I had done it many times before.  I wasn't worried about getting caught.  My chickens coming home to roost, Mama called it . . . my chickens coming home to roost . . .
     I knew his reputation, but that was why I picked him out.  He was the most likely candidate.  He's been around, and then some.  And every time, he knew exactly what he was doing--he's had plenty of practice.
     So I came on to him really strong over at the hang-out.  He was doing a number on some chick, but I horned in.  I knew what I had to do, and he was the one.
     "Hey, Jessie,"  I said.  "how `bout you and me--?"  He saw my face and soaked up the offer like a dry sponge.  He was workin' overtime lately to keep up with the rules of supply and demand.  Guys like him used to be a dime a dozen, but in a small town like this one, guys his age were always disappearing to the big city to seek their fortune.  Or at least, that's what everyone said.  Most of them never came back or called their Mamas to say they were okay.
     We went outside and he asked where-to?  I told him I didn't want to go to no motels.  He had a few quick suggestions.  One of them was the old abandoned house outside of town.  Everyone knew about the place and they all said it was haunted . . . that some guy was always screaming bloody-murder in the middle of the night from somewhere in that house.
    But I wasn't afraid of no ghost stories.
    The door creaked shut behind us and I led him up the stairs and into the room I liked best.  It was the big one with the four-poster bed and those thick green curtains on the windows so no one could see inside.  I didn't want anyone to see.  It was just between me and him.  Privacy is so important in these matters.
    I told him to take off his clothes and lay on the bed.  He laughed.  He laughed and took off his clothes and laid down.  I lit a kerosene lamp and then told him to close his eyes.  I went over and took hold of his arm at the wrist and lifted it up to one of the posts above his head.  I was able to get the strap around his wrist and get it buckled before he opened his eyes to pull his hand away.
     "You're kinky, girl,"  he said with a grin.
     "I thought you liked it,"  I said.
     He kept grinning while I buckled up his other wrist to the opposite post.  Then I tied his ankles to the posts at the foot of the big stained mattress.  He looked a little uneasy, but seemed to enjoy it.  I told him to try to get his hands and feet loose.  He couldn't.
"Sorta like bein' one of your own victims, huh, Jessie?"  I watched his face.  He looked mad.  "How does it feel?"  This was one of my favorite parts.  How each of them looked when I had them at my mercy and they knew it.
    "Let me loose, girl."
    He was getting angry.  "Too late,"  I told him.
    The pins were where I'd always kept them: in the drawer in the ugly bedside table.  I liked the ones with the little knobs at the end, all different colors.  They made prettier designs.  You could come up with some neat stuff with a little patience and imagination.  "How many girls have you raped this month, Jessie?"
    His face changed colors like someone had flushed the blood
right out of his cheeks.  He was a smart guy.  Smart enough to get away from the cops, but not from me.  I had my own law.
    "What is this?"  He forgot to keep that macho-lowness in his voice, and it cracked.
     "Have you ever been humiliated?  Or molested?  Or raped?  Or how about all three?"

    True terror.  That was what he was feeling.  True terror, like I had felt once, and like all those other unlucky girls.  It might have had something to do with the tiny needle I had in my hand . . . the way it caught the light . . . maybe I'd spell RAPIST in different colors this time.
    He didn't like the first one at all.  Maybe because I started with his navel.  He yelled pretty loud and cursed me.  But I liked the way the little red knob rested inside that puckered hole like a tiny earring or something.  He was a bleeder, too.  That was good.  Made my job more satisfying.
    "Tell me what you did to that little sixth-grader last week,
Jessie . . . "  He was breathing funny, and sweat was making beads on his upper lip.
    "What?  Whattaya mean?  What are you doing?"
    "Your chicken came home, Jessie.  They always do, you know.  Chickens come home."
    "You're crazy! Let me up!"
    "Beg me, Jessie.  Beg me."
    He shut up, then.  Too proud.  Not for long.  They never shut up for long.  I tried a green one next, just below the first.  His skin started to crawl.
    "Stop it!"  he shouted.
    "Beg me, Jessie.  Beg me."
    He whimpered once.
    "Tell me about the sixth-grader, Jessie."  I held another pin in my hand.  His eyes went wide.
    "She wanted it--"  he stammered.
    "Like you want it, now, Jessie?"  I twirled the pin in my fingers and the silver reflected the light from the kerosene lamp.
     "She was comin' on to me!"  He pulled against the straps, but only made red welts on his wrists.

     "So you raped her."  This pin went above his navel.  He jerked around.  "Beg me, Jessie.  Beg me."
     "No!  Fuck! You're gonna die for this!  You hear me?!"
     "I hear you, Jessie.  But first, you're gonna suffer."  I took the hunting knife from the drawer and twirled it in my hand.  His eyes came a few inches out of his sockets when he saw that.  It was really funny.  "Tell me what you did to her, Jessie."
     He looked at the knife, squirmed around, and looked at it again.  He was weighing his options.  Only, he didn't have any.
    "I raped her."
     "How?"
     "What?"
     I turned the knife around like it was on one of those revolving watch displays at the drug store.  "How, Jessie?"
     "Every way!"
     "How many times?"

    He gritted his teeth at me and I ran the tip of the knife down the middle of his chest to his navel, leaving a long red line behind the blade, and tapped on one of the pin heads with it.  "How many times, Jessie?"
     "Oh, God!  I don't remember!  Over and over!  I don't remember . . . Oh . . . God . . . "
     I put the knife on the table and leaned down into his face.  "Did she beg you to stop, Jessie?"  He spat in my face and I leaned back, wiping it away with my sleeve.  "You shouldn't have done that, Jessie.  Now I'm mad."  I went to the other side of the bed and took out a handful of pins.  As I put them, one at a time, into each space between each of his ribs, I said,  "Do you feel helpless, Jessie?  Do you feel humiliated? Are you afraid you're gonna die?"  He clamped his mouth shut, but I prodded him with a few more pins and he whimpered.  "Do you, Jessie?"

     "Yes!  Yes!  Yes . . ."  his shouts turned into another whine.  He was crying like a kid--like a sixth-grader.  But when I looked down, his dick was hard.  Boys don't know the difference between pain and pleasure.  One look at that swollen, engorged weapon, and anyone can see that.  They just want a place to put it, with or without consent.  "Big man, now, huh Jessie?"  I slapped his dick with the side of my knife and he cursed me.  "You're not going to be a big man for long, Jessie.  If you had shown any remorse, I might have just let you go at this point.  I might think you'd learned your lesson.  But you're not sorry.  Look at it--"  I pointed to his dick with the knife.  "It's ready to rape another sixth-grader."
     His lips curled back in rage.  "Fuck you!"
     I smiled.  "Only in your dreams, Jessie.  See, chickens come home."  I took hold of his dick at the head and let him get a good look at the knife as I cocked back my arm.
     You know, I think he screamed louder than all the others.