08-05-2008, 12:07 AM
Rivals The Arboretum (part 1 of 2) written by Jeri
"This is boring" said Amber to Crissy for the third time that day. It was now spring in their sophomore year, the most boring year of college. But that wasn't what had her bored.
Both Amber and Crissy were so well trained and hard that they barely felt the punches to their stomachs any more. Their stomach-punching contests had become not much more than kickboxing practices.
Both Crissy and Amber had been training since their first stomach-punching contest just over a year ago. Initially, they had gotten together weekly to practice their kickboxing skills. However, they quickly found out it was much more fun if they held stomach-punching contests consisting of the two trading punches. This both built up their punching and kicking skills and conditioned their stomachs to receive the blows they knew they would receive during competitions. Over the year, their punching and kicking skills had improved, but they had reached a plateau that all kickboxers reach about this time. Their kickboxing skills weren't getting any better. Their stomach conditioning was still improving, however. So, they were at a point now where their kicks and punches were no longer sufficient to penetrate each other's stomachs. Once in a while, they would try contests with blows to their completely relaxed stomachs. But while these blows hurt, they didn't have the exquisite pain of a blow penetrating completely through a set of totally flexed and hard stomach muscles. Their weekly stomach punching training did have one unexpected side advantage, though. And of course it was Crissy who figured it out first, during one of her kickboxing competitions.
Crissy was in a bout with a kickboxer from another college. He was many pounds heavier than she was, near the top of her weight class, while she was near the bottom. He was well trained, and had a couple years more experience than she did. After the second round, Crissy was pretty sure she would be losing this bout, as he was so much better than she was. His punches and kicks were starting to get through her defenses, and she had already received several blows from him. After one particularly fast combination of punches and kicks, he caught Crissy blocking upward with both her arms. He then threw a powerful, swift punch directly to her solar plexus ... and froze. He had expected Crissy to fold over from the force of the punch and the induced pain. He had not expected her to absorb the full force of the blow to her stomach with no visible effect. Crissy immediately took advantage of his moment of confusion to respond with a knee to his upper body and a side snap kick to his stomach. He fell to the floor from the force of the blows. Crissy was able to take control of the rest of the bout, and she won it on points.
Crissy and Amber discussed what had happened during the bout. They both realized they had an advantage over the other fighters. They didn't really have to protect their stomachs from any of their opponent's blows. This gave them the advantage that they could concentrate on protecting their upper and lower zones, and not have to worry about blocks to attacks in the middle zone. The other tactic that this afforded them was that their middle stomach zone appeared to be undefended. They could be pretty confident that this open, inviting target would cause their opponent to do a punch or kick to their stomach sometime during the bout. They could absorb the force of the blow due to their stomach-punching contest conditioning, and be in the ideal position to deliver a devastating counter punch or kick combination that often ended the bout right there. In fact, they developed their own strategies and combinations for blows to different parts of their stomach and practiced these counter-attacks extensively on each other so they would respond naturally to a stomach punch of a particular type with the appropriate, practiced combination.
This new fighting strategy gave them a marked advantage over most of the other kickboxers, and won many bouts for them. Some of the other boxers tried to emulate them, but their stomachs didn't have the strength or conditioning to go unprotected, as most of them found out the hard way. And those who did know about their strategy were immediately put at a disadvantage, since a lot of the strongest attacks they knew were to the stomach area. They had to rely on other, weaker attacks to avoid being caught in the trap of the new strategy, while Crissy and Amber had full use of all the strongest attacks they knew.
Crissy and Amber racked up many trophies and had the best win records of the college, due mainly to their newly discovered strategy. And, the conditioning of Crissy and Amber's stomachs was the envy of many of the kickboxers in their college and on a lot of the visiting college teams. Some of their fellow kickboxers would try to catch them unaware in the locker room or shower and playfully throw a light punch to their stomachs. Some would throw punches much beyond playful, with all their strength. Once in a while, Crissy or Amber would be unprepared for the blow and would fall to their knees. But they would be back up soon after with no noticeable effect, but with a stern warning not to do that again. Few did not follow that warning.
When Amber went back to her dorm room after what they both agreed was the most boring stomach punching contest yet, she decided to go for an evening swim in the gym pool. She was coming back from the pool in her bikini and a short bathrobe, winding her way between the cars in the parking lot...
Amber's mind was hazy and confused. She was having a hard time seeing anything. She didn't know what was going on. As she was wondering what was happening, her mind started to become clearer. She suddenly realized that this feeling of confusion was familiar. She remembered this is how she felt when she was awakening from one of Crissy's blows that had knocked her out several months back, though she didn't understand how she could have been knocked out this time. As each second passed, her mind became clearer. The first thing she noticed was that she had a severe headache. She went to hold her head, and her arms wouldn't move. She also heard murmuring of some kind. Slowly over about the next minute, Amber made several discoveries. First, she had a cloth blind fold over her eyes and another cloth covering her mouth. Second, she was tied tightly on the ground in a spread eagle position, with the ropes stretching her limbs in the four directions so tightly that she could get no slack in them. Third, she was completely naked, open and unprotected. Fourth, she seemed to be in some wooded area, since she heard many woodland sounds. And finally, the murmuring she had heard was actually several girls talking among themselves. She thought she heard one of the girls mention the Arboretum, which matched her impressions of the sounds of her surroundings and the strong pine scent in the air.
The Arboretum was an area that abutted the college grounds proper. It was originally part of the woodland area that the college was built on. This wooded area went on for miles, well beyond the borders of the land owned by the college. You could often hear gunshots in the woods well outside the college boundaries, where some hunter was attempting to bag one of the swift deer that populated the area.
The Arboretum proper actually consisted of only one corner of the woods that had been landscaped. In the spring like now, the multi-colored flowers that had been planted in the Arboretum would bloom and the short grass that had been planted around them would grow voraciously, needing to be cut a couple times a week. Outside of the cultured and manicured area of the Arboretum proper, the original woods were mostly untouched. There was an old hiking trail circling through the woods, though it was too narrow and uneven to provide a good path for jogging. During the day, the woods were usually not too crowded, and you could sometimes walk the whole trail without seeing another hiker. During the evening and especially during the night, no one walked in the woods, due to the incident that happened there before Crissy and Amber enrolled in the college.
The Arboretum area proper was small enough that one man was able to maintain it, by himself. Everyone called him Pops, though he was probably no more than in his mid fifties. He would prune the flowers and shrubs, mow the lawn and tend to the gardens and landscaping. Early every morning, he would walk briskly along the old trail in the woods to look for any new dangers, such as fallen trees or branches across the trail, or roots sticking up to trip an unwary hiker. Other than this minimal care, the wooded area of the Arboretum was left to fend for itself.
Amber was now completely conscious. She thought she had figured out what had happened. As she was walking back from the swimming pool through the parking lot, she had been struck from behind on the neck or head, probably with a knife-hand blow or punch, and had immediately passed out. She had been carried back to this area, stripped of her clothes (though she was only wearing a bikini and a short robe) and tied up. Because of the lack of the smell of flowers, she was probably tied up somewhere in the wooded area, with the ropes stretching her body very taut, probably between four conveniently placed trees. They must have pulled the ropes really tight, maybe with some kind of a lever, as she could not move at all in any way and her arms felt like they were being pulled out of their sockets a little. She did notice that her wrists and ankles had some kind of protective wrap around them to protect them from being chafed by the ropes. Because of the trouble they took to protect her from rope burns, she thought whoever had done this didn't really want to hurt her. In this she was very wrong, as she would soon find out.
Amber heard the voices of her captors talking a little way away from her. She heard one of them say, "It looks like she's awake."
She heard them approach her through the rustling of the twigs on the ground. Her only available sense was her hearing, so she listened intently to every sound. It sounded like there were anywhere from 5 to 10 of them in the group. From the voices she heard earlier, they were all girls, though she didn't recognize any of their voices. They sounded like they were all college age, and most likely from her own college. She thought she would probably have recognized most of them if she hadn't been blindfolded.
She heard them gathering around her on all sides. One of them said, "Now," in a low voice, and she was immediately kicked all over down and into her stomach by what must have been all of them.
She wasn't expecting this, so the first two kicks were to her relaxed stomach, which caused her to wince at the pain. As soon as she realized what they were doing, she tightened her whole abdominal area muscles taut and the remaining kicks bounced off her hard stomach. She recognized most of the blows as types of kickboxing blows, but some were just stomps. And some were straight kicks with the toe of their shoes to her side, right into the oblique muscles. These hurt quite a bit.
They kept kicking Amber for a while, probably a minute or two. Some of the girls had quite a good technique and were able to put a lot of strength into their kicks. Some of these stronger kicks started to get through her muscles and caused them to sting. She was a little relieved when she heard the same girl say, "Stop," and the kicks stopped, except for one girl who kept kicking her weakly for about another five seconds, which drew a snicker from the other girls.
One of the girls said, "We know you think you have a strong stomach. We're going to see just how strong it really is. Maybe you'll see that it's not as strong as you think it is. We're going to show you what stomach pain really is."
With that, all the girls kicked down into her stomach together one final time.
Amber's major fear was that someone would get carried away and miss their mark, possibly breaking a rib or other bone. From the feel of the kicks, some of them were not too skilled and had little control of their kick placement. She feared an overzealous amateur would do some major, possibly permanent damage to her. If she were in a bout, she could have deflected these types of attacks, but she had no opportunity to do that here.
Amber heard the ringleader say, "OK, now punches." She heard all the girls move over to her right side. Then individually they started to punch down into her stomach, in different places each time. From the shuffling, she deduced that they had lined up and were taking turns kneeling down to her and punching directly down into her stomach, one punch each. Her stomach started to hurt a lot after about a minute of this continuous punching.
Suddenly Amber got an idea. She started counting the blows. She had noticed that each punch had a different force and that the pattern was repeating, indicating the girls were taking turns in a round-robin fashion. After fourteen punches, she recognized the same sequence starting to repeat itself. That meant there were fourteen girls, at least in this rotation.
The punching went on for a long time, though she had no way of knowing how long it was. Her stomach was really starting to hurt, and her muscles were starting to give out. She could take stronger punches to her stomach, but she had never been punched continuously like this before while she tried to hold her stomach flexed at the same time. Her muscles finally lost their tone in almost a rush and the punches started coming through to her insides. She was really hurting now, as every punch was to her almost completely relaxed stomach. The only consolation she had was that the punches were getting weaker, as the girls were starting to tire too.
The whole of her stomach was on fire from the overall beating it was taking. Every new punch left a searing pain at the spot it landed, and sent ripples of pain throughout the rest of her stomach. She was grunting loudly with every new punch and groaning between the punches.
Suddenly the ringleader said, "Stop."
Amber was awash in pain all over her whole stomach, and was groaning with every exhale. She made a conscious decision to stop groaning so she could use the only sense left to her, her hearing. She heard that most of the girls were panting loudly and gasping for breath. Some of them sounded like they might have been on their knees. She smiled inwardly when she realized that they had stopped only because they were almost about to collapse themselves.
Amber was left alone with her pain for only a little while, when she again was awash with pain as someone knelt down on her tender stomach with one knee. The ringleader said quietly to her, "See, your stomach isn't as strong as you thought it was, was it? But don't think we're finished with you yet!"
The ringleader pushed herself up to a standing position, using her knee in Amber's stomach as a lever (which caused Amber to groan from the new searing pain) and said, "Bring the log."
Amber had no idea what this was going to be about, but she didn't like the sound of it. She was trying to gain back some of her muscle tone to ward off other blows, when she heard some shuffling on either side of her. She instinctively tightened her stomach muscles, which also increased the level of the pain in her stomach another notch. She heard the girl on her left side start counting, "One, two, three." A fraction of a second after the count of three, a large, heavy object smashed down into the middle of her stomach, the log, she would later realize. The pain was so intense that she gasped for breath, even through the gag. She could not get her breath back with the heavy log still deep in her stomach. She kept gasping for any little bit of air that she could get. When they picked the log up, the sudden removal of the pressure made her stomach muscles spasm with the pain. She was suddenly able to breathe and she took in a gasping breath through her nose and through the gag. She was just starting to be able to breathe again, when she heard something that brought fear to her heart.
"One, two three."
The log smashed into her stomach again. This went on for a total of eight times, with Amber getting weaker and weaker with every blow. The pain did not go any higher however, as it was at the peak the body could register already, though Amber's mind was so far gone from the pain that she wasn't really registering the pain any more. She jerked only a little during the last three log drops, but she did not lose consciousness.
The girls left her alone with her pain with the log still on her stomach for a long time, hours it seemed to Amber. She slowly recovered during this time, unfortunately. Her senses were no longer shut down and she was again able to feel the fiery pain in her stomach. She was just starting to feel the pain beginning to subside, when she heard the rustling of the girls on either side of her.
The ringleader stomped on the log while leaning over to her and said, "Still think your stomach is something special? Well, try this."
She stood up and said, "Teeter-totter," and one side of the log tipped, rotating on Amber's stomach. Then the log was tipped back the other way and pressed down tightly into her stomach, crushing it. The previous working over her stomach had gotten from the log had left it still soft and highly sensitive. The heavy pressure on her stomach caused the pain to shoot up to its maximum level again. Suddenly, the log got heavier, and heavier, and heavier still. She would later realize that "teeter-totter" was the appropriate term, as the girls were all sitting on either side of the log. They then started to teeter the log back and forth, using Amber's stomach as the fulcrum. After about a minute of this, Amber passed out again from the pain.
Amber slowly started to come back to consciousness. Suddenly, she was brought back to sharp consciousness by someone drenching her with what seemed like a lake of freezing water. She jumped at the shock of the water, which caused her stomach to release the searing pain it had stored up for her while she was unconscious. She cried out in pain, though the cry was almost completely muffled by the cloth gag covering her mouth. She was barely able to function through the pain, but she heard a girl bringing another bucket of water. She heard the sound of ice hitting the sides of the metal pail, so she knew it was really ice water being thrown on her. The second bucket of ice water actually helped a bit, as it cooled and numbed her inflamed stomach somewhat.
Amber jumped and screamed a muffled scream from the pain of another knee forcefully burying itself in the middle of her stomach. She heard the ringleader say, "Does it hurt? Do you think it hurts as much as a stomach blow to one of our stomachs during kickboxing? Think about this in the future."
The ringleader stood up and said, "Bring the batons."
Amber had done a little work with batons while cheerleading (though she wasn't really good at it), but she knew they didn't mean those kinds of batons. There was an Army base on the other side of the town. A few years back, before Crissy and Amber had entered the college, there were several attacks in the woods on girls, always at night. During a couple of these attacks, several soldiers were seen leaving the area. The last of the attacks put a girl in the hospital. She recovered, but it took a couple weeks. No one was able to identify who the soldiers were, because they all looked alike in their fatigues in the darkness. The college put on extra security patrols for a while, and the attacks stopped. The students just referred to this as "The Incident in the Woods" or just "The Incident."
The school bookstore started to stock some self defense weapons such as Mace and stun guns, and more importantly, an assortment of police batons. As each new freshman class entered the college, they were given an allotment to buy the weapons of their choice from the bookstore, to help them feel safer after the incident. The most popular of these weapons was the three-foot police baton. It was molded of strong plastic and was about an inch in diameter with a right-angle pistol grip near one end. It had heavy lead weights imbedded in it near the tip of the long end, to improve the striking force there. It was a formidable weapon if a person knew how to use it. It was not really an appropriate weapon for most of the girls since it was quite heavy and too long to carry around comfortably. However it made the girls feel safer if they had it handy in their dorm rooms. Over the years since the incident, these batons had been used many times, but so far, they had not been used to ward off an attacker, since there had been no more attacks. Neither Crissy nor Amber thought they had the need for one of these batons, so never bought one.
Amber knew they were talking about these batons, and her mind started to think of all the ways they could use them on her. She didn't have long to wait, as she heard all the girls again approach and surround her. The first blow to her stomach was a swinging axe-like strike down into her stomach with the weighted end of the baton. She gasped at the blow. The rest of the girls used the same type of blow, going around and around in the circle surrounding her. Some of the blows would hit her very lightly, probably because the girl could not really lift the baton to get a good strike. Some hit her much harder, as they probably could lift the heavy weapon over their heads and drop it. And, a couple hit her extremely hard. With these ones, she could actually hear the blow coming, as she could hear them grunting as they forcefully swung the heavily weighted end of the night stick with all their might from way behind their heads down deep into her exposed stomach.
Amber was in searing pain after the first round. Subsequent rounds added to the pain even more. Amber was barely thinking from the pain, but noticed that the weaker girls were dropping out of her beating, probably because they could no longer lift the batons. This did not help, however, since this meant the heavier blows from the stronger girls came more frequently. Soon, there were just two girls alternately beating her with their batons. Amber jerked each time she was hit, but the pain of the new blows could no longer be separated from the pain that was already searing her whole stomach. Eventually the two girls remaining both tired and stopped together, gasping for breath themselves.
Amber's mind was in a haze, the pain was so great. She realized that the ringleader had once again jammed her knee into Amber's stomach and was saying something, but she couldn't make out the words. The knee pressure on her stomach went away. She was suddenly jolted into consciousness when she was drenched again with a bucket of ice water, which brought her around at least to the point she could understand what the ringleader was saying. She said, "I said, does that feel good? How's your stomach now? What? You still want some more? OK, but we'll let you think about the pain a little before we continue."
Amber was completely and fully conscious, which was not what she wanted at this point. She could feel all the pain in her stomach in sparkling, excruciating detail and clarity. Every breath she took was agony as her stomach moved with her breathing. She tried her best to breathe only using her upper chest and leaving her stomach immobile, which helped with most of the shooting pains in her stomach but didn't help the overall fire burning in her stomach. She heard her torturers talking calmly about the latest gossip at her school and about the latest movie that had been released. Amid her pain, Amber thought this was funny, though she didn't dare laugh or even chuckle.
The pain in her stomach gradually lessened, but not appreciably. Every few minutes during this time, she would hear one of the girls walk over to her and the other girls would get quiet. She would then receive a painful stab down into some part of her stomach with one of the batons and she would jump and cry out a little due to the sudden influx of pain to her already inflamed stomach. The girls usually laughed a little at this, then continued their casual conversation. Since this blow was so predictable, she decided to try to stifle her responses a little. The next time she heard the girl coming and was jabbed in the stomach, she did not cry out or even jump at the pain. After a couple of these stabs to her stomach with no response on her part, the other girls did not even stop their conversations to observe her reaction to the blows.
Between blows, Amber was trying to recover. She would flex her stomach a little while trying to ignore the accompanying rush of pain. Eventually, she recovered enough to be able to flex her stomach to ward off the blows a little. This helped her enough that she was finally able to completely ward off one of the jabs, with her stomach muscles remaining firm. This was the wrong thing to do, as the girl that had stabbed her called out, "Lola, I think she's recovered"
"This is boring" said Amber to Crissy for the third time that day. It was now spring in their sophomore year, the most boring year of college. But that wasn't what had her bored.
Both Amber and Crissy were so well trained and hard that they barely felt the punches to their stomachs any more. Their stomach-punching contests had become not much more than kickboxing practices.
Both Crissy and Amber had been training since their first stomach-punching contest just over a year ago. Initially, they had gotten together weekly to practice their kickboxing skills. However, they quickly found out it was much more fun if they held stomach-punching contests consisting of the two trading punches. This both built up their punching and kicking skills and conditioned their stomachs to receive the blows they knew they would receive during competitions. Over the year, their punching and kicking skills had improved, but they had reached a plateau that all kickboxers reach about this time. Their kickboxing skills weren't getting any better. Their stomach conditioning was still improving, however. So, they were at a point now where their kicks and punches were no longer sufficient to penetrate each other's stomachs. Once in a while, they would try contests with blows to their completely relaxed stomachs. But while these blows hurt, they didn't have the exquisite pain of a blow penetrating completely through a set of totally flexed and hard stomach muscles. Their weekly stomach punching training did have one unexpected side advantage, though. And of course it was Crissy who figured it out first, during one of her kickboxing competitions.
Crissy was in a bout with a kickboxer from another college. He was many pounds heavier than she was, near the top of her weight class, while she was near the bottom. He was well trained, and had a couple years more experience than she did. After the second round, Crissy was pretty sure she would be losing this bout, as he was so much better than she was. His punches and kicks were starting to get through her defenses, and she had already received several blows from him. After one particularly fast combination of punches and kicks, he caught Crissy blocking upward with both her arms. He then threw a powerful, swift punch directly to her solar plexus ... and froze. He had expected Crissy to fold over from the force of the punch and the induced pain. He had not expected her to absorb the full force of the blow to her stomach with no visible effect. Crissy immediately took advantage of his moment of confusion to respond with a knee to his upper body and a side snap kick to his stomach. He fell to the floor from the force of the blows. Crissy was able to take control of the rest of the bout, and she won it on points.
Crissy and Amber discussed what had happened during the bout. They both realized they had an advantage over the other fighters. They didn't really have to protect their stomachs from any of their opponent's blows. This gave them the advantage that they could concentrate on protecting their upper and lower zones, and not have to worry about blocks to attacks in the middle zone. The other tactic that this afforded them was that their middle stomach zone appeared to be undefended. They could be pretty confident that this open, inviting target would cause their opponent to do a punch or kick to their stomach sometime during the bout. They could absorb the force of the blow due to their stomach-punching contest conditioning, and be in the ideal position to deliver a devastating counter punch or kick combination that often ended the bout right there. In fact, they developed their own strategies and combinations for blows to different parts of their stomach and practiced these counter-attacks extensively on each other so they would respond naturally to a stomach punch of a particular type with the appropriate, practiced combination.
This new fighting strategy gave them a marked advantage over most of the other kickboxers, and won many bouts for them. Some of the other boxers tried to emulate them, but their stomachs didn't have the strength or conditioning to go unprotected, as most of them found out the hard way. And those who did know about their strategy were immediately put at a disadvantage, since a lot of the strongest attacks they knew were to the stomach area. They had to rely on other, weaker attacks to avoid being caught in the trap of the new strategy, while Crissy and Amber had full use of all the strongest attacks they knew.
Crissy and Amber racked up many trophies and had the best win records of the college, due mainly to their newly discovered strategy. And, the conditioning of Crissy and Amber's stomachs was the envy of many of the kickboxers in their college and on a lot of the visiting college teams. Some of their fellow kickboxers would try to catch them unaware in the locker room or shower and playfully throw a light punch to their stomachs. Some would throw punches much beyond playful, with all their strength. Once in a while, Crissy or Amber would be unprepared for the blow and would fall to their knees. But they would be back up soon after with no noticeable effect, but with a stern warning not to do that again. Few did not follow that warning.
When Amber went back to her dorm room after what they both agreed was the most boring stomach punching contest yet, she decided to go for an evening swim in the gym pool. She was coming back from the pool in her bikini and a short bathrobe, winding her way between the cars in the parking lot...
Amber's mind was hazy and confused. She was having a hard time seeing anything. She didn't know what was going on. As she was wondering what was happening, her mind started to become clearer. She suddenly realized that this feeling of confusion was familiar. She remembered this is how she felt when she was awakening from one of Crissy's blows that had knocked her out several months back, though she didn't understand how she could have been knocked out this time. As each second passed, her mind became clearer. The first thing she noticed was that she had a severe headache. She went to hold her head, and her arms wouldn't move. She also heard murmuring of some kind. Slowly over about the next minute, Amber made several discoveries. First, she had a cloth blind fold over her eyes and another cloth covering her mouth. Second, she was tied tightly on the ground in a spread eagle position, with the ropes stretching her limbs in the four directions so tightly that she could get no slack in them. Third, she was completely naked, open and unprotected. Fourth, she seemed to be in some wooded area, since she heard many woodland sounds. And finally, the murmuring she had heard was actually several girls talking among themselves. She thought she heard one of the girls mention the Arboretum, which matched her impressions of the sounds of her surroundings and the strong pine scent in the air.
The Arboretum was an area that abutted the college grounds proper. It was originally part of the woodland area that the college was built on. This wooded area went on for miles, well beyond the borders of the land owned by the college. You could often hear gunshots in the woods well outside the college boundaries, where some hunter was attempting to bag one of the swift deer that populated the area.
The Arboretum proper actually consisted of only one corner of the woods that had been landscaped. In the spring like now, the multi-colored flowers that had been planted in the Arboretum would bloom and the short grass that had been planted around them would grow voraciously, needing to be cut a couple times a week. Outside of the cultured and manicured area of the Arboretum proper, the original woods were mostly untouched. There was an old hiking trail circling through the woods, though it was too narrow and uneven to provide a good path for jogging. During the day, the woods were usually not too crowded, and you could sometimes walk the whole trail without seeing another hiker. During the evening and especially during the night, no one walked in the woods, due to the incident that happened there before Crissy and Amber enrolled in the college.
The Arboretum area proper was small enough that one man was able to maintain it, by himself. Everyone called him Pops, though he was probably no more than in his mid fifties. He would prune the flowers and shrubs, mow the lawn and tend to the gardens and landscaping. Early every morning, he would walk briskly along the old trail in the woods to look for any new dangers, such as fallen trees or branches across the trail, or roots sticking up to trip an unwary hiker. Other than this minimal care, the wooded area of the Arboretum was left to fend for itself.
Amber was now completely conscious. She thought she had figured out what had happened. As she was walking back from the swimming pool through the parking lot, she had been struck from behind on the neck or head, probably with a knife-hand blow or punch, and had immediately passed out. She had been carried back to this area, stripped of her clothes (though she was only wearing a bikini and a short robe) and tied up. Because of the lack of the smell of flowers, she was probably tied up somewhere in the wooded area, with the ropes stretching her body very taut, probably between four conveniently placed trees. They must have pulled the ropes really tight, maybe with some kind of a lever, as she could not move at all in any way and her arms felt like they were being pulled out of their sockets a little. She did notice that her wrists and ankles had some kind of protective wrap around them to protect them from being chafed by the ropes. Because of the trouble they took to protect her from rope burns, she thought whoever had done this didn't really want to hurt her. In this she was very wrong, as she would soon find out.
Amber heard the voices of her captors talking a little way away from her. She heard one of them say, "It looks like she's awake."
She heard them approach her through the rustling of the twigs on the ground. Her only available sense was her hearing, so she listened intently to every sound. It sounded like there were anywhere from 5 to 10 of them in the group. From the voices she heard earlier, they were all girls, though she didn't recognize any of their voices. They sounded like they were all college age, and most likely from her own college. She thought she would probably have recognized most of them if she hadn't been blindfolded.
She heard them gathering around her on all sides. One of them said, "Now," in a low voice, and she was immediately kicked all over down and into her stomach by what must have been all of them.
She wasn't expecting this, so the first two kicks were to her relaxed stomach, which caused her to wince at the pain. As soon as she realized what they were doing, she tightened her whole abdominal area muscles taut and the remaining kicks bounced off her hard stomach. She recognized most of the blows as types of kickboxing blows, but some were just stomps. And some were straight kicks with the toe of their shoes to her side, right into the oblique muscles. These hurt quite a bit.
They kept kicking Amber for a while, probably a minute or two. Some of the girls had quite a good technique and were able to put a lot of strength into their kicks. Some of these stronger kicks started to get through her muscles and caused them to sting. She was a little relieved when she heard the same girl say, "Stop," and the kicks stopped, except for one girl who kept kicking her weakly for about another five seconds, which drew a snicker from the other girls.
One of the girls said, "We know you think you have a strong stomach. We're going to see just how strong it really is. Maybe you'll see that it's not as strong as you think it is. We're going to show you what stomach pain really is."
With that, all the girls kicked down into her stomach together one final time.
Amber's major fear was that someone would get carried away and miss their mark, possibly breaking a rib or other bone. From the feel of the kicks, some of them were not too skilled and had little control of their kick placement. She feared an overzealous amateur would do some major, possibly permanent damage to her. If she were in a bout, she could have deflected these types of attacks, but she had no opportunity to do that here.
Amber heard the ringleader say, "OK, now punches." She heard all the girls move over to her right side. Then individually they started to punch down into her stomach, in different places each time. From the shuffling, she deduced that they had lined up and were taking turns kneeling down to her and punching directly down into her stomach, one punch each. Her stomach started to hurt a lot after about a minute of this continuous punching.
Suddenly Amber got an idea. She started counting the blows. She had noticed that each punch had a different force and that the pattern was repeating, indicating the girls were taking turns in a round-robin fashion. After fourteen punches, she recognized the same sequence starting to repeat itself. That meant there were fourteen girls, at least in this rotation.
The punching went on for a long time, though she had no way of knowing how long it was. Her stomach was really starting to hurt, and her muscles were starting to give out. She could take stronger punches to her stomach, but she had never been punched continuously like this before while she tried to hold her stomach flexed at the same time. Her muscles finally lost their tone in almost a rush and the punches started coming through to her insides. She was really hurting now, as every punch was to her almost completely relaxed stomach. The only consolation she had was that the punches were getting weaker, as the girls were starting to tire too.
The whole of her stomach was on fire from the overall beating it was taking. Every new punch left a searing pain at the spot it landed, and sent ripples of pain throughout the rest of her stomach. She was grunting loudly with every new punch and groaning between the punches.
Suddenly the ringleader said, "Stop."
Amber was awash in pain all over her whole stomach, and was groaning with every exhale. She made a conscious decision to stop groaning so she could use the only sense left to her, her hearing. She heard that most of the girls were panting loudly and gasping for breath. Some of them sounded like they might have been on their knees. She smiled inwardly when she realized that they had stopped only because they were almost about to collapse themselves.
Amber was left alone with her pain for only a little while, when she again was awash with pain as someone knelt down on her tender stomach with one knee. The ringleader said quietly to her, "See, your stomach isn't as strong as you thought it was, was it? But don't think we're finished with you yet!"
The ringleader pushed herself up to a standing position, using her knee in Amber's stomach as a lever (which caused Amber to groan from the new searing pain) and said, "Bring the log."
Amber had no idea what this was going to be about, but she didn't like the sound of it. She was trying to gain back some of her muscle tone to ward off other blows, when she heard some shuffling on either side of her. She instinctively tightened her stomach muscles, which also increased the level of the pain in her stomach another notch. She heard the girl on her left side start counting, "One, two, three." A fraction of a second after the count of three, a large, heavy object smashed down into the middle of her stomach, the log, she would later realize. The pain was so intense that she gasped for breath, even through the gag. She could not get her breath back with the heavy log still deep in her stomach. She kept gasping for any little bit of air that she could get. When they picked the log up, the sudden removal of the pressure made her stomach muscles spasm with the pain. She was suddenly able to breathe and she took in a gasping breath through her nose and through the gag. She was just starting to be able to breathe again, when she heard something that brought fear to her heart.
"One, two three."
The log smashed into her stomach again. This went on for a total of eight times, with Amber getting weaker and weaker with every blow. The pain did not go any higher however, as it was at the peak the body could register already, though Amber's mind was so far gone from the pain that she wasn't really registering the pain any more. She jerked only a little during the last three log drops, but she did not lose consciousness.
The girls left her alone with her pain with the log still on her stomach for a long time, hours it seemed to Amber. She slowly recovered during this time, unfortunately. Her senses were no longer shut down and she was again able to feel the fiery pain in her stomach. She was just starting to feel the pain beginning to subside, when she heard the rustling of the girls on either side of her.
The ringleader stomped on the log while leaning over to her and said, "Still think your stomach is something special? Well, try this."
She stood up and said, "Teeter-totter," and one side of the log tipped, rotating on Amber's stomach. Then the log was tipped back the other way and pressed down tightly into her stomach, crushing it. The previous working over her stomach had gotten from the log had left it still soft and highly sensitive. The heavy pressure on her stomach caused the pain to shoot up to its maximum level again. Suddenly, the log got heavier, and heavier, and heavier still. She would later realize that "teeter-totter" was the appropriate term, as the girls were all sitting on either side of the log. They then started to teeter the log back and forth, using Amber's stomach as the fulcrum. After about a minute of this, Amber passed out again from the pain.
Amber slowly started to come back to consciousness. Suddenly, she was brought back to sharp consciousness by someone drenching her with what seemed like a lake of freezing water. She jumped at the shock of the water, which caused her stomach to release the searing pain it had stored up for her while she was unconscious. She cried out in pain, though the cry was almost completely muffled by the cloth gag covering her mouth. She was barely able to function through the pain, but she heard a girl bringing another bucket of water. She heard the sound of ice hitting the sides of the metal pail, so she knew it was really ice water being thrown on her. The second bucket of ice water actually helped a bit, as it cooled and numbed her inflamed stomach somewhat.
Amber jumped and screamed a muffled scream from the pain of another knee forcefully burying itself in the middle of her stomach. She heard the ringleader say, "Does it hurt? Do you think it hurts as much as a stomach blow to one of our stomachs during kickboxing? Think about this in the future."
The ringleader stood up and said, "Bring the batons."
Amber had done a little work with batons while cheerleading (though she wasn't really good at it), but she knew they didn't mean those kinds of batons. There was an Army base on the other side of the town. A few years back, before Crissy and Amber had entered the college, there were several attacks in the woods on girls, always at night. During a couple of these attacks, several soldiers were seen leaving the area. The last of the attacks put a girl in the hospital. She recovered, but it took a couple weeks. No one was able to identify who the soldiers were, because they all looked alike in their fatigues in the darkness. The college put on extra security patrols for a while, and the attacks stopped. The students just referred to this as "The Incident in the Woods" or just "The Incident."
The school bookstore started to stock some self defense weapons such as Mace and stun guns, and more importantly, an assortment of police batons. As each new freshman class entered the college, they were given an allotment to buy the weapons of their choice from the bookstore, to help them feel safer after the incident. The most popular of these weapons was the three-foot police baton. It was molded of strong plastic and was about an inch in diameter with a right-angle pistol grip near one end. It had heavy lead weights imbedded in it near the tip of the long end, to improve the striking force there. It was a formidable weapon if a person knew how to use it. It was not really an appropriate weapon for most of the girls since it was quite heavy and too long to carry around comfortably. However it made the girls feel safer if they had it handy in their dorm rooms. Over the years since the incident, these batons had been used many times, but so far, they had not been used to ward off an attacker, since there had been no more attacks. Neither Crissy nor Amber thought they had the need for one of these batons, so never bought one.
Amber knew they were talking about these batons, and her mind started to think of all the ways they could use them on her. She didn't have long to wait, as she heard all the girls again approach and surround her. The first blow to her stomach was a swinging axe-like strike down into her stomach with the weighted end of the baton. She gasped at the blow. The rest of the girls used the same type of blow, going around and around in the circle surrounding her. Some of the blows would hit her very lightly, probably because the girl could not really lift the baton to get a good strike. Some hit her much harder, as they probably could lift the heavy weapon over their heads and drop it. And, a couple hit her extremely hard. With these ones, she could actually hear the blow coming, as she could hear them grunting as they forcefully swung the heavily weighted end of the night stick with all their might from way behind their heads down deep into her exposed stomach.
Amber was in searing pain after the first round. Subsequent rounds added to the pain even more. Amber was barely thinking from the pain, but noticed that the weaker girls were dropping out of her beating, probably because they could no longer lift the batons. This did not help, however, since this meant the heavier blows from the stronger girls came more frequently. Soon, there were just two girls alternately beating her with their batons. Amber jerked each time she was hit, but the pain of the new blows could no longer be separated from the pain that was already searing her whole stomach. Eventually the two girls remaining both tired and stopped together, gasping for breath themselves.
Amber's mind was in a haze, the pain was so great. She realized that the ringleader had once again jammed her knee into Amber's stomach and was saying something, but she couldn't make out the words. The knee pressure on her stomach went away. She was suddenly jolted into consciousness when she was drenched again with a bucket of ice water, which brought her around at least to the point she could understand what the ringleader was saying. She said, "I said, does that feel good? How's your stomach now? What? You still want some more? OK, but we'll let you think about the pain a little before we continue."
Amber was completely and fully conscious, which was not what she wanted at this point. She could feel all the pain in her stomach in sparkling, excruciating detail and clarity. Every breath she took was agony as her stomach moved with her breathing. She tried her best to breathe only using her upper chest and leaving her stomach immobile, which helped with most of the shooting pains in her stomach but didn't help the overall fire burning in her stomach. She heard her torturers talking calmly about the latest gossip at her school and about the latest movie that had been released. Amid her pain, Amber thought this was funny, though she didn't dare laugh or even chuckle.
The pain in her stomach gradually lessened, but not appreciably. Every few minutes during this time, she would hear one of the girls walk over to her and the other girls would get quiet. She would then receive a painful stab down into some part of her stomach with one of the batons and she would jump and cry out a little due to the sudden influx of pain to her already inflamed stomach. The girls usually laughed a little at this, then continued their casual conversation. Since this blow was so predictable, she decided to try to stifle her responses a little. The next time she heard the girl coming and was jabbed in the stomach, she did not cry out or even jump at the pain. After a couple of these stabs to her stomach with no response on her part, the other girls did not even stop their conversations to observe her reaction to the blows.
Between blows, Amber was trying to recover. She would flex her stomach a little while trying to ignore the accompanying rush of pain. Eventually, she recovered enough to be able to flex her stomach to ward off the blows a little. This helped her enough that she was finally able to completely ward off one of the jabs, with her stomach muscles remaining firm. This was the wrong thing to do, as the girl that had stabbed her called out, "Lola, I think she's recovered"