Prologue

The pavement was slick from the rain beneath her heels. Nearly slipping for the third time in the short walk across the parking lot she cursed her vanity that demanded that she wear them for the opening night performance.

Her hair had fallen out of its pins and now was curling wildly about; swiping it out of her eyes she dropped her keys into a rather deep puddle and had to bend down to fish them out. Muttering an old child hood nursery rhyme that was supposed to rid one of the rain she tried to shake off her bad mood and find a positive element to being soaked...Concentrating on getting inside and out of the wet she never heard him come up from behind her. Nor was she given the chance to defend herself when he struck her head against the brick wall of her apartment building....

In a daze she could hear him singing off key “Bumped his head and went to bed and couldn’t get up in the morning” The sensation of her nylons being ripped at the crotch had her heart tripling its beats as she tried to scream.  “Shut up!” he commanded and slapped her face.

Then his face appeared before hers and she could feel his foul breath on her cheeks. So blue...His eyes were so blue, was all she could think of for a split second. Until he forced himself between her legs; then it was pain. She bucked and he laughed and slammed her into the ground. She cried and begged and he kept laughing at her, hurled insults at her and struck her face. The more she tried to escape the harder he hit...

Giving up she waited for him to finish or for the blurry edges of consciousness to surrender to the pain. The rain pounding into the pavement became one with the sounds of his panting but she was already gone into the sweet embrace of the dark.