THE ENGINEER: Honor Student

It was a straightforward job, one the Engineer could do in his sleep. At 1500 hours the target would leave her expensive private academy and take the school shuttlebus to her home. The house, in a prosperous suburb of Houston, was set back behind a row of hedges which concealed it from neighbors. It would be entered via an unlocked laundry room window. The target’s mother was attending an Arts Council meeting in the city and her younger sister was at clarinet lessons, leaving the target alone and vulnerable between 1500 and approximately 1700 hours. Plenty of time for the hit. The client wanted a clean rape—no fluid transfer—and a straight 8mm video recording without edits. The girl was to be left as unharmed as possible. The Engineer was glad for the change of pace; the majority of his clients requested disfigurement and suffering, or at least humiliation. It was nice to have a day where he didn’t have to torture anyone. By 1455 the Engineer was sitting comfortably in the girl’s bedroom, waiting for her to arrive. The room was large and expensively furnished, like the house itself, and had the sweet scent of a teenage girl. The Engineer looked around him with mild curiosity: stuffed animals on the canopy bed, a genuine Matisse sketch framed on the wall, socks and T-shirt on the floor by the closet, a trio of trophies on the top of the dresser. There was also an assortment of papers and pictures stuck in the mirror of the vanity, above trays of makeup and perfume. He walked over and looked more closely at the photos. Most featured a pretty teenager with dark shoulder-length hair and a wide smile. In one she was in a formal gown next to a man with a tuxedo, in another she was outdoors with a parka holding an archery bow, in another she was posing with another girl with the Eiffel Tower in the background. A report card was also on the mirror—all A’s in her honors classes, a B+ in pre-calculus. The Engineer smiled. He had grown up with girls like this; he felt at home in this house. He had flown into Houston Intercontinental Airport that morning. Using a forged credit card he’d hired a Rent-a-Wreck pickup truck, and then driven into the suburb with his Cannondale M800 mountain bike in the back. The bike was his favorite transport vehicle for suburban contracts; it was quiet, inconspicuous, and could navigate into areas no car could enter. It was particularly useful for stealth on night jobs; he’d practiced long hours using an infrared nightvision system to learn to cycle soundlessly and in complete darkness. But that hadn’t been necessary today; he had simply parked the truck at a public library a mile away, ridden to the house, and concealed the bike under a bush at the side of the yard. No one had seen him enter the property. For this job the Engineer had been contacted anonymously through an attorney, as usual, but he had little doubt as to who had commissioned the recording. Like most of the underage contracts, it was almost certainly the girl’s own father. Daughters, ex-girlfriends, childhood sweethearts, business acquaintances, parishioners, friends’ wives, students—with all these forbidden lust-objects in the world, his market was truly enormous. The Engineer’s reputation for discretion, precision and quality was spreading quickly, and the demand for his services was soaring. He now had the luxury of selecting which contracts he would execute, and when. He named his own price. At 1510 he heard a key in the front door to the house. He took a deep breath and calmly adjusted the pignose over his nose and mouth. He was wearing a cheap Halloween mask, a pair of mirrored shades, and a gimme baseball cap. Over his clothes he had on a thrift-store jumpsuit; rubbers covered his sneakers. It was hot, but he needed a low-rent disguise to match his small-time burglar pose. He heard the girl enter the house and close the door behind her. The Engineer double-checked the Sharp VL-E30U that he had been directed to find in the front closet. It offended his professional pride to have to originate on plain 8mm, but using the family camcorder was much less conspicuous than bringing his own rig. This rape was supposed to appear opportunistic—the teenager arriving home to find a burglar in the house. Not many house-thieves carried a Steadicam Jr. and a $3000 Sony Hi8 CCD-VX3 to a heist. Still, he liked the Sharp; it had a bright, color LCD monitor instead of a viewfinder, meaning he could hold it in front of himself when taping instead of pressing it to his eye. That would be convenient. The Engineer listened carefully to the girl moving around on the ground floor, tracking her location. He heard a refrigerator door open and close. Ideally she would come up the stairs and into her bedroom. If she lingered on the ground level, or made a telephone call, he would have to wait before striking. After a moment, though, footsteps climbed the stairs and entered a room down the hall. He soon heard the faint sound of urination. Perfect—she was trapped and vulnerable. Lifting the camera and pressing the REC button with his gloved thumb, the Engineer strolled down the hall and stood in the doorway of the bathroom. The door was ajar, and he slowly pushed it open. The girl from the photos was squatted on the toilet, with her underwear around her knees. When she saw him behind the opening door she jumped with a shreik and then froze, staring. He heard the urine stream cut off in mid-flow. “Well, well.” the Engineer said, using his low, slurred ex-con voice, so different from his own. “Here’s a little girl that just ran outta luck.” For a minute the girl just stared at him in horror, and then she quickly grabbed her panties and tugged them back under her skirt. She looked about fifteen. Her terrified face was lovely; she had a slight resemblance to the actress Jennifer Connelly. She was still wearing the maroon uniform of her private school, including calf-high white socks. She’d taken off her shoes. Her body was petite but the breasts under her starched white cotton shirt were full for her size, and her waist was slim. The Engineer could almost understand Daddy’s lust. After physically securing a target, it was crucial to establish immediate and total control. The target should be forced to suppress the strong instincts for autonomy and dignity and become totally compliant. The Engineer had learned from experience that by far the most effective method was to put the targets into “survival mode”, fear of losing their lives. He was not a cruel man, and didn’t like terrorizing women, but he had a job to do. He took the 7-inch guerrilla survival knife out of the sheath on his belt. The target stared open-mouthed at the knife for a long time, literally shaking from fear. Then she swallowed hard and forced herself to speak. “What are you going to do to me?” She had a high, young voice. The Engineer tried his best to sound ominous. “That depends on you. Get up and go into the bedroom.” She finally started to compose herself. She let out a breath. “Okay. I’m doing what you say. Don’t get excited.” She paused for a long moment, then slowly stood. He continued taping as they walked down the hall, neither taking their eyes off the other. They entered her bedroom. She sat down on the bed and he closed the door behind them.

The Engineer sat on the wicker chair beside the target’s bed. He positioned himself to get the best picture while she stared and trembled. He had to widen the zoom; she was only feet away. Her window faced west and he was getting some excellent sunlight on the bed, which was a big help. With this level of illumination, even the low-resolution 8mm camera would record a decent image. “What’s your name?” he finally said. He had to remind himself to use this Texas ex-con drawl; accents did not come naturally to him. “Um…Ann.” He knew her name was actually Stephanie. He spoke in a quiet voice, making her strain to hear his words, taping the entire time. “Ann, let me explain something to you. I’m a pretty pissed-off guy. I got nothing but shit in my life. And suddenly I find myself with this pretty little rich girl to play with. I gotta say, it would sure be satisfying to get some of that anger out. Hear you scream. Watch you bleed. Know what I mean?” The girl moaned involuntarily from terror, but managed to nod her head, staring at him unblinkingly. “But, you know, don’t think I’m a badguy. I used to be really nice, until everybody I’ve ever fucking known screwed me over. So I don’t want to hurt you unless I have to. You make me feel satisfied, make me feel like a fucking king, and I might not need to get satisfaction in other ways. Do you understand what I’m saying?” “Yes.” said Stephanie’s small voice. “I think I do.” “It can go either way. I’m gonna sit here with this camera and watch you. Make me happy before I lose my self-control.” There was stillness for a long while, as Stephanie sat motionless, staring uncertainly at his masked face. After more than a minute had passed, the Engineer spoke again. “I don’t feel any happier.” Stephanie finally spoke in a weak, pathetic voice. “I’ll—um…perform fellatio on you.’ She sounded hopeless. ‘ Would that make you happy?” The Engineer shook his head slowly.”You don’t get the idea. I want a show. I want you to make an EFFORT. You’re running out of time, girl.” “Okay, okay,” Stephanie said quickly. “I’ll give you a show.” The Engineer waited. The target had her feet on the floor with her knees pressed together and her hands twisting in her lap. She opened them and awkwardly slid her skirt up her legs. It became eerily quiet in the room; they could hear each other breathing, over the whirring of the camcorder. Soon the front of the skirt was around her waist and her legs were exposed up to her underwear. She was wearing blue silk panties. She leaned back and pulled at the corners, pressing her fleshy pubic mound against the fabric. The silk was slightly transparent and he could see a dark triangle of hair above the cotton crotch panel. She glanced at him nervously but he remained impassive, holding the camcorder in one hand and the knife in the other. She swallowed and pulled at the zipper on the side of her skirt. When the skirt was down off her ankles she leaned back, supporting herself with her left hand, and spread her legs wide. She put her stockinged feet on the bed on either side of her and with her other hand she lightly stroked up and down her inner thighs and over the rounded silk mound of her panties. After a minute she gently placed her forefinger into the middle of her crotch and pressed the fabric down into her slit, making a long indentation in the panties where her vulva crack was. She ran her finger up and down this cleft several times, looking at him. Encouraged by the Engineer’s silence, the target sat up, slowly unbuttoned her shirt, and slipped it off her shoulders, revealing full breasts in a thin front-closing brassiere. She undid the closure and slipped the cups off. Her breasts looked larger and shapelier nude than they had under her clothing; they were fresh and plump, with pale pink nipples larger than silver dollars. They seemed only recently developed; the girl’s whole body had a smooth young tautness that you didn’t see in most adults. Despite her full shape, she was still only half a child. The target looked down at her breasts and fondled them. The Engineer captured a closeup of each nipple tightening as she gently stroked first the left, then the right with her fingertips. The center stud in her aureole did not protrude much even when her nipples were hard. She awkwardly got onto her knees and squatted. Her breasts hung down before him. She brushed her fingers lightly over her nipples. Good footage, thought the Engineer with satisfaction. The girl was doing well. The target looked at him again, trying in vain to sense his thoughts, then turned around on the bed, her buttocks towards him. She slid her underwear off of her hips and down to her bent knees. The Engineer slowly zoomed in to the dark patch visible at the base of her cute little ass. There wasn’t much hair, and he could clearly see her slit in the fleshy pubic bulge. Her small buttocks were pale and smooth, the cheeks pressed tight together. As the Engineer taped, the girl arched her back and thrust her backside towards him, causing her cheeks to spread and the small pucker of her anus to appear in the crevice. There was a smattering of hair leading up from her crotch and circling it. After displaying herself in this fashion for a moment the target rolled over and pulled the panties the rest of the way off her legs, her crotch peeking out between her thighs. After she’d tossed them to the floor she crossed her ankles in front of him on the bed and let her knees fall open. The Engineer stood up over her to get a better shot. She watched him carefully. He centered the viewfinder on the little triangle between her flat belly and thighs. It was very small, only a couple inches in area. The cunt crack itself was visible but closed. As he taped she pulled the soft flesh of her mound apart with her fingers and, like a wound opening, a line of tender pink flesh appeared in the midst of her bush. Good, thought the Engineer, the money shot. Her pussy lips were slim and pink, a vertical line rather than the typical pear shape. He took a nice, long shot of the girl’s cunt as she fingered it. She spread the lips apart, showing the little hooded pencil eraser of her clitoris and the inverted U of her vaginal opening. He switched the lens to macro and zoomed even closer. Next best thing to being there, Dad. The Engineer admired the young girl’s slim body and trim twat, but he did not permit himself to become sexually excited. He did not get off on raping women. Even when he was required to become aroused as part of the job, he kept a professional detachment from what he was doing, and concentrated only on fulfilling the requests of the client. He suspected this was one of the reasons for his success. He allowed the girl to assume a final pose for him, laying down on her stomach with pillows under her hips and her ass in the air. He took a lingering shot of her buttocks, vulva and thighs. You don’t love me, you just love my doggy style, the Engineer thought idly. Then he lowered the camera. At this point the basic documentation was complete. In his instructions, though, there had been a request for special footage, and directions on where to locate certain apparatus. “Stop,” he told the target. She turned around and looked at him in fright. “Aren’t I doing OK? I don’t know what else to do…” “You’re doing okay. You’re not cut yet, are you? I want you to come with me.” Wary but resigned, the target stood. Together they walked into the hallway.

He pointed the target at the flight of stairs leading up to her parents’ bedroom. The naked teen looked lovely as she climbed them, wearing only her socks, so he stood at the bottom and taped her until she’d reached the top. Then he followed. The master bedroom took up the entire top floor of the large house, and was flooded with light from the skylights in its twenty-foot cathedral ceiling. It had a fireplace, and a huge circular tub was in the adjoining luxury bathroom. When the Engineer had noticed he’d regretted not asking the client for even more money. The target stood awkwardly beside the king-size bed. He pointed the knife at a nightstand on one side of the bed, not taking his eyes or the camera off of her. ‘There’s a shoebox in there, I noticed it when I searched this room. Get it out.’ She got the box, placed it on the bed and took off its lid. It contained a large assortment of sexual devices. There were several dildos, K-Y jelly, ben-wa balls, and bondage apparatus. The girl looked up at the Engineer questioningly but he just stood there with the camera and the knife. She got the idea, and sat on the edge of the bed facing him. She slowly took a long but relatively narrow plastic dildo from the box. Holding it with both hands in front of her face, she licked the tip, then pursed her lips around it. Gradually she inserted the shaft deeper, sucking it slowly into her mouth and then out again. After a moment she held the dildo still with her hands and started pumping her head slowly back and forth on it. The Engineer had no idea how experienced the girl was with this act, but her technique wasn’t bad. By this time he could tell she wasn’t going to be a compliance problem, so without stopping the camera he put the knife back in its sheath. She noticed and look visibly relieved. He started to feel slightly bad about frightening her earlier, and decided to talk to her a bit. “What were those trophies in your bedroom?” he asked her as she sucked. She took her mouth off the dildo. “Um…from archery competitions.” she said, looking up at him in surprise. ‘I didn’t know there were such things.’ ‘sure,’ she said. She seemed very eager to get him talking. ‘ There are national rankings. I might even go to the Atlanta Olympics.’ She tilted her head and smiled, out of some deeply-ingrained charm instinct. ‘No kidding.’ He stood in front of her, shooting down at her face, and took the dildo from her with his gloved hand. ‘Lie down and spread your legs.’ Stephanie smiled weakly but obeyed. She lay on her back, then opened her slim thighs. The Engineer started to rub the saliva-slick dildo on her narrow pussy lips, getting a nice overhead shot with the camcorder. ‘Are you a virgin?’ he asked her. ‘Yes,’ she said in a small voice. He positioned the tip of the dildo at her vaginal opening and pushed it in. He watched her cleft spread wide as the shaft of the dildo pressed up into her body. She winced but made no noise. He kept pushing until at least six inches were inside her, and then worked the dildo out again. There was blood on the shaft. He shoved the sex-toy in and out of her pussy with increasing frequency. ‘So what do you want to be when you grow up?’ he asked. She was breathing in jagged pants. She had to concentrate to answer him. ‘Um…an art historian. I—I want to run a museum someday.’ The Engineer smiled behind his pig mask. He liked this girl. If she were ten years older, and they’d met under different circumstances, he might have asked her out. After another minute he pulled the blood-slicked dildo out of her cunt and pointed it at the shoebox. ‘You see that black one? Fold up a pillow and strap it on.’ Stephanie took a pillow from the head of the bed, folded it lengthwise, and then took the large black strap-on dildo from the shoebox. She placed it at a right angle on the pillow and pulled the strap tight around the back. The pillow was squeezed into an hourglass, the dildo firmly protruded from its side. It was about eight inches long, shaped like a gruesomely swollen and gnarled penis. ‘Now put it on the bed and get on.’ The girl looked at the dildo reluctantly a moment, then got up and straddled it.

Stephanie carefully positioned the thick head of the dildo between her slim cunt lips. She tried inserting it, but after several attempts it still wouldn’t fit. The girl took the tube of K-Y jelly from the shoebox and rubbed a handful of lubricant all over the black shaft. Then she wiped her hands and with an air of resignation she tried again. She stood on the bed and squatted so that the dildo was pointing straight into her mound, then reached down and grasped it. Its slick head rubbed back and forth into her vulva. Crouching down gradually lower, her hair and breasts swinging in front of her, she winced as the large rounded tip of the dildo spread her slim vagina wider and wider. When most of the tip was inside of her, she slowly shifted her weight back and carefully placed her hands behind her on the bed. She paused a moment, tossing her head back and shaking her hair out of her face. Then she held her breath and with a grimace squatted her full weight down upon the dildo. The Engineer videotaped impassively as the thick gnarled shaft forced her lips apart and embedded itself between her legs, nearly to its hilt. He could see the flesh above her pubic hair bulge out as the tip of the dildo pressed into her belly. The target let out a pained cry, and tears instantly wet her face. She was still for a long moment, panting. Then she painfully began moving herself up and down on the dildo shaft. The Engineer stood in front of her, taping. This was the shot he wanted: her protruding collarbone highlighting the plump swell of her swaying breasts, her soft belly between her jutting hipbones, and the thick shaft of the dildo splitting her pink cleft wide. From the front the dildo looked enormous in relation to her slim, narrow hips. The target’s eyes were squeezed shut and her face was crimson with pain. She grunted as she humped up and down. Since this was the big finale, the Engineer taped it for several minutes. He moved around the bed and zoomed the Sharp’s lens in and out, getting a variety of angles. Then his concentration shifted and he mentally ran through his escape procedure one final time. ‘Get off,’ he told Stephanie. She lifted herself painfully and slid the slick dildo out of her cunt with a wet pop. The teenager’s previously tight twat was yawning and swollen, blood coating her lips. She laid back in exhaustion. Her crotch was a mess of crimson. “Time for phase two,” said the Engineer. The target looked miserable. He guessed what she was thinking. She was probably glad because he didn’t seem ready to use the knife, but worried because he was probably going to take his penis out now. She didn’t seem at all aware that he was finished with her. This was just what he wanted. He directed her into the parents’ bathroom. He had previously checked it for a possible window escape; there were only skylights on the ceiling, which she couldn’t possibly reach. “I want you to fill the tub and clean yourself off. Use bubble bath. I’ll be out here. After a couple minutes I’m going to come in, and we’ll see what happens then.” “Okay,” said the girl obediently. He left her standing naked by the massive tub, then closed the door and listened through it. After a moment water started running. So long, Stephanie, he thought, and ran noiselessly out of the bedroom and down two flights of stairs. On the ground floor he took the tape out of the Sharp and placed the camcorder into a gym bag he’d hidden near the back door. The bag was full of minor valuables he’d collected from around the house. He went out the door and moved swiftly across the rear deck of the house, dropping the bag when he reached the lawn. It would look like the burglar had panicked and dropped his booty. As the Engineer hurried across the rear lawn he could still hear the faint sound of running water from the top of the house. He located the Cannondale hidden in the side bushes and ripped off his gloves, cap, glasses, mask and rubbers. He shoved them all into the panniers on the rear rack of the bicycle, then shoved the videotape into a side pocket. It took him a moment longer to step out of the thrift-store coveralls. Underneath he was wearing a Nike T-shirt and black Descente bicycle shorts. He folded and stored the coveralls, put his Oakley M-frames and Giro helmet on, and mounted the bike. It was little more than two minutes after closing the bathroom door on his target that the Engineer pedaled swiftly out of her driveway, looking like a yuppie bike commuter. He watched carefully to see if anyone observed him; there was no one visible on the quiet street. It only took him a few minutes to reach his pickup truck at the library and put the bike in the back. He drove several miles to a Piggly-Wiggly which had Goodwill dumpsters in its parking lot, and threw all the clothing into one of them. In ten minutes he was on his way to Houston. The target was probably still sitting terrified in the tub. He parked outside of the Rent-a-Wreck office and spent a few minutes taking the wheels and pedals off of his bicycle and putting it into its fiberglass flight case. Then he returned the truck and hailed a cab to the airport. In the airport men’s room he changed from his bike outfit into Ralph Lauren khakis, Polo shirt, and loafers. He slipped the knife into the wastebin after using its handle to hammer and crack the case of the videotape. There was a photo and video shop in the airport complex, and he showed its sales clerk the cracked videotape case. While he watched, the clerk unscrewed the case, placed the reels of tape into a new shell, and threw away the broken plastic of the old one. The Engineer had the clerk place the case into a FedEx envelope, which he sealed without having touched the new videotape. He put a forged routing slip, made out to the contracting attorney, into the envelope’s plastic pocket and dropped it into a FedEx delivery box. When he was in the air, forty-five minutes later, the Engineer carefully searched his mind for any variables he may have forgotten. He could think of none. He was miles above Louisiana, the tape of Rachel’s sexual assault was in the hands of Federal Express, and any object connecting him to the crime scene was hopelessly scattered around Texas. The girl would definitely report the attempted burglary, but it was a toss-up whether she would tell about the quasi-rape, unless she thought her torn vagina needed medical attention. Her father would come home and comfort his child about her ordeal, no doubt. Then in a day or so he would masturbate while staring at the video of it. Another contract well executed, thought the Engineer. He allowed himself to relax, and by the time the sun set over the clouds he was dozing happily against his airline pillow.