There had been years of counselling, both inside and outside of the church but nothing could lift the crushing burden of profound guilt. If only there was some punishment which could give Julie a true sense of having paid for her crimes so that she could be free and finally move on.
Julie was a typical middle-class mum with a good job, a successful, loving husband and two beautiful children. She always attended Parent’s Days at the school; she and her husband had a healthy social life and sex life and Julie was on various rosters at church to do things like serving coffee and even Bible reading in the services.
But Julie had a deep secret. Of course, Dave, her husband knew all about Julie’s difficult childhood and they had been working through it together. Julie’s mum had been a difficult woman who found it hard to show affection. Her love for Julie had manifested mainly in a strong desire to protect her child by keeping her on the straight and narrow and this, in turn, had led to a strict regime and to a demand for the highest standards at all times. The result had been that, whatever Julie did, she always carried a sense of failure, inadequacy and even guilt for falling short of parental demands.
There had been years of counselling, both inside and outside of the church but nothing could lift the crushing burden of profound guilt. If only there was some punishment which could give Julie a true sense of having paid for her crimes so that she could be free and finally move on.
For over a year, Julie had been having sessions with Rev Tim at church and the sessions had been effective in identifying that this guilt was the root of the problem. This was a real breakthrough but how to deal with the guilt? Years of strict punishments from her mum had left Julie with a strong sense that only real punishment can deal with guilt. The offender must suffer a suitably serious penalty to expunge the guilt of their own failings.
It was from these thoughts that a possible solution had come to be considered but, for a long time, it was just too radical to even put into words. And yet, that same idea kept coming up during their sessions albeit in slightly different forms each time.
Julie had discussed it with Dave and he was open to anything which helped his wife but was she really sure about this? Had she thought about what it could involve?
All the above is just the preamble to that Friday evening. The family had their evening meal and, as soon as it was over, Julie nervously looked at her watch. Dave caught her eye and said something about it being time for her meeting. Of course, the girls knew that Mummy was having counselling so this was just routine for them.
Julie put on her beige raincoat over the dark trouser suit which she had worn at work. She blew a kiss to her loving, wonderful family and went out to Polly, her little car.
She did not drive to the Vicarage as she normally would on a Friday evening but, following directions from Rev Tim, she went to a run-down area of town and, in a narrow street, she pulled onto the forecourt of an abandoned car workshop. It was dark now but, in the streetlight, she could see how peeled and blistered the paint was on the closed wooden double doors and she could see the faded TO LET sign which had been there for a very long time. Julie discarded her raincoat and wristwatch, leaving them in the car. There was no other car on the forecourt; he would probably have parked in the street somewhere and walked the last part of his journey. As instructed, Julie went down the side of the building and opened the small, unlocked door which led her into a cold space still smelling of oil. A single low powered bulb provided all the light and did not leak out because the one window at the back of the building had long been boarded up.
Her tormentor was dressed in jeans and a roll neck jumper and he sat on a high stool.
“You know that, in coming here, you are consenting to this?”
“Yes Sir, I do.”
He had walked casually towards her and, without warning, his open palm crashed into the side of her face slamming her back against the wall and making her ears ring. She had not recovered her balance when the second blow landed causing her to trip over her own feet and sprawl on the oil-soaked concrete floor.
“Stay where you are and get your sodding clothes off.”
The tears had not come yet. She unbuttoned her expensive jacket and discarded it on the floor beside her then did the same to her cream blouse which had already acquired a long smear of black grease. He was looking down disapprovingly at her modest, white bra and soft, white skin.
Sitting on the floor with knees bent, she pulled off her black shoes and then unfastened her trousers and slid them off. Her briefs were unremarkable pink cotton from Marks and Spencer. She looked up at him and he grabbed her hair and pulled her upwards. She scrabbled her hands against the floor to take some of the weight off her scalp but it did little to lessen the pain.
His hand clamped around her throat.
“Get your knickers off you fucking, stupid whore.”
She pulled them down while gasping for precious oxygen and he lowered her to permit her to raise one leg at a time and slip the small garment from her feet. Her pop socks were flesh colored and he probably thought that her feet were bare.
Still gripping her throat but just permitting her to breathe, he pushed her down over a cheap, chipboard desk and his hand landed a resounding slap across her unprotected left buttock. More slaps followed, how many she would never be able to say. Each slap caused her foot to rise from the floor and a shriek of pain to escape her lips.
“Get on your back and lay along the desk, bitch.”
She rushed to obey feeling the cold wood on her sore bottom. He had taken a length of black hose from the top of a low bookcase which might once have held box files and he thrashed it down across her belly.
“Don’t you dare move until I’m fucking finished.”
The foul language was almost certainly deliberate as she was unused to the coarseness and it added an extra level of violence.
Again, and again the radiator hose assaulted her smooth flesh catching breasts, thighs and belly at random. Her hands clasped the sides of the desk as she willed herself not to jump from her position. Her head was over the edge of the desk with her hair, no longer perfectly neat, hanging down in disarray.
She was weeping now in great sobs with tears staining her face and thick goo running from her nose.
Again, he gripped her hair and pulled her from the desk prior to forcing her back against a wall with him standing in front of her. He released her hair and the face slapping began on alternate cheeks back and forth in a terrible rhythm. He only paused occasionally to grope her breasts and painfully twist her nipples then the slapping began again until she thought she would pass out. Her head being violently slammed to one side and the next had made her dizzy and unbalanced. He was obviously aware of this because he released her and then stood back to watch her try to keep upright and then fall, heavily in a heap at his feet.
He pointed to a tin bathe which stood on the floor and shouted at her to, “Get over here.”
She crawled to the bath which, she saw was full of water. She barely had a second to realize what he had in mind when he grabbed her hair and thrust her head under the cold water. She was screaming as she went under which caused her to suck in a lungful of choking water. He pulled her upwards immediately and held her up just long enough for her to cough most of the water out of her lungs then he plunged her back under and this time she thought she would drown. She was fighting him as best as she could but he was far too strong and, eventually, he pulled her up to another chorus of coughing. He was laughing uproariously as he pushed her under the water once more but, by now, so much had been spilled that he could not get her fully under.
He threw her face down on the floor and she lay still not knowing what was coming. She had not seen him unzip his trousers so the warm, noxious soaking took her by surprise as she painfully struggled up to hands and knees. When he had shaken off the final drips, he stood beside her and kicked her in the thigh causing her to roll onto her side against the floor in the pool of liquid.
She saw him move back to the desk and then return to her and bend to grab her right ankle and pull it upwards so that she was forced to lay on her back. He must have taken the dowl rod from the desk because now he began to bring it down onto the sole of her foot which was total agony and caused her to try to pull away but he only laughed at her pathetic efforts. Just when she was sure that she could bear no more of this, he released her foot and grabbed the other one which had to take the same torment.
Again, she had no idea of how many times he beat her or how long it took. She thought that she might have been slipping in and out of consciousness because events did not seem to be following any coherent order by this point.
His hand swopped down like an eagle after its prey and it grabbed her by the throat and pulled her upwards. Her feet did not gain purchase on the floor so she was suspended by her throat.
A huge gob of spittle caught her in her right eye and more followed. He used his free hand to wipe it all over her face, neck and sweat soaked hair.
Then his face was an inch from hers.
“You have been punished, Julie. You have accepted it bravely and you have expunged the years. She has no hold over you anymore. It is settled and you have paid in full. You are free and soon Dave will be here to take you home.”
She did not see or hear him leave and, lying still, in her pool of urine and pain, she remembered their plan. He would telephone Dave who would come for her in a taxi with fresh clothes and then he would drive his wife and Polly home.