September 26, 2006 -- The predator's eyes were red. His face was pockmarked. His mouth - on her lips, her face, her breasts - was nearly toothless.
In emotional testimony yesterday, a beautiful New Age healer from the Lower East Side took the stand in Manhattan to describe the man she says violated her at gunpoint among the candles, crystals and gauzy curtains of her Clinton Street store.
He wanted "his energy release," his "healing session," he told her as he put a silver .32-caliber revolver to her head and pushed her against the wall of a back room. If she refused, he'd kill her.
"He said, 'You're going to give me my session now,' " the victim testified, her voice choking and her eyes welling with tears.
"He said, 'I knew I would f- - - you from the first day I saw you.' "
This beauty-and-the-beast horror story played out in Manhattan Supreme Court at the sex-assault trial of Allen Johnson, 36, - who is linked to the attack by fingerprint, DNA and lineup identification.
There is also Johnson's alleged confession, given in Hampton, Va., after he was arrested there a month later.
In it, Johnson said he had a clear agenda when he entered the victim's store last Jan. 31. He would rape her and then kill her. Afterward, he intended to use his revolver to go on a "rampage," he told cops - and finally turn the gun on himself.
But something about the tiny, soft-spoken and ultimately iron-willed woman dissuaded him, he said.
"He said that she had touched his soul," Detective Edward Tacchi, a senior sex-crime investigator with the DA's office, testified at a pretrial hearing last week.
The soul touching was not mutual.
"He was a creepy man," she testified, describing how on at least six occasions she'd seen Johnson pacing outside her store, waving, trying unsuccessfully to catch her eye or make a healing appointment.
"His mouth was everywhere, his hands everywhere," she said of the attack.
Bizarrely, she said, "he gave me a hug [afterward]."
Johnson faces up to 25 years if convicted of sodomy and attempted rape. Testimony continues today.
