IT started with an extremely salacious text message on her cellular phone. The sender made it clear his burning desire was for oral sex. The graphic nature of the message should have warned the 25-year-old massage parlour worker. But she had ignored her most powerful defence — her instinct — and it almost got her killed, she later admitted.

She shuddered at the memory of the desperate fight for her life in a darkened hotel room in Portmore two Saturdays ago when her fair complexioned, 5 feet 6 inches tall client who “had clean finger nails, low-cut hair and seemed like a typical nice guy”, tried to strangle her with his belt.

“I started screaming and fighting,” she told the Sunday Observer in an interview last Thursday. “He tried to stop me from screaming by pushing his thumbs into my mouth and pulling my lips apart, but I bit him and held on with my teeth.”

Throughout the terrifying ordeal which, she believed, lasted about 20 minutes but which at the time seemed more like hours, the masseuse, who asked not to be named, said the man kept repeating “it looks like you’ll be better than the others”.

She wonders now whether the man is a serial rapist/killer and if any of the other girls who are now making a living offering massage services have fallen prey to him.

That information, though, has proven difficult to ascertain, not surprisingly because of the reluctance of such victims to report attacks to the authorities because of the nature of the job, which can include sex at the client’s request.

The Sunday Observer called a handful of police stations in the capital, as well as Portmore and the police information arm, the Constabulary Communication Network, for any recent reports of attacks against massage service workers. No such reports appeared on any police blotter.

Reporting the attack, the 25-year-old masseuse admitted, would lead to too many questions about her business, which relies heavily on discretion.

For instance, the growing number of young girls who offer this service never use their real names in advertisements they place in local newspapers or on the Internet. Their target market is mostly upper- and middle-class professionals with disposable income and who would have more to lose if their patronage was exposed.

Most sensual massage girls admit the high risk nature of their job. But they, unlike this young woman, usually take precautions to lessen the potential for personal harm. For example, when hose and private calls, they usually inform co-workers about their destination, leave precise pick-up times with their transportation and arrangements for periodic contact by mobile phones.

In the case of this young woman, last week’s ordeal has provided her with a valuable lesson for the future, one of which is never to ignore clear signs of trouble, as was obvious when she received the first of her attacker’s 10 text messages on July 18.

“This was the first time that I was responding to a text message,” the young woman, who has been in the business for just two months, told the newspaper. “He sent 10 messages between Friday and Saturday.”

She made arrangements to meet the man in Half-Way-Tree, St Andrew, rejecting his suggestion for a rendezvous at a secluded place in Portmore. “I don’t know that area very well,” the masseuse explained, adding that she always insisted on meeting clients in crowded areas.

From Half-Way-Tree they took a bus to Portmore. During the drive over, she noticed that he kept looking at her and, at one point, asked her if she was familiar with Portmore. She told him no.

When they got off the bus, they took a taxi to the hotel. At this point, she admitted, she was a little uneasy, but figured that if anything went wrong she could call for help. “But that was my mistake,” she said.

According to the masseuse, when they got into the room the man asked her what she would do for him first. “I told him that he ordered a sensuous massage and that was what I would do.”

Normally she would collect her money before giving the massage. But for some reason, which she still cannot explain, she did the opposite.

“When I was ready to collect, he said he wanted sex. I told him that he had to pay up front for that and he said he was going to look for the money in the bag he was carrying.”

That response, she said, increased her unease. However, she went into the bathroom to wash her hands and straighten her hair as it had been ruffled by the wind during the taxi ride.

“I was combing my hair when I heard the room door and window open. I grew more suspicious and asked myself why is he opening the door and the window, unless he was looking for someone,” she said.

The masseuse became even more concerned when she returned from the bathroom and saw a belt on the bed. She asked him if it belonged to him, he answered yes, and told her that he used it whenever he changed after playing football. The answer made no sense to her.

“I then asked him if he found the money and he said yes. After that, he started telling me that he likes me and wanted a relationship on the side. I told him I don’t think so. Furthermore, I don’t want a man in my life because of my lifestyle.”

The man said he didn’t mind and his persistence started to frustrate her. At this point she sat on the bed and it was then she realised that her phone was missing. She asked him if he knew where it was. He said no, and they both started looking for the instrument.

A few minutes into the search, the masseuse announced that she was going home. The man, however, went to the door, opened it, looked out and answered ‘no’ to a question asked by a woman outside. The woman, the masseuse figured, worked at the hotel.

He then closed the door and turned off the light.

“I asked him why he turned off the light. He said he didn’t have any money. I asked ‘do you think I’m doing this for free or for fun?'”

The man, now in a high pitched voice, replied that he didn’t want to tell her that he had no money.

He again asked her to have sex with him. “I said, ‘are you crazy?! and you are dead ass broke!’

The man continued pleading, she said, even asking her to go home with him and promising to go to an ATM on the following Monday to get the money.

She got up off the bed, grabbed her handbag and started for the door. Another mistake, she admitted, for she normally doesn’t leave a room walking in front of a client. That’s when the man struck.

“He came behind me and slipped the belt over my head,” she said. But she managed to grab the belt before it tightened around her throat and threw it back.

“Whe you a try fi do, kill me?” she asked, and turned on the light.

He replied “no, but I don’t want you to leave”.

According to the masseuse, she was now scared stiff, but she tried not to show it and began talking to the man in an effort to calm him.

“He turned off the light again,” she said. “I was scared, but I didn’t want to do anything sudden like rushing for the door.

“He asked me if I found my phone. When I told him ‘no’, he said that he had it. I asked him why he took it up and he said he didn’t want me to leave.”

Again, he asked her to go home with him. This time, she said ‘yes’, hoping that it would soften the man long enough for her get through the door. But when she made the attempt, he threw the belt around her neck again and pulled her onto the bed.

The masseuse said she pleaded with him, but he merely told her to lie down, while lamenting her refusal to go home with him and pulling the belt tighter.

The noose, however, was not choking her fully because she was holding it with her left hand.

She started thinking about her father, a stroke patient, and her four children and asked herself who would support them if she was murdered.

With death staring her in the face, she recalled, sad memories flashed through her mind — memories of her tough life, growing up with a sick father whose wife had died a few months before he took ill; tending bars from she was 16 to make a living; the teenage years when men saw her as nothing but a sex object; and her limited educational qualifications, which she tried to improve but was forced to put on hold because of the cost, before entering this line of work.

“I just gave up,” she told the Sunday Observer. “I said this could put me out of my misery.”

The man, his eyes now red and glazed, was pulling the belt tighter and saying “it will soon be over”.

Somehow, she summoned the strength to resist and started fighting him. She doesn’t recall when she took up her phone and his with her right hand. She only remembers hitting him with them in the left side of his head — three times. He avoided the fourth blow, but not without losing his grip on the belt, giving her the chance to pull away and scream.

A fierce fight followed during which the man tried to suppress her screams with a pillow, while trying again to strangle her with the belt.

“Unnu caan go on better dan dat?” a man, who the masseuse later learnt was the proprietor of the hotel, shouted from outside the room.

“You nuh see the man in here a try to kill me,” the masseuse shouted back. But her attacker countered: “Ah so she gwaan all the time.”

The masseuse again shouted: “Don’t mek him fool yu. A kill him in ya a try fi kill me.”

The momentary break allowed her to turn the light on, but to her dismay, the proprietor walked away grumbling “that’s why me caan bother wid nayga people”.

The fight resumed with the same intensity as before. She was now lying on her stomach, the man on top of her trying to cover her head with the pillow. Her screams earned her another rebuke from outside.

“Unno caan go on better dan dat?” this time from a woman who had managed to open the window and was looking in.

Again the masseuse shouted that she was being attacked. “See the belt around my neck here,” she indicated to the woman, who by now was joined by the proprietor and two other people.

The masseuse started crying and repeated that an attempt was being made to kill her. The man released her as the persons outside the room ordered him to open the door. He refused and lunged at the masseuse, who was now standing near the door. She shifted her body out of the way, but instead of merely avoiding him, she attacked him.

“It took him by surprise,” she told the Sunday Observer. “I punched him in his face and head and kicked him.”

The man hit back and, according to the masseuse, managed to grab her right arm, twisted it behind her back, demanded his phone and grabbed it before opening the door and escaping.

The ordeal over, the masseuse broke down in tears again as she related her near death experience to the woman.

“I’m grateful that I’m alive,” she told the Sunday Observer and explained that she came to the newspaper with her story because she wanted other massage service workers to be aware of the dangers of the job.

“Listen to that little voice that says be careful,” she advised. “Use your instinct. If there’s one single sign that something’s not right, run!”