1. Emily
The deadbolt unlocking echoes through the room, and we all cower as best as we can with the limited room available. I try wrapping the material of the ripped dress over my knees but it’s too ragged to hide any skin.
Igor’s gigantic frame fills the doorway like a villain in a slasher movie. Dark and foreboding. Every fiber of my being screams to run and seek shelter.
Scanning the room, he searches for his next victim. Every day one of us is taken to be used as the guards see fit.
Some never return.
I’ve been taken three times since being placed in this room. Each time, I was raped until I bled from every hole due to the violence in their thrusts. My body has been persistently littered with bruises of handprints and fingerprints from being slapped or squeezed.
I’ve been treated for STIs and STDs several times since my kidnapping, but the men here apparently are not because I keep getting reinfected.
Igor sets his sights on a thin Hispanic woman chained in the center of the room. When she notices that she’s been chosen, she begins pulling on the chain in an attempt to pull it from its bolt in the ground.
I lower my head to avoid watching him take her. Her Spanish pleas echo in the quiet space, and it pierces my heart. My bottom lip quivers as I continue to avoid watching another one of us being taken.
Her cries are silenced with the slam of the large metal door. The bang echoes in my ears like a bass drum until whimpers, cries, and prayers replace it.
Praying under my breath, I begin scratching at the skin on my thigh - a new habit I’ve formed since being kidnapped. Pain is the only way I can escape from the misery in my mind. The only way the voices stop echoing in my subconscious. Scars now litter my body from where I have either scratched, picked, or cut myself but I can’t stop. The agonizing need to silence the noise is unbearable.
“Hey,” a whisper causes me to nearly jump out of my skin.
I turn my head to a beautiful woman close to my age with light green eyes, olive skin, and long dark waves. She holds her hands up.
“Do you know where we are?” she asks softly with a natural rasp in her voice.
“We’re at an auction… in Mexico,” I mumble nearly inaudibly.
Her face pales and she searches my hollow eyes. I’m not sure what she’s looking for. There’s nothing there anymore. My once bright blue eyes have now become as gloomy as the Black Sea.
“My name is Paige Henley,” the smile she gives me is sad, but I struggle to feel any emotion at the sight of it.
“I’m Emily,” I try to offer her a smile in return but I’m sure it looks more like a grimace.
Her lips part slightly, and her eyes fill with panic that I don’t understand.
“E… Emily?” her voice cracks as her eyes become glossy.
“Emily Moore,” I confirm. She doesn’t look familiar at all but then again, I’ve met an astronomical number of people in my lifetime.
A shaky hand raises to her lips as she continues to stare at me. Recognition and sadness begin to cover her features. My brows knit in confusion and the uneasy feeling that I’m not going to like what I hear spreads through my body.
“Oh my God… you’re Declan’s sister, aren’t you?” her question comes out in a pained whisper.
My body fills with adrenaline at the sound of my brother’s name on her lips. The fact that she knows who I am gives me some small piece of hope that maybe Declan knows she’s missing and will come.
“You know Declan?” I say and hunch forward. Each beat of my heart booms in my ears.
“Y-yes… Oh my God… Emily.” she sobs into her hand, tears flowing down her cheeks. “How are you here? Declan said you were in Ireland with your mom.”
The shame of my stupidity replaces my adrenaline. My stomach churns and I chew on my bottom lip.
I tell her about meeting a guy in Ireland just a few days after arriving and him kidnapping me. I foolishly allowed myself to try and find a distraction to help the emotional pain I was feeling, and it cost me everything.
I’m not sure how my abduction has been hidden from Declan and my ma for as long as it has and it’s unclear if I’ll ever find out.
When I ask her how she knows my brother, she tells me he’s someone very important to her, but she was too afraid of being with him, so she ran and ended up here.
My brother seems to have found the love of his life and she here in purgatory.
Ain’t that a bitch?
The back of my eyes burn as tears form. Reaching over, I intertwine my fingers with hers and we sit in silence surrounded by our depressing reality.