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The Hanjub Syndrome

A Novella (MMF, MMf) (21,273 words) by Fabula Salaxacis - A child’s imagination is a wondrous thing that is methodically stripped from them as they are inculcated into adult society. CarolLee’s imagination is in a class by itself.

Read as: ePub file or mobi file

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Chapters: 1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 • 12 • 13 • 14 • 15 • 16 • 17 • 18 • 19 • 20 • 21 • 22 • 23 • 24

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1

Adam bristled in the stiff chair, his elbows pressed onto the dining room table across from his father. He was infuriated by the man’s smug look, which suggested Adam’s defeat was inevitable. It was a look all too familiar, and seemed present in nearly every interaction with him lately. His father seemed to relish Adam’s mistakes, and never missed an opportunity to point them out. His concentration wasn’t being helped by CarolLee’s constant stare, and her frequent interrupting questions. He swapped his father’s knight with one of his own pawns, and put it aside.

“Why can’t the horse play any more?” CarolLee asked.

Adam snapped, “It’s not a horse, it’s a knight, and it was captured. Stop asking stupid questions.”

“Don’t take it out on your little sister,” David said, ignoring the capture and moving a rook into position targeting Adam’s king. “She didn’t fall for the trap, you did. Check.”

 Adam looked up to see his father’s smirk, which made him all the more angry. “Son-of-a-bitch,” the teen barked as he pushed over his king.

“Don’t swear in front of CarolLee,” David said, his admonition not serious enough to displace the smirk.

“Can I play,” CarolLee asked.

“You don’t know how to play,” Adam said, as he and his father began resetting the pieces.

“Yes, I do,” the ten-year-old said.

“Who taught you?” Adam asked, displaying a smirk not unlike that of his father’s.

CarolLee’s head dipped shyly as she said, “A friend.”

“You don’t have any friends that know how to play chess,” Adam said. “You don’t even have any friends.”

“Oh, stop it,” David said. “Let her play a game, then we can play again. It’ll be quick.”

Adam grumbled as he got up and hung over the two at the table with his arms folded. CarolLee sat on the edge of the chair, and leaned on her elbows in front of the board. She had drawn white, and moved her pawn to Q4.

Adam and his father looked at each other with more than a little surprise. CarolLee continued to play, considering her moves briefly, only asking how a knight could move once, until she resigned after about twenty moves.

“Hah,” Adam said. “I knew you couldn’t play.”

David said, “Nonsense, you played a very good game, CarolLee.”

Adam hated that his father always took his sister’s side. As she got up from the chair, his father pulled the girl into his lap, and cuddled her. “Your mistakes were strategic,” he said, then turned to Adam, “Not stupid blunders. I’ll bet you could beat your brother.”

Adam, incensed, said, “She can not, and I can prove it. Let’s play.”

“No, thanks,” CarolLee said. “I don’t want to play any more.”

“That’s not fair– ” Adam started, but was interrupted by his father telling him to let her be. David wrapped his arms around the girl, cuddling and oozing his affection all over her. Adam stomped off to his room in disgust.

2

Beverly listened to the commotion at the dinner table from the laundry room as she folded clothes. She heard feet stomping up the stairs and the door to David’s bedroom slam indicating he had left the scene in a huff. Every interaction between the two males seemed to end in the same way, as if they somehow knew the truth.

She decided to remind David of his responsibilities as parent to both children. Just outside the dinning room she paused to listen to his conversation with their daughter. She could see that CarolLee was sitting in his lap, her long legs barely able to fold up enough to make fitting there possible, and she had her arms around his neck.

As he held her, he said, “CarolLee, who did teach you to play chess? I’ve never seen you play before.”

“A friend,” she said, snuggling closer, and nuzzling into his neck.

“Yes, Dear. But which friend?”

“He’s not around now.”

“Your friend is a boy?” David said, unbelieving. “I didn’t think you and your girlfriends liked boys.”

“I like him.”

Intrigued, Beverly walked into the dining room, and looked askance at her husband and daughter in their warm embrace. “Well at least somebody’s happy,” she said. “Adam sure isn’t. I gather he lost again.”

David kissed CarolLee again, saying, “He’s never beat me yet.”

“Which one of you is the adolescent again?” Beverly said. “I get confused when you say things like that.”

Her husband ignored the slight. “Did you know CarolLee knows how to play chess? And she plays very well.”

CarolLee smiled at the praise, and slipped off her father’s lap, announcing she was going to go to her bedroom to read. When she was out of the room, Beverly said, “Couldn’t you have taught her another game? There is enough arguing in this house over chess.”

“Don’t look at me, I didn’t teach her,” David said. “I never even thought she was interested. She says a friend of hers taught her. A boy. I thought she didn’t like boys?”

Beverly was amused at the idea. “She doesn’t. There must be a boy at school interesting enough to pierce the solid wall of Barbie Doll conversation.”

“He must be a hell of a chess teacher,” David said. “She played really well.”

“It’s just a game.” Beverly said. “You remember your daughter is very smart, don’t you, gifted even? Very imaginative. Learns quickly. You remember the parent teacher conferences?”

“Of course, I remember. But you don’t learn to play that well, that quickly. That’s not normal.”

“You’re just afraid she’s going to be able to beat you. Then I’ll have two boys who throw tantrums when they lose.”

3

Adam sat at the small desk in his room, turned on his computer, and went directly to one of his favorite free porn sites. He grabbed at his crotch as he clicked through the pages looking for something of interest. Chess with his father always left him frustrated and in need of relief. It especially annoyed him that his little sister had learned to play, so now, he didn’t even have that accomplishment to himself. It wasn’t fair she turned out so smart.

Adam often imagined elaborate schemes in which he outwitted his sister, and she had to submit to him as a result. He fantasized a particularly dumb expression on her face as she realized he was the smarter one, and had to lay down on the bed on her stomach, while he pushed his cock into her butt hole. He would make her say, “Fuck my dumb ass, Adam, I deserve it,” a million times.

This line of thought reminded him of his mother’s hairbrush, which he pulled out of its hiding place, dropped his pants, smothered the handle with some of his mother’s skin cream, stuck it a good ways up his ass, and began jerking off. Lately, he had been jerking off twice a day, and he was sure that was too often to be normal. He knew the content of his fantasies was not normal, but he had tried to accept that. It was the frequency that was disturbing, as though his need could never be satisfied. Adam feared it would never be even if he jerked off five times a day. The fear was well-founded, since there had been several days in which he had jerked off six times.

He was sitting in his chair with his knees up and spread wide, one hand jerking his cock like he was trying to start a lawn mower, and the other working the hairbrush in and out of his ass when his mother opened the door and walked in. She was carrying a stack of laundry and she stopped two steps into his room to stare at him. Adam threw the brush to the floor, dropped his feet to the ground, and stood trying to pull up his pants.

“Geeze, Mom,” Adam said, “Can’t you knock?”

It seemed to take her a few seconds to respond, and then she said, “Sorry.” She set the stack of clothes on the dresser and left, closing the door behind her.

Adam was humiliated, and was sure his mother would never speak to him again. He wanted to throw the hairbrush and bottle of cream in the garbage and promise his mother he would give up jerking off forever. Stronger desires prevailed, however, and he returned to the chair, jammed the hairbrush in even farther and shot his spunk all over the keyboard.

After, mainly to get out of the house and avoid his mom, he decided to go for a run. He changed his clothes, and exited his room. CarolLee’s voice caught his attention. He could only make out a few words as he stood listening in the hall. She often read aloud, particularly at night after everyone had gone to bed, which he thought was whacky. That didn’t seem like something a girl who was supposed to be so smart would do. He left muttering her craziness, ignored the overly friendly greeting from her mother’s creepy real estate partner who had dropped by again as he rushed out the front door, and went for a long run in the hot Arizona sun.

4

Beverly was intrigued learning CarolLee had spent enough time with a boy to learn chess. She must have given up a few recesses or lunch periods with her friends, and she wanted to know who the girl found so interesting. There were a number of cute boys in her fifth grade class, and she thought her daughter was attractive enough to have any one she wanted. She was a big girl, far from petite, but not chubby, who took after her mother at that age. Her height alone made her look older than her classmates.

After her business partner, Rusty, had left, Beverly took a stack of clean laundry and trudged up the stairs toward CarolLee’s room. She stopped just outside the slightly ajar door when she heard her daughter’s voice. “Yes, very much… Good bye… I love you, too.”

Shocked by the words, Beverly pushed open the door to find her daughter laying on the bed on her back, the afternoon light streaming in from the gabled window above her head. CarolLee’s room was in one corner of the old brick house, the guest bedroom was opposite the hall at the top of the stairs, and her brother’s bedroom, the largest of the three, consumed the rest of the upstairs. At the other end of CarolLee’s room was the small door to the attic. When she was younger the attic door was a source of great anxiety for CarolLee, as she imagined all manner of threats lived there, and she required the light in the hall be left on in order to fall asleep. She had grown out of that, though, and no longer required a night light. Beverly looked around the room to confirm her daughter was alone. “CarolLee, who were you talking to?”

“No one,” she said sitting up, and throwing her feet onto the floor.

“But I heard you,” Beverly said. “Just now. Who were you talking to?”

Her daughter avoided looking directly at her, shuffled her feet into her shoes, then looked up and said, “I’m hungry. Can I have a sandwich?”

Beverly put the stack of laundry on the dresser, and sat down beside her on the bed, impressed by the ease with which her daughter had changed the subject. “CarolLee, we are the only two women in this house, and we have to stick together. We shouldn’t have any secrets between us.”

“You have secrets,” she said.

Beverly sputtered awkwardly, “What? What makes you think I have a secret, Honey?” She had been caught off-guard by her daughter’s accusation, and thought she had responded convincingly until CarolLee looked her in the eye. Her unflinching stare shook Beverly to the core. The woman got up, hurriedly stuffed the laundry in the drawer, and said, “Well, I want to hear all about the boy who taught you to play chess… when you’re ready.” Beverly smiled again, and left the room, trying to convince herself her daughter couldn’t possibly know her secret.

5

David cornered Beverly when she returned from grocery shopping. “Have you noticed CarolLee is behaving weird lately?”

“What do you mean?”

“I heard her in her room talking to herself.”

This reminded Beverly of her recent conversation with their daughter, but she suppressed the anxiety this provoked. “Are you sure she wasn’t reading, or reciting something?”

“No. It was like she was talking to someone, but there wasn’t anyone there, and the stuff she was saying wasn’t out of a book.”

“Like what?”

“Something about how good she felt– or doing things to make each other feel good.” His face scrunched up as he said, “It was weird.”

David’s phrasing reminded Beverly of one of her recent phone conversations, and she wondered if CarolLee had overheard. She couldn’t have, though, as Beverly had checked on the whereabouts of Adam and CarolLee before she made the call. CarolLee was upstairs in her bedroom, well out of range, and Beverly was downstairs in her own bedroom. Yet, coupled with her earlier conversation with CarolLee, it was yet another suggestion her daughter knew something that could shatter the family. Beverly tried her best to hide her anxiety from David. “Kids talk to themselves when they play. I’m sure that’s all it is.”

“And what’s with Adam?” David continued. “He is so touchy these days. Flies off the handle at the slightest thing.”

“He is only touchy with you,” Beverly said. “What did you say to him?”

“Hey, don’t make this about me,” David said. “I just said one of his friends had hair like a girl, and he stomped off swearing. He swears way too much.”

“And you think being offended because his father said one of his friends is effeminate makes him touchy? Do you ever listen to yourself?”

“I’m sorry,” David said, not apologetically, “but he has hair like a girl.”

“Which friend?”

“That kid who was hanging around the other day. What’s his name? Brian?”

Beverly slammed the refrigerator door. “Brian is not effeminate. He is a year younger is all, because he was promoted a grade, but he is a freshman just like Adam and all the girls love him. You have a very distorted sense of masculinity. He’s just… sensitive. Women appreciate that, not that you care what women appreciate.”

“Oh, really? You’re going to go there again?” David stepped closer, and forced his voice into a whisper. “I was in an accident, remember? It hurts my neck.”

“It isn’t that you refuse to do it,” Beverly said. “It’s that you don’t make any effort to do… anything.”

“What do you want from me?” he said, the anger infusing his words. “I always let you come first.”

“I would like a little effort, so I don’t feel like I’m just– masturbating.”

David’s stifled his response when CarolLee walked into the kitchen. Beverly resumed unpacking the groceries, and David sipped at his coffee while staring out the window.

The girl eyed the two carefully, then asked, “Can I have a sandwich?”

Beverly smiled, “Again? You must be going through a growth spurt. Peanut butter and jelly?”

CarolLee nodded, and then poured herself a glass of milk while her mother made the sandwich, and put it on a plate with a napkin for her. CarolLee took both items and started to leave the kitchen, explaining she was going to her room.

“Why don’t you eat in the kitchen?” David asked.

CarolLee turned briefly, saying, “He doesn’t like to eat with you because you fight too much.” She turned again, and disappeared.

Both parents stood equally chagrined, unable to look at each other. David was the first to find a response. “Since when is she getting sandwiches for Adam?”

“It can’t be for Adam,” Beverly said. “He hates peanut butter.”

“Then who the fuck is he?”

“I think our daughter has an imaginary friend,” she said.

“You’re kidding?”

“It explains a lot of things,” Beverly said, taking a breath. “The talking to herself. All the sandwiches she asks for. She’s feeding him. It’s kind of cute. Don’t you see?”

“Isn’t she a little old for imaginary friends?” David asked.

“Apparently not.”

6

Adam and Brian played video games for most of the afternoon in the living room. Brian liked playing at Adam’s house because Brian’s mom always got mad about the noise they made when they played at his house. Adam’s family just retreated into the far corners of the small house and left them alone. Only CarolLee dared to intrude. She carried a large drawing tablet in her hand, and seemed to be looking for something. Brian greeted her happily, “Hi, CarolLee.”

She smiled shyly, but said nothing in response as she looked around.

Brian let the controller fall to his lap, “Whatcha looking for, CarolLee?”

“My big eraser,” she said, getting down on her hands and knees to look under the side table next to the couch the boys were sitting on.

“Hey!” Adam yelled at Brian. “Play the game, Butthead.”

Ignoring his friend’s command, Brian got down on his hands and knees and looked for the eraser with her. He could tell she was pleased he was helping, and he smiled at her.

Furious, Adam yelled again, this time at his sister. “Get the fuck out of here, CarolLee. We’re playing.”

The two ignored him until Brian reached under the couch and came out with a large gum eraser. He presented it to the girl, who accepted it gladly, and managed a, “Thank you,” in response.

“Can I see what you’re drawing?” Brian asked.

CarolLee held the tablet of heavy paper against her chest, and looked at the floor until the neatly dressed freshman with a long lock of hair hanging over one eye said, “Please. I like to draw sometimes, too.”

She offered it hesitantly, and Brian turned on the floor and leaned against the couch so he could flip the pages. Most contained partial sketches of hands, either alone or clasped in some manner, as though she had been practicing. Adam had stopped the game, but refused to show any interest in the girl as Brian looked at the images. Brian said, “These are really good, CarolLee. You’re much better than I am at drawing.” CarolLee smiled in a way that told Brian she was pleased. Turning the next page brought a surprised look to his face, and his mouth dropped open in a wordless stare. Brian’s sudden quiet and expression was enough to capture Adam’s attention, and he leaned over to look at the drawing.

It was a well rendered sketch of an uncircumcised penis in a state of rest below a patch of rough hair, and testicles below. Brian wasn’t sure how to respond, but Adam burst into a combination of outrage and laughter, “Holy shit, CarolLee. It’s a dick! You can’t draw a fucking dick. I’m going to tell Mom.” He fell back against the couch laughing, leaned forward to look again, then sputtered more laughter. “I can’t believe you drew a dick.”

CarolLee grabbed the tablet from Brian, and ran upstairs. Brian watched her go, wishing he had said something to make up for Adam’s critical tone.

“She is the dumbest girl ever,” Adam said. “I don’t know why they think she is so smart.”

“Whose do you think it is?” Brian asked.

“What?”

“You can’t just draw that well without ever seeing one,” Brian said. “Whose dick did she draw?”

“She hasn’t seen any dicks,” Adam said. “She’s too young.”

“She saw someone’s,” Brian said.

Adam found the direction of this conversation disturbing, and he resumed the game saying, “Let’s play.”

“I like your sister,” Brian said, picking up the controller. “She’s cute.”

Adam muttered his response. “You pedo.”

7

Adam listened to music on his iPod until he heard his parents close the door to their bedroom downstairs. He waited a few more minutes until he could hear the faint sound of their television, then retrieved the small flashlight, and tiptoed to CarolLee’s room and listened. Sometimes she was awake late, but tonight he heard no sounds from her room as he stood outside in his underwear. He quietly opened the door, and tiptoed in. She was motionless in her bed, and he looked on and near her desk for the tablet. Adam eventually found it on the floor near her bed, as though she had been drawing before she fell asleep. He retrieved it, making as little sound as possible, and turned the pages. As he looked in the glow of the flashlight, he saw mostly sketches of hands, and a few objects like dishes. All of them were realistic, and all had a certain style. He could feel his anger grow as he realized here was yet another accomplishment of his little sister’s: she was an artist.

When he found the page with the penis, he stopped. He reluctantly admitted this pencil drawing was also very good, even compelling. The dark pubic hair, longish penis, and wrinkled testicles seemed to be hanging in the air on the white page, without any attempt to lessen the impact by attaching it to a body. It stood shockingly alone. Even flaccid there was life in the drawing that drew his stare for a long time. Adam had been thinking about the image all afternoon, and he could feel his erection protruding through the flap of his boxers. He was about to take the tablet to his room and jerk off when CarolLee said, “What are you doing?”

Startled at being caught in her room in his underwear, his erection exposed, looking at a picture that had given him the erection, Adam responded angrily. “I’m going to tell Mom you’re drawing dirty pictures.”

“I’ll tell her you look at pictures of naked boys on the computer.”

Adam was stunned that she knew his pornographic interests. “I do not!” he said. Adam knew instantly she didn’t believe him. He turned to face her and pointed his finger, “You’d better not say anything, or so help me I’ll break your neck.”

“I’m not afraid of you any more” she said, her voice calm and superior.

Adam stood paralyzed, about to cry at the frustration of not feeling in control of his urges. Suddenly aware again of his erection, he pushed the dwindling thing back into his boxers. “How did you know?”

CarolLee paused before answering, “A friend told me.”

“What friend? You don’t have any friends. Nobody likes you because you think you’re so smart.”

“I do too have a friend,” CarolLee said. “And he tells me all the bad things you do.”

“How come I’ve never seen him?” Adam sneered. “How does he know what I do if he’s never around?”

“He’s around all the time,” she said, sounding very smug. “Because he lives here… in the attic.”

Adam turned toward the end of the room and the slightly open attic door. He had explored the attic thoroughly when they first moved in years ago and it was not big enough for an adult to stand in, let alone live there. He was sure his sister was making this up, but she did know something she shouldn’t know. He went cautiously to the door, opened it, and peeked inside. His flashlight shown on the unfinished interior, empty except for some old furniture and dusty boxes. Turning back to his sister now sitting up in the bed, he said, “You’re crazy, CarolLee. It’s too fucking small for anyone to live there. Where would he sleep?”

“He’s does too live there,” she said.

“Then where is he?”

“He’s watching Daddy go down on Mommy. Daddy doesn’t like to do it.”

It had never occurred to Adam that CarolLee knew anything about sex, and he couldn’t believe she knew what she was talking about. “You don’t even know what that is.”

“Yes, I do,” she said. “He does it to make her feel good. Hanjub told me all about it,”

“You’ve been spying on… everyone,” he said, even more shocked by this revelation. “You’re going to get caught. You’re not supposed to spy on people.”

CarolLee’s face retreated into the shadows, her voice apologetic. “He can’t help it. It’s hard not to spy when you’re invisible.”

“Holly fuck, you are so crazy.” Adam turned off the flashlight and went to the door. “You had better stop talking like that or they are going to put you away.” He pulled the door closed as he left, whispering, “So fucking crazy.”

8

Beverly had lost plenty of sleep wondering what CarolLee knew about her secret, and how. Every time she convinced herself her daughter couldn’t know anything, doubt crept in, and she reversed her conviction. She had been avoiding lengthy conversations with CarolLee so the topic wouldn’t come up, but now she felt the anxiety was too much to bare, and she had to know what she knew. She waited for CarolLee to come home from school to engage her when they could be alone. CarolLee had been to the library and was lugging another large art book which she put down on the counter in the kitchen. As she usually did, the girl asked for a sandwich and a glass of milk. Beverly had her sit while she retrieved the ingredients. Trying to sound nonchalant, Beverly asked, “Is this for you, or your friend?”

CarolLee said nothing, seeming wary of her mother’s inquiry.

“It’s okay,” Beverly said. “Your friend is welcome here.”

There was another pause, then CarolLee said softly, “He gets hungry in the afternoon.”

After a knowing nod, Beverly asked, “What’s his name?”

“Hanjub,” CarolLee said.

Beverly had to suppress her laughter at the obviously made-up name, but kept the conversation going, wondering just how elaborate her daughter’s fantasy life was. “That’s such an interesting name. Where is he from?”

“India,” CarolLee said. “He’s Hindustani.”

“Really? How exotic. And what does,” she struggled with the name, “Hanjub, look like?”

“Well,” CarolLee said, “he is very good looking, like a nobleman. He wears a blue turban with a silver star in the middle, a long silk coat, and he has dark skin, and a very nice penis.”

Beverly could barely manage to attend to the sandwich as she struggled not to burst into hysterics. Neither Adam or CarolLee had ever had imaginary playmates before, but she recalled conversations in which they were described by other moms, and CarolLee’s sounded typical, except for the penis. She didn’t recall any such explicit references in their descriptions. “Well, he sounds very interesting, I would like to meet him sometime.”

“Oh,” CarolLee said. “he doesn’t like adults.”

“I wouldn’t bother him. Maybe just long enough to say, Hello?”

“I’m the only one who can see him,” CarolLee said with enough finality that Beverly knew she wouldn’t get any farther. She cut the sandwich in half and put it on a plate in front of her daughter. “That’s too bad,” she said. CarolLee took the plate and milk, and stood up to go to her room.

“CarolLee,” her mother asked. “How do you know he has a nice penis?”

The girl turned to back through the kitchen doorway, said, “I saw it,” turned again, and disappeared.

9

“Are you serious?” David said. He had listened uncomfortably to his wife’s description of her after school conversation with CarolLee. “Where did she ever come up with an Indian? One of the dark ones. With a turban, no less.”

“There are a couple of Indian kids at school,” Beverly said. “But I am pretty sure they are Christian, not Hindu. They don’t wear turbans. You work with people from India. Maybe she got the idea there.”

“They don’t wear silk coats,” David said. “And none of them are named Hand Job.”

“It’s not Hand Job,” Beverly said. “It’s Hunjab, or Hanjub. Don’t make more of this than it is. Kids develop imaginary friends because they are looking for companionship. That’s all.”

“He showed her his penis,” David said. “That’s not what imaginary playmates do. That’s what perverts do. I mean, why is she looking for companionship with a flasher?”

Beverly had been ready to dismiss the whole thing as the result of an over active imagination, but David’s words were making her think twice. “You don’t suppose somebody… flashed her, do you?”

“I think we have to consider the possibility,” he said.

“Who?” she wondered allowed.

Adam came in through the back door and David watched him seize in apprehension when the boy saw his parents. He seemed to be avoiding them more and more, spending all of his time in his room. He said, “Hi,” when he saw them, but then tried to rush out of the kitchen.

“Hold it,” David said. “We want to talk to you.”

“Adam,” Beverly said, “do you know anything about CarolLee’s imaginary friend?”

“Nope,” he said quickly, and tried to leave again.

“Adam,” his father said angrily, “this is important. We are very concerned about CarolLee. If you know anything, tell us now.”

“All I know,” Adam said, speaking softly, “Is she says he lives in the attic. She is batshit crazy.”

“She is not crazy,” Beverly said. “Kids have imaginary friends. Don’t start telling everyone she is crazy.”

“Then why are you two always going off the rails about it?” Adam asked.

Beverly tried to sound very on the rails, “We are just trying to better understand– ”

David interjected before she could finish, “Has she mentioned anyone showing her their penis?”

 The look on his son’s face told David he knew something. The boy started looking around the room and fidgeting. “Well?” said David.

“What?” Adam responded, as though he hadn’t heard the question.

“Has she seen any penises?” David repeated.

“No, she’s never said anything about… those,” Adam said.

“Well,” David said, “if she says anything let us know.”

The boy nodded and walked away. David said, “What the hell is the matter with him?”

“I wonder,” Beverly replied.

10

Mr. Feltman was a tall, angular man who was either older than he looked, or loosing his hair far earlier than most men. Beverly had always thought him a good teacher with a lot of positive energy toward his students. She found it difficult to approach the subject with him as he sat behind the desk in his classroom eagerly waiting to hear the reason for her requested meeting. Eventually, after more small talk than was necessary, she told him of CarolLee’s invisible playmate, his foreign background, and that he lived in the attic and ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

The teacher smiled broadly, but said he hadn’t heard anything about Hanjub, nor did he have any idea where she might have acquired the unusual details of his person. He assured her, though, that this was not a subject for worry, and that although CarolLee was a little old for imaginary companions, she was extraordinarily bright and creative, read continuously, and was more than capable of developing elaborate fantasy worlds, should she put her mind to it. He suggested, in the least offensive way possible, that her lack of close friends at school may be a factor in her need for an imaginary friend.

His expression changed, however, when Beverly mentioned ‘the very nice penis,’ and he agreed that was an unusual detail. Mr. Feltman took her into his confidence at that point, and related to Beverly that there was a girl in class who had been molested. For obvious reasons he couldn’t say who, and he did not believe the girl had discussed it with any of her classmates because it was such a difficult topic for her. He couldn’t exclude the possibility, however, that some of the details might have trickled from parents to children to classmates, and that CarolLee may have become aware of them, and they found their way, innocently, into her fantasy. He suggested that as long as CarolLee appeared untroubled Beverly should not press her for details. Doing so might make her feel she had done something wrong. He confidently declared the girl’s fantasy would fade once its purpose in her inner life was achieved.

The conversation with Mr. Feltman left Beverly feeling greatly relieved as she stood to go, and the teacher took the time to show her some of CarolLee’s artwork on the way out, praising it as he did so. Beverly noticed a man playing chess with a classmate of CarolLee’s in a corner of the classroom. Mr. Feltman explained that was Mr. Norbert, the janitor, who sometimes taught the kids to play chess after school. When asked, he stated that CarolLee had never shown any interest in learning the game.

11

“Guess what I found in the attic today?” David said. Their after dinner conversations about Hanjub and CaroLee had become a regular occurrence, as though the Indian nobleman was an unfavored boyfriend who was leading their daughter astray. David was drying large pots and pans as Beverly loaded the dishwasher, and she waited for David to answer his own question. “That old coffee table that used to be in the living room, a chair and a stool, and a chess set with a half played game. She is playing chess with Hand Job.”

“Stop calling him that,” Beverly said. “It’s bad enough as it is.”

“And what the fuck is she feeding him? You should have seen that disgusting half-eaten sandwich.”

“It’s chickpeas with chutney sauce,” Beverly said. “I had to get it because we ran out of peanut butter, and because he wanted food from his native land.”

“What?”

“That’s what she said, food from his native land.” Beverly shrugged, “I don’t know where she gets this stuff. She has never even mentioned Indian food before.”

“Well, he’s in America now,” David declared. “Tell him to eat baloney like the rest of us.”

“Oh, I thought of that, but he can’t eat baloney because he is a vegetarian.”

“Fuck me sideways,” David said. “This has gone too far. Shouldn’t we try to put a stop to it?”

“How? She is the only one who can see him. He doesn’t like adults, so he only shows up when she is alone.”

“And then he shows her his schlong,” David said. “I’d love to hear how that comes about. I mean, does he offer to show her what’s under his big turban, or does he whip it out to move the chess pieces around?”

“Nothing like that,” Barbara said, trying to sound reassuring. “From what I can tell, she just happened to see it, sort of.”

David was growing exasperated, “How do you just happen to see a man’s penis?”

“Now, don’t get upset,” Beverly said. “She has seen him in the nude, is all.” She could tell by David’s look he wasn’t going to settle for that. “You see, he sleeps in her bed with her.”

“Are you serious? Why does he sleep in her bed?”

It sounded much less absurd to Beverly when CarolLee was telling it in her nonchalant way. Beverly tried to make it seem less so now. “She says he’s tall, and the attic is too small for him, and he is more comfortable in her bed. And she saw his penis because… he doesn’t wear… pajamas… or anything.”

David threw up his arms, spun around once, and sputtered, “He sleeps in her bed, in the nude?”

“She says it is too hot for pajamas… in India.”

“This is ridiculous,” he said.

Beverly could see her husband’s anger blossoming into a familiar rage. “There’s no reason to get so upset,” she said. “After all, you sleep in the nude.”

“That is hardly the point.” David threw the dishtowel on the counter. “I’m going to put a stop to this right now.”

“No, David don’t.” Beverly pleaded. “I have the name of a psychiatrist. I’ll make an appointment tomorrow. Let’s not do anything in the meantime that might damage her.”

12

Saundra Winklebaum became a psychiatrist to heal herself. Early on she believed the quality of her misery was vastly greater than of those around her, and by the time she entered her teens she had decided to do something about it. She read everything she could about psychology, and soon aspired to the highest level of accomplishment in the field. Her desire was clear in her study habits and her willingness to do more than was required in all of her classes. She was rewarded with a scholarship to medical school and a prestigious residency in psychiatry. It was an unspoken assumption on her part that along with her degrees, licenses and board certifications would come the peace of mind she had so long desired. It was dismaying to discover that was not the case.

Her demons, it seemed, were of a vague, shadowy nature, and not easily identified as they crouched in the background of her psyche. So well hidden were they that she could not illuminate them with the light of her acquired knowledge, and she remained miserable. Her parents, naturally, were scrutinized for the origins of her malaise. Her father was present in the home without being there, and her mother was passive to the point of hopelessness. The two fought a great deal, and occasionally her father would drink to excess. Her mother ignored this, dismissing the episodes as him just being “too much a man.” They seldom went anywhere, and Saundra was an only child so there were long periods when no one spoke in her house and time seemed to pass so uneventfully that there was little to be remembered. When she heard others speak of their eventful childhoods she often thought there must be more to hers, but it was a though the memories were lost.

It was at this point she decided she needed help with her demons and she saw a hypnotherapist. Under her spell Saundra began to fill in the blank spaces in her childhood with memories of being sexually abused. It was an amazing revelation full of pain but greatly satisfying in that it provided an explanation for her persistent misery. Her parents denied her accusations, but her many therapies since had solidified her assisted recollections. This new understanding became the focus of her personal life and her career, and she dedicated herself to saving young girls with similar experiences. She became an expert in the field of recovered memories, wrote and blogged about the phenomenon, and even became an expert witness in many high profile cases of sexual abuse.

She knew just from the history presented by Beverly that her daughter had been sexually abused, without having yet talked to the girl. The girl’s report of having seen the penis of a nude man in her bed was an arm full of red flags of sexual abuse, no mater how benign the context in which it was presented. The doctor explained to the mother that children do not introduce sexually explicit content into their play unless they have been exposed to sexually explicit situations. The girl had clearly seen a real penis on a real man, and had contrived Hanjub as a clever way to communicate the fact to her mother. She praised her mother for bringing her in, and not discounting her daughter’s report, as that would only make it harder for the girl to tell of the abuse she has certainly suffered from the real owner of the penis. It was, she emphasized, a delicate matter, and they should not push CarolLee for details until she was ready. The doctor suggested twice weekly sessions designed to build trust until the girl felt comfortable enough to reveal the identity of the perpetrator and the extent of the abuse.

13

Although Beverly and David initially feared CarolLee had seen a real penis, they didn’t believe it was anything more than part of her fantasy. Dr. Winklebaum’s conviction that CarolLee had actually been abused was a shock to them both. More so, they were fraught with guilt at having missed some clue that their daughter was being abused. They each rifled through the girl’s activities of the past year trying to recall any of a suspicious nature. There was the week she stayed with her grandparents. Beverly’s father had been having memory problems, and his wife complained he had been acting strangely. Could he have done something to CarolLee?

Her teacher, Mr. Feltman had dismissed the whole thing as a passing phase. Was he simply trying to put Beverly off the track? And why was a janitor allowed to teach the kids to play chess in Mr. Feltman’s classroom after school? Could they be colluding in some way to lure children into situations where they could be abused, and providing alibis for each other? CarolLee certainly never had any interest in chess before, and all of a sudden she began playing well.

There was her piano teacher whose house she went to for an hour each week. They lived close and CarolLee usually road her bike there, and Beverly was led to believe the man’s wife was always at home. She had made no attempt to verify this, however. Was he the one? Or her soccer coach?

CarolLee used to go to Sunday school, but complained so much about being bored the whole time, and how unbelievable the Bible stories were, that they let her attendance lapse. Did something occur there?

There were babysitters, although these were always girls, but perhaps their boyfriends visited. There were a few occasions when CarolLee had come home to an empty house after school, and someone could have dropped by. She spent a lot of time at the library, but it was always crowded with other kids after school. There were other, less likely suspects, but the more they looked, the more possibilities there seemed to be.

14

Dr. Winklebaum’s first few sessions with her young patient were spent playing chess, or watching the girl draw as the psychiatrist acted as a guide on the path toward revelation. While initially hesitant, the girl seemed to respond to the promise of confidentiality and soon spoke freely about her life at home and at school. However, when the doctor expressed a keen interest in Hanjub, CarolLee seemed reluctant, and related little more than what her mother had told her about the man.

Eventually, and with much encouragement, CarolLee related she really wasn’t as smart as her teachers had said, and she got good grades only because Hanjub did most of her homework for her. It was Hanjub who taught her to play chess, suggesting her father would look more favorably upon her if she learned. It was he who read to her every night before bed, and he who kept her company when she was lonely. It was he who protected her from her big brother when he got angry at her, which happened frequently. It was Hanjub who told her what was going on in the family, and from this the doctor gleaned that there were many family secrets yet to be revealed. And it was Hanjub’s penis she saw while he slept naked in her bed. The psychiatrist was sure more than passive genital exposure had occurred, but that would come with time.

It became clear to Dr. Winklebaum that the invented nobleman, a person of some importance in a child’s mind, was both a protector and a perpetrator, a tutor of the game of chess and the stark realities of adult sex, and the one who could both guard and expose the family’s secrets. Saundra could find nothing similar in the literature, so decided she would call it the Hanjub Syndrome. She would establish a relationship with Hanjub so that the girl would see her as an ally and trust her with the truth. Several years of therapy would uncover all of the abuse, and the identity of the person abusing her, piece together the psychic mechanisms, and save this girl.

15

The doctor had warned Beverly not to press for details, as that would only increase the denial, and could precipitate something called Dual Identity Disorder, in which the victim develops alternate personalities. Beverly, however, was so overwrought that she could not let the mystery alone. At every opportunity she tried to extract more details about the attractive Indian nobleman now so much a part of her daughter’s life. She hoped she could learn something that would reveal the identity of the abuser, if there was one, and she could put a stop to the whole thing before her daughter was permanently affected.

CarolLee had been asking about getting some bangles, so Beverly took her shopping and used the opportunity to inquire further on the way to the mall. “He sleeps with you every night, is that right?”

“Uh huh,” the girl responded casually.

“And he doesn’t wear any clothes?”

“No,” she said.

“That’s very unusual, not wearing pajamas, don’t you think?”

“Daddy doesn’t wear pajamas to bed,” she said.

“How do you know that?” Beverly asked, barely masking the surprise.

“Hanjub told me.”

Beverly gritted her teeth trying to hold back the anger she felt toward her daughter for knowing something she shouldn’t know, without admitting how she knew it. She forced herself to stay composed, and continue. “Your bed is quite narrow. Isn’t it hard to get comfortable sleeping with such a large man?”

“No,” she replied, her tone implying some uncertainty.

“You must bump into each other a lot,” Beverly surmised.

“Um… once in a while.”

“Well, does he ever touch you… on purpose?”

The girl paused, then asked, “You mean to cuddle?”

“Well, I suppose so, yes,” Beverly asked. “Does he like to cuddle you?”

“Oh, yes. He cuddles me a lot. He smells good when I put my head on his chest.

“What does he smell like?”

“Kind of sweet,” she said.

“Must be all the chutney,” Beverly muttered, exasperated. “Why do you like him?”

“Because he makes me feel good,” CarolLee said.

“Feel good? How does he make you feel good?”

“Um… he tells me I’m fun to play with,” the girl said, “and that I”m a good friend.”

“What do you do to be a good friend?”

“Good friends have to keep each other’s secrets,” she said.

“Well, are we good friends?” Beverly asked. When her daughter responded with a curt, “No,” she asked, “Why not?”

CarolLee looked at her and said, “You haven’t told me your secret.”

Beverly wanted to scream. She alternated between thinking her daughter knew everything and was tormenting her, and thinking she had somehow stumbled upon a few stray facts and had no idea of the implications of her knowledge. Could CarolLee know about Beverly’s affair with Rusty, and if so, how? Beverly only called him on her cell phone in the bedroom with the door closed, and only when David was gone, and the kids were in their rooms upstairs.

His voice sent a chill through Beverly each time he answered her call. His was a strong, measured tone, but animated, as though he was delivering a sermon. It gave the impression that everything he said was a great truth. So when he told her he loved her, she believed with a religious conviction. And how could she not respond to such a great outpouring of love? How could she not talk with him, be with him, do everything that he asked of her.

There was great guilt, of course. She loved David, as much as any woman loved a man after seventeen years of marriage and two children, she supposed. But she had been seeing Rusty off and on for just as many years and he was the one who made her pussy drip like a carelessly closed faucet. She certainly didn’t want to hurt David, or leave him, or break up the family. She just wanted to– feel, something, anything. She wanted to know that she was still alive, and nothing made her feel more alive than when Rusty was demanding she do something depraved.

It was the turmoil of her not knowing what her daughter knew, of fearing if her daughter told what she knew the family would implode that drove her to call Rusty as soon as they returned home. The anxiety was too overwhelming to hold off, and their was only one relief. Beverly knew the relief would be followed by shame, but it was a glorious relief none the less.

16

Doctor Winklebaum accepted CarolLee’s descriptions of her interactions with the Indian as always positive. It was common for abuse victims to portray their abusers in a positive light due to the extensive grooming by the perpetrator. The sexual activities are presented as a natural part of their affection for the child, which can remain unchallenged for years. This is especially true if the child experiences orgasms during the abuse. The natural physiological response to sexual stimulation is twisted by the abuser until the victim believes they want the inappropriate contact, and they like the abuser. When they do discover how unnatural it is, the shame they experience is profound, and they may try to withdraw or consider telling someone. The abuser will then impress upon the child the importance of keeping the secret so as not to break up the family. Saundra learned that she herself had masked the experience of being abused well into adulthood because she did not want to destroy her family, no matter how dysfucntional.

The doctor decided to use the girl’s drawings as a means of uncovering the repressed abuse. As it was Hanjub who taught her to draw, and the one who suggested she concentrate on the human form, especially the hands, Dr. Winklebaum developed a strategy. She asked CarolLee to draw various parts of the human anatomy, which the girl did with considerable deft. When she asked her to draw a penis, CarolLee quickly sketched a flaccid penis and testicles, disconnected from a body as though suspended in the air. The drawing was artistic, rather than obscene, conveying none of the sexual tension the doctor suspected was lurking beneath the surface. She believed this was evidence the girl was still too afraid to reveal her actual experience.

Saundra complimented her on her excellent drawing of a penis, and said it looked very much like penises she had seen. Then she asked her if this was Hanjub’s penis and CarolLee acknowledged that it was, and stated she thought it was a very nice one, and the doctor agreed. Then she asked her young patient to try and imagine a different kind of penis, a penis with a different shape, perhaps, any kind of penis at all, and to draw that.

 CarolLee thought for a moment, then used a pencil to quickly sketch an erect penis being grasped by a hand along the shaft, and another hand clutching a set of hairy testicles. The genitals were not disconnected, but attached to the mid section of a body. There was a dynamic quality to the image, as though the hand was moving quickly, and drops of liquid filled the air at the end of the penis. There was also what appeared to be a hairbrush nearby.

This was real progress as far as Dr. Winklebaum was concerned, and the first direct indication the girl had been abused. She simply could not have drawn the ejaculation scene in such detail if she had not been a participant. Interestingly, the girl did not attribute the penis to Hanjub, but said Hanjub described the scene to her. This was evidence to the doctor that the girl’s actual experience was so traumatizing that she could not admit to having seen it directly.

Saundra praised the life-like quality of drawing and how complete it was, and then she studied the hairbrush. As she stared at it, something about the shape and style of the brush evoked an image the doctor had not thought of for a long time. “What’s the hairbrush for?” Dr. Winklebaum asked.

“It’s to stick in your butt,” CarolLee said.

The doctor took a deep breath to steady herself. “Why would you stick a hairbrush in your butt?”

“’Cause it feels good, I guess,” the girl said.

Dr. Winklebaum felt her vision blur, and the room seemed to dim. An image from long ago sprang forth and she closed her eyes to block it out. The image was so upsetting she had to end the session early, making an excuse to the girl’s mother and she sent them away. As she locked the door and leaned back in her chair with her pants on the floor and both feet propped on the desk she thought about a particular recovered memory she had worked many years with several therapists to retrieve. Most doubted the validity of the memory, principally because it seemed more theatrical than practical, but she finally found a therapist with enough perseverance that she was able to assemble the truth of her participation in a Satanic cult at the age of twelve.

In the single event she remembered, she was being held aloft by many hands as though she was crowd surfing at a concert. She felt as light as a cloud as she floated above them and she enjoyed the sensation of so many hands touching and moving her around and around as they chanted slowly in sonorous tones.

Soon, the hands began to squeeze harder, the movements became jerky, and they pulled the scant clothes she was wearing from her body. She cried out for them to stop, but she was helpless in their grasp. They continued until she was naked and they lowered her to waist level where she could see seven naked men wearing vicious looking animal masks. The men groped and fingered her roughly as they chanted ominously.

Still suspended by their hands she watched as the seven pricks grew hard and pointed directly at her. She knew what they were going to do to her and she screamed and begged for them to stop, but her pleas were drowned out by the chanting now grown thunderous. They pulled her legs wide and she watched as the first massive prick came toward her. She shrieked as he ripped into her, then began a slow fucking while the others groped her and chanted, “Blood of the virgin and the devil’s seed, of the coming birth, mankind take heed.” Other pricks were pushed into her hands and mouth while they swung her body back and forth, on and off the invading prick to continue the fucking action.

The only smell was that of dick sweat, and the only sound was that of the chanting, and the only sight that of dimly lit animals with rapacious cocks. She was terrified at first and she hated what they were doing to her, but the driving friction of his prick in her now sloppy cunt felt so good that she became confused about what was happening to her.

The man kept thrusting into her in sync with the chants, and his mask was so disturbing, and his fucking of her felt so satisfying, and it was so frightening to be held so tightly by the men, yet so oddly comforting because she couldn’t get away from the fucking that felt so good. After a few minutes of driving into her they all began chanting loudly, “Cum, cum, cum,” until she could feel him splashing inside her, and she shuddered with her own ecstasy and screamed her pleasure as he filled her with his satanic seed.

The chanting softened again, and the seven rotated one position counter-clockwise around her body, and she watched as the next big prick entered her. She sucked ravenously as another cock entered her mouth. The one in her cunt thrust in sync with the deep voices of the seven, and she climaxed again to the crescendo of chants as he filled her with his seed. Seven times she was fucked, and seven times filled with their disgusting spunk, and seven times she came. When the last had filled her they dipped her head down and pushed her feet in the air to keep the seed in, they said. She watched as they inserted a large cross with a crucified Jesus into her ass as they chanted and paraded her around the room.

As always when the memory was triggered the doctor attempted to replicate the experience in it's entirety. She visualized the angry animal masks, chanted “Cum, cum, cum,” under her breath, and stabbed at her cunt with various objects from her purse and her desk as though they were the blood red pricks of the Satanists. After the seventh penetration she slid off the chair to the floor keeping her feet in the air, shoved the handle of her hairbrush in her ass, and screamed her orgasm out into silent office like a hosanna for the devil.

After, she pulled herself together and had a long cry. The joy of her release was always followed by the shame of her enjoyment of her abuse. Intellectually, she knew that victims of ritual sexual abuse masturbate ritually, and she tried to not judge herself too harshly. She contemplated her life-long malaise a while longer and kept reminding herself that there is no end to the healing journey.

It was at this point Saundra decided CarolLee would be the subject of her paper at the next International Symposium on Therapeutic Interventions With Sexually Abused Children. She would explain that the child had been so traumatized by sexual abuse that she had removed the experience from reality, and created instead, an imaginary perpetrator, one she could name and describe without fear of reprisal from the real perpetrator. The fact that the abuser embodied a number of admirable qualities was merely an attempt to manage her extreme fear of the perpetrator, and rationalize her continued, albeit forced, participation.

The doctor knew to suspect family members first, it was almost always someone close to the child, and she had a suspicion about who was behind the Hanjub mask. She prided herself on her professional objectivity, however, and resolved to assemble the clues presented by her young patient with an open mind until the true identity of the perpetrator was revealed. It was just a matter of time before the girl trusted her enough that her repressed memories of abuse would surface, and the two of them would begin putting the broken pieces of her psyche back together.

17

 Beverly’s secret was becoming more difficult to conceal. The amount of time she spent away from home with Rusty was starting to be noticed, but she could not help herself. She felt completely out of control with the man, and cursed herself for never being able to break it off for long. The desire, the raw lust, the dizzying unreality of her time with him was irresistible. She had never done more than experiment with drugs, but she felt she had a perfect understanding of someone addicted to crack or heroin, someone who would throw their life away in pursuit of the next opportunity to get high.

So when she secreted herself in the bedroom and called him just to hear his voice, she should have anticipated he would demand to see her. She told David and the kids she was going to show a home and left to meet him. When she arrived at the parking lot and climbed into the back of his camper van, she leapt into his arms. After a long embrace he began removing her clothes, and she assisted, feeling she could not get him inside her too quickly. As her bra and panties fell to the floor, he told her to turn around. She loved the way he commanded her, and she obeyed immediately and leaned forward with her hands against the cabinets above the small sink.

Unexpectedly, he slipped a black, silk hood over her head and pulled the drawstring loosely around her neck. The man was always a surprise. Even though there were several small holes, her breathing began to swell as she imagined what he might have in store for her. As her mind raced at the delights to come, he turned her around, and tied her wrists together with what felt like a soft, thick rope. He forced her to the back of the camper, and onto the bed, and secured her hands above her head, leaving her helpless to resist. “Oh, yes. Fuck me, Rusty,” she said. Instead, she heard the sound of a vibrator being turned on, and then felt Rusty slip the familiar egg shaped object inside her already wet cunt. She embraced the analeptic by closing her thighs and moaned, “Oh God, it feels good.”

Next, she heard the van start, and felt it pull away causing her to shudder with what was to come. He no doubt had some secluded spot in mind where he would give her what she craved. Their activities together over the years had evolved into ever more perversity and the bondage was now a favorite part of their play. The last time he tied her to a tree. She was terrified for a week David would discover the scratches on her back, so she was grateful this time she was on a bed. The movement of the van and the vibrator was more stimulating than she might have imagined, but then every experience with Rusty was exhilarating and surreal.

After a short time, the van halted, and she heard Rusty open the door and step outside. Her legs were twitching around the vibrator and she wanted to feel his fingers slip inside her and make her come. She listened as she heard Rusty talking to someone in Spanish. Rusty was fluent, but she was not. She was raised in Arizona, so she knew how to count, and she thought she heard Rusty say, “Diez.” The other man, obviously a native speaker, said, “Cinco.” They were arguing about the price, and Beverly assumed he was trying to get admitted somewhere, like a park or an out of the way parking lot.

The excitement of knowing she was naked, her head covered, tied to the bed with a vibrator stuck between her legs just inside the van, while normal people were outside unknowing made her tremble with titillation. Rusty was the most exciting man she had ever been with. She heard Rusty step into the van, and the door close, and she said, “Fuck me, baby. I can’t wait for you to fuck me.”

He didn’t say anything, but fell upon her and sucked her breast into his mouth. The scent of him had changed. He smelled like… dirt! Perhaps they were at a construction site where men were digging and he wreaked of the earthy oder because he had been outside. He sucked hard on both of her breasts, which she liked, and he began clutching her roughly all over, which she also liked. She twisted underneath him trying to maximize the contact. His movements were all wrong, though. They were clumsy, groping, not at all like Rusty’s usual confident manipulations of her. She felt him rise up, and felt the tug of the corded vibrator being pulled from her, causing a shiver as it popped out and dropped to the floor. Now he was going to give her what she wanted, and she readied herself by spreading her knees wide. She felt his dick plunge into her, and his chest press onto her. The odor of dirt was strong again, and he was bouncing on her in a ragged, thrusting motion. It was a difficult realization that came to her, difficult to fully appreciate, difficult to accept. The man inside her was not Rusty. The earlier heard conversation began to make sense. Rusty had sold her!

She was being fucked by a native Spanish speaker who smelled of dirt, and who was going at her like he hadn’t had a woman in a long time. She could only assume Rusty had stopped at one of those places migrant workers hang out waiting to be picked up for a day’s work. Whoever he was; young, old, ugly, handsome, he was really slamming her. His rough flannel shirt rubbed against her neck, his hands crushed her breasts, and his belt buckle banged her thigh as his hips pounded into hers.

She was in shock at what she had let Rusty do to her. She was being fucked by a complete stranger, one of the lowest type of men society had to offer, sold for less than the cost of the dirt on the man’s clothes, and Rusty was no doubt sitting there smirking, enjoying her descent into perversion. The man groaned something in Spanish, squeezed her breasts so hard she nearly cried out, and ejaculated inside her. She felt each of his four pulsing discharges distinctly, and she could not escape the feeling she was being filled with dirt. As he collapsed on her, his halting breath constricting her own breathing, she felt not his weight, but the weight of humiliation, and she wondered if she would be permanently diseased.

Finally, he pulled out of her, made the noise of a man fastening his pants, and trudged out of the camper. “Rusty?” she said into the dark of her hood.

“Yes?” he said, his voice broken with laughter. She heard him advance and sit beside her.

“How could you?” she cried.

“You were magnificent,” he said, caressing her breasts and thighs. “Did you come?”

“No, I didn’t come, you son-of-a-bitch.”

“Too bad,” he said, drawing his thumb down her stomach and between her trembling wet lips, then slipping his fingers inside her, “I want you to come, just like you do for me. Maybe with the next one.”

“The next one? What do you mean? You can’t do this, Rusty. Please, take me home.”

“I can feel his sticky come,” he said, his fingers twisting and stroking inside her, his pleasure evident in his tone. “He had a real load for a little guy. Would you like to taste it?”

“No, Rusty. I want to go home.”

“I picked the ugliest one first. You should have seen the look on his face when he saw you laying there, with those beautiful tits of yours, and your legs spread wide for him. You’re the best looking woman he’s ever fucked, I’m sure.”

“Rusty, stop doing that,” she said.

“Stop doing what? Stroking your clit, and massaging the inside of your cunt? I won’t stop until you come.”

“Please stop. I don’t want to come.”

With his free hand he pulled the hood up enough for her to blink rapidly in the bright daylight coming through the window of the van. He pressed his lips into hers, one hand stroking her clit, and one hand kneading her breast. Seeing him, his strong, dark eyes, black hair, and imperious manner, made her swoon. “Oh, Rusty. How could you?”

“Just like this,” he said flicking her clit rapidly, kissing her again, kneading her breast, then focusing on the climax she knew would soon come. He picked the still vibrating object up off the floor, lubricated it with the juice from her cunt, and carefully inserted it into her ass. She groaned as she involuntarily swallowed the egg. Rusty expertly tweaked her, and she twitched and gasped as Beverly did what she had been desperate to do since she had called him. The relief she felt at her climax was exquisite, and made the memory of her humiliation recede to the back of her mind. How could he make her come so easily? The man was magic.

“For the next one,” he asked, “do you want the hood on or off?”

She did not want leave the unreality of her bliss, but his words obliterated the pleasure. Beverly knew Rusty would not relent until he saw her come with a strange, dirty, low-life of a man. She considered what to do. She really had no choice, tied as she was to the bed, and tied to Rusty by something stronger than rope. How had it come to this?

She had responsibilities, a job, a family, and she had a daughter who was drawing pictures of men jacking off, maybe even being abused. Perhaps she was being abused right now by a teacher, or a Mexican day laborer, or an Indian nobleman while her mother was whoring.

“The hood,” Rusty said again. “on or off?”

“On,” she said, the resignation thick in her tone. She hoped with it on she could pretend the next one doing her was Rusty, unless he smelled like dirt, too. Either way, she knew Rusty would make sure every man out there– how many could there be? Fifteen, twenty? Every one of them would pay to fuck the attractive white woman until she came like he wanted her to. She knew it wasn’t the money he wanted, he would sell her for small change if necessary, it was the abasement he would see on her face when she proved she was so wanton that she could enjoy being fucked by the least of men. What’s next, she thought, homeless men living under a bridge?

Beverly felt even more humiliation when she admitted to herself that it would not be that hard to allow herself to thoroughly enjoy the upcoming experience. She had fantasized about fucking more than one man, but never voiced the idea. Rusty had somehow deteted her desire and was leaving her no choice. If she could make herself come with the next one, or with as many as necessary until Rusty was satisfied with how he had degraded her, then he would take her home so she could protect her daughter from a similar fate.

He called out the door in Spanish for another ombre, and she was grateful for the egg in her ass so at least the coming train would not be able to pull into that station. She could tell by the Mexican’s heavy steps, crushing weight and surrounding flesh he was a fat guy, and she had always thought fat guys had tiny dicks. She was very wrong.

18

As David emptied the dishwasher it occurred to him he had been spending a lot of time staring out the kitchen window. He was usually wondering why his son was always in a bad mood, or why his daughter liked her imaginary friend more than her own father, or why the hell his wife was always out selling houses without ever making a sale.

CarolLee came into the kitchen, clasped her hands together, bent her head slightly, and said something unrecognizable to her father, her bangled wrists clinking merrily as she passed. Perplexed, David asked, “Did you just call me nasty?”

CarolLee stopped, surprised by the accusation, and said, “No, Daddy. I said, Namaste.”

“What the hell is that?”

“It’s a greeting.” CarolLee paused awkwardly. “An Indian greeting.”

“Well, of course it is. Why didn’t I think of that?” David’s words carried an overabundance of sarcasm. “And what does it mean, exactly?”

“It’s hard to explain,” CarolLee said. “I am acknowledging that you are part of the one ultimate essence.”

“Lucky for me,” David replied. “Do you think in the future you could just say, Hello?”

“Sure, Daddy,” she said, her tone apologetic.

“I suppose that nasty thing is something Hanjub taught you?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

David was torn between keeping his mouth shut as everyone seemed to think was best, or giving words to what was boiling over in his head. It confounded him why the half-wit psychiatrist didn’t just tell her to grow up and knock this shit off. “CarolLee,” he said. “Hanjub doesn’t exist, really, now does he?”

“Yes he does,” she said softly, as though the softness of her voice would make the idiocy of what she was saying more palatable.

“Nobody has a name like Hanjub?” David said, equally softly. “That’s a made up name, isn’t it?”

“It’s not a made up name,” CarolLee said. “It’s his real name, or part of his real name.”

“Part of? What’s the rest of his name?”

CarolLee took a breath, and said, “Raja Kumar Mohan Hanjub Chatterjee, Knight Commander in the Most Exalted Order of the Star of India.”

“What the hell kind of name is that?” David asked, the anger rising in his voice.

“Raja means king, and Kumar means son of, he is the son of a king,” the girl explained, seeming to avoid looking at David directly. “When his father dies, he will become the king.”

David folded his arms, smiled as though he was not ready to hit his heretofore favorite child, and said, “A king. And why is the future king hanging out with a ten-year-old girl?”

“When he becomes the king he wants me to come and live with him in India.”

David’s smile felt out of place given the true nature of his feelings, but the false expression was the last vestige of calm he possessed. “So you’re going to marry a king and be an Indian queen? How grand.” His tone changed abruptly to direct anger. “I have news for you, young lady. You are not marrying an Indian. I don’t care if he is a king.”

“Oh, Daddy,” CarolLee said, as though she was happy she could put her father’s mind at ease. “I am not going to marry him. I am going to be in his harem. He said once I am trained, I’ll be his number one girl.”

David began to tremble. “Trained?” he said.

“Well, sure. Not just anybody can be a harem girl.”

“Why not?” David asked, incredulous.

“You have to learn how to please him.”

“And what does that involve?” he asked, his voice breaking into a kind of whispering rage. He immediately threw up his hands, saying, “Wait, I’m sure I don’t want to know, and it doesn’t matter because I have had enough. You listen to me and you listen to me good, young lady. There is no Hanjub and I don’t want to hear another word about him. No more talking about him, no more sandwiches in the attic, no more bangles, no more nasty greetings, and no more stories about how you are being trained to be in his harem. If you ever mention him again, I am going to tan your hide with my belt. I’ve never spanked you before, but that doesn’t mean I won’t start now. Hanjub is no more. Got it? And you had better tell that doctor of yours to stop looking around for someone who has been doing things to you, that you made it all up. Do you understand?”

CarolLee broke into tears and ran from the room.

David returned to looking out the kitchen window knowing Beverly was going to be furious with him for confronting the girl. Someone had to put a stop to this nonsense, and his wife was never around anymore. He smiled knowing they would all be relieved when they realized Hanjub had moved out of the attic and gone back to India for good.

19

Beverly could feel the cum oozing through her panties begin to drip down the inside of her thigh as she got out of the car. She tried to enter the house quietly hoping she would not be noticed before she could take a shower. Having just been gang-banged by a busload of Mexican illegals, she felt physically as though she had been stuffed with, and then buried in dirt, and emotionally confused. She wasn’t sure if she should feel good about the dozens of orgasms she had, or bad about allowing herself to be passed around like a bottle of cheap tequila. She succeeded in not being observed by anyone as she entered through the back door and headed straight for the master bathroom. The door was closed and she opened it to find her daughter sitting on the edge of the bathtub.

“CarolLee, what are you doing in here?” she asked, although it was obvious from the fact that the water was running in the tub and the girl was naked.

“Taking a bath,” she said.

“At this time of day? Well turn it off, Mommy needs to take a shower.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Because I feel dirty, that’s why,” she said, the guilt-driven impatience rising in her voice. “You can take a bath afterward.”

Beverly began removing her clothes, then stopped when she saw her daughter had stood up and was staring at her. “What’s the matter?” Beverly asked.

“What’s that?” CarolLee asked, pointing to her mother’s chest.

Beverly looked in the mirror, and pulled her blouse open to reveal a large, rust-colored splotch above her right breast. She immediately flashed back to a particularly smelly one of the Mexicans who had sucked on her so hard she thought he was going to swallow her breast. She never saw his face, but she remembered the orgasm so vividly she almost had another thinking about it.

“It’s nothing,” Beverly said to her daughter. “I bumped into something, is all.” She quickly added, “Don’t say anything to Daddy. I don’t want him to worry. Okay?”

CarolLee nodded, turned and bent over to turn off the water.

Beverly watched as she moved with a graceful innocence, without any sign of embarrassment at being stark naked, even when the girl exposed her hairless pink crotch in the process. Beverly thought another girl would have been embarrassed to expose herself, even to her mother. It made what she saw next even more jolting. “CarolLee, what is that?”

The girl turned slightly, “What?”

“That thing sticking out of your butt.”

Now the girl flushed with embarrassment. CarolLee stood, faced her mother, and put her hand behind her as though to cover the thing. “Ahh… well, it’s a… plug.”

“What?” Beverly couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “What kind of plug?”

“It’s a… butt… plug,” she said again, a little more tentatively.

Beverly felt her face bloom with anger. “Where on earth did you get that? And so help me God, if you say Hanjub I will slap you silly.”

CarolLee looked troubled, started to mouth something, then stopped.

“Well?” Beverly yelled.

“I don’t want you to slap me silly,” she said.

Beverly wanted to scream, even clenched her fists in preparation, but told herself to be calm. Dr. Winklebaum had warned her about being overly emotional when CarolLee brought up the topic of abuse. That would only cause her to repress it more. Although Beverly could feel the muscles in her jaw want to clench, she said calmly, “Tell me, CarolLee, why do you have a butt plug?”

“To stretch it out,” she said matter-of-factly. “Hanjub says it will hurt when he sticks his penis in there if I don’t stretch it out first.”

Beverly felt as though she was talking to an alien being, certainly not the impeccant girl she had given birth to and raised for ten years. “Has he… anyone… put his penis in there?”

“No, it takes a long time to stretch it, he says. This one’s only a small one, but they’ll get bigger, until my hole is the right size to please him. Do you want to see it?”

Beverly had heard of butt plugs, but had never seen one. She was surprised Rusty hadn’t gotten around to sticking one in her. Before Beverly could answer her daughter’s question, CarolLee reached around behind, made a funny face, and presented the powder blue object shaped like a stubby arrow to her mother. “I like it,” she said. “Isn’t it pretty?”

Beverly’s mind was still reeling from the gang bang, and the realization that someone had crudely penetrated her daughter with an object was shattering. She had never wanted to believe Dr. Winklebaum was right about her daughter being abused, and she had even agreed with David when he said he thought the girl had made it all up, but she could not pretend this wasn’t real. Neither did she have any idea what to do next, so she deferred any action until she could think. “Yes, yes,” Beverly said, “It is very pretty. May I take my shower now, please?”

A suspicion began to surface Beverly had not seriously considered before that Adam was the one who had been abusing CarolLee. Beverly knew from his cum-stained laundry that he was jerking off all the time, and she knew he liked sticking things in his own butt. He looked guilty all the time, too, particularly when they asked about CarolLee seeing anyone’s penis. Adam probably mesmerized her with one of his frequent hard-ons. She knew from walking in on him while he was masturbating that he had a fat dick just like his father’s. He could be smooth, too, like Rusty when he wanted to. He probably coaxed her into touching, then sucking, then fucking, and now he was preparing her little ass for his fat dick with butt plugs. And Carolee isn't even upset about it. She thought they were pretty.

“Sure, Mommy,” CarolLee said. The girl spread her legs into a wide stance, bent over, and placed the object back into her butt. She gave a quick smile at her success, wrapped a towel around herself, and put her hand on the bathroom door, then said, “Mommy? You won’t say anything to Daddy will you? About the plug? He’s kind of mad at me right now, and he said I shouldn’t talk about Hanjub any more. I promise not to say anything about your bruise?”

“Yes, that seems fair,” Beverly said, realizing her daughter had proposed the only solution. David would never believe the mark above her breast was the result of a bruise, and she had no doubt his unbridled jealousy would result in a divorce, thus destroying her family. Likewise, if she told him about the butt plug and her suspicions about Adam, he would go into a rage, and probably threaten to kill the boy for harming his precious daughter, which in turn would cause Rusty to get upset that David was threatening Adam, and end in David discovering he was not Adam’s father.

No, she would have to sit on this secret, too, for the sake of the family. She would handle it herself. Soon she would confront the two children, make her son confess, and promise her daughter it would never happen again. When she had the energy. When she didn’t feel like a bag of dirt. “I won’t say anything,” Beverly assured her. “It will be our little secret.”

When CarolLee had closed the door, Beverly undressed and turned the shower on hotter than comfortable and stood under it, ignoring the burn. She was still numb from her own shame and the realization that her daughter was showing every sign of being just as depraved as her mother. Only her daughter was ten-years-old. Beverly had acquired a new reason to hate herself besides being a slut and an absent mother who didn’t recognize when her own daughter was being abused; she carried a bad seed.

20

Adam was frustrated. His father was mad at CarolLee again and he wouldn’t play chess with him. Brian had to go to a church picnic with his parents, so he couldn’t come over and play video games. The feeling was a familiar one to Adam; he felt agitated, but not sure what he should be agitated about. He tried going for a run earlier, but it was too hot, and nothing helped when he was in one of these moods except jerking off. He wanted to sit in front of his computer, pull up a couple of favorite videos, the ones with the two guys sucking on each other at the same time would be good, stick the hairbrush in his ass and jerk so hard that he hit the ceiling with his spunk. He knew he would feel miserable afterward, though, so he threw himself on the bed, and tried not to think about it.

After about an hour of thinking about sucking dick in spite of not wanting to think about sucking dick, he heard a knock at his door. “Who is it?” he yelled. He hoped it was his mom, she always knocked after she had discovered him with her hairbrush, but he would be surprised because she was always out selling houses with the creepy guy she worked with. He hated how Rusty was always tying to be so friendly with him.

“It’s me,” he heard CarolLee’s voice say.

“Go away!” he yelled back.

“I have something for you,” she said.

“Okay,” he said, “Come in.”

Adam sat up on the pillows, and his sister entered holding a large piece of paper from her drawing pad, and sat next to him. Laying back with a smile, she showed him the drawing. “I made it for you,” she said.

Adam stared at the image in disbelief. It was of an erect penis at the point of climax when the spunk was flying. He was instantly aroused and ashamed. He jerked to an upright position. “CarolLee!” he yelled. “What the fuck’s the matter with you. I told you, you’re not supposed to draw dicks.”

“Don’t you like it?” she asked, the smile replaced with an expression of tragic disappointment. “The doctor did.”

“It’s disgusting,” he said. “Why would you think I would want a picture like this?”

“You like to look at penises,” she said, then added, “Hanjub says you do it all the time.”

“You’re insane!” he said. “No guy wants a picture like this. And I don’t look at them… all the time. Why can’t you be like a normal kid? You’re always talking about that stupid Hanjub, and it’s making everybody crazy. Dad’s angry all the time, and Mom is never around any more. And it’s your fault.”

“It’s not my fault Mommy doesn’t like Daddy anymore?”

“What?” Adam said. “What do you mean?”

“Mommy likes someone else better, because he likes to go down on her.”

This immediately made sense to Adam because of all the time his mother spent with Rusty. “How do you know that?”

The girl avoided Adam’s intense stare, saying, “Hanjub told me.”

“You’ve been spying again. You’re a dirty little spy. How do you do it?”

“I am not a spy,” she said. “It’s not my fault Hanjub sees things and hears things.”

“Yes, it is your fault,” he said. “Do you want Mom and Dad to get divorced? We’ll have to move, and be poor, and only visit dad every other weekend. If you say anything about this you will ruin the family.”

“I don’t want to ruin the family,” she said, as her eyes filled with tears.

“Well, you’re going to if you tell on Mom,” he said.

“I won’t say anything,” she said, “I promise.”

Adam did not feel at all bad about making his sister cry. She deserved to feel bad for the crazy things she did. His attention was captured again by his sister’s drawing which he still held in his hand. In spite of himself, he was impressed with quality of his sister’s work. “How did you draw this?” he asked. “Did someone show you his dick?”

“Hanjub described it to me” she said.

“Bat shit crazy,” he muttered. “It sure is big. I’d better keep it so no one finds it.”

21

Dr. Winklebaum was dismayed by the dejection she saw on the face of her young patient at their next session. CarolLee was not her usual ebullient self, and unlike previous sessions, she seemed to have little to say. She encouraged the girl to draw, which was usually accompanied by very productive discussions, but not this time. CarolLee doodled more than drew, and offered little.

The doctor had noticed a strain on the face of her mother in the waiting room, so she decided to explore further. “How are things at home, CarolLee?”

The girl continued to doodle without responding.

“Is somebody upset at your house?” she asked.

CarolLee nodded.

“Who is upset?” she asked, leaning in closer to the girl.

CarolLee’s eyes glistened, and she said, “They’re all mad at me.”

“They are?” she said, in genuine surprise. “But why?”

“Because of Hanjub,” she said.

“What about Hanjub?”

“They are all mad at him because he tells me everybody’s secrets.”

“What secrets?”

“Oh, I’m not supposed to say,” CarolLee said.

Dr. Winklebaum reminded CarolLee of one of their earlier conversation about how the things said in her office were confidential, and she shouldn’t be afraid to tell the doctor anything. She also said that good families didn’t have secrets, and that CarolLee would feel better after telling her the secrets.

“Adam says if I tell about Mommy and Daddy they will get divorced and Daddy will go away and I won’t get to see him very much anymore. And Mommy says if I tell about her bruise Daddy will get mad at her like he gets mad at me.

“Why is your daddy mad at you?” the doctor asked.

“Daddy gets mad when I talk about doing things with Hanjub. He said I should tell you I made Hanjub up, and for you to stop looking for someone who did things to me. He said he would use the belt if I talked about him again. I don’t want him to hit me with the belt.”

Ah ha! Dr. Winklebaum thought. It was no surprise the true identity of Hanjub was her abusing father. He must have realized the doctor was getting close to the truth and he threatened his little girl to silence her. She was so touched CarolLee trusted her enough to tell her the truth, the psychiatrist nearly broke into tears. Now it was necessary to uncover those complicit in his crime, either by participation or denial.

This meant she would have to act fast and report her discovery to Children’s Protective Services. There would be an investigation, of course, and the police would determine the details, but now that the girl had let go of her denial she could begin to heal. Although the psychiatrist knew she could put a stop to the child’s abuse, she knew CarolLee’s healing journey would never end. When the session was over Dr. Winklebaum sat and cried, both for her young patient, and for herself.

22

Detective Marlowe had arrived early to review the evidence collected in a recent case. He preferred doing this in the morning before the bureau grew noisy with the activity of the many men and women housed there. The hapless suspect had amassed a library of images, and each one had been carefully labeled, cataloged, assigned keywords and indexed for easy retrieval. The suspect lived with his mother and had never been within ten feet of a child all his adult life as near as they could tell, but he had done it all through the images he collected. It was without a doubt the best collection of child porn the detective had ever come across and would certainly earn the man a ten year sentence. He hoped he had enough time to finish his review before he had to stop.

Which is why he groaned when an officer came by with two messages for him. The first was that his partner, Detective Ruth Taylor, would not be in that day. He sneered thinking the woman was probably trying to reconcile with her crazy boyfriend, again. He couldn’t understand why they gave women such positions of responsibility when they couldn’t come to work if they were upset or on the rag. If he hadn’t come to work every time he got pissed off at his wife he would still be a beat cop.

The second was from CPS requesting an investigation for a possible child sexual abuse. It was one of the nicer areas of town, which meant it would probably be some banker who had been watching so much porn he decided to try out what he saw on his daughter. Marlowe had been working Special Victims Unit for six years, had seen everything, and he hated these kinds of cases most of all. He actually preferred the street pimps who sold their child whores to tourists because it was just money to them. It was the wealthy, middle-class types who had the elaborate rationales for why it was okay to fuck a little girl that made him puke. They should hang them all by their dicks as far as he was concerned.

He called the psychiatrist who had made the report and she kept trying to tiptoe around the confidentiality laws while fulfilling her obligation to report an instance of suspected abuse. The result was she suspected the father who she kept calling a dirty name for some reason that didn’t make sense to him. But beyond the fact that the girl drew pictures of penises, he had nothing concrete to go on. It would require some good old-fashioned police work to get to the truth.

Marlowe left minutes later to begin the investigation before the family had time to destroy the evidence. Even when there was horrific abuse the family would always pull together during an investigation and try to conceal the facts. When he arrived at the house, the family was having breakfast. Normally, the female detective would question the women, while the male questioned the men. It was all on Marlowe this morning, though, so he began by taking the father into a separate room to ask his questions. He pulled out his note pad and thumbed through the notes from his conversation with the psychiatrist. “So you’re David, the father of CarolLee and Adam?”

“Yes,” the man said.

“Why do they call you Hand Job?”

“What?” David said, his face turning white. “Nobody calls me Hand Job, and it’s Hanjub. It’s an Indian name.”

“You don’t look Indian,” Marlowe said as he wrote in the pad. “Why are you called… Hanjab?”

“It’s Hanjub, and they don’t call me Hanjub. Hanjub is his name, not mine.”

“Whose?”

“The Indian,” the father said. “He’s a damn king or something.”

Referring to his notes Marlowe said, “The psychiatrist, a Dr. Winklebaum, said you were the… Hanjab…”

“It’s Hanjub, you idiot, and I am not Hanjub.”

“Keep a civil tongue in your mouth mister,” Marlowe said, “or you will be answering my questions down at the station.” Marlowe thought the guy looked like he was ready to lose it, and he kept an eye on him in case he tried anything funny. “Now, where is this Hanjub? I’d like to talk to him.”

“You can’t talk to him,” the father said, his lips tight.

“Why not?” the detective asked.

“Because he doesn’t exist.”

Glancing at his notes, Marlowe said, “I thought he lived in the attic.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” the father said. “Nobody lives in the attic.”

“So who has been sleeping in your daughter’s bed at night… ” he glanced at his pad, “in the nude?”

“Are you insane?” David said. “Nobody sleeps in her bed. She made him up. She just wants attention. Hanjub is a figment of her imagination.”

Marlowe had lost count of the number of times he had been told the abused child was making up stories of molestation. They had been trained that children never made up such accusations, but that parents always made up excuses. “Do you sleep in the nude?” Marlowe asked. The man paused which told Marlowe the next words out of his mouth were going to be a lie.

“Uh…no, I don’t–.”

The detective followed quickly with, “Do you sleep in the attic?”

“Of course not,” he said, the words spitting out of his mouth. “Nobody sleeps in the attic.”

“According to the doctor, the girl knows how to draw a penis,” the detective continued. “Not just a regular one, but one that means business. Now how would she be able to do that if somebody hadn’t been sneaking into her bed in the nude?”

“There must be some mistake,” the father pleaded. “CarolLee is only ten-years-old and she has never seen a penis. She says she has, but she says a lot of things. She says she is going to be a harem girl.”

“A harem girl? Whose idea was that?” Marlowe asked.

“Hanjub’s,” the father said. “Hanjub told her he wanted her to be in his harem.”

“I thought Hanjab didn’t exist?” Marlowe said, pleased with himself for catching the lie.

The man began fuming, “Hanjub does not exist. I told you, she made him up. He does not sleep in her bed or show her his penis. She is not in his harem and he is not molesting her.”

“Well,” Marlowe said. “you had better get your story straight, or you’re in a lot of trouble.”

“For what? Nothing is going on here. We are just a normal family with a little girl who makes thing up.”

“I guess we’ll just have to see about that. I’d like to talk to your wife now.”

The wife was as uncooperative as the husband and was definitely hiding something. In his experience the mother knew everything, but refused to acknowledge it because she didn’t want to break up the family. After some tough questioning, she admitted there were sexual problems in the marriage, and that CarolLee was her father’s favorite, and the two were very affectionate. She even said CarolLee had told her someone was sleeping in her bed at night in the nude, but she didn’t believe her. She then admitted her husband slept in the nude, but she was sure it wasn’t her husband doing the molesting. She couldn’t say why she was so sure, of course, and Marlowe considered it another lie.

Marlowe had honed his observational skills for many years and he noticed the rope burns on her wrists in spite of her constantly pulling the long sleeves of her blouse down to cover them. When he asked about them, she said she injured herself putting up a real estate sign, about as flimsy an excuse as he had ever heard.

He interviewed the boy next, who was a nervous as a field mouse caught in a cat’s paws. He was barely coherent the way he trembled and was full of denials about everything. He denied sneaking into the girl’s bed at night to show her his penis, and he had no idea how she might be able to draw one, but he was sure she hadn’t seen one. How he could be so sure simply told Marlowe the boy knew more that he was telling.

He saved his interview with the girl for last. “Hello there, CarolLee. Do you know what a policeman does?”

“He arrests people,” the girl said.

“Sometimes,” the detective said, “but mostly he helps people. That’s a policeman’s most important job is to protect and help people. And that’s why I am here today. I want to help you, and make sure nobody hurts you.”

“Are you going to arrest somebody?”

“No,” the detective said. “I’m going to ask you a few questions, and I want you to tell me the truth, because if you tell me the truth, then I can protect you. Do you understand?”

“You’re not going to arrest me, are you?” the girl asked.

“Of course not. Policeman never arrest little girls.” Marlowe sat near her on the couch. She was a large kid for her age, not fat, but tall, big-boned as they say, and cute, he thought. There was no evidence of breasts and he wondered if she had any hair yet, and if it matched the two long blond braids and the fine blond hair on her legs.

The girl had a remarkably wide mouth that cut across her face like a knife and, when she smiled, a mouthful of beautiful teeth. It was, he thought, the widest mouth he had ever seen on a little girl, and he couldn’t help but wonder how that mouth would handle a large cock, when she was much older, of course. He suspected a cock, even one as large as his, could get lost in a mouth that size, and if she could learn to suppress her gag reflex she could drain a nut sack faster than you could say, ‘Dyson my dick you blond baby bitch.’

“CarolLee,” he began, “Do you know what a penis is?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Have you ever seen a penis before?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Whose penis did you see?”

The girl looked suspicious, which told Marlowe he was on the right track. “I’m not supposed to talk about him anymore,” she whispered.

Marlowe leaned closer, letting his elbows rest on his knees. “That’s okay. You don’t have to say his name. So this penis you saw, does it belong to the man who sleeps in your bed at night, naked?”

“How did you know?”

“Policemen know everything,” he said. “Now this penis, can you describe it?”

She shrugged and said, “It’s like a little floppy hose,” she said. “Kinda cute.”

“Little and floppy, huh?” Marlowe responded. “Does it ever get stiff and red, like it’s angry?”

“Angry?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “All hard and mean, like it’s going to do something it shouldn’t? Have you ever seen one of those?”

“Maybe,” CarolLee said, the caution clear in her voice.

Now we’re getting somewhere, Marlowe thought. “Can you describe the angry penis?”

“Well–,” the girl seemed unsure, so the detective encouraged her while wiping a bead of perspiration from his brow with his finger. “How big was it? Was it the size of a banana, or a cucumber? Cucumbers are a little fatter than bananas, but not as fat as a salami. Was it that real meaty salami size?”

“I guess so,” CarolLee said.

Marlowe cleared his throat, made sure he was smiling, and said, “And did he ask you to touch it?”

“No,” she said.

“Really?” he asked with genuine surprise. “His big, salami size penis was right there in your bed with you, and he didn’t ask you to wrap those long fingers around it, and pull on it maybe? You know, back and forth like a… a bicycle pump?”

CarolLee said, “No.”

“How about kiss it?” Marlowe asked, resorting to pressing the sleeve of his jacket to his forehead to prevent the beads of sweat from dripping. “Did he ask you to kiss it?”

“No,” she said.

“Or suck it?” the detective asked. “I’ll bet he asked you to suck it. Did he put it near your mouth and say, let me in, let me in, or I’ll cum all over your chinny chin chin?”

“No,” she said, looking confused.

“Oh,” Marlowe said, gulping and catching his breath. “Well, when he is laying in bed with you, naked, does he touch your privates?”

“No,” CarolLee said, her eyes fixed on him as he brought his sleeve to his brow again.

“Really? He doesn’t try to slip it to you with his finger, or his penis, or maybe with something that vibrates, or a large vegetable?”

“What do you mean? CarolLee asked, still looking confused.

Marlowe remembered that his partner always brought the anatomically correct dolls to use to question kids, and he would have to do without. “Well, you have holes, see, near your privates,” Marlowe said, trying to add to his description with a hand gesture in which he made a very small circle with his thumb and forefinger. “Does your– the man with the penis, try to push something in there…” He pushed another finger through the finger circle, and continued, “…something so big that it feels like it will never go in, but then all of a sudden it slips in and you feel like you’ve been blown up like a balloon?” The finger protruding through the pinching finger circle was turning blue, and it didn’t seem to be helping the girl’s understanding, so he let his hands drop.

After a thoughtful expression, the girl said, “You mean like my butt?”

“Yes, yes, your butt,” Marlowe said, his face lighting up, causing him to get down on one knee and a foot closer to the girl. “Did he try to put his big salami penis in your very tight, wrinkled brown butt hole?”

The girl looked wary, “You won’t tell Daddy will you? He’ll get mad. He doesn’t want me to say what I have to learn to do to please him.”

“Oh, your secret will be safe with me, don’t you worry,” Marlowe said in his most reassuring tone. “Now, what do you have to learn to do to please the man with the salami penis?”

“I have to stretch it out,” she said.

The detective gulped, and his voice dropped to a whisper, “Stretch what out?”

“My butt hole,” the girl said clearly.

Mopping his brow, the detective asked, “Why does he want you to stretch your butt hole, CarolLee? Tell me everything. Don’t be afraid to tell me everything.”

“So his penis will fit,” she said.

“Oh,” Marlowe gasped. “He wants it bigger? But not too big, right, because he still wants it to be tight, so that it feels good? It has to be tight to feel good. Right?”

“No, I think it has to be stretched out,” CarolLee said. “That’s what he says.”

Marlowe began muttering, “Dumb son-of-a-bitch.” He cleared his throat and resumed his interrogation. “Ah… now… when he puts his thing in there, CarolLee, in your tender and still very tight butt hole,” Marlowe wiped his forehead with his sleeve again, “did it hurt? Did it hurt so bad it made you cry because it was in there so deep?”

“Oh no,” CarolLee said. “It didn’t hurt. I like the way it feels.”

The detective gulped, loosened his collar, and wiped his sweating brow with his sleeve, but had to switch sleeves because the first one was soaked. “Now, CarolLee, this is very important,” he said solemnly, “so I want you tell me the truth. When the man put his thing into your butt hole, and pushed it in and out, and in and out making that sloppy wet sound, did it make you feel warm and shuddery and tingly all over, like your brain had exploded? But not bad, good like, so good it felt like being tickled and eating ice cream at the same time. Did it? Huh?”

“I don’t think so,” she said.

“Well, of course not,” Marlowe said, standing and taking a deep breath, “because that would make you a real little– Ah… never mind.”

“Do you want to see it?” CarolLee asked.

Still struggling to compose himself, he turned to her, “See what?”

“My butt plug,” the girl said. “I keep it in most of the time, now.”

The detective felt slightly dizzy and he spread his feet wide so he wouldn’t tumble to the floor. He was once again grateful for the pleated slacks and compression shorts he always wore to keep anyone from noticing the frequent hard-ons he had on the job. It had been a problem ever since he came to the unit which he attributed to a bad dose of Viagra crossing some wires in his brain. His partner suggested the solution because his tented pants seemed to scare the female victims they interviewed. “You… you… ” he gulped again, and his voice fell once more to a whisper, “You have something in your butt, right now?”

“Uh huh,” CarolLee said. “It’s very pretty. Mommy thought it was pretty, too.”

He cleared his throat again. “Mommy knows about him putting the… thing in your butt?”

“Yes. She was going to slap me at first when I told her who gave it to me, but then we promised to keep it a secret. You won’t tell Daddy I told you, will you?”

He had seen cases like this a hundred times where the abuser threatens the family until they are terrified he will find out who told. This guy would be going away for a long time, Marlowe was sure. The girl admitted he was sticking things in her rear, and that was a felony. A search warrant would no doubt reveal child porn on the father’s computer, probably with pictures of him fucking his daughter. Marlowe would look through every byte for any pictures of the cute blond bent over and taking it in the ass from her father’s big angry cock. That would add another twenty years to his sentence. The brother was probably involved, too, either as victim or perpetrator, and the mother knew about it, but kept quiet because she was being tied up and abused as well.

“Well, CarolLee,” he said, moving awkwardly, as though he had three legs. “You’ve been a very good little girl. A very good girl indeed. I want to thank you for being so brave in telling me all the things he did to you. And truthful, you have been truthful with me, haven’t you CarolLee?”

The girl nodded.

“Good, good,” the detective said. “Just one more question, CarolLee. That part about how the thing he made you stick in your butt feeling good. That’s not true, is it? You don’t like having things sticking in your butt, now do you?”

“Yes, I do.”

Marlowe looked at the girl again as she sat on the couch, her bare knees together, her hands in her lap, and a pleased expression formed by her wide mouth. He tried to imagine what she was feeling sitting on her cute butt with something sticking deep inside her most private of privates, and then him accepting her offer to present the object to him, holding it in her long fingers like an invitation because she liked having things in her ass so much. Then he realized he must have misheard her because she couldn’t possibly enjoy something like that. He had been assured by the females conducting the many trainings that little girls never liked being abused, even if they said they did. CarolLee was only doing it because her crazy father was pretending to be an Indian king and forcing her.

“You don’t have to worry, CarolLee,” the detective said. “He’s not going to destroy your exquisitely tight butt hole by sticking things in there any more.”

“But I like the way it feels,” she said.

“Now CarolLee, you don’t mean that,” the sweating detective said. “It’s okay, you can admit how bad it feels now.”

The pleased expression disappeared from her face, and she said, “Am I a bad girl for liking the way it feels in my butt?”

“No, no, of course not, you’re just confused,” Marlowe said, putting his notepad into his coat pocket. “You see, girls get confused when people stick big things in their privates because that causes the blood to flow away from the brain and into their privates, which is not where it belongs. In your case, you just have too much blood in your ass, I mean butt, and it’s very confusing to have all that blood in your ass…butt.”

The girl felt her rear with her hands as she sat, saying, “I don’t feel confused. I was looking forward the next one, you know, a bigger one.”

The detective tried to ignore the throbbing erection pressed to the inside of his leg by the compression shorts, and said, calmly, “You just tell yourself you don’t enjoy things sticking in your butt, that you have never enjoyed it, and that you never want to stick anything in your butt again. We have to keep all that confusing blood out of your… butt. Do you understand?”

“I guess so,” she said, her head down.

“Good,” Marlowe said. “That’s very good, CarolLee. You’re going to be alright because I am going to make sure he doesn’t try to play hide the salami in your butt ever again. And you remember the part about not liking it, because we can’t have little girls around who actually like that kind of thing, can we?”

Marlowe began a zombie walk out of the room, relieved he had helped the girl understand the way things had to be. Still speaking softly to himself, he said, “After all, what kind of world would it be if there were little girls who liked sitting down with things sticking in their ass? Why, if little girls liked that sort of thing men would want to poke things in their ass all the time, and naturally they would get around to poking their big cocks in there, and they wouldn’t even have to feel bad about it because the little girls liked it so much.”

He was still muttering as he left the house and got into his car. “And if they didn’t feel bad about poking their big cock in a little girl’s ass, there wouldn’t be any reason to feel bad about anything. Then there would be no need for laws, and no need for detectives to arrest men caught with their cock buried deep in a little girl’s ass, and we could all live on the beach, naked, with lots of little girls sitting on our cocks, any little girl we wanted, and we would all be so free and happy, just like the animals…”

23

Dr. Winklebaum made a few last minute edits to her slides before submitting the final version to the conference board in anticipation of her appearance. She was gratified by their acceptance of her presentation at the symposium and the warm praise they gave in anticipation of her talk describing her discovery of the Hanjub Syndrome.

The doctor had used the intervening months since the discovery to explore more thoroughly the imaginary friends of her other young patients. She consulted with colleagues and reviewed the literature and, while the evidence was not all in, she believed she saw the red flags of sexual abuse in these play companions previously regarded as harmless.

Dr. Winklebaum would use the presentation to point out to her colleagues the clues to sexual abuse that were clearly evident in children’s play with imaginary companions. It would be a ground shaking revelation when she presented the true origins of imaginary companions as psychic mechanisms for managing sexual abuse and how they could be used to reveal the abusers and aid in the treatment of the child.

Unfortunately, the doctor would not be around to help CarolLee in her recovery. The clumsy investigation by the detective did not result in charges being brought, but it did result in the father loosing his job, and the insurance which paid for the child’s treatment with her psychiatrist. There was enough suspicion, though, that the District Attorney threatened the family with prosecution until the children were placed in foster care with the requirement that they all attend family counseling before they could be re-united. Saundra took comfort in knowing CarolLee’s healing journey, although endless, had begun and she would no longer be abused. The psychiatrist remained frustrated the father, like Saundra’s parents, did not get the punishment he deserved. She did hear the detective had been disciplined for beating up the father, and she knew it was wrong to take satisfaction in such vigilante justice, so she tried not to.

24

Brian rang the doorbell at the address given in the letter in the tacky residential neighborhood. A very short, hard-as-nails looking guy answered the door. He called himself Hoss on the phone, which Brian thought was a stupid name. It was a good fit for his face though, because he looked stupid, too.

“Hi,” he said. “I’m Brian. I called earlier.”

The man turned and yelled, “CarolLee, your uncle is here.” He faced him again. “You’ve got half an hour. Stay on the porch where I can see you, and anything you have to give her, I see first. Got it?”

Brian politely agreed, handed him a large drawing tablet and charcoal pencils, which Hoss shook to make sure there was nothing hidden inside. He returned them to Brian when he was satisfied, and Brian sat on one of the white wicker chairs arranged in front of a big window overlooking the porch. He looked up to see CarolLee step outside, close the door, show the thinest of smiles, and sit across from him. She had always been a big girl for her age, but now her face looked older, too. She was still cute, but with an unfamiliar toughness.

He handed her the pad and pencils, and said, “Happy birthday. I would have brought them before, but I didn’t know where you were until I got your letter.”

Her smile broadened as she accepted the gift. “Thanks, Brian,” she said. “They’re wonderful. I’m so glad you came.”

I was glad you wrote me,” he said. “Your’s is the only letter I’ve ever gotten, except from my grandmother.”

“They won’t let us have cellphones, or use email,” she said. “I had to tell them you were my uncle because only family can visit.”

“Sure,” he said. “It’s the same with Adam. I was his step-brother when I saw him.”

“How is he?” she asked.

Brian said, “He’s pretty good. He said the group home is not bad. And he likes another gay guy there. They don’t know he is gay, of course.”

“I hope he is happy,” she said. “We fought all the time, but I miss him, now. Is he still mad at me?”

Brian hung his head, “Yeah, a little.” CarolLee started to cry, and that made Brian feel terrible.

As she wiped at the tears, she asked, “Were you able to see my parents?”

Brian didn’t want to answer for fear of making her feel worse. She looked at him expectantly, though, so he said, “I saw your mom. She looked like she had been crying a lot.” CarolLee nodded, and Brian continued, “I saw your dad when I went to pick up your drawing pad. He said he got fired when they found out he was being investigated for… you know. He looks pretty… well, bad, I guess.”

This precipitated more tears from CarolLee, and Brian wished he knew how to make her feel better.

“I ruined everything,” the girl sputtered. “just like Adam said. Now they all hate me.”

“Don’t worry,” Brian said. “they’ll get over it.” He wasn’t at all sure that was true.

“That stupid doctor kept telling me I needed to admit my family was abusing me. No matter what I said, she wouldn’t believe me.”

“It was a pretty weird story.” Brian said. “Why an Indian?”

“I don’t know. It just came to me,” she said, a long sigh following her words. “Then everybody thought he was so interesting. Mom talked to me, Dad played chess with me, even Adam paid attention to me. That doctor always wanted to talk about him. So I started looking things up and kept adding things to keep them interested.”

“You said the Indian told you things,” Brian said, “about your mom having an affair, and Adam being gay. How did you know all that stuff?”

“In the attic there are holes into Adam’s room, and Mom and Dad’s room. Sometimes when I got lonely I would watch and listen.”

“You’re something else, CarolLee.” Brian felt part wonder and part affection for the girl. “When do you think you’ll get out of here?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “They couldn’t send them to jail because I refused to say they molested me, but they won’t let us live together again until Mom and Dad and Adam all admit they were abusive, and get counseling.” CarolLee leaned closer, her face hopeful, and asked, “Did you tell them if they just admit it, we can all go home?”

Brian hung his head again, “Yeah. Your mom is willing. I think she would say anything to get you back. Brian doesn’t want to, but I might be able to talk him into it. Your dad, though… I don’t think he is going to go for it. He’s still pretty mad.”

Brian watched as CarolLee’s disposition seemed to change as she absorbed his words. The tears stopped abruptly, and her expression hardened. Too hard for one so cute and young, he thought. She lifted her unbraided, long hair and pulled a cigarette from behind her ear, a single match from her pocket, struck it on the wicker chair, and lit the cigarette. Brian stared with astonishment at her being allowed to smoke.

“I suppose you’re mad at me, too?” she said, the first expression of anger he had ever seen on her.

“Heck, no,” he said, blushing. “I really like you. I… I always have.”

CarolLee didn’t look like she believed him, or worse, didn’t care. “Were you able to find it?” she asked.

“Ah…yeah. I hid it in the bushes like you said.”

“Thanks. I’ll be able to get it later,” CarolLee gestured to the window, “when Hoss isn’t looking.”

“CarolLee,” he asked, “what are those things in the bag?”

“You don’t know?” she said, as though he should. “They’re butt plugs.”

Brian had no idea what she was talking about. “What are butt plugs?”

“You stick them in your butt,” she said, not at all embarrassed. “to stretch it out.”

“Why?” he asked, still confused.

“So a really big cock will fit in there,” she said.

It took a few seconds for Brian to process the idea. “Damn, CarolLee. That’s the dirtiest thing I’ve ever heard.” CarolLee smiled and after a few more seconds of processing, he asked, “Where’d you get them?”

“There’s a girl at my school,” CarolLee started. “Her uncle gave them to her so her butt would stretch until his penis would fit. He got arrested when he finally put it in her, though. She was too embarrassed to tell them about the plugs, so she gave them to me.”

“Why are there so many?

“Each one is little bigger. You wear each one for a while, then your big enough for a penis.”

“And you stick them in your butt?” he asked, to make sure he understood.

“You should try it,” she said. “It feels really good.”

“Damn, CarolLee, you sure know a lot about… that stuff.”

“That’s nothing,” she said. “I’ve learned a lot dirtier stuff than that being in group homes for three months.”

“Like what?” he asked.

“How to give hand jobs, how to suck a dick, how to fuck.” She blew a lung full of smoke at him, and said, “Surprised?”

Brian was too surprised and envious of the eleven-year-old’s sexual experience to even speak.

“That’s why I need those butt plugs,” CarolLee said, jerking her thumb toward the window again. “He has a cock like a horse. If I’m ever going to get it in there I need to stretch it a lot.”

“You mean you’re going to let Hoss put his penis in your butt? Why?”

“It’s all about earning privileges here,” she said, displaying her cigarette to him. “The more you do, the more you’re allowed to do.”

Brian was stunned. “CarolLee, I don’t think they’re allowed to do that. You should tell someone.”

“I did,” she said, her expression one of exasperation with his ignorance, “in the first group home. That’s how I ended up here. The people are different, but the rules are the same. So now I’m going to use the butt plugs so Hoss doesn’t rip me apart when he gets his chance. Maybe I’ll get to go to the mall once in a while.”

Brian tried to imagine the young girl he liked so much bending over while the man who looked as stupid as a horse stuck his horse-sized penis in her. It made him shiver with disgust. “You shouldn’t have to do that CarolLee,” he said. “It’s not right.”

“I’m sure I’ll like it,” she said.

Brian stared, not believing she meant it.

“It’s because I have so much blood in my ass now,” she said as she took a long draw on the cigarette. “Besides, I wrecked my family with a stupid game. I deserve whatever happens to me here.”

Brian felt like he was going to cry, but he showed nothing.

“You know the crazy part?” she asked, and answered when he looked up. “I miss Hanjub.”

“You said you made him up,” Brian said.

“I did, but he was interesting, and he was going to take me to India and put me in his harem. That sounded so… exciting. I wish he would take me right now.”

“But he isn’t real,” Brian said, confused.

She looked at him with hope in her eyes. “You could take me,” she said.

Brian stuttered, “To India?”

“No, silly. To California. I could wait until his wife falls asleep, and Hoss is fucking one of the other girls, grab the petty cash box, and we could take a bus. The station is really close.”

“I don’t know, CarolLee,” he said. “What would we do in California?”

“We could get jobs. The kids here say guys would pay a lot of money to put their cock in my butt,” she said. CarolLee’s face softened a little, and she said, “I’d let you put your cock in my butt, too. If you want?”

Brian flushed with embarrassment, unintentionally showing his enthusiasm for the idea. “Damn, CarolLee.” He didn’t know what to say after that, so he just grinned at her.

CarolLee extinguished the last of her cigarette on the sole of one of her flip flops, glanced at the window to see if anyone was looking, and flicked it into the bushes. “They have lots of Indians in California,” she said. “Maybe we could find Hanjub.”

∞

© 2014 Fabula Salaxacis - This work may not be reproduced in any form without permission.