Angie clicked a button and spoke into her headset. "911 Emergency..." A woman's voice, choked, sobbing and urgent on the other end. "P-please....help..." On her terminal, Angie hit a few more buttons, trying to pinpoint the caller's location. Damn! Cellular phone, she cursed silently. "Ok...ma'am? What's your name?" "Please..." "Ma'am...please calm down. Can you tell me your name?" "K-Karla..." "OK...what's wrong, Karla?" The woman on the other end took a breath and sniffled. "I've...I've just been raped..." Angie frowned and took a deep breath. Rape. As much as she tried to emotionally distance herself from her work, this particular genre of calls always seemed to get to her...a constant reminder of what had happened to her, two years ago... "Where are you, Karla?" The caller sobbed out an address which was on the outskirts of town. Deftly working her keyboard, Angie immediately dispatched one of the town's three police cruisers. "OK. Who did this to you, Karla?" "A gr-group of guys...f-four of them..." Karla's voice filled with shame. Angie was now shaking with rage, as she recounted her own ordeal at the hands of her then-boyfriend and his drunken friends... Angie spoke quietly. "What did your boyfriend and his friends do, Karla?" "WHAT?" Karla screamed into the phone. "IT WASN'T MY BOYFRIEND!!! I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW ANY--" She broke down in sobs. Oh my god. Did I say that out loud? Angie cursed herself. "No...Karla, I didn't mean to say your boyfriend, I'm sorry, I got you confused with another 911 call..." A 911 call made two years ago, to be exact... "What happened, Karla?" "This guy...this guy came in here and said...'M-me and my f-f-friends....are gonna h-have a little f-fun with y-y-you...and...'" "OK, Karla," Angie said soothingly as Karla's voice broke. "Take your time. What happened next?" "This guy...he...he was like the l-leader...he told me...told me to use my m-mouth on him, and his f-friends...s-said if I didn't...they'd bust all my teeth out and do it anyway..." Angie trembled as she remembered very similar words, spoken to a terrified young blonde who'd been groped, slapped around, then finally forced to her knees... The 911 operator forced her mind back into the present. There was someone on the line who needed her, and she needed to focus on that! "What happened then, Karla?" "I g-gave them wha...what they wanted...but they wanted more," Karla wept the last four words. Angie spoke softly. "Did they have vaginal intercourse with you, Karla?" She felt like a heel for asking such a clinical, cold question. "Y-yes," Karla sobbed. "A-and...and my b...my bottom..." As she dispatched an ambulance to the scene, Angie continued. "Karla? Can you...can you describe these men?" "They...OH GOD IT WAS SO HORRIBLE ANGIE...." "Karla hon, please try to remember for me. Anything at all you can tell me, to describe them..." "The l-leader...he...I remember...he h-had a tattoo on his arm...of...of an e-eagle..." Angie's blood ran cold as she realized exactly who Karla's assailant was. "Oh, deargod," she choked, barely thumbing the "mute" switch on her headset in time as the memories came flooding back. Memories of the eagle... Angie on the floor in the kitchen, in a firm headlock...gasping for air as he explains to her EXACTLY how he likes his steak cooked...her eyes focusing on the eagle as the arm chokes the breath out of her... ...the eagle, coming at her in the form of a thrown fist, too fast for Angie to dodge...the fall down the stairs...the same arm wrapped around her in the E.R., "comforting" Angie as she's "lovingly" told, "you need to be more careful on the stairs, honey..." ...Angie, beaten and bleeding, forced to her knees in the midst of that circle of men...him yanking and dragging her around by her blonde hair, explaining what she's going to do...Angie, too frightened to look into those maniacal, psychotic, drugged eyes, focusing on the eagle instead as she's taken repeatedly... Fighting to regain her composure, she quickly dispatched the remainder of the town's police force to the girl's location. "Sit tight, Karla," Angie said as she choked back tears, "help is on the way..." "It was s...it was so horrible, Angie..." Angie's horror was now rapidly giving way to another emotion--guilt. Two years ago, the friends she'd told about the rape had urged her to file charges, and she'd declined... wanting only to get away from that horrible man, and put the ordeal behind her. If only she'd pressed charges... then this woman on the line might not have had to have gone through the same thing... "K-Karla...I...I'm sorry..." She was openly crying now. Karla sounded startled. "Angie...are you crying? What is it?" "Oh god...Karla...I...I was...um...raped, too...and it was...well...I...um, I th-think it was the same man..." Sniffling and sobbing at both ends of the phone line now. "Angie? Can...can I tell you something?" "Anything," Angie promised tearfully, and she meant it. The two of them were victims of the same horrible crime, the same horrible man. "Well...when I was...using my mouth...on them... my... well... ummmm... my pussy got real wet...I think I must have really wanted--" That set Angie off. No doubt the asshole had told the poor girl that, to further destroy her pride and break her spirit. "NO!" she chided vehemently. "You listen to me, Karla. LISTEN. When...when that happens...that's just a physical reaction...it doesn't mean that..." "I'm just a slut, Angie...just a whore..." "NO! You're NOT..." Angie was now sobbing harder than her caller. "Yes I am..." "Karla listen to m-" "No...you listen, Angie," Karla said in a very sweet voice. "I've had two fingers in my pussy the whole time we've been talking...listening to you cry is turning me on so much, Angie..." Rage. "You mean," Angie asked angrily, "that this was a HOAX?? You MADE ALL THIS UP????" Then, a thought, "How did you know my name?" "I know a LOT about you, Angie. My... um... boyfriend has told me a lot. And, no, this wasn't made up... not exactly. I *did* give all of those guys blowjobs, just like I said." "What about the rest? Did you lie about that?" "Oh, not exactly. The gang-rape is a fact...it just hasn't happened yet... and it's not *me* whom it will be happening to..." "What..." "But thanks for your concern, Angie. Especially, thanks for sending *all* of the police over to the other side of town... Now you're all alone..." Then the line was dead. Then....footsteps...multiple footsteps, stopping at the door to the call center. As the doorknob slowly started turning, Angie began to scream.