Where the Heat receded
處暑 [4] / [7]
"Let's talk it over one by one. Can you remember the date and time?"
"I can remember recent things. It got worse a month before he kicked me out of his house,”
she began to testify.
He acted irritated when faced with minor things, even without reason. He argued, he slapped her cheek hard, and not just that, after slapping her, he roughly took her clothes off and raped her. In this process, he used a whip, a real whip, which he kept in his room.
He also recorded her while they had sex, even though she didn't want him to. She said nothing about the video because she didn't want to annoy him more, since he scared her. Later, he threatened her if she didn't listen to him, saying that he would spread the video online.
"Precisely what did he want you to do for him?"
"Most of it was about sexual things. He ordered me to suck him until he ejaculated or tried to insert himself into my anus. I hate those things, but whenever I rejected him, he threatened me with the video that he already recorded.”
Alexander listened, but something about the things she was saying, and the way she said it, didn't sound sincere to him. She was either holding something back, or she was lying about something, and Alexander suspected it was the latter. In fact, the more he listened, the more hollow her accusations seemed.
On one hand, Alexander knew Ed pretty well, and though he was obviously a womanizing creep who was not above taking advantage of women, he also never came off as the overtly violent type as she was describing.
On the other, her accusations sounded, frankly, as if she made them up. It wasn't the accusations themselves, but the lack of detail that raised red flags for him. He knew that victims who've experienced trauma sometimes forget details such as times and places.
But if she remembered this happening to her, why couldn't she paint a more coherent picture of exactly what happened? Alexander continued with the interview.
"Okay, so these sexual acts. When did this all begin? When, to the best of your knowledge, did he first threaten you with these videos?"
"I can't remember exactly, but it was an ongoing thing until our relationship ended, and―"
"When did your relationship with Ed end again?"
Alexander interrupted, pulling at a loose thread.
"And whose decision was it to end the relationship?"
She looked at him with a cool, unflinching expression,
"Excuse me?" she asked.
"I'm sorry," Alexander said,
"I'm just trying to get a better understanding of the dynamics of your relationship with Ed and how it changed towards the end."
