Chapter 7
Summer – Twenty-Three
Crying echoes in the cold, dark room along with loud grunts, mixed with the fear that can be smelled around the large room and I squeeze my eyes tightly trying to block it all out as Eric’s hazel eyes hit me, centering me along with his smirk that shows a dimple every time.
I try to hold onto it, try to hold onto him like I do every second of every day to get me through this, to keep me going, to keep me fighting when I want nothing more than to give up.
“No, please, stop, stop, please, stop,” someone screeches, and I flinch, the picture of Eric disappearing again like it always does when someone breaks into my head with their pleas as I wrap my arms around my legs and squeeze my eyes tightly shut as I try to get it back, the crying sending me insane, making it difficult to keep count of the days, the months.
Today’s my birthday, or at least I think it is. If the marks I’ve left on the wall where my cage is shoved up against are right, I should be twenty-three today.
I should have graduated from college by now, getting ready to go on to do my master's. I should be happily in love, living with Eric, maybe even thinking about marriage, even if he did take a situation wrong and tried to hurt me back, I should be happy with him, but I’m not.
I’m dirty, filthy, used, abused, bruised, broken, starved.
My ribs are prominent, my hair a greasy mess, my body full of mud, cuts, and blood, my insides screaming with pain, my lower stomach always aching.
I want Eric —even if that makes me pathetic. I want him, I need him.
“Please…” the woman sobs, “I-I, I’m pregnant, please, please, let me go, please,” and I squeeze my eyes even tighter as my sore body trembles.
Five hundred and seventy seven days, thirteen thousand, eight hundred and seventy hours, eight hundred and thirty two thousand and two hundred and one minutes.
Nineteen months.
That is how long I have been here for, since I tasted freedom, since I last saw Eric’s hazel eyes.
In those nineteen months I’ve been pregnant three times and three times I had the baby kicked out of my stomach before they decided to put me on the shot.
When I was put on it, I can’t even remember if I’m honest, though the little star shape I’ve got on day one hundred and five is when I had the first baby kicked out of me, something I know they are now doing to the woman behind the door, her terrified screaming proof of that.
It's full of pain and heartache, and a single tear falls down my cheek, the only one I let out, letting it fall onto my knee.
They don’t like it when you cry, the twenty slashes down my back from their whips, their punishments for showing that kind of emotion is proof of that.
They like it when you fight back, just not cry because apparently it puts off their clients.
“God, why can’t she just shut up?” a woman above me snaps, and I flinch again as a shiver runs down my naked spine.
“Because the baby they are kicking out of her is her husband's.” A woman behind me whispers, and the one above gasps in shock.
Guess she didn’t know they’ve brought a new one in, though she should have seen it coming.
Yesterday, a girl, no older than sixteen, who had been here since she was thirteen, the longest running person here before me, somehow managed to grab a wire from the ‘playroom’, which is full of toys that injure us and fulfill the sick needs of men and women who pay to have us anyway they want, though if the whispers I’ve heard are true, it costs extra…
Cage number eight, what the monsters here called her, strangled herself to death with the wire while the women around her cried and pleaded for her to have faith that we would be found, a faith I no longer have.
I’m cage number two, meaning I’m the second most wanted in this whole place because, of course, we’re ranked, and if you stay at the bottom for long, they sell you permanently to whoever bids the highest which happens every month and as soon as one goes out, another is brought in, kicking and screaming.
Gabriel has tried to put me up several times, wanting to buy me for himself, but Hanz, the leader of the Pillars, has refused because I earn him a lot of money.
After all, I still try to fight back, picturing Eric, letting him give me strength.
Though I can feel myself slowly slipping, the pain becoming too much, and even though I know death will become me once they sell me, I’m welcoming it.
I want to die, I can’t live in this body anymore, used and broken.
They took what I was saving for Eric, then slowly tore me apart while laughing.
The picture of him smirking as he thrusted inside the woman over his desk hits me, and I shudder.
He’s probably moved on, maybe fallen in love with her, decided to start a family.
My bottom lip wobbles, and I bite down hard, trying to get my emotions under control, the pain of knowing I’ll never see him again so goddamn consuming pain that I feel sick and I try to picture his eyes again, the way he used to look at me when we sat at the lake underneath the stars, his hand slowly stroking my jaw, trying to keep that image, allowing his strength to rush through me.
“Please, please, please,” the sobbing woman croaks, her voice louder, but I don’t lift my head, trying to keep the image of Eric, not needing to see all the blood from her miscarriage as they drag her into the room.
They’ll give her twenty four hours before they allow men or women to use her anyway they see fit as long as a price has been paid and they don’t kill her.
A dark chuckle echoes, one I know well, and I tense as I try to keep myself still, and my heart pounds with fear.
Please no, not again.
“I’m having a play with number two,” Gabriel's snarl enters my ears, and I squeeze my eyes tightly.
The one and only time Hanz allowed him to touch me, I was unconscious for a week, and he apparently received a beating.
Turns out Gabriel wasn’t happy about his boss tearing my virginity from me, something he clearly wanted, and decided to punish me for it instead.
“No,” a man whose name I don’t recall snaps, “last time you nearly fucking killed her and she’s number two for a reason, so you can fuck off until she goes down in ranks and go pick another girl or fuck call Amber.”
“You don’t get to tell me what to fucking do!” Gabriel growls in return, just as my cage door swings open and I dig my nails into my calves to stop myself from reacting.
“Actually, I fucking do, considering you're just our errand boy picking the merchandise up, and besides, someone has just paid nineteen thousand for an hour with her, so back the fuck up!” the man snaps in return before suddenly my arm is yanked and I fall onto the floor with a thud, a pain ricocheting through my side and back but I don’t make a sound at the pain, instead, I bite my bottom lip hard enough to make it bleed.
I try not to fight back, I swear I do as I’m dragged by my arm towards the playroom, my eyes looking at all the women staring at me with sadness, Gabriel wearing slacks and a shirt, curling his lip full of anger, staring at me, and I-I, oh god.
“No, get off me, you bastard!” I scream as I punch the man’s stomach, who laughs, and I kick out as I lock eyes with Gabriel and threaten, “You’re dead, Gabriel, I mean it, you are dead if it is the last thing I do, you and that bitch!”
He narrows his beady eyes at the threat, but I ignore it and kick out harder, screaming louder as I’m dragged across the cold floor, naked, and into the room I dread, the wooden bat being shoved inside me last week coming back to me, making me want to vomit.
“Oh, she’s a feisty one, isn’t she?” a raspy voice cackles as I’m shoved hard onto the floor.
My eyes go to the toys first, whips, chains, and a bat lie on the concrete flooring and panic sets in as I look up and lock eyes with dark ones full of coldness and I don’t think.
The sadistic smile on his face as he unbutton his shirt putting my flight or fight instincts into action and despite being weak, I stumble up, grab the bat and before either man can think, I swing it, hitting the man who wanted to rape me hard on the temple.
He grunts, falling to the floor as he slips over the chains, and before he can get his bearings, I hit him two more times on the head, as hard as I can, already seeing blood and just as I go to hit him again, I’m pulled back, and I kick and scream, “Get off me, get off me,” the hands around my waist, one on my breast, squeezing it, making me want to puke as the man holding me shouts, “Hanz!”
“What the fuck is going on?” I hear Hanz snap as several bodies enter the room but I don’t focus on them, instead I focus on hitting the man who wanted to rape me again not caring blood is pouring from his head.
“For fuck’s sake Ivan, please tell me he paid before she fucking killed him?” I hear Hanz growl, and the man, Ivan, chuckles, “Yeah, boss, he did,” just as I feel a prick in the side of my neck and everything goes fuzzy as my body begins to tire.
“Lock her back up,” Hanz growls, then threatens, “I’ll teach her a lesson later with my cock up her ass.” Just as everything goes black, my body limp, Eric's hazel eyes are the only thing I see, picturing the future I thought we would have gotten.