eye readings: jenny reads the rapist

The Rapist

by jenny alton

The drawing of the rapist in the wanted posters looked familiar now. When the flyers had first been posted on bulletin boards and behind glass cases she couldn’t even recognize the baseball cap and pinched features as human.

She wondered how exactly one became a police sketch artist if one couldn’t draw– she wasn’t surprised that the rapist hadn’t been caught. It has been months and now he looked familiar, and not because she knew him. She wouldn’t know him if she saw him, and that bothered her.

His chin didn’t seem like a human chin. No one’s chin comes to so fine a point as that. The eyes were small and watery, that part translated fine into reality, but the cheekbones were too high and his mouth was out of the question.

No, the rapist looked familiar only because she has seen him hanging there, smiling placidly for months.
What must the victim has said for the artist to render him smiling in such a way? It wasn’t the smile she imagined a rapist would have. The corners of his mouth did not turn up in the challenge. There was no territorial gleam in his eyes. His features were delicate, pretty. Rendered with care through distorted, as if the artist has drawn each of the victim’s answers to his questions separately. Everything was incongruous, didn’t represent a whole.

Why then has the victim approved this drawing to be sent out, seeking answers? Didn’t she want to warn people to look for his grimace, the way his eyes were cast down and jumpy when he sat across from her on the last train from the station?

She imagined the heavy footsteps behind the victim as she walked. The posters said the rapist has pushed her from behind, has forced her in a parking lot. She imagined the feel of asphalt against the side of the victim’s face, how clearly she could smell the beginning of rain. And then the roughness of the ground on the back of her head when he turned her over and she wondered if the stars would have been obscured by his watery eyes and smiling face. That’s how it must’ve gone, for the drawing to look like that.

She’d always had a plan for being raped. Nothing so common as a whistle or pepper spray always within easy reach and she was never one of those girls who’d position their keys between their fingers on the way home, the modern female version of brass knuckles. No, she’d overcome them with her willingness, with a feverish desire that she imagined matched their own.

And there was more to it than providing no resistance; she’d thought of that long ago and had dismissed the idea– they’d keep in going even when the thrill of the chase has been done away with. Her reasoning was this: if it was going to happen either way, she may as well enjoy it.

And so she decided that if she ever heard the heavy footsteps behind her she wouldn’t wait for his hand to cover her mouth. She would listen for the perfect moment, the ideal distance. She would suddenly turn and seize his hand and instead of keys there would be his fingers between hers and her mouth would be upon his. She wouldn’t close her eyes and every one of his blows would only be a response to one of her own. And when she’d finished she would button up her coat again and leave him panting in the parking lot alone.