39. Nell
The man’s shoulder digs hard into my hip, jarring my ribs with every step he climbs. Each jolt sends a fresh wave of heat through the bruises blooming beneath my skin—like fire licking under the surface, raw and unforgiving.
It’s their own damn fault.
If they hadn’t drugged me, maybe I could’ve walked myself up these stairs. Maybe I wouldn’t be slung over his shoulder like a sack of meat.
The air shifts as we ascend—louder, warmer, more chaotic. A cacophony of sound crashes over me; laughter, clinking glasses, the low thrum of music, voices—male and female—mingling in a haze of luxury. The scent of perfume and sweat and expensive alcohol clings to the air, thick enough to choke on.
There are people here. So many people. And yet, no one stops him. No one says a fucking word.
Surely someone’s seen me? Surely someone’s noticed the girl being carried half-naked, limp, hooded, like contraband.
But no one intervenes.
Because they’re not here to stop it.
They’re here to watch.
To bid.
To buy.
And suddenly, the laughter isn’t just overwhelming—it’s suffocating.
The noise fades behind thick walls and distance, swallowed by silence as he carries me deeper into whatever place this is. The laughter, the music, the clinking glasses—all of it disappears like a dream I was never meant to wake from.
Then, without warning, he drops me.
I tense, bracing for the crack of bone against concrete, but instead I hit something soft. Not comforting—just softer. A thin, mattress that groans beneath my weight. The springs jab into my back like rusted fingers, and the fabric reeks of mould, sweat, and something metallic—blood, maybe. Old and dried.
He doesn’t speak. Doesn’t grunt. Doesn’t even breathe loud enough to track. Just the slam of a door—sharp and final—tells me he’s gone.
I lie still for a moment, listening.
Nothing. No footsteps. No voices. Just a heavy silence pressing down on me like it’s trying to suffocate me.
Then I move.
My fingers fumble at the knot beneath my chin, nails scraping against the coarse rope. It’s tight—too tight—but I know knots. I’ve tied enough of them in my life to understand how they work. My hands are shaking, but I work through it, tugging and twisting until the hood finally slips free.
The air hits my face like a slap—stale, humid, thick with the scent of rot and old fear.
The room is dim, lit only by the weak light filtering through a barred window. Scraps of curtain hang like torn skin, fluttering slightly in the breeze from a cracked pane. Dust floats in the air, catching the light like ash in a dying fire.
And then I see her.
She’s curled up on a mattress across the room, her back to me, knees drawn to her chest. Her spine juts out like a row of broken wings beneath a threadbare shirt. Her hair is matted, tangled, and clings to her neck like it hasn’t been washed in weeks.
She’s so small. So still.
She could be a child.
But something in the way she curls into herself tells me she’s older than she looks. Older in the way trauma ages you—fast and without mercy.
The wall behind her is smeared with handprints. Faint. Dirty. Some small, some larger. All of them desperate. The beige paint is cracked and peeling, flaking like old scabs.
“Hello?”
My voice barely escapes me—hoarse, cracked, more breath than sound. It scrapes up my throat like it’s forgotten how to form words.
The girl flinches. I see it in the way her shoulders tighten, her spine curling in tighter.
“We shouldn’t talk,”
she whispers, her voice so soft it barely stirs the air.
“If they see us talking… we’ll be in trouble.”
Her tone is hollow. Not just afraid but conditioned. Like the words have been beaten into her bones.
“Who are they?”
I ask, even though I already know the answer. I need to hear it. I need to understand what I’m walking into.
“They’re the devil,”
she says, and her voice catches—tight and trembling, like it’s wrapped around a sob she’s too afraid to let out.
I swallow hard.
“What do they make us do?”
I don’t want to ask. But I have to. I need to prepare. I need to know what’s coming—what they’ll expect, what they’ll take without question.
“Everything,”
she whispers.
“Please… don’t talk to me. I don’t want to be punished again.”
Her words land like a stone in my chest.
I nod, even though she can’t see me. I won’t push her. The last thing I want is to get her hurt. But still—something inside me aches. We should be allies. We should be looking out for each other. Because in a place like this, where the walls are closing in and the rules are written in bruises, a friend might be the only thing that keeps you human.
I lie back slowly, eyes fixed on the ceiling.
I don’t know her name.
But I know her fear.
And that’s enough—for now.
The room isn’t spinning as violently anymore, but the dryness in my mouth is unbearable—like I’ve been chewing sand for hours. My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth, and every breath feels like it scrapes through the Sahara. But there’s no water. No sink. No cup. Nothing to quench the thirst clawing at my throat.
I push myself upright, waiting until the floor stops swaying beneath me. My legs tremble, but I stay standing. I make my way to the door, gripping the handle with a flicker of hope.
Locked.
Of course it is.
I try the window next. The bars are thick and rusted into the frame like prison bars in a cell that forgot it was pretending not to be one. There’s no latch, no give. Just cold metal and the faint sound of wind beyond the glass.
No drawers. No wardrobe. No furniture to search.
Just two beds.
Two girls.
And no way out.
I’m about to crawl back onto the mattress when the door clicks open, and a man steps into the doorway.
He’s wearing a black balaclava which is pulled tight—a faceless shadow. Only his eyes are visible, and even they seem hollow. He moves toward me without a word, his footsteps eerily silent on the floor.
“Stay back,”
I warn, my voice hoarse and thin. It’s a bluff, and we both know it.
He doesn’t stop. Doesn’t speak. Just keeps coming until I’m backed into the corner, the wall pressing against my spine with nowhere left to go.
“Take this,”
he grunts, holding out a small white tablet in his gloved hand.
I stare at it like it’s poison. Because it might be.
Like hell I’m taking it willingly.
“What is it?”
I ask, trying to keep my voice steady.
His eyes narrow beneath the mask. He doesn’t like being questioned.
“It doesn’t fucking matter what it is. Take it. Now.”
I hesitate. My body screams no. My instincts scream louder. I can’t do it. I won’t.
When I don’t move, he snaps.
His hand shoots out, pinching my cheeks together with brutal force. My teeth cut into the inside of my mouth, the taste of blood blooming across my tongue. I claw at his arms, nails digging into fabric, but he doesn’t flinch.
He shoves the tablet past my lips, jamming it to the back of my throat. Then comes the water—ice cold, poured straight from a bottle, flooding my mouth and nose. I choke, sputter, thrash, but he keeps pouring until I’m forced to swallow or drown.
Then he’s gone. The door slams shut behind him, the echo rattling through the bones of the room. I’m left gasping, water dripping from my chin, the taste of blood and bitterness clinging to the back of my throat.
I stagger to the bed and sit down hard, my limbs already starting to feel… strange. Not heavy exactly—just distant. Like they belong to someone else.
Across the room, the other girl hasn’t moved. She’s still curled into herself, her back to me, her silence louder than anything. I want to speak, to ask if she’s okay, but the words get stuck somewhere between my chest and my mouth.
My heart is still racing, but my body isn’t keeping up. My arms feel warm and loose, like they’ve been unspooled. My legs are jelly. My head starts to float—not in a pleasant way, but like it’s slowly detaching from the rest of me.
The corners of the room blur. The light from the barred window smears across the wall like paint left out in the rain. I blink hard, trying to focus, but my eyelids are suddenly too heavy. My thoughts are slowing down, like someone’s dragging them through syrup.
I try to stand, just to prove I can, but my knees buckle, and I collapse back onto the mattress. The springs groan beneath me, and I let out a shaky breath.
This is it. This is what they wanted.
Not unconscious. Not screaming.
Just quiet. Compliant. Forgettable.
I turn my head toward the girl, my vision swimming. “Hey,”
I whisper, barely audible.
“Are you… are you okay?”
She doesn’t answer. Maybe she’s asleep. Maybe she’s pretending.
Maybe she’s already gone in the way that matters.
My body sinks deeper into the mattress, my muscles giving up one by one. I try to hold onto something—anger, fear, anything—but it’s all slipping through my fingers.
And as the drug pulls me under, the last thing I feel is the weight of my own helplessness spreading like a second skin.
“Get up! They’re coming round.”
The voice cuts through the haze like a distant echo, a girl’s whisper swimming into focus. My head feels like it’s been split open—every throb a hammer blow behind my eyes. The pain is relentless, pulsing in time with my heartbeat.
I groan, unable to form words. My tongue is thick, my mouth dry as ash. But she doesn’t stop. Her hands are on my shoulders, nudging, coaxing, dragging me back to the surface.
Somehow, I’m standing.
Barely.
My legs tremble beneath me, rubbery and weak, like I’ve just run a marathon in someone else’s body. I sway, unsteady, but I don’t fall. Not yet.
The door creaks open.
This time, the man doesn’t enter. He just stands there silently in his mask, beckoning us with a flick of his fingers. The girl beside me grips my arm and pulls. I follow, because I have no choice.
We step into a corridor that looks nothing like the room we came from.
Plush black carpet muffles our footsteps. The walls are lined with gold trim and soft lighting, like something out of a luxury hotel. It’s surreal—opulence layered over rot. A mask for the monster underneath.
At the end of the hall, a grand staircase curves downward, its banister polished to a mirror shine. Below, a lounge spreads out in perfect symmetry—velvet chairs, a marble bar and crystal glasses catching the light.
And girls.
So many girls.
All of us in underwear or nothing at all. Moving like ghosts, descending the stairs toward five men waiting at the bottom who are loitering, assessing each and every one of us.
Predators in tailored suits.
My skin crawls. Every instinct screams to run, but my body won’t listen. I’m still floating, still half-drugged, still trying to piece together where the nightmare ends and the performance begins.
“Big night tonight, girls. The club’s been bought out by a private client, so you know what that means—no mistakes.”
His voice is sharp, practiced, like he’s said this a hundred times before. There’s no warmth in it. Just control.
“Keep quiet. Smile when you’re told. Do what’s expected. Anyone steps out of line—talks back, makes a scene—you don’t eat for two days. Maybe longer. Got it?”
The silence that follows is heavy. No one dares speak.
“Good. Behave, do your job, and no one gets hurt. That’s the deal.”
It’s not a deal. It’s blackmail wrapped in a smile. Compliance in exchange for basic survival. Food. Safety. A little less pain. That’s how they keep us in line.
Not with chains, but with hunger, fear, and the illusion of choice.
“All of you—shower block. Now. Before they arrive.”
The command slices through the air, and the girls around me begin to move in unison. No one questions it. No one hesitates. I follow, not because I want to, but because being left behind means being singled out—and I’ve already learned what that leads to.
Safety, if you can call it that, is in numbers.
I don’t pay attention to where we’re going. I just keep my head down and my feet moving, swept along in the current of bare skin and hollow eyes. We stop in front of a tiled room that looks like it was ripped straight from a public swimming pool—communal showers, cracked grout, rust-stained drains. The kind of place that should hold childhood memories. Not this.
The girl from my room is still beside me. She hasn’t said a word, but she stays close, like a shadow, or maybe a shield. She reaches for a bar of soap that’s been passed around so many times it’s barely more than a sliver, then hands it to me without meeting my eyes, and jerks her chin toward my body.
Wash.
It’s not a suggestion.
Around us, girls begin to strip and step under the cold spray. No privacy. No dignity. Just skin and silence. Every girl here is malnourished—ribs like scaffolding, collarbones sharp enough to cut. Some look dazed, like me. New. Brought in last night, maybe even this morning. Others move with mechanical precision, like they’ve done this a hundred times before.
But the girl from my room—she’s the smallest. The youngest. No creases at the corners of her eyes. No sun damage. No signs of a life lived long enough to be here.
She looks like porcelain.
Seventeen, maybe.
A child.
And for a moment, I let myself hope—hope that she’s been spared, that she hasn’t been forced to service the monsters who run this place.
But that hope is a lie.
A hollow, naive little thing that doesn’t belong here.
Because in a place like this, innocence isn’t protected.
It’s sold.