Chapter 1
Jolie—aged eighteen
“Where's our next adventure, baby?” My dad's hand squeezed my shoulder as I relaxed into him.
“Home. . . just home.”
“No more adventures?”
“Not for a while.”
He kissed my head, his blond stubble getting lost in the thickness of my afro.
Biologically, he wasn't my father, but in every other way, he was. He was my world, and the only person I really had in the world. He was in the process of adopting me when my mother died. . . and he fought the system to keep me in his care, and won.
“I love you, Dad.”
“I love you, baby. I love our adventures.”
I nodded. I loved them, too. But seeing the view through the airport window and the big white plane that would take us home, had my insides jumping for joy.
A jerk came from nowhere and had me hitting my head.
And just like that, reality called, pulling me back to the real world where my dad no longer existed.
I wasn't at the airport. I was in a box, our last adventure cut short, forcing me to journey into a new one, alone.
The space where I sat was dark. The air that was lacking in my confinement was cooling in temperature, just like my rapidly beating heart.
I was trapped in the dark.
Isolated from civilization.
They told me I was going home.
But. . . I could never go home.
Home didn’t exist anymore. It was snatched away from me, along with the life of the only parent I had left.
This was supposed to be a happy time.
Not many eighteen-year-olds wanted to spend their vacation time with their folks. But I wasn’t like most teenagers. This was what I looked forward to each year.
I was a loner. . . by choice.
I didn’t have a big group of friends; I didn’t have a boyfriend–not anymore; he had decided that he preferred blondes. . . but he was no gentleman, and he was no loss.
I had no one to look for me, now that I was missing.
I’d expected a light, happy trip. I’d expected warmth. Sunshine. . . love.
I didn’t expect darkness. I didn’t expect coldness and cruelty.
I didn’t expect this.
I didn’t have time to mourn, and I’d never experienced such sadness. Such pain. I didn’t have time to acknowledge the passing because of such uncontrollable fear. It had me paralyzed, my body and emotions.
I’d spent the last two weeks in a room with close to forty other women, all under forty.
I had witnessed the death of three of them.
Three of them who looked just like me–not in features but in facial expressions.
They had tried to fight back. Fight back against the fists that were constantly aiming at their faces and already bruised bodies to force their submission.
Fight against the intrusions of fingers and genitalia in their bodies.
That hadn’t happened to me.
Thank, fuck! Or I’d have done the same; I’d have fought back, and I’d have died. . . just like they did.
I’d be lying in a shallow, unmarked grave with a hole in my head. Instead, because I was “a well-behaved little skank”, as they’d been calling me, I didn’t suffer that fate. I was, instead, squashed into a sitting position, in a crate too small for a damn spaniel.
I was a shipment.
An expected gift.
I was told that my new family would love me.
I was told that they’d make me feel good.
I was told lies.
My favorite song came out of my mouth, trying to find some kind of comfort.
The vehicle jerked as the chunky tires hit another giant dip in the gravel road, created by a lack of upkeep over many years, distorting my sound.
My big hair offered little cushion as my head smashed against the thick wooden lid that concealed me in the tiny crate.
Sick filled my mouth; bile had risen from my empty stomach. Was it hunger? Was it fear? Was it dread? Or, just the travel sickness, caused by the driving skills of the man up front.
A cold tear dropped from my eye, a tiny splash landing on my bare foot, close to the chipped nail paint staining my toes. Toes, I’d excitedly painted with the new gels my dad had gotten for me, in preparation for our trip. Now, I hated the color—red, like blood.
The color brought reminders, brought pain. The look on my dad’s face as he bled out, knowing he couldn’t save me. The shade matched his blood as it stained my hands while I tried hard to stop the bleeding from his fatal gunshot wound.
He died in my arms. In a warehouse, where we’d been taken to in the dead of night after being trailed all day. Empty, like the hearts of the men who’d transported us.
I stared down at my feet, barely able to see them, but I still scrunched my toes up, hiding the peeling paint.
I pushed the pain from my mind, focusing on the days before these monsters ripped apart my life.
I focused on every happy time, on every smile I’d ever smiled, thinking of a better life, before I tucked the memories away into an internal box of sacred recollections, where my father could rest in peace with my mother—the love of his life.
Silent tears fell, so many that I thought my tears would flood the box where I sat.
I prayed the wood would rot before they filled the space and drowned me.
It was only a minute later when the speed faltered and the vehicle–I think, a van—rolled to a halt, on the poorly maintained road.
Multiple voices surrounded me, some with familiar accents, some with tones from across the sea. Voices that teenage girls would have dreamed about, whispering sweet nothings, in any other circumstances.
These voices would haunt my dreams.
They’d bring me nightmares.
I felt a strange kind of nausea as my wooden prison lifted into unsteady arms. Arms familiar with the maneuvers, but with no care for the fragile items they were transporting–human beings.
I was carried up the steps of what I imagined to be a nice house—vast and once adorned to perfection. I tried to see through the gaps in my crate, but the haze of tears covering my eyes disallowed it.
I never got to see the fading beauty of the house as I imagined it, or the trees in the distance, turning pretty shades of auburn with the oncoming of fall. I never saw the stream, or the little bridge that rose above it, allowing feet to cross safely to the other side.
I never saw the daisies that covered every inch of this land.
I only saw darkness.
I played with my hair—involving myself in an action that always brought me comfort as I tried to distract myself from oncoming fear.
The balance shifted as one of my handlers slipped away to pat his heavy knuckles against the front door of wherever the hell we were. It was only seconds later, a creaking welcomed my presence.
A glass door protected its wooden companion from weather damage it probably wouldn’t receive in this state.
I had no idea where I was, but the heat from the fading sun was creeping through the paper-thin gaps in my crate, along with the scent of grass, earth, and pretty flowers, that crept right up my flaring nostrils.
“Hello!” the man at the door sounded happy; his southern accent lifted the heaviness pressing down on me. He sounded nice, bringing me a small reprieve from my most awful thoughts.
Maybe he’d be my saving grace.
Maybe I was more na?ve than I ever thought.
“I’ve been expecting you,” the southerner continued.
“Traffic.” One of the men on my left was blunt. He had no time for greetings, pleasantries, or small talk. He wanted business dealt with, and then he wanted to leave. “Where do you want the package? We want to get back on the road. . . other deliveries going out in the morning.”
“Of course. Please, take it into the kitchen.”
I was carried over the threshold and into my doom. The journey to the kitchen was steady. . . nothing like my nerves. . . nothing like my heart or rattling bones.
The men trucked me past a doorway to what I assumed was the living room. I recognized the voices of the cartoon playing on the TV.
A small child laughed—a little girl. She giggled out the words, “Oh, Woody.”
Relief filled me. There was a child here. Her little voice brought feelings of safety and comfort.
Something inside my gut told me she wasn’t talking to the character on the screen or any of the matching merchandise she’d collected, but instead, to a person in the room who was named the same.
Her voice grew distant as the space between us amplified.
The wood of my crate rattled as I was dropped half a foot onto the stone floor.
More vibrations of fear tingled in my blood. The homeowner had sounded nice, but this wasn’t normal. I’d been abducted, emotionally beaten and physically beaten, too, just to be brought here.
“We’ll be on our way, seeing as payment has already been dealt with.” The man with an unfamiliar accent was the first to leave, guiding out his now-silent acquaintances.
I listened to muffled voices and the front door slamming in the distance. A family had gathered around the wood where I sat. The little voice was back, and it caught my attention, making it so I heard nothing else. Nothing but her as she jumped up and down on her small feet.
“Can I open the box, Daddy? Please!”
“No, Darlin’, you know that we can’t do that,” her father told her, his words deflating her bubble of happiness. “Why don’t you go get your brother in here.”
“Can he open the box?”
“He can.”
Vibrations of little feet bouncing on the cold floor greeted my ears again. Her excitement altered the velocity of her speed, taking her swiftly out of the room as she rushed through the house, eager to discover what lay beyond the wood—eager to discover me.
Voices become hushed. Words became whispered. The man of the house started talking with someone, and the adults in the room didn’t want me to hear the private conversation they were having in limited privacy.
Their almost silent words bounced off the walls, dancing around the lack of decoration I was yet to see, but I couldn’t hear them. I heard nothing, not until I heard the footsteps again. More footsteps.