There were six of us in the group, and since we had the good luck to be the only ones at the quarry at this early hour it was decided that we’d converse properly at the diner when we met for lunch. Since the day was overcast, we didn’t want to let the visibility become further impaired by other divers getting in before us and kicking up all the silt. After a round of handshakes and introductions, each of us donned our equipment and headed for the dock. Two of our number split off and walked down into the water, holding on to the dock for balance as they slipped on their fins and masks, then surface-swam out to the barrels that marked the underwater platform. From earlier, I knew that their names were John and Mike. I had never actually met them online; they were friends of my own dive buddy, Stephen. We’d found each other a month ago through an online dive buddy search, though this was the first time we’d met in person. It turned out that he came with his own group of friends, and I rounded that group out to an even number for this dive. The other two were named Daniel and Gabe.
The rest of us did a giant stride into the cool water, which felt unbelievably refreshing after the mugginess of the August air. The summer had been so hot that we’d all opted to go without our wetsuits for this dive, wearing only our swim suits under the dive gear. None of us planned to go below twenty feet, which marked the temperature change of the thermocline, so we figured we’d finish with the dive before we got too cold.
I was wearing a cute new two-piece in aqua blue, which matched the accent colors on my BC vest and fins. The scratch of the BC vest against my bare back felt odd, without the usual insulator of my wetsuit. But at the same time I felt much more free and unconfined. Stephen and I deflated the air in our BCs and slowly descended to the training platform twenty feet beneath the surface, making sure to equalize our ears every few feet. Once we had adjusted our buoyancy, I motioned for him to lead the way, since I was unfamiliar with this quarry. Stephen nodded and began kicking, following a rope into the darkness that surrounded us. I glanced around before I followed, but apparently the rest of the group had already gone ahead, or gone off on their own dive plans.
Stephen showed me the usual sunken treasures…an armored car, a ghostly-looking speedboat, and an old Buick with the hood up, as if its driver had simply pulled over and was waiting for roadside assistance. Most of the places he showed me involved rope paths, but when he darted up and over some rocks, I lost sight of him for a moment. I gently kicked my fins, propelling myself to his last location, but when I got there I didn’t see him anywhere. All there was was the line leading back to the training platform. Confused, I did a did a 360-degree turn in the water, looking for my lost buddy according to procedure. He hadn’t left me, had he? Maybe he’d started back toward the platform, and didn’t realize I wasn’t behind him. He should have been checking, but…well…this was our first dive together. Maybe he wasn’t a great buddy.
I knew that technically I was supposed to surface and look for him, but it seemed clear that he’d gone back to the platform. Visibility was down to about ten feet, so I could probably even catch up to him.
With that in mind, I bent at the waist, aiming my torso down toward the line, and kicked again. Before long I was cruising along the line, periodically checking my gauges and catching the occasional flash of silver from a passing bass. Otherwise there was no movement aside from the easy glide of cool water over my skin, and no sound aside from each steady inhalation through my regulator.
With the visibility as bad as it was, I was nearly upon the platform before I saw it. Its yellow planks appeared in the darkness and I glided to a stop before letting all of the air out of my BC again so that I could kneel on the surface without bobbing around. There was no sign of Stephen, not in any direction. Not topside with the barrels waiting for me, either. Where the hell had he gone? Belatedly, worry seized me as I wondered if something had happened to him back at the Buick, and I’d simply missed it and left him there. What should I do? Should I go back? Do I have enough air?
As I reached to check my gauge, water surged behind me and I was knocked forward by something solid. The water slowed my forward momentum, leaving me plenty of time to get my hands up to keep my face from hitting the wood. What the hell?
I braced my hands to give me the leverage to turn around and see who had knocked into me – the quarry had nothing bigger than catfish, it couldn’t be anything other than a clumsy diver! – but hands suddenly gripped my shoulders and shoved me back down, and there was a weight pressing down on me from above. For the first time, I felt little fingers of panic prying at the edges of the calm every scuba diver needs to maintain in order to be safe.
My fear grew as I felt the mystery diver pull away from me a bit, and then tug at my tank until I had been dragged backward to the edge of one edge of the platform square. There was still no sound other than my own breathing, faster now that my heart rate had sped up. There was no way to turn around and ask what the fuck the other diver thought he was doing, screwing around like this. Any scuba diver is powerless to fight back at someone in just that spot, just behind the tank, with a grip on its nozzle.
Once we reached the edge, my attacker pressed me flat against the boards again, with the edge of the wood jutting into my belly, and my lower half dangling over the side. On each corner of the square, a one-foot beam of wood jutted up to provide anchors for the barrels that floated above us, and my assailant had maneuvered us right next to one. Grabbing my left arm, he curled it around the wooden beam with the obvious intention that I should hold on. I snatched my arm back the second he let it go, and tried again to get up.
All of my struggles ceased a moment later, however, as the hand reached down to my face and yanked the regulator out of my mouth. Suddenly panic was a much bigger foe than it had been just a moment before. Suddenly this was a life and death situation.
I reached instinctively for my backup regulator, but the aggressor behind me pushed my arms forward and held them there. He wasn’t letting me get to my air. He was going to murder me.
But no…a moment later my regulator was shoved back toward my mouth, and I grabbed it with both hands, biting down on the mouthpiece and purging the water away so that I could breathe. I could breathe! But the message was clear.
While I sucked on my air gratefully, my unknown attacker took further steps to ensure my cooperation…he peeled off my mask. Cold water flooded in and washed against my naked face, and I closed my eyes against the useless blur that was my vision.
While not life-threatening, there was still a danger in not having my mask. My nose was exposed, and if I moved around too much or became panicked, breathing in water was a possibility. All it would take was a little for me to begin choking, and that could quickly escalate to drowning. My only real option was to lie still and breathe.
It seemed to be exactly what my attacker wanted. Once it became clear that I wasn’t going to risk fighting him, he turned me over onto my back. It was an awkward position because of the tank on my back, but he moved between my legs to stabilize me. If I’d still had my mask on this would have been the perfect opportunity to get a look at who was doing this, but without it all I could see was a black blur against the dark green blur of the quarry. But whoever it was, it was obvious from his movements over my body what he wanted.
He put his hands on my chest and shoved the material of my bikini top up, exposing my breasts to the cool water, and his sight. He ran his palms over them, cupping them and pinching the nipples made hard by the temperature of the water. I couldn’t see him doing it, but I could feel his hands running over my body, warm spots amidst the cold, sensual feel of the water. Then his hands trailed down, down, to cup me between my legs. I jerked, but it was vital that I remain still. My position was precarious. One wrong breath and I could inhale water. One move to anger my attacker and he could rip my regulator out again, depriving me of oxygen. I had no choice but to suffer his attentions.
I felt his fingers lift the elastic and slide beneath, pressing skin-against-skin before he delved into the crease. He stroked me there for a minute, then penetrated me with a finger. I couldn’t gasp. There was no gasping through a regulator. I could only lie there and breathe shallow breaths, becoming light-headed as he manipulated me. The whole thing was so unreal, I couldn’t believe what was happening. I was balanced precariously on the cusp of danger should I move too suddenly, and I wasn’t getting enough air because I wasn’t calm. There was absolutely no resistance on my part when he pulled the crotch of my bikini bottom aside and pressed against me. It was only when the tip of his penis touched me there that I realized he had tugged down his own swim trunks and was even now poised to broach my entrance.
Panic reared up and clawed at me again, but I could do nothing but lie there as he began to push his hardness into me. Sex underwater is not easy…water is thinner than a woman’s natural lubrication, and so his entrance was slowed by that difficulty. But bit by bit he fucked himself into me, shoving in a little bit at a time as I lay there open to him. Finally he pressed all the way inside, and I could feel him there, the hard, hot, foreign length inside me.
He grasped my thighs and hiked them up around his waist as he began to move. The friction of the water necessitated slow, gentle movements, but they merely prolonged the sensation of him sliding out of me, then slipping back in. Blindly, I reached out for the wooden beam and tried to anchor myself as he rocked in and out of my body.
I had no way of knowing how long this went on; all I could do was grit my teeth and clench my eyes shut against the stinging water as he rode me and my unrestrained breasts bounced weightlessly in time with his motions. After awhile he pulled out, and I thought it was over. I started to reach around for my mask, but then I felt his hands pulling at me again and he turned me over so that I was in my original position, face down at the edge of the platform, legs dangling. Behind me, I felt my rapist pull the bikini fabric down over my bottom, exposing my rear end to the quarry. Then he was pushing into me again from behind, sliding deep with this new angle and I vocalized my protest, though I knew he would not hear it over the sound of his own breathing. Sound carries farther in the water, but the sound of a diver’s own, mechanized breathing is loudest, drowning out most other noise. In this eerie silence, where I could see nothing and hear only my own heart beat and each labored breath, he continued to rape me.
Out, and back in. Out, then in again. He penetrated me repeatedly…seemed to enjoy entering me anew with each thrust, seeming to turn one rape into dozens. And each time I could feel him prodding forward in me, pushing in faster than before. Finally he stopped withdrawing completely, and stayed buried inside my warmth as he thrust his way to satisfaction, gripping my naked hips to keep himself stabilized and in control. When he began moving erratically, bumping hard against me as he shuddered, I realized what was coming and a moment later I felt his dick pulse inside me, throbbing as it repeatedly ejaculated inside my body.
The water shifted over me, and I sensed that he had slumped forward to rest over me. Then the presence was gone as he leaned back and withdrew.
I wanted to shoot for the surface now that I was free. I wanted to know who had done this to me, but mostly I wanted to get away before he could kill me. But he wasn’t finished, yet.
I felt his hands fumbling at my left shoulder, and could tell by the POP! I felt that he had disconnected my inflator hose. I would be unable to fill my BC vest with air and ascend until I had reconnected it. There was another wave of water indicating movement, and then I sensed that I was alone. I sat there for a moment, bikini bottoms pulled down to my knees, no mask, and with part of my gear disassembled. My priority was my mask…I had to see how much air I had left…but I hesitated long enough to pull my bottoms up. I had no idea where everyone else had been during of this – there were numerous other platforms in the quarry, Stephen had told me, and so it was quite possible no one would even return to this one – but I had no desire for any of Stephen’s friends to see me half naked, on top of one of them having violated me.
Once I was clothed again, I opened my eyes to try and search for my mask. After several minutes of wandering around the platform, patting at the wooden planks, I found it and put it on. I tipped my head back and blew out of my nose, clearing the water from my mask, and finally, I could see again! Immediately checking my gauges, I discovered that I was down to less than fifty pounds of air; divers were supposed to return with at least five hundred pounds, always, for safety. Still, I knew that I could be back to the surface in a minute, literally, once I hooked my inflator hose back up. Now that I could see, it was an easy task and I quickly ascended, feeling the pressure recede with each foot until I broke through the surface.
And not a moment too soon. When I went to inflate my vest I discovered that I was out of air, and I had to finish by orally inflating it. I looked to the shore and my heart sank. All five of the men in my group were sitting on the dock, looking out at me. “Hey!” Stephen called, taking a swig from his bottle of beer. “Where’d you go?”
I’d been hoping to narrow it down. I’d been hoping my rapist would be easily identified. But as I watched them all on the dock, each already out of his gear and safely anonymous among his fellows, I realized.
It could have been any one of them.
