Personal Log 112: A Recollection
15 Oct 2016Jemine Caesar
Now that my captivity has come to an end, and I am still alive to tell the tale, I feel the need to recap what happened. I'm hoping that putting it all into my personal log will somehow help to remove it from my own memory, or at least enable me to deal with it.On March 21st I was approached by Agent Conrad. At least, that's who she said she was. I didn't suspect for a moment that she was, in fact, the one responsible for the murders of the girls on the Harem List. To add insult to injury, she used my own ship to carry out my abduction...
Aboard The Last Thing I Do, Agent Conrad took the pilot's chair. I sat in the co-pilot position. I called Sam to let him know about this latest turn of events. As we prepared for the first jump into witchspace, I glanced over to the navcom. Something wasn't right.
"Agent Conrad?" I said, uneasily. "That course... It takes us away from Sol, not towards it." Suddenly, I realised the truth.
"SAM!" I yelled into the comms. "I've been kidnapped!"
Then everything went black...
*****
It was dark when I woke up. Dark and cold. I was lying, naked, on a hard stone floor. My wrists were manacled and chained to the wall. A voice whispered my name from nearby.
"Jemine? It's Suzanne. Suzanne Telford. We're all here, Jemine. All the remaining Harem girls. She's going to kill us all."
Presently, light began filtering into the room through cracks in the roof. I could make out that we were in a storage facility of some kind. Cargo pods were lined up along one wall. There were no windows. As the gloom lifted I could see the other girls more clearly, naked and manacled just as I was. We exchanged accounts of our abductions, all of which had employed the same ruse of refuge at a safe place in Sol while the killer was caught in an undercover operation. 'Agent Conrad' had worked quickly.
No one knew who our kidnapper was, nor where we were being held, though I could tell it was on a planet and not a starport.
Hours passed before our captor put in an appearance. She brought us water, but no food.
"Now, ladies," she said, "I hope you enjoy your vacation." Her voice was cruel and heavy with sarcasm. "And since our guest of honor is here at last," she continued, "the real fun can begin!"
She produced a large knife. It looked like the one I had used to kill John Graham.
"Time for your hairdressing appointments, ladies," the woman said. "I'm going to give you all a new style. You'll love it!"
She proceeded to use the knife to hack off our hair. Anyone who objected was given a sharp slap across the face. She left me until last. I didn't object, but she slapped me anyway, drawing blood from my lip.
"There," she said finally. "I'll be back later, to start your special facial treatments."
The 'facial', of course, proved to be yet more physical abuse. One of the girls, Carina Panetta, begged for mercy.
"Please!" she cried, "I can't take this! I'm four months pregnant!"
The kidnapper smiled. "All right, honey," she said, unlocking Carina's manacles. "Tell you what I'll do for you. I won't hit you this time, OK? But now you have to do something for me in return."
Carina was dragged across to where I lay.
"Hit her," the kidnapper told Carina. "Hit her good and hard."
Carina looked at me, saying sorry with her eyes, then thumped me with all the strength she could muster. I fell back under the force of the blow, dazed.
Satisfied, the kidnapper dragged Carina to her place, then returned to me.
"Plenty more for you where that came from, Caesar," she hissed. I looked at her, struggling to focus on her features. I could feel blood trickling from a cut over my left eye.
"Who are you?" I asked.
"Oh!" she replied, with mock embarrassment. "How remiss of me not to introduce myself. Such a terrible hostess, huh?"
She bent low, so that our faces were almost touching.
"My name is Gayle Graham," she said. "You killed my son. Prepare to die!"
*****
Revenge. It was that simple. Gayle Graham wanted revenge for the murder of her son. She had convinced herself that we had all seduced John, rather than the other way around. Never mind that it was he who had come looking for sex, driven by his Lothario Syndrome. Never mind that he had left the legacy of a killer disease within all our children. As far as Gayle Graham was concerned, her son was blameless.
But how had she known that I had killed him? Unless Aoife Hohnlein had told her, before killing herself.
*****
Time passed slowly. We had no way of telling how much. Our stomachs rumbled with hunger. We shivered with the cold. We could only lie and wait for Gayle to return from wherever she went when she left us alone. We dreaded her arrival, because it only meant more torture.
We were beaten and slapped. We were compelled to hold our manacled, aching arms out straight. We were forced to race on our hands and knees from one end of the warehouse to the other. We were repeatedly stung and burned all over our bodies with low-power shots from Gayle's stun pistol.
Then there were the rants. We had to stand to attention and listen as Gayle told us, in no uncertain terms, exactly what she thought of us all. That we were all just so much biowaste. That we were all worthless sluts, pathetic bitches who would never amount to anything. That she was going to do the galaxy a big favour by killing us.
And then there were those k-cast burnchip messages. Gayle brought in a holo-imager, and told us to record a message to our loved ones. We each made four in all. I can only guess that Gayle delivered them herself. No mean feat, considering all the star systems she would have to visit. It was only after I was rescued by Sam that I saw the messages as he had received them. Gayle had edited them to conceal her identity, yet couldn't resist adding her own taunting comments.
At the end of my third message, Gayle told Sam that she had taught me a lesson for provoking her. The 'lesson' consisted of her kicking me several times in the stomach and sides as I lay on the floor. I was left with four broken ribs and damage to my spleen and one kidney. Then she had released me from my manacles and dragged me, screaming in agony, across the rough floor and into a separate room.
"You want to know why I hate you so much?" she asked. "Because I know it was you who killed my son. You want me to tell you how I know? Then stop snivelling, and listen..."