**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.

S** A neighbor rapes a girl in a secret hideaway underground

From first chapter of Lovely Bones (2002) by Alice Sebold.

    "I got to go, Mr. Harvey. This is a cool place, but I have to go."

    He stood up and did his hunchback number by the six dug- in steps that led to the world. "I don't know why you think you're leaving."

    I talked so that I would not have to take in this knowledge: Mr. Harvey was no character. He made me feel skeevy and icky now that he was blocking the door.

    "Mr. Harvey, I really have to get home."

    "Take off your clothes."

    "What?"

    "Take your clothes off," Mr. Harvey said. "I want to check that you're still a virgin."

    "I am, Mr. Harvey," I said.

    "I want to make sure. Your parents will thank me."

    "My parents?"

    "They only want good girls," he said.

    "Mr. Harvey," I said, "please let me leave."

    "You aren't leaving, Susie. You're mine now."

    Fitness was not a big thing back then; aerobics was barely a word. Girls were supposed to be soft, and only the girls we suspected were butch could climb the ropes at school.

    I fought hard. I fought as hard as I could not to let Mr. Harvey hurt me, but my hard-as-I-could was not hard enough, not even close, and I was soon lying down on the ground, in the ground, with him on top of me panting and sweating, having lost his glasses in the struggle.

    I was so alive then. I thought it was the worst thing in the world to be lying flat on my back with a sweating man on top of me. To be trapped inside the earth and have no one know where I was.

--

    Mr. Harvey started to press his lips against mine. They were blubbery and wet and I wanted to scream but I was too afraid and too exhausted from the fight. I had been kissed once by someone I liked. His name was Ray and he was Indian. He had an accent and was dark. I wasn't supposed to like him. Clarissa called his large eyes, with their half-closed lids, "freak-a-delic," but he was nice and smart and helped me cheat on my algebra exam while pretending he hadn't. He kissed me by my locker the day before we turned in our photos for the yearbook. When the yearbook came out at the end of the summer, I saw that under his picture he had answered the standard "My heart belongs to" with "Susie Salmon." I guess he had had plans. I remember that his lips were chapped.

    "Don't, Mr. Harvey," I managed, and I kept saying that one word a lot. Don't. And I said please a lot too. Franny told me that almost everyone begged "please" before dying.

    "I want you, Susie," he said.

    "Please," I said. "Don't," I said. Sometimes I combined them. "Please don't" or "Don't please." It was like insisting that a key works when it doesn't or yelling "I've got it, I've got it, I've got it" as a softball goes sailing over you into the stands.

    "Please don't."

    But he grew tired of hearing me plead. He reached into the pocket of my parka and balled up the hat my mother had made me, smashing it into my mouth. The only sound I made after that was the weak tinkling of bells.

    As he kissed his wet lips down my face and neck and then began to shove his hands up under my shirt, I wept. I began to leave my body; I began to inhabit the air and the silence. I wept and struggled so I would not feel. He ripped open my pants, not having found the invisible zipper my mother had artfully sewn into their side.

    "Big white panties," he said.

    I felt huge and bloated. I felt like a sea in which he stood and pissed and shat. I felt the corners of my body were turning in on themselves and out, like in cat's cradle, which I played with Lindsey just to make her happy. He started working himself over me.

    "Susie! Susie!" I heard my mother calling. "Dinner is ready."

    He was inside me. He was grunting.

    "We're having string beans and lamb."

    I was the mortar, he was the pestle.

    "Your brother has a new finger painting, and I made apple crumb cake."

    Mr. Harvey made me lie still underneath him and listen to the beating of his heart and the beating of mine. How mine skipped like a rabbit, and how his thudded, a hammer against cloth. We lay there with our bodies touching, and, as I shook, a powerful knowledge took hold. He had done this thing to me and I had lived. That was all. I was still breathing. I heard his heart. I smelled his breath. The dark earth surrounding us smelled like what it was, moist dirt where worms and animals lived their daily lives. I could have yelled for hours.

    I knew he was going to kill me. I did not realize then that I was an animal already dying.

    "Why don't you get up?" Mr. Harvey said as he rolled to the side and then crouched over me.

    His voice was gentle, encouraging, a lover's voice on a late morning. A suggestion, not a command.

    I couldn't move. I couldn't get up.

    When I wouldn't —was it only that, only that I wouldn't follow his suggestion? —he leaned over to the side and felt, over his head, across the ledge where his razor and shaving cream sat. He brought back a knife. Unsheathed, it smiled at me, curving up in a grin.

    He took the hat from my mouth. "Tell me you love me," he said.

    Gently, I did. The end came anyway.

* Woman kidnapped and forced to serve as a Sheik's sextoy

Pathetic, absolutely pathetic. I should have known better than to expect anything as the book is from 1919 even though when I started reading it I had no idea it was that old. Hull barely describes the ridiculous Sheik kissing Diana, let alone fucking her. This book is such a waste of time. Instead of saying she was raped she writes, ‘She had experienced his tremendous strength.’ The book’s archaic.

The Sheik (1919), by E. M. Hull. Excerpts form an eBook.

END OF CHAPTER II

    "Why have you brought me here?" she asked, fighting down the fear that was growing more terrible every moment.

    He repeated her words with a slow smile. "Why have I brought you here? Bon Dieu! Are you not woman enough to know?"

    She shrank back further, a wave of colour rushing into her face that receded immediately, leaving her whiter than she had been before. Her eyes fell under the kindling flame in his. "I don't know what you mean," she whispered faintly, with shaking lips.

    "I think you do." He laughed softly, and his laugh frightened her more than anything he had said. He came towards her, and although she was swaying on her feet, desperately she tried to evade him, but with a quick movement he caught her in his arms.

    Terror, agonising, soul-shaking terror such as she had never imagined, took hold of her. The flaming light of desire burning in his eyes turned her sick and faint. Her body throbbed with the consciousness of a knowledge that appalled her. She understood his purpose with a horror that made each separate nerve in her system shrink against the understanding that had come to her under the consuming fire of his ardent gaze, and in the fierce embrace that was drawing her shaking limbs closer and closer against the man's own pulsating body. She writhed in his arms as he crushed her to him in a sudden access of possessive passion. His head bent slowly down to her, his eyes burned deeper, and, held immovable, she endured the first kiss she had ever received. And the touch of his scorching lips, the clasp of his arms, the close union with his warm, strong body robbed her of all strength, of all power of resistance.

    With a great sob her eyes closed wearily, the hot mouth pressed on hers was like a narcotic, drugging her almost into insensibility. Numbly she felt him gather her high up into his arms, his lips still clinging closely, and carry her across the tent through curtains into an adjoining room. He laid her down on soft cushions. "Do not make me wait too long," he whispered, and left her.

    And the whispered words sent a shock through her that seemed to wrench her deadened nerves apart, galvanising her into sudden strength. She sprang up with wild, despairing eyes, and hands clenched frantically across her heaving breast; then, with a bitter cry, she dropped on to the floor, her arms flung out across the wide, luxurious bed. It was not true! It was not true! It could not be—this awful thing that had happened to her—not to her, Diana Mayo! It was a dream, a ghastly dream that would pass and free her from this agony. Shuddering, she raised her head. The strange room swam before her eyes. Oh, God! It was not a dream. It was real, it was an actual fact from which there was no escape. She was trapped, powerless, defenceless, and behind the heavy curtains near her was the man waiting to claim what he had taken. Any moment he might come; the thought sent her shivering closer to the ground with limbs that trembled uncontrollably. Her courage, that had faced dangers and even death without flinching, broke down before the horror that awaited her. It was inevitable; there was no help to be expected, no mercy to be hoped for. She had felt the crushing strength against which she was helpless. She would struggle, but it would be useless; she would fight, but it would make no difference. Within the tent she was alone, ready to his hand like a snared animal; without, the place was swarming with the man's followers. There was nowhere she could turn, there was no one she could turn to. The certainty of the accomplishment of what she dreaded crushed her with its surety. All power of action was gone. She could only wait and suffer in the complete moral collapse that overwhelmed her, and that was rendered greater by her peculiar temperament. Her body was aching with the grip of his powerful arms, her mouth was bruised with his savage kisses. She clenched her hands in anguish. "Oh, God!" she sobbed, with scalding tears that scorched her cheeks. "Curse him! Curse him!"

    And with the words on her lips he came, silent, noiseless, to her side. With his hands on her shoulders he forced her to her feet. His eyes were fierce, his stern mouth parted in a cruel smile, his deep, slow voice half angry, half impatiently amused. "Must I be valet, as well as lover?"

CHAPTER III

    The warm sunshine was flooding the tent when Diana awoke from the deep sleep of exhaustion that had been almost insensibility, awoke to immediate and complete remembrance. One quick, fearful glance around the big room assured her that she was alone. She sat up slowly, her eyes shadowy with pain, looking listlessly at the luxurious appointments of the tent. She looked dry-eyed, she had no tears left. They had all been expended when she had grovelled at his feet imploring the mercy he had not accorded her. She had fought until the unequal struggle had left her exhausted and helpless in his arms, until her whole body was one agonised ache from the brutal hands that forced her to compliance, until her courageous spirit was crushed by the realisation of her own powerlessness, and by the strange fear that the man himself had awakened in her, which had driven her at last moaning to her knees. And the recollection of her abject prayers and weeping supplications filled her with a burning shame. She loathed herself with bitter contempt. Her courage had broken down; even her pride had failed her.

--

    "Why have you done this?" she murmured faintly.

    Then for a moment her heart stood still, her eyes dilating. He had come close behind her, and she waited in an agony, until he caught her to him, crushing her against him, forcing her head back on his arm.

    "Because I wanted you. Because one day in Biskra, four weeks ago, I saw you for a few moments, long enough to know that I wanted you. And what I want I take. You played into my hands. You arranged a tour in the desert. The rest was easy."

    Her eyes were shut, the long dark lashes quivering on her pale cheeks so that she could not see his face, but she felt him draw her closer to him and then his fierce kisses on her mouth. She struggled frantically, but she was helpless, and he laughed softly as he kissed her lips, her hair, her eyes passionately. He stood quite still, but she felt the heavy beating of his heart under her cheek, and understood dimly the passion that she had aroused in him. She had experienced his tremendous strength. She realised from what he had told her that he recognised no law beyond his own wishes, and was prepared to go to any lengths to fulfil them. She knew that her life was in his hands, that he could break her with his lean brown fingers like a toy is broken, and all at once she felt pitifully weak and frightened. She was utterly in his power and at his mercy—the mercy of an Arab who was merciless.

    She gave in suddenly, lying quiet in his arms. She had touched the lowest depths of degradation; he could do nothing more to her than he had done. For the moment she could fight no further, she was worn out and utterly weary. A numb feeling of despair came over her and with it a sense of unreality, as if it were a hideous nightmare from which she would wake, for the truth seemed too impossible, the setting too theatrical. The man himself was a mystery. She could not reconcile him and the barbaric display in which he lived with the evidences of refinement and education that the well-worn books in the tent evinced. The fastidious ordering of his appointments puzzled her; it was strange to find in such a place. A dozen incongruities that she had noticed during the day crowded into her recollection until her head reeled. She turned from them wearily; she was too tired to think, too spent in mind and body. And with the despair a kind of indifference stole over her. She had suffered so much that nothing more mattered.

    The strong arms around her tightened slowly. "Look at me," he said in the soft slow voice that seemed habitual to him, and which contrasted oddly with the neat, clipping French that he spoke. She shivered and her dark lashes flickered for a moment. "Look at me." His voice was just as slow, just as soft, but into it had crept an inflection that was unmistakable.

    Twenty-four hours ago Diana Mayo had not known the meaning of the word fear, and had never in all her life obeyed any one against her inclination, but in twenty-four hours she had lived through years of emotions. For the first time she had pitted her will against a will that was stronger than her own, for the first time she had met an arrogance that was greater and a determination that was firmer than hers. For the first time she had met a man who had failed to bow to her wishes, whom a look had been powerless to transform into a willing slave. In a few hours that had elapsed she had learned fear, a terrible fear that left her sick with apprehension, and she was learning obedience. Obedient now, she forced herself to lift her eyes to his, and the shamed blood surged slowly into her cheeks. His dark, passionate eyes burnt into her like a hot flame. His encircling arms were like bands of fire, scorching her. His touch was torture. Helpless, like a trapped wild thing, she lay against him, panting, trembling, her wide eyes fixed on him, held against their will. Fascinated she could not turn them away, and the image of the brown, handsome face with its flashing eyes, straight, cruel mouth and strong chin seemed searing into her brain. The faint indefinite scent of an uncommon Turkish tobacco clung about him, enveloping her. She had been conscious of the same scent the previous day when he had held her in his arms during the wild ride across the desert.

    He smiled down at her suddenly. "Bon Dieu! Do you know how beautiful you are?" he murmured. But the sound of his voice seemed to break a spell that had kept her dumb. She struggled again to free herself.

    "Let me go!" she cried piteously, and it was her complete immunity from him that she prayed for, but he chose wilfully to misunderstand her. The passion faded from his eyes, giving place to a gleam of mockery.

    "There is plenty of time. Gaston is the most discreet servant. We shall hear him when he comes," he said with a low laugh.

    But she persisted with the courage of desperation. "When will you let me go?"

    With an exclamation of impatience he put her from him roughly, and going to the divan flung himself down on the cushions, lit another cigarette and picked up a magazine that was lying on an inlaid stool beside him.

    She bit her lips to keep back the hysterical sobs that rose in her throat, nerving herself with clenched hands, and followed him. "You must tell me. I must know. When will you let me go?"

    He turned a page with deliberation, and flicked the ash from his cigarette before looking up. A heavy scowl gathered on his face, and his eyes swept her from head to foot with a slow scrutiny that made her shrink. "When I am tired of you," he said coldly.

    She shuddered violently and turned away with a little moan, stumbling blindly towards the inner room, but as she reached the curtains his voice arrested her. He had thrown aside the magazine and was lying back on the divan, his long limbs stretched out indolently, his hands clasped behind his head.

    "You make a very charming boy," he said lightly, with a faint smile, "but it was not a boy that I saw in Biskra. You understand?"

    Beyond the curtains she stood a moment, shaking all over, her face hidden in her hands, able to relax a little the hold she was keeping on herself. Yes! She understood, plainly enough. The understanding had already been forced upon her. It was an order from one who was prepared to compel his commands, to make herself more attractive with all that it implied in the eyes of the man who held her in his power and who looked at her as no other man had ever dared to look, with appraising criticism that made her acutely conscious of her sex, that made her feel like a slave exposed for sale in a public market.

    She must take off the boyish clothes that somehow seemed to lend her courage and substitute, to gratify the whim of the savage in the next room, the womanly dress that revealed more intimately the slender lines of her figure and intensified the uncommon beauty of her face.

--

Her tired body shrank from the struggle that must recommence so soon. If he would only spare her until this numbing weariness that made her so powerless should lessen. She heard his voice at the door and her icy fingers grasped at the book that had slipped to the ground. The thick rugs deadened the sound of his movements, but she knew instinctively that he had come in and gone back to the divan where he had been sitting before. She knew that he was looking at her. She could feel his eyes fixed on her and she quivered with the consciousness of his stare. She waited, shivering, for him to speak or move. His methods of torture were diverse, she thought with dreary bitterness. Behind the tent in the men's lines a tom-tom was beating, and the irregular rhythm seemed hammering inside her own head. She could have shrieked with the agony of it.

    "Come here—Diane."

    --The proprietory tone in his voice roused all her inherent obstinacy. She was not his to go at his call. What he wanted he must take—she would never give voluntarily. She sat with her hands gripped tightly in her lap, breathing rapidly, her eyes dark with apprehension.

    "Come here," he repeated sharply.

    Still she took no notice, but the face that he could not see was growing very white.

    "I am not accustomed to having my orders disobeyed," he said at last, very slowly.

    "And I am not accustomed to obeying orders," she retorted fiercely, though her lips were trembling.

    "You will learn." The sinister accent of his voice almost shattered her remaining courage.

    She crouched, gasping, on the ground, the same horrible terror that had come to her last night stealing over her irresistibly, paralyzing her. Waiting, listening, agonizing, the tom-tom growing louder and louder—or was it only the throbbing in her own head? With a choking cry she leaped to her feet suddenly and fled from him, back till the side of the tent stopped her and she stood, with wide-flung arms, gripping the black and silver hangings until he reached her.

    --"Little fool," he said with a deepening smile. "Better me than my men."

    The gibe broke her silence.

    "Oh, you brute! You brute!" she wailed, until his kisses silenced her.

CHAPTER IV

--Her mind travelled back slowly over the days and nights of anguished revolt, the perpetual clash of will against will, the enforced obedience that had made up this month of horror. A month of experience of such bitterness that she wondered dully how she still had the courage to rebel. For the first time in her life she had had to obey. For the first time in her life she was of no account. For the first time she had been made conscious of the inferiority of her sex. The training of years had broken down under the experience. The hypothetical status in which she had stood with regard to Aubrey and his friends was not tolerated here, where every moment she was made to feel acutely that she was a woman, forced to submit to everything to which her womanhood exposed her, forced to endure everything that he might put upon her—a chattel, a slave to do his bidding, to bear his pleasure and his displeasure, shaken to the very foundation of her being with the upheaval of her convictions and the ruthless violence done to her cold, sexless temperament. The humiliation of it seared her proud heart. He was pitiless in his arrogance, pitiless in his Oriental disregard of the woman subjugated. He was an Arab, to whom the feelings of a woman were non-existent. He had taken her to please himself and he kept her to please himself, to amuse him in his moments of relaxation.

** A young woman is sexually abused by her new legal guardian

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson, chapters 11 to 14. Exerpts from an eBook. The original Swedish book Män som hatar kvinnor (literally: men who hate women) was published in 2005.

She sent evil thoughts to Herr Bjurman, but then she bit the bullet and called her guardian to explain that she needed money for an unexpected expense. Bjurman’s secretary said that he had no time to see her that day. Salander replied that it would take the man twenty seconds to write out a cheque for 10,000 kronor. She was told to be at his office at 7:30 that evening.

--

    Bjurman came round the desk to show her the statement of her bank account – which she knew down to the last öre, although it was no longer in her disposal. He stood behind her. Suddenly he was massaging the back of her neck, and he let one hand slide from her left shoulder across her breasts. He put his hand over her right breast and left it there. When she did not seem to object, he squeezed her breast. Salander did not move. She could feel his breath on her neck as she studied the letter opener on his desk; she could reach it with her free hand.

    But she did nothing. If there was one lesson Holger Palmgren had taught her over the years, it was that impulsive actions led to trouble, and trouble could have unpleasant consequences. She never did anything without first weighing the consequences.

    The initial sexual assault – which in legal terms would be defined as sexual molestation and the exploitation of an individual in a position of dependence, and could in theory get Bjurman up to two years in prison – lasted only a few seconds. But it was enough to irrevocably cross a boundary. For Salander it was a display of strength by an enemy force – an indication that aside from their carefully defined legal relationship, she was at the mercy of his discretion and defenceless. When their eyes met a few seconds later, his lips were slightly parted and she could read the lust on his face. Salander’s own face betrayed no emotions at all.

    Bjurman moved back to his side of the desk and sat on his comfortable leather chair.

    “I can’t hand out money to you whenever you like,” he said. “Why do you need such an expensive computer? There are plenty of cheaper models that you can use for playing computer games.”

    “I want to have control of my own money like before.”

    Bjurman gave her a pitying look.

    “We’ll have to see how things go. First you need to learn to be more sociable and get along with people.”

    Bjurman’s smile might have been more subdued if he could have read her thoughts behind the expressionless eyes.

    “I think you and I are going to be good friends,” he said. “We have to be able to trust each other.”

    When she did not reply he said: “You’re a grown woman now, Lisbeth.”

    She nodded.

    “Come here,” he said and held out his hand.

    Salander fixed her gaze on the letter opener for several seconds before she stood up and went over to him. Consequences. He took her hand and pressed it to his crotch. She could feel his genitals through the dark gabardine trousers.

    “If you’re nice to me, I’ll be nice to you.”

    He put his other hand around her neck and pulled her down to her knees with her face in front of his crotch.

    “You’ve done this before, haven’t you?” he said as he lowered his zip. He smelled as if he had just washed himself with soap and water.

    Salander turned her face away and tried to get up, but he held her in a tight grip. In terms of physical strength, she was no match for him; she weighed 90 pounds to his 210. He held her head with both hands and turned her face so their eyes met.

    “If you’re nice to me, I’ll be nice to you,” he repeated. “If you make trouble, I can put you away in an institution for the rest of your life. Would you like that?”

    She said nothing.

    “Would you like that?” he said again.

    She shook her head.

    He waited until she lowered her eyes, in what he regarded as submission. Then he pulled her closer. Salander opened her lips and took him in her mouth. He kept his grip on her neck and pulled her fiercely towards him. She felt like gagging the whole ten minutes he took to bump and grind; when finally he came, he was holding her so tight she could hardly breathe.

    He showed her the bathroom in his office. Salander was shaking all over as she wiped her face and tried to rub off the spots on her sweater. She chewed some of his toothpaste to get rid of the taste. When she went back to his office, he was sitting impassively behind his desk, studying some papers.

    “Sit down, Lisbeth,” he told her without looking up. She sat down. Finally he looked at her and smiled.

    “You’re grown-up now, aren’t you, Lisbeth?”

    She nodded.

    “Then you also need to be able to play grown-up games,” he said. He used a tone of voice as if he were speaking to a child. She did not reply. A small frown appeared on his brow.

    “I don’t think it would be a good idea for you to tell anyone about our games. Think about it – who would believe you? There are documents stating that you’re non compos mentis. It would be your word against mine. Whose word do you think would carry more weight?”

    He sighed when still she did not speak. He was annoyed at the way she just sat there in silence, looking at him – but he controlled himself.

    “We’re going to be good friends, you and I,” he said. “I think you were smart to come and see me today. You can always come to me.”

    “I need 10,000 kronor for my computer,” she said, precisely, as if she were continuing the conversation they were having before the interruption.

    Bjurman raised his eyebrows. Hard-nosed bitch. She really is fucking retarded. He handed her the cheque he had written when she was in the bathroom. This is better than a whore. She gets paid with her own money. He gave her an arrogant smile. Salander took the cheque and left.

--

    The plan began to go wrong almost from the start.

    Bjurman was wearing a bathrobe when he opened the door to his apartment. He was cross at her arriving late and motioned her brusquely inside. She was wearing black jeans, a black T-shirt, and the obligatory leather jacket. She wore black boots and a small rucksack with a strap across her chest.

    “Haven’t you even learned to tell the time?” Bjurman said. Salander did not reply. She looked around. The apartment looked much as she had expected after studying the building plans in the archives of the City Zoning Office. The light-coloured furniture was birch and beech-wood.

    “Come on,” Bjurman said in a friendlier tone. He put his arm around her shoulders and led her down a hall into the apartment’s interior. No small talk. He opened the door to the bedroom. There was no doubt as to what services Salander was expected to perform.

    She took a quick look around. Bachelor furnishings. A double bed with a high bedstead of stainless steel. A low chest of drawers that also functioned as a bedside table. Bedside lamps with muted lighting. A wardrobe with a mirror along one side. A cane chair and a small desk in the corner next to the door. He took her by the hand and led her to the bed.

    “Tell me what you need money for this time. More computer accessories?”

    “Food,” she said.

    “Of course. How stupid of me. You missed our last meeting.” He placed his hand under her chin and lifted her face so their eyes met. “How are you?”

    She shrugged.

    “Have you thought about what I said last time?”

    “About what?”

    “Lisbeth, don’t act any more stupid than you are. I want us to be good friends and to help each other out.”

    She said nothing. Advokat Bjurman resisted an impulse to give her a slap – to put some life into her.

    “Did you like our grown-up game from last time?”

    “No.”

    He raised his eyebrows.

    “Lisbeth, don’t be foolish.”

    “I need money to buy food.”

    “But that’s what we talked about last time. If you’re nice to me, I’ll be nice to you. But if you’re just going to cause trouble…” His grip on her chin tightened and she twisted away.

    “I want my money. What do you want me to do?”

    “You know what I want.” He grabbed her shoulder and pulled her towards the bed.

    “Wait,” Salander said hastily. She gave him a resigned look and then nodded curtly. She took off her rucksack and leather jacket with the rivets and looked around. She put her jacket on the chair, set her rucksack on the round table, and took several hesitant steps to the bed. Then she stopped, as if she had cold feet. Bjurman came closer.

    “Wait,” she said once more, in a tone as if to say that she was trying to talk sense into him. “I don’t want to have to suck your dick every time I need money.”

    The expression on Bjurman’s face suddenly changed. He slapped her hard. Salander opened her eyes wide, but before she could react, he grabbed her by the shoulder and threw her on to the bed. The violence caught her by surprise. When she tried to turn over, he pressed her down on the bed and straddled her.

    Like the time before, she was no match for him in terms of physical strength. Her only chance of fighting back was if she could hurt him by scratching his eyes or using some sort of weapon. But her planned scenario had already gone to hell. Shit, she thought when he ripped off her T-shirt. She realised with terrifying clarity that she was out of her depth.

    She heard him open the dresser drawer next to the bed and caught the clanking sound of metal. At first she did not understand what was happening; then she saw the handcuffs close around her wrist. He pulled up her arm, placed the handcuffs around one of the bedposts, and locked her other hand. It did not take him long to pull off her boots and jeans. Then he took off her knickers and held them in his hand.

    “You have to learn to trust me, Lisbeth,” he said. “I’m going to teach you how this grown-up game is played. If you don’t treat me well, you have to be punished. When you’re nice to me, we’ll be friends.”

    He sat astride her again.

    “So you don’t like anal sex,” he said.

    Salander opened her mouth to scream. He grabbed her hair and stuffed the knickers in her mouth. She felt him putting something around her ankles, spread her legs apart and tie them so that she was lying there completely vulnerable. She heard him moving around the room but she could not see through the T-shirt around her face. It took him several minutes. She could hardly breathe. Then she felt an excruciating pain as he forced something up her anus.

--

    Salander was allowed to put on her clothes. It was 4:00 on Saturday morning. She picked up her leather jacket and rucksack and hobbled to the front door, where he was waiting for her, showered and neatly dressed. He gave her a cheque for 2,500 kronor.

    “I’ll drive you home,” he said, and opened the door.

    She crossed the threshold, out of the apartment, and turned to face him. Her body looked fragile and her face was swollen from crying, and he almost recoiled when he met her eyes. Never in his life had he seen such naked, smouldering hatred. Salander looked just as deranged as her casebook indicated.

    “No,” she said, so quietly that he barely heard the word. “I can get home on my own.”

    He put a hand on her shoulder.

    “Are you sure?”

    She nodded. His grip on her shoulder tightened.

    “Remember what we agreed. You’ll come back here next Saturday.”

    She nodded again. Cowed. He let her go.

--

    Salander spent the week in bed with pain in her abdomen, bleeding from her rectum, and less visible wounds that would take longer to heal. What she had gone through was very different from the first rape in his office; it was no longer a matter of coercion and degradation. This was systematic brutality.

    She realised much too late that she had utterly misjudged Bjurman.

    She had assumed he was on a power trip and liked to dominate, not that he was an all-out sadist. He had kept her in handcuffs half the night. Several times she believed he meant to kill her, and at one point he had pressed a pillow over her face until she thought she was going to pass out.

    She did not cry.

    Apart from the tears of pure physical pain she shed not a single tear. When she left the apartment she made her way with difficulty to the taxi stand at Odenplan. With difficulty she climbed the stairs to her own apartment. She showered and wiped the blood from her genitals. Then she drank a pint of water with two Rohypnol and stumbled to her bed and pulled the duvet over her head.

** A friendly neighbor betrays the trust of a girl next door by raping her

Jack – middle aged, married and a soon to be father – is smooth in making lonely Dolores, living with her ma and grandma in the apartment below, feel special. They develop a relationship that from Dolores’ point of view hovers in between innocent friendship and a tentative crush. As so many times before, trusting Dolores gets in Jack’s car after school. She agrees to taking a drive though Jack is in a strange mood, drunk and, in fact, still drinking. Warning: the victim is underaged.

She’s Come Undone (1992) by Wally Lamb, chapter 7

     ”Yup. So where’s this waterfall?”

     ”We’re friends, right?” he said. ”Can I ask you for a favor?”

     “I don’t know. What is it?”

      “You promise you won’t take it the wrong way?”

     “I won’t,” I said.

     “Could I give you a kiss – just a friendly one?”

     My stomach pulled in; blood pounded in my head. “I don’t think so.”

     “Some friend.”

     Then he bent toward me and kissed me anyway – softly, on the mouth. His breath was smelly and sweet from the liquor. His fingers dug into my back. The dogs were barking again.

     “That felt nice,” he said. “Nicest kiss I’ve ever had. Don’t be afraid.”

     He tried to do it again but I pulled away and stood by the car.

     “And you said there’s a reservoir?” I said. My voice was quivery.

     He laughed and got back in the car, shaking his head. I got in, too. Our door slamming echoed in the trees. His hand moved to the ignition switch, then stopped.

     “Can I ask you something?” he said.

     “What?”

     “Do you think much about sex?”
     “No,” I said. “Can we go?”

     “Because I think you’re very, very sexy – as if you didn’t know already. Sometimes when she and I are…”

     I wanted to be back at Grandma’s, in the bathroom with the door locked, figuring everything out. “Can we just go?” I said.

     He reached in front of my knees and flopped down his glove compartment. I was surprised to see his hand shaking a little. He pulled out a rolled-up magazine.

     “See this,” he said.

     It took me a second to figure it out: a woman on the cover had her mouth on a man’s penis. I flung it back at him.

      “Here,” I said.

     “Don’t you want to take a look? Aren’t you curious?”

     I started to cry. “No.”

     “You sure?”

     “Shut up.”

     He chuckled. “They’re doing a great job with you over at that school. You’re going to make a terrific nun.”

     I didn’t speak.

     “Stop shaking. It’s just a magazine.” He was trying to sound calm and cool, but his words came out tight and his breathing was quick and jerky. I could tell he was losing his temper. “Sometimes I forget what a little kid you really are,” he said. “What a little baby…”

     I jammed my hands under my legs. “I’m not a little kid. I just don’t feel like looking at dirty pictures,” I said. “So shoot me.”

     “Maybe I will,” he laughed. “The thing is… the way I look at it, anyway, is that love isn’t dirty. And neither are pictures of it. But some people’s minds are.”

     “What’s that supposed to mean?”

     “Besides, it’s not even mine. I borrowed it from someone for a joke. But I guess I made a big mistake… Either that or I was misled by a little cocktease who’s probably going to run back and tell Mommy.”

     “Look, I don’t tell her stuff, okay? And I’m not that thing you just said, either.”

      “What thing?”

      “You think I’m such a baby, but I’m not.”

      “Okay, okay,” he said. He reached over and began playing with my hair. “Because we’re good friends,     you and me, and I hate to think I couldn’t trust you.”

      “Well, you can, all right? Can we just go home now?”

     He rolled the magazine back up and ran the edge of it against my leg, down to my foot, over and over. “I’ll probably have this for a while. Before I have to give it back to that guy. You tell me if you ever want to look at it. We’ll look at it together.”

      “No thanks,” I said.

      “No thanks,” he mimicked. He slid it under the seat.

     A few of the dogs were lying down. One paced his cage.

      “Dolores,” he whispered. “Look.” His hand was between his legs. He was rubbing his lump, watching me.

      I turned away and stared hard out of the window, tears falling fast. “Would you please stop that?” I said. He didn’t even seem to be the same person. A sudden thought slammed into me: I might not get home.

     “Stop what?” I could hear him still doing it.

     “That!” I said, flailing my hand back at him. Then I flung the door open, was out of the car, running past the dog pens. The animals barked and leapt. None of it seemed real.

     He caught me behind the building. I lost my balance and he fell down onto me. He twisted my arm back, yanking and pulling. “Don’t tickle me!” I cried. “This isn’t funny. What are you doing?”

     He didn’t seem to hear. “Little Miss Innocence… fucking fed up with your bullshit. Give you what you been looking for.” The words spit out of him. “Look at me when I’m talking to you!” he shouted. “Bitch!”

     His knee jabbed against my leg, pinching the skin against the ground. I looked.

     “Now, say it: say ‘Fuck me, Jack.’ Tell me to fuck it into you.”

     When I swung, he reached out and caught my wrist, pressing the bone against the ground. He gave my arm another painful yank. This isn’t Jack, I told myself. Somebody – Daddy, the real Jack – will come and save me.

     With his free hand, he yanked my skirt up and I heard something tear. “If you rip this uniform, you’re paying for it!” I screamed. “Honest to God!”

     “Shut up,” he whispered. Begged. “Listen. It’s nicer if you don’t fight it. We’re friends, you and me. Don’t wreck it. I can’t… It won’t hurt if you don’t fight. I promise…”

     He kept fumbling and poking at me. I tried to pull my head up, to punch and spit, but my fists wouldn’t land. The drool fell back against my chin. His elbow swung out and jabbed against my throat, gagging me.

     His rubbing was rough and mean. His pants were down. “I hate you!” I shouted. “You pig!”

     I stopped fighting, cut off by the pain of it. The sound of the barking dogs fell away so that all I could hear was his cursing and grunting, over and over, in rhythm with each thrust, each rupture. He’s splitting me open, I thought. He’ll break me and then I’ll die.

     I turned my head away and watched my fingers rake the dirt. My hand opened and closed, opened and closed. I couldn’t feel myself controlling it. “Just pretend I died,” I had told my father – and I knew no one was coming for me, that I was by myself.

     Jack’s anger shook us both. Then he stopped altogether, his dead weight on top of me. He was whimpering, catching his breath. When he got up, he kicked me hard on the leg and walked back out in front.

     I heard him talking softly to the dogs, soothing them.

     On the drive home, he sobbed and talked. He wouldn’t shut up. “We’re awful people, you and me. Don’t think this was all my show. We did what we did together.”

     My mind was numb; my insides burned. He seemed to drive so slowly.

     --

     When he pulled up near Connie’s, he reached over and brushed dead grass off my uniform. I was scared not to let him. “I feel so much closer to you now,” he said. “You and I are together in this.--”

     I looked only at my shoes, one in front of the other, getting home. -- My underpants and legs were filthy with blood and him. -- What had happened was going to be always on me, in me, as permanent as one of Roberta’s tattoos. -- I was afraid to stay in my room, afraid to be alone. I could hear him up there.