Triangle Choke

Valerie eyes opened wide. Her mouth opened and closed a couple of times before she could get anything out.

"Uh, I've got to go. But remember I really like you and I don't like what she's doing."

"I'll remember."

*****************

Andi was right that her scheme stayed in Thorne's mind. What stopped him from saying anything to Harley was wondering what would happen if he did. So many possibilities ran through his mind that he couldn't keep track of them. The only thing they had in common was they were all bad news. At least if he kept quiet, there was a chance Andi would come to her senses and no harm would be done.

Andi continued to train at other facilities and come to Star Gracie once a week. Some nights she would roll with him. Others she would spend with the Amazons or helping less experienced grapplers who were in awe of her. She soaked up their admiration and was always aglow the rest of the night.

That encouraged Thorne to be more optimistic about her. Another positive development to him was that she never again brought up Harley. They still avoided each other, but she never spoke his name.

One evening, she and Thorne were rolling with others almost continuously all night and didn't spend a minute together. The academy was closing in a few minutes, and he was heading to the locker room when she walked up to him.

"Wait a minute. I haven't had a moment free all night. I want to show you something new I just learned Tuesday. It won't take long."

He grumbled under his breath. All he wanted to do was go home, take a shower and fall into bed. He watched her sit down and spread her legs and motion for him to take the mount while she was in full guard.

She moved her arms and legs, adjusting them and then changing their positions slightly. He kept waiting for her to make a move, but a few minutes went by, and she didn't do anything.

"Come on," he said, and as he said it, he noticed that all the lights in the room came on, which almost never happened, especially just before closing. He looked around and as he did, she made her move.

He thought he knew what she was doing and quickly moved to thwart her, but she moved her legs in a way that he hadn't seen before and they didn't go anywhere near where he thought they would be. When he grabbed for her gi on her right thigh where he thought it would be, he came up with nothing.

As he grasped air, she quickly moved her legs again. This time they locked around his neck. She jerked them hard and pulled him into a standard leg choke. He realized her first move had been a deception to make him vulnerable to her legs.

It worked. He felt her thighs tightening around his neck. He knew her leg muscles were now so strong that it would do no good to move forward because she would just flip him over into a more dangerous position where she could choke him tighter and twist his arm as he grew weaker. He also knew he couldn't pry them apart like he used to. So he tapped out.

As he did, he saw some movement in front of his face. He looked up into the faces of the Amazons. They backed away from him as he tapped again.

Prothoe stepped forward and got on her knees next to him and Andi. She bent down so her face was close to his and spoke to him. Her voice was flat, but he could sense that she was doing her best to hide her emotions.

"This is it, Thorne. Pantarise is focusing her mind and strength, so she won't speak. She asked me to say these words, speaking as her. You were warned. Valasca admitted she warned you, too.

"I never said I was after Harley. Maybe you told yourself that, but deep down, you knew it always you. I told you that you would pay, and I told you how. You can't tap out today. All you can do is win or choke."

Prothoe wiped the her hand across her eyes to brush away her tears and stepped back. She and the other Amazons broke the ring around him, and as they moved away, he saw one of the large padded stools had been moved to a few feet from where he and Andi were locked together on the mat.

He saw bungee cords draped over the stool and on top of them a hideous, shiny, thick red phallus and next to it an open can of Crisco.

Time seemed to stop as he took in the stool and the implements that Andi had warned him about. He felt her thighs getting tighter around his neck.

He realized that Andi's words, spoken by Prothoe, were true. He had always known it was him she intended to punish. He had chosen to hope she wouldn't go through with it.

He took stock of what was happening. He was already tired from his workout earlier, and he couldn't see any escape from the lock she had on him, but he had to try. With a tremendous effort, he leaned to the side, stepped forward and slowly pulled his body up against her pincer thighs pulling it down.

It wasn't much of a move. She anticipated it and swept him into rolling over onto his back. Now she was looking straight down at him, holding his right arm and continuing to squeeze her thighs tighter around his neck. She held tight to the sleeve of his gi and didn't try to do anything to his arm except keep it from pushing her.

As he struggled to breathe, Thorne's life flashed before his eyes.

He saw nothing from his birth up to August twenty-first of his thirty-eighth year, the day he met Andi. For him, that was the day his life began.

Now it was ending, after less than five years. He didn't feel like he was being choked. It was more like a pillow -- a dark, cold pillow of disappointment and sorrow -- was slowly smothering him. Happy memories passed before him and disappeared. He had hoped they would grow old together. Even now, it was hard to believe she was doing this to him.

Andi choked him harder. Her new strength made him helpless to stop her. The movie of his life was speeding up and beginning to blur. It was getting darker and harder to see. Finally, the screen went black, and his mind went blank. He didn't hear the Amazons screaming.

They screamed as they saw Andi flying up into the air in an arc over Thorne's head, then falling straight down to land with a splat behind him. As they rushed to her, they saw Thorne crouched over her with his large hands straight out and almost at her throat. He had moved so fast that none of them had noticed.

What they saw was him frozen in place and looking down at Andi with an expressionless face. A second later, his face came to life again and his expression was one of horror. He looked at Andi a few more seconds as the women began talking to her and then slowly stood up.

He stood there until he heard Andi speak.

"I'm all right. I just had the wind knocked out of me. Nothing is broken. Please just back off and give me space to breathe."

He turned, walked quickly to the locker room, got his stuff and went to his car.

He was a block away when the call came in on his hands-free. He saw it was from Andi's cell. He answered.

"Hello."

"Where are you?"

Her voice sounded subdued.

"I'm driving home."

"What about me?"

"One of the girls can take you home."

"Come back. I might need medical attention."

"I made sure you were all right before I left."

"I'm not kidding, Thorne. Get back here now."

Her voice rose in pitch and in decibels.

"I'm going home."

"Listen to me, Thorne. You better get back here right away."

She was screaming into the phone now. He heard other voices.

"Take the phone away from her."

"We've got to calm her down before she has a fit."

"She's too weak to deal with this now."

He heard the connection break and drove on in silence.

A half-hour later, she called again.

"Hello."

"Where are you?"

"Home."

"No you're not. I just looked everywhere, even the closets."

"I'm in my apartment."

"That's not your home. When are you coming home?"

"This is my home now. I stopped at your place to pick up everything I needed."

"All your clothes are here."

"Keep them or give them away to a charity. I've got plenty of clothes here."

There was silence for a while.

"Do you want to stay there for now?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Will you talk to me?"

"I'm talking to you."

"I mean, do you not want to see me for a while? Should I give you some space? Or are you willing to meet with me and talk in person?"

"I'll talk to you in person, but do you mind if it's not tonight. I'm really tired."

"How about tomorrow?" she asked. "Should I come over there, or are you willing to meet here?"

"Either way."

"Why don't I come there. It might be better."

"That's fine."

"I'll come right from work and be there around five-thirty if that's all right."

"That will be fine."

******************

She called the next afternoon from her car as he was walking in the door after returning the ring to Benny's.

"I'm on the way."

"Thanks for letting me know."

When she came in, she looked around and seemed surprised.

"It looks so clean and tidy. Were you cleaning all day?"

"No. When I moved out, I had someone come in once a month."

"Why? All your friends stayed with us?"

"I don't know. I guess it's left over from the military. Things have to always be neat and clean in quarters."

"Even when you're not in quarters? Never mind. Are you willing to talk about last night, or do you want to wait a while."

"We can talk about last night."

"What did you do to me? We slowed down the video as much as we could but it still wasn't clear. Lysippe is working on it. She said if she had been shooting in slow motion, she could have caught it."

"I don't know what I did."

"Whatever it was, it wasn't legal. So you lost by disqualification."

"I guess so."

She laughed.

"I could have predicted you'd say that. It's so Thorne. We both know I already lost because I didn't honor your tap. To say nothing of having the extra lights turned on or the violations that I didn't have a chance to commit."

She paused.

"Thank goodness I didn't."

He didn't respond.

"Do you remember anything about the end?"

"I remember one moment feeling like I was about to pass out, and then the next moment, I was about to kill you."

"Kill me? You're exaggerating. You were angry, and maybe you even wanted to hurt me, but you wouldn't do that."

He didn't respond.

"Do you want to hurt me now for what I did?"

"No."

"I thought so. The girls don't know you like I know you. We have a special relationship, and it's nobody else's business that you like being submissive to me. You wouldn't hurt me in a million years."

He didn't understand everything she said, but he nodded when she said that he would never hurt her and groaned silently to himself, because he hated what he had to do and hoped it wouldn't be tonight.

She didn't notice he had tuned out momentarily and continued talking. He paid attention once again.

"The girls said you wouldn't take my calls. Valerie told me she would call you and find out what you were thinking. They were surprised when I told them I was coming here tonight.

"I can understand you wanting to stay here for a while. We need to give ourselves space, even though I'm ready to put last night behind us immediately. How do you feel?"

"I agree. Let's put last night behind us."

"Am I being too pushy if I ask whether you'd rather not come to the company picnic next week."

"I'll come if you want."

"Of course I want."

She took a deep breath.

"I have just one more question. Maybe you're not ready to answer it yet, but I've been thinking about it all day. Do you have any idea when you might come home?"

"This is my home."

"I know it is now. I mean your other home, your home with me."

It was his turn to take a deep breath. It was going to be tonight after all.

"That's not my home anymore."

There was silence.

"All right," she said. "This was going too well. I should have known it wouldn't be that easy. We need some healing before we talk about this again."

She had started talking in a calm voice but as she continued, she began getting more emotional, and now she sounded as if she was on the edge of hysteria.

"I have this feeling like I'm lost in a dark forest and don't know how to get out. Can you help me? You know me better than anyone. Do you know what I'm feeling now?

"I think I do. Are you thinking you made a huge mistake and you'd give anything to go back in time and erase it."

She nodded.

"I feel the same way."

"What can I do?" she asked. "What's keeping you from coming home, I mean coming back to me? Are things complicated for you right now?"

"No, it's simple. It's what you said a while ago. I would never hurt you in a million years. That's why we can't live together anymore."

"I don't get it. What does coming home have to do with hurting me? It doesn't sound like you've put last night behind you yet."

"I've put it behind me, but I'll go back there to explain. I would never hurt you in my right mind, so I must have been out of my mind. I have no memory of what I did. All I remember is you were choking me and I knew I was going to pass out and then you were going to..."

"Don't say it!" she screamed, interrupting him. "Please!"

"All right," he said. "The next thing I knew, you were lifeless on the mat and I was about to twist your head off. If it had been five more seconds before I recovered, you might be dead."

"But I'm not, and that will never happen again. It's my fault. I brought it on myself."

"You can't tell that to the judge when you're dead. Anyway, it doesn't matter whose fault it was. The only thing that matters is that you live a long and healthy life."

"What about you? Are you going to live a miserable life because you can't stop thinking about what you almost did?"

"No. My life will be like what it was before I met you. It was fine. Like I told you, I've stopped thinking about it. I've moved on. I only thought about it now because you asked me to. I don't feel guilty. It's over."

"Let's use our brains, Thorne. It was the circumstances that provoked you. I'll never put you in that kind of situation again. Almost everything you can imagine has been going through my mind since yesterday, but one thing that never showed up was fear of you. You need to accept the fact that this was a one-time thing."

"I can't take that chance."

"Are you willing to talk to a professional about it? If the therapist agrees with me, will you believe it?"

"I'll talk to anybody you want -- as long as you understand that if the therapist says there's only one chance in a million, I'm not going to take that chance."

"You have more of a chance of being hit by lightning than that."

"I don't care."

"I think --"

She stopped and thought.

"I won't tell you what I really think. I've always told you what I was thinking before, but now I'm afraid to."

He looked sharply at her.

"You've always told me what you were thinking?"

She looked down.

"You're right. I hid things from you after I found out about you and Harley. But I'm going back to the way things were before. I want to tell you everything again. I want us to be like we were before."

He didn't say anything.

"Do you have any thoughts on what I just said?"

"We can never be like we were before."

"Why?"

"Because we don't belong together."

"How can you say that?"

"I've known it for a while, but I didn't face it. You found my biggest weakness. It's wishful thinking. You're right that I knew deep down you were going after me, not Harley. You and your friends gave me plenty of signals. I was wishing hard that you wouldn't go through with it, because I knew if you did, it would be the final nail in the coffin of my delusions."

He looked at her. She was melting in front of his eyes. It was so quiet that he thought he could hear the tears streaming down her face like tiny rivers. We wanted to take her in his arms and comfort her but that would only make it tougher for her accept the inevitable.

She got up, still crying, waved a hand in his direction, turned around and walked quickly to the door without saying another word.

************

He didn't hear from her again for two weeks. In that time, all his service buddies and all the Amazons called him. His friends told him Andi had sent an email to all of them with complete details of what had happened and what had led up to it. She pleaded with each of them to help her get him back.

The reactions of his friends varied. Most of them lined up with Hunter, whose feeling was, good riddance to bad rubbish.

"She wrote everything in her email, but she never apologized," he told Thorne. "Doesn't she think she did anything wrong?"

"One of the things she hates is someone who belabors the obvious," Thorne replied. "She respects all of you, so she thought you could tell how she felt from the way she wrote. Did she make any excuses?"

"No, but she really lost me when she said that all of us knew how happy she had made you and that we needed to help her for your sake, even if we hated her. She has a lot of nerve. I'll say that for her."

The other side was represented by Hag, who told him everything Andi said in her email was true. She didn't like to admit it, but Andi had dusted him off and opened him up. Being with her had turned him completely around into a happy, optimistic, complete person.

"What she tried to do to you was evil, so she deserves to be punished, but at least she never did it. It's like the sentence for attempted murder is less than the sentence for murder one.

"I believe her when she says it will never happen again, and I think you're being foolish if you don't give her a second chance. Your excuse doesn't hold water. The next time I visit you, we'll talk about it. Do you mind me sticking my nose into your business?"

"I don't mind anything you say or do."

Each of the Amazons asked him to call her by her real name from then on, even at the academy. They all apologized for their part in the scheme and said that it was a bad night but it taught them a good lesson. They would never be involved in anything like that again. A couple of them asked if he wanted to see the video. He declined.

Valerie and Priscilla asked if he would still roll with them at Star Gracie. He said that would be fine and he would be glad to help them any way he could, but he decided that after the workouts, he was going to go straight home. No more coffee nights for him.

All of the Amazons began rolling with him, including Andi. They worked out a schedule among themselves, so two of them wouldn't bother him on the same night. There was friendly talk as they worked out, and nothing was ever said about what had happened.

Valerie was the only one who went beyond that. She called him at home once a week most weeks and chatted with him. He realized what she wanted, but he wasn't ready to think about dating.

He noticed that Andi was back to two nights a week at Star Gracie. One of the Amazons told him she had stopped going to her trainer. She began working with Harley some nights, and one night when they were working together, Allison told him Andi had apologized to Harley, Harley had apologized to Andi and they were friends again. The next time Andi rolled with him, he told her he was happy about her and Harley.

"I'm glad that pleases you" was her response.

As new men joined the academy, some of them rolled with Andi and became interested in taking their acquaintance further. He got reports on them from Valerie during their chats. Valerie said that Andi would have coffee with them and talk about BJJ but shut down everything else.

****************

Hag came to town for three days and spent the first two debriefing him. At breakfast on the third day, she said that Andi wanted to meet with her that night and would it be all right with him?

"Of course. She asked me the same thing last night at Star Gracie."