VECTOR

Jasmine

                                                                CHAPTER 1

                                                                   Jasmine

        Jasmine was tired. Her day at the lab had run longer than she had expected, mostly because her ignorant boss didn't understand the difference between incubation time, contagious time, and symptomatic time. He kept insisting that people were contagious from the instant they acquired the virus. In this case, that was impossible and in fact, undesirable. The virus could be quickly defeated if symptoms occurred immediately. After the first or second infection, countermeasures would be initiated. She finally had to agree with him simply because she couldn't work otherwise. Stupid people, stupid men. As she removed her burqa and headscarf, she knew her day was far from over. Stupid male boss would be replaced by stupid husband, and of the two, stupid husband was by far the most dangerous.

        Alone in her own home, Jasmine could wear the blue jeans and silk shirt she wanted to wear to work. In Karachi, women never worked in jeans and shirts. A lab coat over the burqa, a headscarf that made her scalp itch, she felt more like a robot than a woman. When she thought about her trip to Europe for the conference, envy rose in her like a lava. What she wouldn’t give to be able to parade around in a skimpy skirt and stiletto heels. She had the legs for it. Whenever she looked in the mirror, she saw a woman far sexier than anyone would believe. And all that beauty was wasted. The only male who ever saw her naked was her husband, and he was a pig.

        Before she left her bedroom for the kitchen, she logged onto her special email account. No one knew about it, because if someone did, she would be subjected to extreme punishment. The email was part of the dark network, a place where not even the Imam’s lackeys could penetrate. Oh, they probably knew she was online, but they had no idea where she was, and that thrilled her. To have something of her own, something no one could take away. That was exciting. More, she had friends out there in the netverse. They knew almost nothing about her, and she knew little about them, but they were there. They sent blogs and stories and asked about her, her, little Jasmine. Few people in Pakistan cared for her. Her parents were done with her as soon as they married her off to the pig, and her siblings had their own tribulations.

        Her inbox held a number of messages, and she skipped most of them. She scrolled down until she found mail from Claire. She opened the message, and as she read, she smiled. She had met Claire in Paris, at the conference. They were in the same profession—biological science. They even worked in the same field, infectious diseases. But while they both lived in that rarified world of tiny, dangerous organisms, they rarely traded work information. It wasn't as if they were rivals, although in a way, they probably were. It was that research results were often iffy, and if Jasmine passed along a preliminary finding that was wrong, her credibility would take a hit. No, they limited their shop talk and traded mail about the important stuff—love and s*x.

        In this message, Claire described her latest in a line of men that had shared her bed. Oliver wasn't the most handsome guy, but he was stable and not given to excessive drinking. Jasmine recounted that one night in Paris where she had had too much wine. Jacques had been there to take her back to her hotel room, and Jacques had been there the next morning. In between, he had ravished her in ways that were literally impossible in the world of Pakistani men. She had never felt so alive as when Jacques licked her till she had her first ever orgasm. She had often thought she was too frigid to have one of those. At least, that’s what the pig told her. She would never enjoy his superior lovemaking.

        Jasmine had her mother to thank for her orgasms. While her father wanted her “cut” in accordance with local customs, Jasmine’s mother would not hear of it. She called it barbaric and cruel. She said that if her husband insisted, then she would do the same to him some night while he slept. Jasmine's mother was not incredibly power, but when she put down her foot, her husband obeyed—not often.

        Jasmine finished the email and wondered if she would ever see Claire again. There would certainly be other conferences for those in the infectious disease field, but there was no guarantee that she would be allowed to attend. Her boss might like her to exchange ideas with her colleagues, but her husband wasn’t so liberal. At least once a week her husband threatened to make her quit. Jasmine didn’t believe him as he loved money more than anything else, but she was careful not to antagonize him too much. She liked her job, and she was competent. There weren’t many women in Karachi who could claim that.

        After logging off, Jasmine went to the kitchen to cook. She was a passable cook, although her husband called her a goat herder, someone who burned the outside and left the inside raw, as if she cooked over an open fire. Her culinary skills were nothing to brag about, but the food was always simple and edible. If she wanted, she could arrange for it to be poisonous too. She had sometimes wondered if the police were competent to catch her if she wanted her husband dead. She doubted it. She knew far more about the human body than did the police. As she set water on the stove to boil, she remembered Jacques. He was heat itself.

        "There you are.”

        She turned to her husband, a fat man who was twenty years older. She had come to loathe his body, its folds of fat and hair. He was obese, from fat fingers to drooping jowls. Since he didn’t bathe every day, he often smelled foul and half dead. One look at his florid face told her he had been drinking, something forbidden but enjoyed anyway. He was not the practicing Muslim he pretended to be. Many afternoons, he met with other men in a dim and dirty coffee house where they served more alcohol than coffee. And when he drank, he became insufferable and dangerous.

        “Why are you wearing that?”he demanded.

        “I will change,” she answered. “

        "No, you will not. Down to the basement.”

        “I've just started dinner. Perhaps later.”

        He sneered. "You will not obey?”

        Jasmine bowed her head. She had learned long before that obedience had to be absolute. He always claimed that as her husband he enjoyed certain rights, and her complete obedience was one of those rights. “

        As you wish,” she said.

        He stepped forward and grabbed her hair. He painfully twisted her head to one side and stared into her eyes. “

        "I wish,” he growled. “Now, go!”

        He half threw her across the room, and she crashed into the wall. She knew she would have a bruise the next day, and that he didn’t care. Head still bowed, she opened the door and turned on the light. As she descended the steps, she started the mantra in her mind. She knew what was coming. She knew his cruelties would come, and she tried to steel her mind against the coming pain. At the bottom she stopped and waited. Perhaps, he wouldn’t come down. Perhaps, he would merely lock her in the dirt floored room overnight. He had done that before but not often. Spending the night in the room would be cold, but she had done it before. Shivering was far preferable to what might happen if he came down.

        She spotted his mud-stained shoes on the steps, and her heart beat faster. He was coming. The mantra quickened in her head. Many times, she had wished the pig would trip on the steps and tumble down the steps like the drunken goat he was. Despite her wish, he never tripped. He arrived at the bottom, his small, piggy eyes lidded with disdain. It was ever the same, and it made her ball her hands into fists.

        "You are clothed,” he said. “That is not acceptable.” “

        "Please,” she said. “It is cold.”

        He slapped her hard, sending her reeling. It always began with that slap. She stopped, her cheek stinging, and began to strip. She knew he watched.

        She knew he liked her nakedness, her vulnerability. She knew it made him aroused to see her naked. She knew that once naked, she had to walk to the wall and place her hands inside the restraints. He always came over and wrenched her hands over her head. Then, he would spank her. It was a gentle spank at first, but after half a dozen slaps, she knew she was red and stinging. Her mantra was a prayer that it would stop with that, with just the spanking. When he stopped, she thought that perhaps he was too drunk to do what he usually did.

        She was wrong.

        The whip whispered across her bare skin. It was his own invention as he often told her, a broad bit of leather that he had cut into strips. The strips were knotted at the end which left polka-dot bruises all over her. Not when he barely flicked it, but that was just to tease her, to let her know that worse was coming. He never flayed her. He rarely broke the skin. He didn’t have to. The pain was exquisite. The individual strips were like snakes that bit into her over and over again. She held back her screams because if she screamed too early, he would accuse her of faking and apply his whip with more vigor. No, she had to wait till the exactly right moment, when her scream would make him even more aroused. He liked torture, liked to inflict pain. She often wondered if he could take pain.

        “You are whispering,” he said. “What are you whispering about?"

        She knew she had not been whispering, but it would be foolish to protest. She knew what he wanted to hear.

        "I beg for your touch,” she said. “I beg for my husband's perfect touch.”

        He jerked back her head and spit in her face. “Lies must be punished.” He stepped back and lashed her with his whip. She moaned and tried to avoid the whip, but he was good with it. The strips raked her breasts and bottom, even between her legs. When one tore at her, she screamed as she knew he wanted. He lived for her screams.

        “Please,” she pleaded, “Please.”

        She heard the whip drop, and she knew what came next. Next he would penetrate her with his less than large manness. He would ram into her, and she would remember how much Jacques had been, how much stronger and better. Her husband seemed feeble by comparison, and yet, she knew she must whisper about his size, his strength. She knew he needed her moans.

        “You like it there, don't you?” he asked.

        “Oh, yes,” she hissed. “You know what it does to me.”

        He reached around and squeezed her breast so hard she thought it might burst. Then, he stuck his thumb inside her and pressed harder than he had ever pressed before.

        “I think I might kill you,” he whispered.

        His other hand slid up to her throat, and he choked her, something he had never done before.

        “Yes, it would be so easy. You are nothing. You are worse than nothing, for you cannot give me children. No one would say a word.”

        She fought the panic creeping into her mind. Would he really kill her? Would he choke her so that he might feel something he had never felt before? Is this what he did to those young boys he brought home? She couldn't know, but even as her vision began to fade, she made herself a promise. If she survived, she was going to kill him.