4. Phoenix
Phoenix
I don’t take another full breath until I end my shift, still commando under my uniform, and head back home. The entire way home, I am kicking myself for not taking that damn watch.
If I had taken it, I wouldn’t be walking home in thousand percent humidity with my hair sticking to the back of my neck, really missing my underwear.
Instead, I would be walking home in the same Savannah heat with hair sticking to my neck, but I’d at least be dreaming of what the next day was going to bring—like freedom and new panties.
I chickened out, so I have to pay the price, which is the slow walk back to the same dilapidated trailer in the same derelict trailer park that I’ve lived in my entire life. Dinner will be a cup of noodles and sitting in silence as I contemplate the relative unfairness of my existence.
I don’t know why I don’t just go. Pack my backpack with my scant wardrobe and plenty of panties, and just leave. There’s no reason for me to stay here. Fear, I guess, that the unknown will be just as dismal and lacking as the familiar.
There will be nothing for me to do, no company to see or talk to until work the next morning.
Unless Scrappy comes to visit me again. The little stray dog that hangs around the trailer park occasionally comes and keeps me company.
I would have taken him in and adopted him years ago if I thought I could take better care of him than he could have himself.
As it stands, I’m pretty sure that most nights he eats better than I do.
When I get home, I head straight to the shower. Payment on the hot water bill was due three weeks ago, and I won’t be able to pay it until Friday. There’s a fifty/fifty shot if I have hot water or not.
Dropping my uniform on the floor, I step under the spray and stifle a shriek. Make that a one hundred percent reality that the water is cold. It’s all good. It’s way too hot outside for hot water, anyway.
After the world’s coldest shower with the last of my body wash, I dress in an old pair of pajamas and go to heat my dinner.
I don’t even get the kettle on the stove before there’s a loud banging on my door.
I lower the kettle slowly to the burner. No one comes here unless they have to. And rent is the one thing that’s paid up.
The only people who ever came before were for my father, and since he’s gone, with only me left to mourn him, I have no idea who it could be.
Unless Con figured out why I was really there in his room.
Would he punish me for only thinking about stealing from him?
Did he somehow know that I was still thinking about taking that watch?
I peek my head around the corner of the refrigerator, trying to see through the faded curtains and dingy glass of the door.
It isn’t Con or any of the other Titans. I don’t recognize the men as security from the hotel, but when one turns to say something to his companion, the movement reveals the gun tucked into his waistband.
I duck down, pressing my back against the wall, and hold my breath as the knocking turns to a kick, and they break in the front door.
Fresh sweat trails down my back as I bite the inside of my lip to stop myself from making any noise, hold my breath, and hope they won’t see me.
Of course, I’m not that lucky.
“Over here,” the first guy calls as he grabs my arm and hauls me to my feet, slamming me against the wall. The trailer shudders under the impact. “I found the little gutter rat.”
The man holding me has a thick mustache, the kind dirty cops and pedophiles boast, and his sour breath smells like tobacco and stale beer.
The other man lumbers around the corner, a pot belly sticking out over his belt and his hair thinning.
“Where’s your daddy, girl?”
“Dead,” I say. “Died about a month ago.”
“Do you know who killed him?” Pedo-stash asks .
“He killed himself.” I clench my teeth on the words. “He ate a bullet.”
“Fucking coward,” Baldy mutters.
Pedo-stash looks at me for a moment and then shakes his head as if he is disappointed.
“Well, see, that’s a problem for you, little girl. Your father owed us some money.”
“If you want to take it up with him, his ashes are in the living room. The silver canister on the shelf,” I say, trying to act tough.
I know that if I show weakness, these men will hurt me.
I need them to believe that my bark is worse than my bite.
It’s the only way a girl can survive in this kind of neighborhood, and it’s why I haunted the resort when I was younger.
I’m not tough.
He laughs, chuckles like it’s all a big joke. Then his hand flies up, and his knuckles slam into my face hard enough for me to taste blood. He lets me go, and I fall, barely catching myself on my palms before my face slams into the floor.
That apparently wasn’t enough, because he decides I need a good kicking too. He pushes his steel-toed boots under my ribs, pinning me to the floor for a beat before rearing back and kicking me in the same place twice.
I stifle a scream and cough out a trail of blood, trying to catch my breath as pain radiates throughout my body. The boot rears back to kick me again, and I force my knees into my chest, ignoring the way my stomach screams with the movement. I have to protect myself.
Baldy stops Pedo-stash from kicking me again and instead grabs my hair and yanks me up back to my feet. Tears sting my eyes, but I refuse to let them fall. Tears only encourage men like him.
“Look here, little girl, we’re going to give you an opportunity, because we are first and foremost businessmen.” Baldy sneers, his breath worse than Pedo-stash’s. “Your father owes us one hundred thousand dollars.”
A hundred thousand? Jeezus H and all the saints…what has he done to me? I loved my father, in spite of his flaws, but in this moment, all I can feel for him is fury. “He’s dead,” I cry out.
“Yeah, I got that. But we still need to get paid,” he says, flinging my table over on its side and knocking over my last cup of noodles .
“Dead men don’t pay their bills, but their families do. You don’t stiff the mob, sweetcheeks. So you have two choices. You can come up with the hundred K he owes, or we can take your pretty little body and make you earn it.”
The mob. Fear floods me, images of a bloody horse head and being buried in concrete beating back every rational thought. The mob doesn’t play.
His meaty, sweaty fist grabs my chest hard, squeezing my breast, and my stomach lurches. I want to throw up all over him. I swallow back the bile, knowing that anything like that would just antagonize him.
“Of course, if you don’t want to turn tricks, we could just beat the shit out of you and kill you,” Pedo-stash says.
Baldy ignores him and keeps running his hand up and down my body. My stomach turns and flops, and bile rises in my throat, but I say nothing. If I say the wrong thing, he might take it as a challenge. Pissing him off could be as detrimental as encouraging him.
“If I were you, girl, I would just suck cock until you make up his debt, and then you’ll be free.
” He tips his head to the side, evaluating.
“It’s not a terrible gig. You’ll probably end up emotionally scarred; you’ll definitely get beat up a few times, but I would say you have at least a twenty percent chance at survival.
Which is definitely better than if you did nothing,” he says, his voice falsely helpful.
He slides his hand around and grabs my ass.
I swallow down the bile burning its way up my throat. That’s the pitch? Emotional scarring and a twenty percent survival rate? I would pray to someone, but it has been too long since I thought someone might actually listen or even care about me. I’m on my own.
“I’ll pay,” I choke out.
“With your body?” Baldy asks, a little too eagerly.
“Cash,” I say, still trying so hard not to puke. “I just need a little time.”
“How the fuck is a little gutter rat like you going to come up with a hundred thousand bucks?” Pedo-stash asks.
“I work at the casino. I can get it. All of it. I’ll just have to steal it or something. I’ll figure it out. Time, I just need time. ”
“You know what,” Baldy laughs. “I believe you will. You look like you have some fight in you, girl, so I’m going to make you a deal. I’m going to give you a week. You have one week to come up with one hundred and forty thousand?—”
“You said a hundred,” I argue.
“Did I?” he taps his chin like he’s thinking about it.
“Well, I must have forgotten the interest. One week to come up with one hundred and forty thousand cash, or you’re going to work for me, and you’re going to do it on your knees.
It shouldn’t take you more than a decade.
I mean, you’re going to have to heal before I can turn you out. ”
“Heal?”
Pedo-stash gives me a wicked grin. “You don’t pay, we’re going to make an example out of you.
I think two broken ribs, and maybe losing a finger or two should be enough.
Normally I’d break your jaw, or your kneecaps, but those take longer to heal, and you’re gonna need both to make good on our investment. ”
The men both laugh, and I push myself against the wall, trying hard to still the quiver of my chin and the tremble in my hands. Nothing good will come from showing these men any weakness.
“One week. One hundred and forty thousand, and I never see you two again?”
“That’s the deal, sweet cheeks,” Pedo-stash says. Baldy takes one more squeeze of my tits for the road, and then they’re gone, leaving the door hanging open on its hinges.
I stand with my back against the wall, shaking, refusing to move, refusing to breathe until I hear gravel crunch under their tires, and I know they’re gone.
The second they drive away, my knees fall out from under me, and I catch myself on my palms again. I dry heave onto the torn linoleum floor.
I don’t know how long I lie there. When I open my eyes again, it’s dark, and the stray puppy has crawled through the hole in the floor and is curled up against my side, whimpering.
My hand goes to his soft fur, and I pet him. Tears trail down my face, making a little puddle beneath me .
Maybe it would have been better if I had antagonized them. Maybe I could have made them so angry that they beat me to death.
Death would be better than being whored out to pay for my father’s debt.
Death would be better than living in this shithole, constantly reminded of how I will never be anything more than a maid.
I won’t do it.
I will not let them whore me out. Living in this trailer, working a thankless job, being abandoned by everyone who’s supposed to love me…all of that is enough . I refuse to sink lower by letting some monster pimp me out.
I’ll pay them, or I’ll die trying.
One hundred forty thousand dollars. One week.
It’s more money than I’ve ever seen, and my thoughts return to that stupid watch. My hand curls into a fist in the pup’s fur. It’s the only way.
Was I really going to steal from Con Masterson?
Was I stupid enough to court the wrath of the Titans and their parents ?
Yes.
It’s six of one, half dozen of the other.
If I don’t pay the debt, the loan shark will make me wish for death.
If I’m caught, the Titans will kill me.
Whichever way you look at it, unless I manage to straddle a very thin line, I’m a dead girl walking.