A Life Altered By Mere Happenstance

Observers of life will at times condemn other people for their life paths or decisions they make. Very few realize that sometimes people are thrust into circumstances beyond their control, normal comprehension or that the game of life becomes rigged for some people to fall into traps prepared and waiting on them

I will tell you the story Chantal Le Gamboge a young woman who was from a noble family of New Orleans and had moved to New York for a more challenging and satisfying life.

Chantal was tired of living in her family’s opulent image and wanted to break free and strike out on her own. She wanted to test her skills and gifts. She was hoping to make a name for herself without her family connections.

Chantal found an apartment in a boarding house, however, the only way she could afford to pay the rent was to take on a roommate. Therefore she agreed to inhabit the apartment with one other female person whom she had not really known.

Several months into residing with the roommate Chantal fell behind on her rent because she was not able to find gainful employment. It so happened on one particular evening Chantal and her roommate had an argument. The argument was instigated by the fact that the roommate kept bringing strange men into the apartment at all hours of the night.

Since the roommate was paying most of the rent she decided to put Chantal out in the middle of the freezing winter. Chantal had no place to go. Then she remembered if she could just get to an old friend of her parents who lived outside of the city limits she would be fine.

As she tried to make her way to the bus depot she ran into a man who looked distinguished and seemed kind. Chantal had no idea where Orangeburg, New York was and she had decided to let her guard down and ask the man for help.

He said he would help her by taking her to the family friend located in Orangeburg, NY. He also reiterated that there were no strings attached. As they rode along into the thick woods outside of the city limits she noticed that the man was driving slower than usual and then he abruptly stopped the car and cut off the engine.

She turned to him asking what had happened and that is when she was met with a changed demeanor. He turned to her and quite coldly said, “I will not take you any further unless you put out.”

When Chantal refused to comply with his request, he began undressing her and forcing himself on her. After the deed was done, he told her, “Now I will take you to your destination.”

Chantal was traumatized, confused and horrified all at the same time. Although she knew she had taken a chance trusting the man, she never thought that he would have stooped to such levels even though she had offered him a couple of dollars to take her to her friends’ home.

Please bear in mind this story took place long before cell phones became mainstream……

When she got to the destination, there was only an old abandoned house, which made her even more mortified. Apparently, her parent’s old friends had either died or left the house many years prior.The man she had traveled with took the opportunity to hold her hostage. He chained her to the bed abusing her for several days on end.

Chantal was frightened and had no idea what her abuser was planning to do with her. She was away from civilization and barely knew places in New York, so for her, it seemed as if there was no escape.

One snowy, wintry morning when her abductor had gone to the general store,  she began pacing the floor hoping to find ideas that would help her get out of her unfathomable ordeal.

That is when she realized there was a squeaking noise coming from one of the floor boards, which meant they were loose. She began digging at the floorboards with her bare hands until they pried open. Beneath the dusty, cobwebbed boards lay a metal box.

On the metal box were the initials “LF” which she knew were that of Lady Fontaine the woman she had known as a little girl. As she opened the box with one of her hairpins, she found a  45 mm handgun with a pearl handle.

She was astonished because she had never held a gun before, although her brothers and father were avid hunters. She looked inside the chamber of the gun and saw there were bullets.

At first, she was ambivalent to even touch the weapon, but the more she thought about the abuse she had suffered at the hands of this despicable man, she knew it was her only way out.

Chantal sat there gazing at the gun, then she heard her abductor’s annoyingly loud footsteps coming towards her. In the moments that ensued she took hold of the gun and shot him at point blank range.

He immediately dropped to the floor and was motionless. At that point, she realized she had not thought the whole plan through. Chantal knew she had to do something to get out of the circumstances she was in.

Her captor had the keys to her shackles and there was no way she could have gotten to his dead body to retrieve the keys. So she had no choice but to shoot the shackles off of her hands.

Luckily she was unscathed from the shots and was able to free herself. As she gathered her composure to make a daring exodus, she heard sirens wailing in the distance. She leaned over and checked the man’s body for any signs of life but his rigid corpse had no pulse and was beginning to turn ice cold.

Chantal got in the dead man’s vehicle and started to make her way to the interstate. However, she did not get very far because she was apprehended by State Troopers. She tried explaining to them the horrible ordeal she had encountered. However, the authorities did not believe her story since the corpse in question was no other than a prominent politician.

Within days, Chantal Le Gamboge found herself in a psych ward being evaluated. Her system had been plied with so many drugs she was hallucinating and could not decipher reality from fantasy.

Her situation had gained national attention and had been reported to the news media, so after about  2 months, her family in New Orleans had gained word of her admittance to a psychiatric facility.

Although Chantal had been told she had been brought there for evaluation because her story did not make sense, she quickly realized that another nightmare had taken on a life of its own. Her psychiatrist began threatening her that if she were not “nice” to the male workers of the facility she would make life a living hell for her and she would never get her release papers.

It wasn’t as if she had a choice in the matter because they kept her pumped up on drugs night and day, to the point where she barely knew what was happening to her body on a daily basis.

Luckily for Chantal, her parents had connections, and they were able to orchestrate her release, filing charges against the institution that had taken advantage of a fragile woman during a crisis.

Once released, the family settled Chantal in a co-op apartment in the city. At first, life seemed to be stabilizing for her. She had been working steadily, receiving counseling and had even started making friends.

Until one day she received a notice that her building had been sold to a new landlord. Initially, it appeared to be a non-event in Chantal’s life, until she noticed that things were turning up missing out her apartment. At first, it was minor personal items like gloves, scarves, and socks. Then she realized some of her expensive jewels were missing and at times money she had saved up in her coffee pot just magically disappeared.

When she reported the items missing her critics kept insinuating she was going bonkers. But, it was all part of a diabolic plan to get her re-admitted into the mental health system.

It wasn’t until a friend told her to get a webcam that she found out the culprit of the missing things were no other than the new landlord. Apparently, he had keys to her apartment to come and go as he pleased.

Chantal reported him to her family and the next thing she knew was that she lost her job. When she fell behind on her rent after many months of unsuccessful job searching, the same landlord began harassing her by making sexual advances.

When her circumstances became dire he told her the only way to work off the debt was by pimping herself for him. Chantal listened to all his onerous statements intently and then went back and told her family what was going on.

After much investigation, the family found out the landlord was indeed a pimp and he had been working scams with many renowned psychiatric facilities. Even the one Chantal had once visited.

However, their findings would prove to be too late because in between the time of their research and discovery, Chantal and the landlord had gotten into a heated discussion and he accused her of being crazy and demented.

He then had her carted off to the same psych facility that had once taken advantage of her. It was all part of his pimping plan.

Chantal would eventually get way from his clutches and the clutches of the psychiatrists who were involved in taking advantage of innocent individuals.

The moral of this story is, “Always Be Aware of people, places, and things!” No one is ever sent into our lives by mere happenstance. While in the daily course of our lives when things suddenly start going awry and we see a lot of coincidences or connectivity amongst people we should never take any of those signs for granted because in the grand scheme of things EVERYTHING is connected!