CODES: * means plain. The scene is unsatisfactory due to lack of length or detail. ** means average. *** means hot.
V is a warning for above average violent content. S is a warning for snuff content - the excerpt is usually from a crime novel.

Thursday, February 26, 2015

**An abuser torments his past victim over the phone by reminding her of her past suffering and humiliation

The Devil's Star (2003) by Jo Nesbø. A policewoman struggles to keep up appearances at work despite having been put through an ordeal of rape, sexual abuse and humiliation in the hands of a higher ranking officer. And despite still having to work with her abuser.

CHAPTER 20

Beate Lønn enjoyed her work. She like the routines, the security, the knowledge that she was competent, and she knew that the others at the Forensics Institute at Kjolberggata 21A knew that too. Since work was the only thing in her life she considered important, it was reason enough to get up in the morning. Everything else was a musical interlude. She lived in her mothers house in Oppsal and had the whole of the top floor to herself. They got on extremely well. She had always been Daddys girl when he was alive; she assumed that was why she joined the police force, like him. She had no hobbies. Even though she and Halvorsen, the officer Harry shared his office with, had become a sort of couple, she was not convinced about it. She had read in a womens magazine that this kind of doubt was natural and that you should take risks. Beate didnt like taking risks. Or being in doubt. That was why she enjoyed her work.

As she was growing up she blushed at the thought that anyone could be thinking about her and she spent most of her time devising different ways to hide. She still blushed, but she had found good places to hide. She could sit for hours inside the worn redbrick walls of Forensics studying fingerprints, ballistics reports, video recordings, comparisons of voices, the analyses of DNA or textile fibres, footprints, blood and an endless number of technical leads which might resolve important, complicated, controversial cases in total peace and quiet. She had also discovered that working was not nearly as dangerous as it seemed. So long as she spoke loudly and clearly and managed to repress her panic about blushing, losing face, her clothes, standing there exposed and full of shame, for what reason she didnt know. The office in Kjolberggata was her castle; the uniform and her professional duties her mental armour.

The clock showed 12.30 a.m. when the telephone on her office desk rang, interrupting her reading of the laboratory report on Lisbeth Barlis finger. Her heart began to quicken with fear when she saw on the display that the caller was ringing from an unknown number. It could only mean that it was him.

"Beate Lønn."

It was him. His words came out in a flurry of blows.

"Why didnt you ring me about the fingerprints?"

She held her breath for a second before she replied.

"Harry said he would pass on the message."

"Thank you. I received it. Next time, you ring me first. Is that understood?"

Beate gulped. She didnt know whether out of fear or anger.

"Fine."

"Anything else you told him that you didnt tell me?"

"No. Except that Ive got the results from the lab on what was under the finger we were sent through the post."

"Lisbeth Barli's? And it was?"

"Excrement."

"What?"

"Poo."

"Thank you very much. I know what it is. Any idea where it came from?"

"Er, yes."

"Correction. Who it came from."

"I dont know for certain, but I can guess."

"Would you be so kind."

"The excrement contains blood, perhaps from a haemorrhoid. In this particular case, blood group B. Only seven per cent of the country has this blood group. Wilhelm Barli is a registered blood donor. He has --"

"Right. And what do you conclude from this?"

"I dont know," Beate said quickly.

"But you know that the anus is an erogenous zone, Beate? In men and women. Or had you forgotten?"

Beate squeezed her eyes shut. Please dont let him start again. Not again. It was a long time ago, she had begun to forget, to get it out of her system. But his voice was there, smooth and tough, like snakeskin.

"Youre good at playing the very ordinary girl, Beate. I like that. I liked it when you pretended you didnt want to."

You know something, I know something, no-one else knows anything, she thought.

"Does Halvorsen do it to you as well as I did?"

"Im putting the phone down now," Beate said.

His laughter crackled in her ears. She knew it then. There was nowhere to hide. They could find you anywhere, just as they had found the three women where they felt safest. There was no castle. And no armour.



**Sexual harrassment scene (no rape though)

From Open Season (2001) by C. J. Box. A game warden's daughter is threatened and harrassed because she's harbouring endangered animals which some people want dead. The excerpt is from an eBook.

PART FOUR, CHAPTER 18

She knew the area around their house so well that she was certain where she would find her pets: under the foundation of the garage.  There were some large cracks in the concrete where the structure met the ground, and the cracks led to a large dark space under the floor of the garage.  She had once probed the space with a long stick and had not been able to find the sides.  That, she was sure, was where she would find them.

When she emerged from the bushes, the first thing she saw was Lucky sticking his head out of the crack and then vanishing under the garage.

"Boy, am I glad to see you," she said, emptying her pockets into the hole. "That ought to keep you guys full for a while."  The relief she felt made her giddy.

"I'll be back as soon as I can be, you can count on that."  She felt as wildly good as she had horribly bad a moment before.  "You guys are pretty smart."  She smiled, pulling her pockets inside out to get every last sunflower seed. "This is a much safer place for you."

Rather than crawl through the bushes again back into the yard, Sheridan skipped down the length of the lilacs toward the end of the fence and the corner of corral.  She planned to turn and enter the yard through the same gate the monster had used. As she turned toward the corral, she saw the face of a man in the window of the pole barn, and it stopped her cold.

The man's face withdrew from the window into the shadows of the barn and then reemerged in the doorway, so that she could now see all of him.  He stood in the light but didn't step outside into the corral. He was motioning to her to come to him.  He was smiling.  She had been right about being watched.

Sheridan couldn't move.  She was terrified.  She didn't know whether to scream for her mom, run for the gate, or run back toward the garage. If she ran back to the garage, the man might follow her and maybe see the animals.

"Sheridan, right?"  The man asked softly.  He spoke just loud enough for her to hear him.
"I need to talk to you for a second.  Don't be afraid," the man said. "I know your dad."

He did look familiar, Sheridan thought.  She had seen him before with her dad. She didn't know his name, and if she had been told what it was, she had forgotten.  There were a lot of people who came to their house because it was Dad's office also.  There had been a lot of men at their house when the dead man was found.  She knew she shouldn't talk to strangers. But if he knew her dad and her name, was he really a stranger?  She weighed going to the man against screaming or running to the house.  If the man saw her feed the animals, he might tell her mom.  If she ran screaming, she might embarrass her dad.

The man kept smiling and motioning for her to come. She walked toward him on stiff, heavy legs.  Her eyes were huge.  She walked past the gate and ducked through the poles of the corral. Still, the man stayed in the pole barn.  Sheridan suddenly realized that he was standing there so he couldn't be seen by anyone in the house, and she knew she had made the wrong decision.  She turned to run, but he was on her in an instant, and he jerked her back roughly into a dark stall with him.

He swung, her around and pressed her against the hay bales, and her scream was smothered by his hand.  His face was so close to hers that his hat brim jammed against her forehead and his breath fogged her glasses.

"I'm sorry I had to do this, darling," he whispered when she had stopped struggling.  "I really am.  I wished you hadn't come around the yard that way.  I didn't expect you and you saw me."

He kept his hand, massive and rough, crushed against her mouth.  Her breath came in quick little puffs from her nose, and he didn't intend to let her answer.

"Before I take my hand down, there is something you have to understand, Sheridan.  Are you listening?"

She tried to nod her head yes.  She was trembling, and she couldn't make herself stop.  She was suddenly afraid she would wet her panties.

"Are you listening?"  he asked again.  This time his voice was very gentle. "Are you listening?"
She said with her eyes that she was.

"You've got some secrets, don't you little girl?  You've got some little friends in the woodpile, don't you?  I've been watching you.  I saw you feeding them."

The big hand did not move from her mouth. "Do your mom and dad know about them?"

She tried to shake her head no.  Even though he pressed her to the hay, he could tell what she was trying to say because he smiled a little. "You're not lying to me, are you, Sheridan?"

As forcefully as she could, she tried to say no.  He pressed his face even closer to her.  His eyes were all she could see of his face.

"Okay, then.  That's good.  We both have a secret, don't we?  And we're going to keep it our secret, just between us.  Just between us friends. You just keep this to yourself and don't you ever say a word about this to anyone.  Look at me."

Sheridan had averted her eyes toward the door, hoping her dad would be there.

"Look at me," he hissed. She did.

"If you say one thing about this to anyone, I'll rip those pretty green eyes of yours right out of their sockets.  And I won't stop there."

With his free hand, Sheridan felt him reach back.  She heard a snap and a huge black gun filled her vision. "I'll use this on your dad.  I'll shoot him right in the face.  I'll do the same thing to your pretty mom and your itty-bitty sister.  I'll even kill that stupid dog.  I'll blow her head right off.  Keep looking at me," he said.

She had stopped shaking; she was beyond it.  She was absolutely calm, and absolutely terrified.

"I'm going to take my hand down now and let you go as soon as you can smile," he said. "Then you take that smile right into the house and never, ever tell anyone what happened here.  Your little animals in the woodpile are going to heaven, do you understand?  Your family won't have to go to heaven or anywhere else if you keep your little mouth shut."

He eased his hand down.  Her face felt cold as the air hit it.  Her lips had been crushed against her teeth, and she tasted a drop of salty blood from inside her mouth.

"Are you listening, Sheridan?"

"Yes."  Her voice was thin, and it nearly cracked.

"Then smile."

She tried.  She didn't feel like smiling.

"That's not a smile," he chided, his voice gentle again. "You can do better than that, darling."

She tried.

"Closer," he persisted. "Keep working on it."

Her mouth smiled.

"We can live with that," he said, stepping back.  His crushing weight was now off of her.  She stood up.  She winced as he reached over her shoulder, but he was just brushing the hay off of her dress.

"Don't be scared of me," he admonished.  He sounded like a normal person now.  She was as confused as she was frightened. "Nothing bad will ever happen because we've got a deal.  I won't break it if you don't.  Shoot," he said, "we might even turn out to be friends someday.  That'd be nice, wouldn't it?"

"Yes," she said.  But she was lying.

"You might even get a little older, and I'll take you to a movie.  Buy you a Coke and some popcorn."  He smoothed her dress across her bottom, pressing his hand more firmly than he needed to. "You might even like it."

They both looked up when they heard her mom call her name.

"You had better go now, darling," he said.