Chapter 3
3
T he girl on the mattress next to me hasn’t stopped crying for hours.
Not since she came back from whatever torture she had to endure, with a black eye and swollen lip.
I tried to ask if I could help, but she turned her back, giving me a ghastly view. Crisscrossed bleeding welts cover her skin in raised, red strips between her shoulder blades. Someone came in with a flashlight during the middle of the night and gave her pills, but what she really needs is for those wounds to be properly dressed, and I already know that isn’t going to happen in a place like this.
Something tells me she’d probably refuse medical attention, even if it was offered.
If I were in her position, I might just curl up and pray for sepsis to force me to the ground and claim me into delirium, too.
“They’re coming,” a voice from the mattress opposite mine whispers. Her position is closest to the door, and I suspect she can hear much more than any of us can.
She’s a girl with cropped blonde hair and heavy circles under her eyes. It’s hard to tell her age, but I’d say we’re possibly much the same in years.
How could I ever have known this was how I’d celebrate being twenty-six? Imprisoned in a bunker and about to become a sex trafficking statistic, thanks to psychopaths belonging to a secret society.
I’ve been too out of my head this entire time to ask anyone’s names, or attempt conversation. It’s hard to think, let alone form words. Certainly, any effort to try to talk about what is happening in this place feels like we’d be breathing life into this nightmare. To mention it out loud might bring something far worse crashing through the walls to devour us alive.
As the door opens, the room falls eerily silent as I’m sure the others send up whatever quiet pleas they play on repeat in their own foggy minds that this won’t require their presence, that it won’t be them these men call upon.
All I hear is my own breathing.
None of them need be concerned, I already know it’s me they’re coming for.
I’ve used a chipped piece of concrete at the base of the wall behind my head to mark the days. Between the drugs and the lack of natural light, it’s disorienting being locked inside this room. I only know their routine administration of medicine occurs each morning when we’re given something to eat.
So, I’ve scratched tiny lines each day.
One.
Two.
Three.
Today was the ominous fourth marking, lined up alongside the others like a miniature tombstone.
Seems fitting really, four scratches to represent four bodies. The group this all began with, is where my ultimate undoing and breaking point is liable to come from.
Did I really, truly, enjoy being at the mercy of them that night? Or was it all twisted and sick and depraved? Was I just a silly little whore who stumbled across the path of the wrong men at the wrong time, and now I’ve been primed to pay the ultimate price of giving over my flesh.
The first time was willingly.
This time, they’re stealing it from me, and are likely to destroy my soul while they’re at it.
Footsteps cross the room, and my eyes stay fixed on the threadbare sheet beneath my fingers pressed into the cot bed. They stride forward until I see the outline of polished shoes drift into my line of sight.
“Come.”
His instruction is clipped. Efficient. This man knows that I’m incapable of arguing or fighting the inevitable. I’ve already endured a more than humiliating shower earlier on under the watchful gaze of one of the men who linger in this place. When my hesitation to get undressed in front of him became apparent, he laughed at me and said he wouldn’t touch my filthy cunt even if someone paid him to.
He was only there to confirm that I was, in fact, suited for purpose now that four days had passed since my last visitation from this awful man.
I can feel a room full of eyes on me as I make my way to my doom. Following behind the nameless man and his suit and grotesqueness. As we exit and walk the now familiar path toward the room at the end of the hall, my stomach churns, and my head grows lighter with each step. I don’t know if they upped my dosage, but I feel like there’s every possibility I might simply pass out during this ordeal.
Either that, or they might break me in two.
Some of the girls who left that room since I’ve been here never returned, and the mess inside my mind has dreamt up horrendous scenarios of what even worse fate might have befallen those poor things .
The same raft of noises drifts from many of the rooms, with their closed doors and sickening secrets hidden away. I’m terrified of what is about to happen to me. I’m even more traumatized to think of what might be happening to the children whose voices I’ve heard through my drug-induced fog.
All too quickly, the room swallows me up. I’m inside without really knowing how I walked the length of that corridor. Somewhere within me, a voice is screaming, pleading, begging to be released. However, the numbness due to the poison lurking in my blood keeps me mute. Even if I wanted to cry for help, there might be nothing more than a shriveled carcass left of me. I might be reduced to no more than remnants of dust left filling my lungs where my blood has dried up, and my bones have ground down to nothing.
This time, the room is already dark. With a large spotlight focused squarely on the bed.
It sends a cold trickle of dread down my spine.
“Tie her down. This time the bitch doesn’t get to escape.” A voice emerges from the shadows.
“Face up or face down?” Another comes from close to the red pinprick of light. The camera.
I’m grabbed by the shoulders and forced across the room so carelessly that my bare feet drag and catch on the floor.
“Face up. They like seeing it on film when the cunts start crying.”
Panic rips through me, clawing at my throat, with a surge of adrenaline I didn’t think would be possible considering how doped up I’ve been for so long.
Turns out, even when it feels like the light is fading fast, there is one last ounce of fight left in me.
“Ahh. Don’t think of trying to get clever now, Posey.” The man whose fingers dig into my arm throws me onto the mattress under the blinding spotlight. “This is all you’re good for, remember. To take all of us, like we know you’ re so very capable of, and be a good little hole to split three ways over and over until we’re satisfied.”
I make a strangled noise and try to roll away. Except he’s too big, too strong. This is the largest of the three of them, and he shoves a forearm over my stomach, leaning his weight so heavily that the air rushes from my lungs, and I feel like my ribs are going to crack beneath his weight.
A memory of that night pops in, far more vivid than anything I’ve been able to grasp lately. That night, I recall thinking that this was a man who could crush my rib cage beneath massive hands if he wanted to.
Turns out, this might be the eventuality I’ve foreshadowed.
My hands are dragged above my head and bound with something biting and cold. Handcuffs maybe? They cut into my skin, leaving me unable to twist or move.
Once they’re satisfied that I’m rendered fully immobile, the elbow sunk into my stomach lifts off, and I choke out some wheezing breaths. My vision grows more blurred. Along with struggling to inhale and the sheer terror of whatever is about to happen in the next few minutes, the lightheadedness ratchets up a notch.
The sound of clanking metal comes from the side of the bed.
“Give it to her hard. Break the bitch in good.” A cold laugh comes from the direction of that red light, which is now flashing at me like a warning beacon. Alerting me with a series of crass, repetitive winks that this is the moment.
Right here.
There’s no escaping this inevitability, and I’m about to become just another statistic.
Except after these men are done with me, they’re either going to be disposing of a corpse, or waiting until they can do it all over again. Truth be told, they might not even wait.
Between my legs, the mattress rolls and dips, and I squeeze my eyes shut. My face contorts as I hear the lowering of a zipper, and feel the hideous presence of whichever man this is between my thighs.
“Yeah, that angle’s perfect. We’ll be able to see you pile drive her real good from here.”
I feel myself starting to vacate my restrained limbs. I’m pretty sure my brain has just scooped my awareness up and left my body entirely. A last-ditch effort to shield myself from whatever is about to happen. It’s as if I’m floating somewhere over all of this, and whoever is left on that mattress isn’t me anymore.
None of this is going to happen to me. Just to the shell, the flesh and blood part of me, but the true core and heart of me they can’t have. I’ve taken her somewhere far, far away from all of this, and she’ll be protected from whatever agony these men inflict for as long as necessary.
A fist grabs the waistband of the thin cotton shorts I have on. Just as they’re forcefully tugged, ruthlessly stripped from my body, I feel a tremorous vibration rattle through the room like a shockwave.
Heat and noise boom in; the dark space is invaded by commotion. However, I’m still trapped in the quagmire of my own mind. Unclenching my eyes, I try to focus, try to grasp hold of reality.
As I crack my eyelids open, my mouth drops wide on a silent scream, because there’s a man leaning over me, with bared teeth and a rotten dick hanging out of his pants. He’s about to force himself into my body, and I can’t move, I can’t escape this.
Then blood splatters across my face.
Above me, the grotesque man clutches at his neck, and a thin wire slices through his skin. Blood continues to spurt everywhere, landing on my chest, chin, more of it hits my cheeks. Hot, thick liquid pumps from the vein in the side of his throat.
Is this a scene from one of my nightmares ?
Have I descended into an all-consuming madness in order to avoid the reality of whatever he’s doing to my body?
Pops ring out.
Scuffling and low voices emerge from the deep shadows.
The man with the wire lodged deep in his throat gurgles, and blood spills from the sides of his mouth until his body goes rigid and then slumps to one side.
His weight and pulsing streams of wet, crimson feel like they’re everywhere. I try to shrink away from the garish, sickening sight, but with how sluggish my legs feel, it's hard to pull them out from beneath his bulk slumped over my thighs. I don’t know what fucking sick game is being played, but I’m letting out silent screams into the blinding spotlight.
The glare dims, revealing a sight that makes my blood turn to ice.
Along the wall with the camera, the other two men lie crumpled. Blood splatters and slick smears have been left behind, marking the place where bullets have passed straight through the middle of their foreheads.
The third body, the one whose throat has been slit and left to bleed out, is shoved off the bed, landing on the floor with a sickening thud.
And standing over me, are three figures dressed in full combat attire.
Each of them wearing a skull mask.