Chapter 3
VIOLET
Days blur. Guard rotations instead of hours, three per day give or take, according to Matt's estimate.
They move us on what I think is day four.
Could be three. Could be five. Two guards haul us out of the small cell and shove us down a corridor lit by bare fluorescent tubes buzzing on their last legs, and after days of total darkness the light feels like broken glass against my eyes.
I throw my arm up, trying to shield my face as I stagger while Matt grabs my elbow.
That's when I see the scale of it.
Warehouse floor, maybe, could be an old factory.
Partitioned with chain-link fencing and corrugated metal into sections, dozens of them, some walled off with plywood and industrial plastic sheeting, others open enough to see through.
Women on thin mattresses. Women on bare floors.
A girl barely older than eighteen rocking against a fence panel, lips moving around words I can't hear.
My brain does what it always does. Reads the bones before I can stop it. Load-bearing columns, twenty-foot spans, poured concrete, steel reinforcement. Ventilation industrial, wiring recent, not original to the structure. Whoever built this place built it to hold.
I press my fist to my mouth and breathe.
They put us in a larger section near the back.
Chain-link on three sides, solid wall behind, two thin mattresses that smell of mildew and old sweat.
Matt claims the one closer to the open side without making a thing of it, positions himself between me and the fence, and I let him because I'm busy looking for possible exits.
I spot two. One at the far end of the floor, heavy steel, with an armed guard in front of it, and one to our left, up a flight of metal stairs. The second one looks unused.
"Cozy," Matt says, sitting cross-legged on his mattress. "Reminds me of my first apartment. Except that had fewer rats. Marginally."
"You had rats?"
"One. Named him Horatio. After the Shakespeare character, not the CSI guy. He ate my cereal and left droppings in my shoes, so really he was more of a roommate than a pet."
"Did Horatio pay rent?"
"Horatio contributed nothing and took everything. Typical roommate."
I lie back and stare at the ceiling. Water-stained concrete, spider-webbed with cracks. A building telling you exactly how it's failing, if you know how to read it.
I try to sleep at night, but the screaming and sobbing makes sure that's impossible.
Three women and one man are dragged past our cell to the door at the top of the metal staircase.
They come back an hour later, looking beaten and dejected, dried tears and blood marking their faces, their dirty clothes ripped in places.
I cross out the door from my list of potential exits.
Whatever happens there, I want to be as far away as possible.
The next morning the guards bring a five-gallon jug with a spigot, place it on top of the table and let us out one by one to refill our cups. The whole thing is quiet. No one says a word, no one fights, no one tries to run. Just subdued prisoners, taking their turn one by one.
I'm filling my cup, dented metal can, with sharp edges, that tastes of rust no matter how many times I rinse it, when the woman behind me screams and runs at the door with the guard in front of it.
I watch with horror, as the guard lazily lifts his gun and shoots twice.
The woman collapses, screaming in agony, holding her bleeding leg, as another guard walks over to her and drags her by her hair out of my line of site.
The one by the water jug looks at me and smirks. "Legs aren’t required. Just the rest of her."
It takes everything in me to peel my eyes away from the blood smear on the floor and make my way back to my cell, letting Matt take his turn with the water.
I slide onto my mattress. My back to the chain-link wall.
"You're the Americans." A whisper from behind my back startles me.
I turn and am met face to face with a woman, gazing at me through the fencing.
She's thin in a way that used to be lean and is now just looks depleted.
Dark hair pulled back from a face all angles and hollows.
Mid-thirties, maybe. Italian. Eyes the kind of brown that looks black in this lighting, fixed on me with an intensity that has nothing to do with the water jug.
"Word travels fast." I reply quietly.
"There are no secrets here. Only things we don't say out loud yet."
She doesn't smile, just watches me drink with lifeless eyes. I watch her back.
"I'm Elena," she says.
"Vi."
"They drug the water."
I spit out my sip, coughing, just as she takes a drink.
"You might as well drink it. It dulls the senses, and it beats dying of thirst. Trust me."
My throat tightens as I sweep my eyes across the floor, noting the guard pushing Matt into the cell next to mine instead of the one we shared.
I keep my face straight, not showing any emotions, months of practice in Elio's estate, watching his world without letting mine show.
A skill I never wanted and now can't afford to lose.
Matt instantly goes to the mattress closest to the wall we share, his wide eyes on me, as his trembling hand lifts the cup to his mouth.
I shake my head almost imperceptibly. He lowers the cup.
"You're counting the guards." Elena whispers, bringing my attention back to her.
"Everyone counts things."
"Not everyone counts the things that matter." She sets her cup beside her. "The ones who count, they either survive or they get noticed. Be careful which one finds you first."
She lies down on her mattress and closes her eyes.
Matt and I exchange glances. I point at the cup and mouth 'drugged'. He swallows visibly and nods a thanks in return.
Two days later they come for him. It's morning when two armed men I've been tracking walk over to his cell. I moved my mattress to be beside his.
"Stay down," he hisses, standing up before they reach us. Already moving toward the fence opening, like he heard them coming before their boots hit the floor.
"I'll be fine," he mouths, with a smile that doesn't reach anywhere near his eyes as the guards swing open his door and escort him out.
He's gone four hours.
They drag him back, bruised and barely conscious, throwing him on the mattress then locking the door behind him.
With my heart hammering, I reach for to thread my fingers through the fence.
"Matt?"
He turns his head, his hand moving, fingers touching mine. He's got a split lip, fresh blood crusting under his nose, the left side of his jaw is swelling red-to-purple. He moves like his ribs are screaming at him, one arm pressed tight against his side
"I'm okay." He eases himself closer, wincing, and I squeeze his fingers tighter.
"Don't bullshit me."
"I would never." He tries to grin. The split lip reopens and bleeds fresh down his chin. "Okay, I would absolutely bullshit you, but not about this."
I tear a strip from the bottom of my sweater, already ruined, stained and stretched from days on concrete, wet it from my cup and push it through the links. He presses it to his lip, flinching.
"What did they do?"
His eyes move away from mine. Down, to the left, the way people look when they're deciding how much of a thing is safe to share.
"They—" He stops. Swallows. His jaw works under the bruising. "It's not just beatings."
I wait. The strip of fabric turns pink in his hand.
"They raped me. They've done it every day before you got here." Flat and quiet, the way you'd report someone else's bad news. " Then it stopped, and I thought—I thought maybe—" he sighs. "Different guards. Not always the same ones. They just—" His voice cracks. "They take turns."
The world contracts to the space between his mouth and my hand.
I don't say I'm sorry. Don't say oh my God. Those words are vapor, the kind of thing you say when you don't know what to do with someone else's pain and want to package it into a sentence that makes you feel less helpless. I've been on the receiving end of that enough to know its worth.
I motion for him to move closer, until his face is against the chain between us, and through it I clean the blood from his chin instead. Move the cloth to his cheekbone, dab at the bruising. My hands are steady even though my chest is a live wire.
"The tall one with the scar, or the short one?"
"Both." A pause. "And others. There's a rotation."
A rotation.
Acid burns up the back of my throat. I clamp down on it. Wring the cloth out and don't look at him, wring it out again even though there's nothing left in it.
That's what they do behind the door?" My chin motions at the door on top of the metal staircase.
"Yeah."
I think of the women taken there all throughout the day, sometimes more than once a day. Yesterday Elena went through that door three times. Each time she came back more dazed then the last.
Matt tips his head back against the wall. Blood still seeps from his lip, sluggish now. Under the fluorescent buzz the bruises look worse than they did two minutes ago, but his breathing has evened out. He's recovering fast. Good.
"'The robbed that smiles, steals something from the thief,'" he says.
"Shakespeare?"
"Othello. Act one." He opens one eye. "My students hated that play. Called it 'old-people drama about bad communication skills.' I guess it is."
"How's your Othello impression?"
He attempts a deep dramatic voice that sounds more like a man gargling gravel. "She loved me for the dangers I had passed, and I loved her that she did pity them."
"That's horrific."
"You should hear my Lady Macbeth. I did it for the senior showcase one year. Three parents complained."
"Only three?"