Chapter Text
Rose Lalonde was almost certain her life had somewhere diverged into some nightmarish reality and she would not be able to return to her own comfortable existence.
The night was mild, the heat of the day dissipating slowly as John Egbert’s 20th birthday came to a close as Rose Lalonde tried to make her way back to her hotel. The day had passed in a happy haze of good old fashioned underage drinking and some light recreational drug use and both Dave and Jade had long since passed out on John’s bed.
Rose thought nothing of it, planning to spend the night herself when John followed her to the kitchen when she went to refresh her drink. He’d crowded her against the counter, eyes too wide and too earnest. Rose was caught off guard as he confessed his crush stretching years and years.
As gently and politely as she could, she turned him down.
They could be good, John insisted. She was a rock for him in turbulent times, like when his father forced him into family therapy or when he started slacking in school.
You do nothing for me, Rose wanted to respond, but she bit her lip.
John smoothed a hand over her hip and dipped just under the her shirt, his eyes imploring and desperately blue.
She told him to take his hands off her.
His free hand went to her other hip.
Purple eyes locked with blue. Rose frowned. John half smiled.
And Rose opened her mouth and screamed, piercing in the silence of the Egbert residence.
John’s father was in the kitchen in under a minute, clad in very respectable pajamas with a robe thrown over them. John had sprung away from her and was rambling more quickly than she could keep up with. All of a sudden, the night had caught up with her and she felt dizzy.
“Son, have you been drinking?”
Rose, unable to stand being in John’s sight, John’s presence, John’s home, fled out the back door and gulped in the cool night air. She checked her pockets, relieved to find her phone and her wallet. She could pick up another phone charger tomorrow and her hotel room key card was safely ensconced in her wallet.
Hearing the stern fatherly scolding pick up in volume and correctly assuming Mr. Egbert was coming after her (no doubt to usher her out of the danger of the night and into a warm home), Rose quickly cut across the yard and scrambled up the fence. She remembered a half second too late that she was wearing a skirt and likely flashed any onlookers as she drunkenly tumbled over the fence.
The ground of the neighbor’s yard was cold and unforgiving, but Rose had to lie there for a moment and breathe and stare upwards at the stars. The more rational part of her mind was telling her that this was a bad idea, a terrible idea. The drunk part of her reassured her that she could navigate just fine and besides John lived in a nice neighborhood. She stood, using the fence as a guide and lurched towards the side of the house, thankful the neighbors seemed to be absent or asleep.
The street was deserted and the neighborhood itself seemed to be sleeping as Rose wandered in the direction of the main roads. She knew there was at least a 24 hour McDonalds she could camp at while she summoned an Uber.
As she walked, she cursed herself. Mr. Egbert would have surely given her a ride home if she’d stayed and asked nicely. Although perhaps not, if he knew they had been smoking. He might have gone overboard and taken them all to an emergency room or something. Or maybe he would have revealed a hidden past as a stoner. You could never tell with Mr. Egbert.
Rose took her phone from her skirt pocket and unlocked it, squinting at the glare until she could adjust the brightness manually. Unsurprisingly, she still had trouble focusing on the word and pictures as her vision swam.
“Fuck,” she whispered and stood still. With the phone clenched in her hand, she brought both of her hands to her face and took a moment to internally scream at her poor decisions. She scrubbed at her face and then nodded decisively though the world spun a bit faster when she did. “Let’s go get some McFuckingDonalds.”
Rose wandered in the vague direction that she recalled the McDonald’s being from her visits in her youth before her palate had refined enough to refuse that particular fast food trash. In her hand, she tried to open the uber app on her phone, but it was insisting on updating and insisting upon wifi to update with.
The second major disaster came when Rose arrived at the building formerly known as McDonald’s. She stared at the closed storefront and wondered what to do. Cars were zipping by behind her, as she’d finally gotten to a busy street. Businesses were few and far between and, due to the late hour, almost entirely closed.
Unwilling to stand around gaping like an idiot, Rose began to walk, picking a random direction on the main road. She pulled out her phone and opened Google Maps to look at what was around her, hoping to decipher something open nearby where she could seek refuge. Slowly, sobriety began seeping in and Rose shivered, the enormity of her situation catching up to her as surely as her phone would not load. She spared a thought to consider returning to John’s house, but was forced to admit that she probably could not retrace her steps well enough to find one specific house in a suburb of identical houses.
Still, she walked. What else could she do?
Eventually the main road began giving away to more residential development. It was there that Rose encountered people for the first time on her haphazard journey to her hotel. The bar she came across had three people standing outside smoking and laughing together with the sound of many more inside.
Cowed by her helplessness and armed with only a wallet and a cell phone to ward off any troublemakers, Rose simply ducked her head and hurried back. She wanted to ask for help, but none of them seemed trustworthy enough… not that she spared much time to size them up.
Continuing on her way, she made the risky call of restarting her phone. It would strand her for a few minutes, but given its limited functionality she felt already abandoned. Rose stationed herself in front of what looked to be a closed furniture store, back pressed to the cold concrete so no one could sneak up on her.
Out of the corner of her vision, she saw someone turn the corner and begin walking up the street towards her. She hunched in on herself and willed her phone to restart quicker, afraid despite her usual fearless facade. Everything was still lazily spinning around her unpleasantly.
Terrified and inebriated, she waited, frozen solid, as the person continued to approach. When they drew closer, making their way under a street light, Rose could see they were a man of medium build. Her grip on her phone tightened and she began to pretend she was engrossed in it, hoping he would assume she was in contact with someone that would immediately notice she was missing, though the phone was frozen at its opening screen. Silently she vowed to trash the damn thing and get another. One that actually functioned.
Slowly, the man drew even with her and slowed to a stop and, if asked, Rose would have vowed her heart stopped as well.
“You got a light?” he called.
“No,” Rose muttered, not looking up.
“Bitch,” he sneered and continued sauntering down the street grumbling to himself, “Rude bitches can’t even look at a man. Scared of this dick.”
Rose watched his back as he walked away, ridiculously relieved that nothing had come of that confrontation. At this point she would have traded all of her earthly possessions to be safe in her hotel room or, hell, even at John’s house again. Damn him, she thought, lip curling in distaste. Damn all men that think it’s okay to corner a woman and think ‘no’ doesn’t apply to them.
Had her phone been functioning even at a limited capacity, Rose would have dialed 911 and asked for assistance. She didn’t care if it got her in trouble for abusing the system or whatnot. She was stranded and alone and it was dangerous for her.
She held her phone’s power button absentmindedly, hoping to force it off and then power it up normally as she thought and chewed her lip. Slowly, she began meandering up the road again unthinkingly. It was hard to put together a coherent through through the vestiges of inebriation and the panic slowly washing out of her system.
Distracted as she was, she didn’t notice when another man began walking up the road in her direction, shadowing her steps a few blocks behind.
Rose was delighted as her phone finally powered on and made it to her lock screen. She breathed an audible sigh of relief and keyed in her code. Something in her, some animal part with a greater awareness made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. Subtly, she glanced around and then behind her.
When she saw the person behind her, her immediate thought was that he was following her. She turned around and pulled up her contact list, fully intending on calling Mr. Egbert and asking him for assistance. She didn’t want to risk trying anything with her internet for fear of locking up her phone again.
But she couldn’t remember his number or if she had saved it to begin with. Cursing her own lack of foresight, she sped up a bit and opened her email app, knowing one of her recent emails to her mother contained his number. She peeked behind her and saw that the man was closer.
Errantly, she considered ducking down a side street and banging on the door of one of the houses, but it would be just her luck to find someone less trustworthy than the person that may or may not have been following her.
With trembling hands, she clicked through the recently sent emails until she found the one she wanted. She copied the number quickly and reopened her dialer. So absorbed in her task, she didn’t notice the lack of side streets to duck onto. Instead, small businesses lined the road, entirely deserted for the night.
She pasted the number in and raised her phone to her ear. Rose listened to two rings before fear suddenly struck her as a hand grabbed her arm and pulled, tearing the phone away from her. As the phone clattered to the ground, Rose tried to run. She had no idea when he got so close and was disoriented.
Laughter chased her down the street, almost as threatening as her actual pursuer. Rationally, she knew there was no way she could outrun him in her flimsy flats even with adrenaline clearing the last lingering effects of her inebriation. She was dismayed to find nothing but storefronts, no residences to bang on and pray that the mercy of a stranger could save her.
Like a heroine straight out of any number of horror movies, Rose stumbled and fell. She caught herself on her hands, bloodying them on the concrete and giving her pursuer time to catch up with her in the space of a breath.
“Don’t be like that,” he implored jeeringly when she flipped over on her back to swing at him with bloody fists. She let out a strangled scream when he grabbed both of her wrists and shoved them back onto sidewalk beneath her. Rose lashed out with her legs instead and managed a solid kick to her attacker’s inner thigh, perilously close to his genitals. He grunted and swiftly transferred the holding of her wrists to one hand before using his free hand to entwine in her short blonde hair and then solidly thunk her head against the concrete.
Disoriented, Rose could only managed the most token of resistance when he hauled her off the sidewalk and down a small alley, just wide enough for a few trash cans. She weakly slapped at him and slurred out a few insults as he deposited her body behind a rancid smelling trash can. He backed off to get a good look at her as she rolled onto her side and vomited, half from pain and half from the liquor in her stomach.
“You trashy little slut,” he sneered.
Rose couldn’t piece together anything wittier than, “Fuck off, bastard.” Her voice was raspy, throat raw. He scoffed and stamped on her leg, eliciting a bitten off scream that was cut short when he shoved her face in her own mess. She gagged. The smell was almost as unbearable as the knowledge of what was going to happen to her.
She managed to roll over on her back, world spinning uncomfortable and whimpering quietly. Rose pried her eyes open and her gaze fell on a poster of an anthropomorphic pig proclaiming the building to be a butcher shop and it dawned on her that the smell (other than her own vomit) was rancid meat. She gagged again.
If she could have found the breath, she might have laughed. She was about to get her first dicking under the watchful eye of a pig surrounded by meat. A veritable sausage party. Dave would have a field day.
All too soon, the man was back on her, pinning her arms and leering at her modest breasts. She struggled as best she could, weak and disoriented and on the verge of being sick again. She loudly slurred, “Get the fuck off of me, you fucking…”
“Shut up, bitch. I don’t need to hear your mouth and neither does anyone else,” he threatened, pulling a knife from his jacket pocket. “Don’t make me cut your tongue out, little girl.”
“Pedophile,” she spat though she very much was overage. But she knew there was no one around to help her and again she cursed herself. She was such an idiot, leaving the safety of the Egbert home. Mr. Egbert would have driven her to her hotel. Fuck, she would even take John’s shitty attempt at seducing her over this.
Her attacker took his time sliding the knife up her blouse, taking the time to vindictively saw off every button from bottom to top. He promised her, “This won’t hurt as much if you don’t struggle.”
But Rose Lalonde could not, would not, go out without a fight no matter how pitiful it might be. She wiggled and hissed insults, batted at him and kicked at him, but could not summon the strength to actually fight him off.
He ripped at her blouse from the back of her collar, bunching the fabric and forcing her arms behind her, tangling them there. She cursed him with her panting breaths as he shoved his rough, calloused hands under her lilac bra, previously one of her favorites. She vowed to burn all of her clothes when she got free from his nightmare as he palmed her breasts and toyed with her nipples.
She could feel him, hard against her and felt more disgusted than she ever had before. If there was anything left to vomit up, she would even though it would likely just end up staining her hair with the rest.
God, a part of her wished she wouldn’t survive the encounter. Being dead was surely better than having to endure a strange man pulling up her skirt and pressing hard between her legs with his dirty, terrible fingers.
“Stop,” she said, finding her voice again though it was weak. He was yanking down her panties. “Just please stop.”
The cold kiss of metal trailed over her neck as the man pretended to think about it, looking her up and down with his disgusting, disgusting eyes. Rose wanted to never be looked at, never be touched again. She didn’t want to exist.
“No,” he told her, voice full of mockingly false sweetness. “You’re gonna have to beg better than that.”
“Fuck you,” she rasped, landing another solid kick, this time managing to hit his groin. He fell back a bit, but Rose couldn’t find the strength in hear fear heavy limbs to try and stand, to run away from this damned alley and never look back. All too soon, he recovered and was back on her, hands wrapping around her neck as her eyes finally overflowed with angry, shameful, fearful tears.
Her vision was going blurry, but her eyes still tracked the movement of someone coming up behind her attacker. She tried to get out a plea for help, but her breath was entirely gone.
“That’s enough of that, I think,” a woman’s voice said, tutting. There was a noise almost like a… revving?
The next moment, her attackers head fell from his shoulders with a roaring noise and a sickening squelch. The pressure on her neck was relieved as her eyes followed the rolling of the would-be rapist’s head. It took a moment to realize that she had been splattered with something wet and horrifically warm.
She knew what it was by scent and limited sight at once and if her attacker’s body hadn’t fallen on her, pinning her as she made eye contact with his dead eyes a few feet away, she would have rolled over and vomited everywhere once again even if it would just end with her smearing it into her hair and onto her skin.
“Oh, Hell,” the voice said, sounding startled. “Damn, I’m sorry; I thought he would fall to the side… Just let me…”
The body was moved off her her, but she didn’t notice. Her mind couldn’t make sense of words or sights or any other kind of stimulus. Fear and shock and relief overwhelmed her, shutting her brain down. Rose’s vision grew darker and darker.
“You’re safe now, darling,” her savior said, kneeling close, shadowed as the street light filtered into the narrow alley from behind her.
Rose dumbly repeated, “I’m safe now,” before passing out.