“Here, hold on to this for me.” one of the guys said while passing a gun to the kid next to him. My eyes widened as I instinctively grabbed my boyfriend Jon’s hand. It was at that moment when I knew I was in trouble. Could this really be happening to me? I remember thinking to myself. Did he really just threaten us with a gun? I looked around trying to put distinct faces to figures in front of me and failing miserably. It must have been somewhere around 2am at that point and the only light I had to work with was coming from a street lamp at least 50 feet away.
“Come with us.” he spoke again, this time to Jon, and began leading the way to the back of the park with the five other guys closely behind. There were six of them and two of us; we were easily out numbered without anything to defend ourselves with. I dared not to let Jon’s hand go and walked with him towards the unfinished skate park in one of the back corners. My heart was pounding immensely once we stopped at the destined location. One of the guys began having meaningless small talk with us as the rest stood around in silence. Responding very calmly to anything he had asked us, I was hoping they’d have a change of heart at let us go safely.
That’s when it happened. The guy talking to us stopped in mid sentence and threw a right hook at Jon’s jaw. He continued to punch Jon while three of the other guys joined in. We. Are. Dead. I remember thinking at that very moment. My boyfriend was the most important person to me during that time and to see him getting hurt right in front of my eyes was one of the scariest things I’ve ever witnessed. That was probably the only reason why I was too distracted to notice the remaining two guys approaching me. “Follow me.” one of them said and took me to another side of the park.
The events from that moment on are a blur. Basically, I was taken aside to be raped at the same time my boyfriend was being jumped. They had no mercy and even threatened to get me pregnant but I remained calm. I hoped that the less fuss I made, the quicker this all would be done with. It wasn’t too long before the guys felt “accomplished” with what they had done to us and they all walked out of the park leaving us with these final words, “You better not tell anyone”. Once they were out of sight, I slowly walked up to Jon who was pretending to be unconscious on the ground. His face was a mess, bruise marks and cuts purtruding from various angles on his once flawless face. I helped him up from the ground and we walked back to my house. What a nightmare that night turned out to be, all because I wasn’t allowed to see Jon during the daytime. After everything, there was only one thing I knew for sure that night, there was no way in hell I was going to tell my mother.
My God, Jess. What a terribly frightening story. I'm so sorry you and your boyfriend went through this. Even though you recreate the scene with powerful details, I still can't imagine how traumatic this experience must have been.
ReplyDeleteClearly, this is just the beginning of your paper. What argument do you hope to develop with this narrative? I can envision a number of topics--gun control, gang rape, stranger danger, curfews, etc. You still have a great deal of work to do to shape and support your point of view, but you have the makings of a tremendous narrative argument here.
More important that the paper, though, is that you've had adequate support in dealing with this trauma, especially if you didn't tell your mother. Have you seen a counselor here at school? If you're open to it, I'd be glad to talk to you and offer any help I can.
Thank you for sharing this story, and good luck with your revision.