his own identity, everything she did with him was on a website, with the threat that if she didn’t take her life in the name of Jesus Christ Lord God Almighty for committing her whorish sins, the Web address would be sent to her family and to her employer, and her life, such as it was, would be exposed, vilified and ruined.

“When the photographs are made public, you can consider the rest of your life a public stoning,” he wrote.

Patty Jennings had no illusions about how people viewed her. She was aware of her reputation and that people judged her because of an event that happened six years ago, when she was labeled the town slut.

In her life, she’d been with five men, not the thirty or the forty or even the fifty some claimed she’d been with.

In a town as small as hers, her mistake was to sleep with the wrong man, her ex-boyfriend of two years, with whom she shared her past loves just as he shared his with her.

When she broke up with him after he slapped her in the heat of an argument, he devised a life for her that she’d never lived. He told everyone he could about that life. And the town, happy to revel in its newfound gossip, directed its ire at its new pariah.

Some would have moved on, but Patty, raised by strong-willed parents who supported her because they knew her, decided she wasn’t going anywhere. She stuck it out. With her father’s help, she got a job at a bank and worked hard in spite of the rumors and the disapproving looks from her co-workers. She ignored them because she knew herself better than anyone, with Cheryl being the exception. She knew she was no saint―she had, after all, gone home with a stranger last night―but she also knew that the people who condemned her were just as flawed as she. Life had dealt her the raw hand of poverty, deceit and abuse, but until this morning, Patty always felt that somehow, likely through the passing of time, that things would get better.

Now, that obviously wasn’t going to be the case.

She had decisions to make, but she wouldn’t make them alone. She reached for the phone on her desk and called Cheryl to tell her what had happened. She knew she would be in bed asleep―Cheryl loved to sleep in when she could―but this was critical, so she listened to the phone ring and waited. When no one answered and it went to Cheryl’s voicemail, she called out for Cheryl to wake up and answer the phone. When she didn’t, she spoke louder, asking her to please answer and to not be angry with her, because she was in trouble.

But Cheryl didn’t answer.

Patty knew that Cheryl’s phone was next to her bed. She knew she was listening, knew she was choosing not to answer and now she understood the full weight of how much she had disappointed her friend last night. She had to fix this with an apology, and there was only one way to handle that. In person.

She went to the bathroom off her bedroom, turned on the shower, undressed and hoped as she stood beneath the hot spray that Cheryl would at least answer the door when she arrived at her apartment.

If there ever was a time that Patty needed her, it was now.