The Colour Purple

The Colour Purple

Ruth screwed up her nose and looked at herself in the mirror. ‘Do I look like a tart?’

‘Oh yes, no doubt about it,’ said her friend, Staci.

‘Well thank Christ for that, it took me over two hours to achieve this look.’

The two girls giggled and Staci shook her head in an attitude of disapproval and affection. ‘You know you get worse as you get older.’

‘Just wait until I'm senile and gummy, I'll be the biggest slag on the dementia unit.’

‘You'll be Morticia Incontinence, meets Valanrda the Veteran Vamp’

It was a twist of psychological voodoo that these two were best friends; a classic case of opposites attracting. They had always known each other; two little girls in pigtails with chocolate smeared faces, eyeing each other with distrust and open curiosity across the nursery school table. Staci had cried for her mummy until she was sick that first day, and Ruth had peed her pants and somewhere along the line, the first tenuous roots of friendship had sprouted.

Staci progressed to university, while Ruth attended some of the classes taught to become a hairdresser. She attained her diploma by the skin of her teeth and had become successful more by luck than judgement, developing a creativity and style that made her the preferred hairdresser with most of the clients at the salon.

The girls had always been friends, Staci ever the straight woman to Ruth's slapstick personality. Sometimes Staci despaired of her wacky friend. She had gritted her teeth and endured the punk era, while Ruth had leapt on the punk bus with psychedelic flair just as it was pulling into the home depot. She grimaced through her friend's rock scene days, and was mortified by the Goth Morticia before her.

Ruth's natural beauty hadn't been seen since she rolled on the sheepskin rug butt naked at eighteen months old. Today her hair was black and purple striped. She wore pixie boots and black stockings, a full inch of bare thigh clearly visible below the hem of her short Indian cotton belt, which Trade Descriptions would balk at calling a skirt. She wore a black string vest top over a lacy black bra, her navel pierced and mutilated with a gold, balled ring that any bull would struggle to lift. Her makeup was creative, bold and attention seeking. The black lipstick only softened by the delight in her eager
and friendly smile.

While Staci walked in her friend’s psychedelic shadow, she was no Mavis the mouse. Staci was stunning; it may have taken people several seconds to close their gaping mouths and notice her next to her friend, but when they did, she left her impression. Staci had a vivacious humour, with a laugh that could stop traffic. Her clothes could be described as sedate, but only when viewed in contrast to Ruth's. Staci's skirt was a good two inches longer than her friends, but it still finished three inches above the knee. Her makeup, applied with care, subtle and understated gave her tanned skin a bronzed healthy glow.

‘Lets go knock `em dead kid.’ Ruth winked at Staci.

They’d had several drinks by the time they sauntered into Blitz. The smoky atmosphere enveloped them and pulled them into the throng of writhing bodies, as though it had fingers that jostled them along. The dry ice was thick and cloying; cigarette smoke swirled in dense opaque spirals dancing to its own beat within the misty haze.

An angry looking man having perfected his, Don't mess with me, arsehole, expression lurched towards them.

‘Ruth Baby, skin me some mouth’ he drawled.

She draped her arms around his neck, and her lips joined his in a swirling act that could only be described as aggressive. This was no kiss; it was a clash of the titans. They ground to the beat of the pounding bass. She hooked her leg over his shoulder, exposing her underwear for anybody watching to be shocked by, and smooched her purple panties into his body.

Staci pulled her friend away, and the kissing gourami session was aborted mid synch.

‘Put him down Ruth, he might be gangrenous.’

‘Well if that's the case, I think I've just swallowed his tongue,’ she giggled. ‘See yer later Snake, You know you're good.’

‘Just come on back when you want some more, Sexy,’ he leered back at them, grabbing his crotch and thrusting his pelvis towards her.

‘Charming, that lad is pure class,’ said Staci.

At the bar, after going ten rounds with the heaving mass of sweaty bodies, they ordered two pints of cider and drank hard before moving out to a side table where they sat watching the scene play out in front of them. Two men at the next table were giving them the eye. Staci pulled at her skirt; conscious that with sitting the hem had risen to temperature-elevating heights. The man with the leather cut-off stared at her leg, making no effort to conceal his interest. Staci re-crossed her legs and looked away, flustered.

The girls often ended up at Blitz and knew most of the regulars. These two were strangers; neither of the girls had seen them in the club before.

‘Don't look now, but they're coming this way,’ said Ruth.

‘Hello ladies. I don't believe we've had the pleasure. My name's Ben and this ugly git here is Rob. It would be an honour and a delight to buy two such visions of loveliness a drink.’

Ruth looked at the good-looking man in denim and screwed up her face. ‘Hey Stace, was any of that English? Or was it just the ancient language of Bull shit?’ She turned on her sweetest smile and lowered her lashes before meeting each of their stares and said sweetly, ‘Sod off tossers.’

Her vulgarity would have sent most men mewling away with their tail clamped between their legs, but something in Ruth's hungry expression was telling a different tale to the words coming out of her mouth.

Undeterred, the one in the leather cut off with the mercury grey eyes grinned. ‘Ey up Ben, we've got us a pair of lively ones here.’ They slumped into the two vacant seats. ‘I think we’re going to have to win them over with our charm and overabundance of sex appeal.’ Ben’s eyes roved over Staci's body, and her cheeks blazed with a varied mix of indignation and excitement. Ben grinned up at Ruth, and she smiled back, overconfidence was sexy, she should know.

‘So ladies do you greet all your future sexual encounters in such a warm and friendly way?’

‘Only when they are as slippery as a fireman's pole,’ retorted Staci, her eyes shining

‘Oh,’ husked Ruth ‘what I wouldn't give for a fireman's pole.’

The girls laughed at the innuendo, ‘So Big boy," Ruth continued, raking her fingertip down Rob's lapel ‘haven't seen you around here before. You must be from out of town otherwise I'm sure I'd have noticed you around.’

Over the next half-hour they continued to drink and have a good time. The women found that they were enjoying the attention of the chancers. The men were good company. They were out of place in the gothic nightclub but refreshing. They seemed to have more conversation and manners than most of the spotty youths that frequented Blitz. The girls were enjoying themselves.

Ben and Staci moved to the dance floor, and Staci was lost in the strength of a warm shoulder and inhaling the heady scent of her dance partner.

Rob and Ruth talked at the table. Her glass was half-empty; she slugged the final half-pint in a single long swallow. Rob stared at her hard watching the dregs from the glass slip between her pretty lips. He smiled, and Ruth felt a shiver that was akin to fear as she looked back at the man beside her. He had something about him, a presence of power and strength. She shivered again—in anticipation. He moved closer to her and draped an arm round her shoulder. She allowed her head to rest into his neck as his fingers entwined and twisted themselves in her long hair. Her lips grazed across the outer sinew of his neck, and released a sigh as she relaxed into him.

Ruth was jolted out of her diversion with jar of pain. Before she could cry out, Rob's lips ground hard onto her mouth. His teeth found her bottom lip and bit. She tasted an iron-sour tinge on her tongue, and felt his breath harshen with excitement as tasted her blood. She struggled. It only heightened his demand. He forced her hand onto his crotch and she felt his hardening. Struggling she tried to prize her fingers out from under his. Needing to break from his grip on her mouth, she shook her head, but he forced her fingertips onto his erection and grunted before he pulled his face away from her.

‘C'mon Darlin` you know you want it. You've been dripping for it all night. I know your type, you like it rough. You've been teasing us since we sat down and you know it. Do you really think Ben’s interested in your prissy little mate? Not a chance girl, she's got just a little too much class for what we have in mind. Ben wants you too, he's just keeping her out of the way so that we can have a little time together alone.’ He smiled and it resembled the spread of an oil slick. He drew out the last word alone as he moved towards her again. ‘So baby, do you think you can handle two hot blooded, well hung men? I bet you can.’

Ruth slapped his face, her eyes brimming with tears of pain and humiliation. The first slap had hit home leaving a vivid slash of scarlet on his left cheek, but Ruth wasn't satisfied; she balled her fist and swung forward to drive it into the bastard's smug face. Rob’s hand shot out; he gripped her wrist, digging his fingertips into her carpal artery. Ruth felt dizzy and sick, the pain and too much to drink making her swoon. She cried out, trying to attract the attention of somebody close by, but the world had lost all its orientation. He still had her in a torturous grip but as the room spun the pain dissolved into a black noise that rose to a crescendo. The last thing she was aware of before the world collapsed in on her was the glitter ball above her head, spinning on its axis, spinning her into oblivion.

Staci and Ben came back to the table to find it occupied by two necking couples, neither of which contained Ruth. She asked Ben to see if they’d gone to dance, while she went to check the bathroom.

The doors to the three stalls stood open, Ruth wasn't in any of them. A lady stood by the hand basin repairing her makeup. ‘Excuse me love, you haven't seen a girl with purple hair have you? She's gone missing and I'm worried about her.’

‘No hun, she hasn't been in here in the last few minutes, but I do know the girl you mean, she was sitting at the next table to us with a man.’

Staci thanked the lady. Her irritation at not being able to find Ruth was turning into an awareness of gnawing worry. Something didn't feel right.

She returned to find that Ben was gone.

Staci bent down and picked up the shiny trinket that lay by the chair where Ruth had been sitting. It was the thick balled ring from Ruth's navel.

The tyres of the black BMW screeched like a hunting eagle as they fought for traction on the loose shingles in the club car park. Two men occupied the front seats, they whooped like coyote that have taken down a fawn. The unconscious girl slumped across the backseat and whimpered in whatever hell she inhabited.

Staci hammered on the door of flat three for the third time. ‘Ruth, please answer the door if you’re there.’ In her panic her voice came out as a keening whine. ‘Please Ruth answer the bloody door.’

She heard movement, something fell to the floor with a crash, and she felt weak with relief when she heard Ruth curse. The door opened a crack and she gasped at the sight of her friend. ‘Oh Sweetie, what the hell happened?’

Ruth didn't answer. She stood immobile staring ahead. Staci had to force the door open, knocking Ruth backwards to get in. She gathered Ruth into her arms and while she made no effort to resist, Ruth was rigid, not yielding to the comfort her friend was trying to offer.

‘What has that fucking bastard done to you?’

She half pushed half carried Ruth to the sofa and had to force her back into it to make her sit. The astringent smell of bleach permeated the air and stung the back of Staci's throat. A pile of smouldering ash lay in the middle of the living room carpet. Only the little beads that had hung from the tassels on Ruth's skirt gave any clue to what form the pile of cremated cloth had been. An outer ring of burning hessian-backed carpet gave off a foul smell that mingled with the smell of bleach.

Ruth sat unaware of her blistered hands and the swelling around her face. She had on a night-shirt with two bunnies and a caption that said, ‘Snuggle time.’ It was obscene on the beaten and bruised body of the broken woman.

Staci embraced her friend again, needing to receive some comfort almost as much as she needed to give it. She gasped in horror as her friend's night-shirt rode up high onto her thighs. Staci brushed away the tears streaming down her cheeks. It all made sickening sense. ‘He raped you didn't he?’

Ruth's inner legs were bleeding where something had been raked across her skin. The furious crimson rash to her flesh highlighted the white plasma blisters, where she’d poured bleach onto her most sensitive parts. Some of the blisters had already burst, leaking clear fluid onto her damaged thighs.

Staci ran to the bathroom. She leaned over the pan of the toilet and emptied her stomach onto the porcelain. The bathroom told its tale. Two empty bottles of bleach lay discarded on the floor. A six-inch scrubbing brush had been flung aside; it's cruel bristles pointing towards the shower stall. The glass panels were still steamed; traces of splattered blood stippled the peach tiles. She slid down the wall, needing a few minutes to compose herself before ringing the police.

At the hospital, Ruth told the police she couldn't remember anything after she entered Blitz. She woke in her own bed, bruised and battered with her face swollen and her genitals stinking of a stranger's load.

The police were sympathetic. ‘Rohypnol poisoning is like that,’ said Sergeant Davis shaking his head in a sympathetic nodding dog impression. The sergeant's voice was calm as he spoke to the women, only the look in his eyes belied his composure and gave some hint to the fury he felt at the brutal rape.

‘It is a clear drug,’ he continued, ‘without taste, odour or colour, that when slipped into someone's drink causes them to lose consciousness. The victim wakes up with no memory of what occurred during the fugue. I promise you that everything possible has been done. I vow that we will not close this case until the perpetrators have been caught. But Sweetheart, you haven’t helped us. Because you’ve showered and burned your clothes, little forensic evidence was found. I just wish you’d felt able to come to us sooner. You’ve been through a terrible ordeal, and it was an added shock to find you'd been raped and tortured by not one but two men. The DNA results will be kept on file, and checked against every sex offender in the Country. I just wish we could do more to help you.’

Ruth made a good physical recovery. But she was never the same girl again. Her spirit died that night. She wears her hair in a mousy bob these days, and her clothes are drab. It took her a long time to go back to work and she won’t go out at night. She met a good man who is gentle and makes little sexual demand. He says her scarring is a mark of her suffering and the strength she showed in overcoming it. He holds her close when she wakes screaming in the night.

And Staci? I'm fine thank you. I try to support Ruth on her bad days when she can't face the stairs from her flat to the outside world. But every day I remember the old Ruth before the termination and the therapists and anti-depressants. I remember Ruth before she lost the colour purple.