Chapter 4 #2
I can’t let this happen.
I shook my head despite the pain from how hard Yusef beat me. Aches stabbed along my spine as I moved my neck at all, but I needed the physical rejection, the denial at what was being said about me.
The images his words evoked were too gruesome to believe. Flashes of nightmares of being raped filled my mind. They yanked me out of the visage of numbness. They pushed me straight out of this hole of hopelessness.
I couldn’t let this happen.
Fourteen years had come and gone of this training for this moment. A moment I couldn’t face.
I saw how impossible it was to get away once before, but this was the moment I couldn’t back away from.
This was it.
This was the moment I would die fighting to get free.
Because there was no part of me that could suffer through the life Erik was describing for me.
To be sold to a monster in the Mafia.
Then for that asshole to sell me again, or share me with other men so those pigs could breed me too.
I just couldn’t let this happen.
It was too awful to fathom.
Bigger and stronger, they could kill me for trying to escape, but so long as I had a breath in my body, I would fight to be free.
No strategy or plans formed in my mind that night. I was defenseless with nothing at all to use against my brother or his friend. I’d never had a phone. I was never allowed to read or watch TV. I knew no one but these two monsters.
My parents were dead.
One cousin, Raisa, remained as a memory in the back of my mind.
We hadn’t been the closest of relatives when we were children, but I had never forgotten a similar look of hatred in her eyes when her strict father, Konstantin Petrov, scolded her.
Like she felt the same hatred I held for my brother now.
Even further back in the recesses of my mind was the phone number she’d once given me. I’d never forgotten, tattooing those numbers into my mind should I ever need them like a lifeline.
The time to test it had come.
I prayed that however I got out of here, I could call her for help.
But how?
I didn’t even know where we were. That was part of the manipulation Erik and Yusef used on me, always staying mobile so they’d never be caught, so I’d never have a routine to rely on to escape.
All night long, I envisioned running away. Sprinting through the hallways I’d strode down with a blindfold when I arrived. Dashing down the stairs I’d climbed to get up here.
With nothing but the will to survive and banking on the power of mind over matter, as if sheer willpower could make me invincible, I dreamed of breaking out.
The sounds of Erik and Yusef drinking, laughing, and gambling in the other room would’ve prevented me from resting anyway.
Yet, that was the silver lining I had to take advantage of.
In the morning, Yusef opened the door to toss in a water bottle and a couple of stale pieces of bread.
He was sluggish. Hung over. Moving too slowly to react quickly.
Perhaps it was a combination of his drunken, tired state and the element of surprise.
I hadn’t tried to fight back in years. I hadn’t tried to run in over a decade.
He could assume I was compliant, that he and Erik had successfully broken me down.
They hadn’t.
The allure of freedom was too tempting for me to give up.
In a blast, I shot up and ran for the door. Squeezing past him as he tried to close the door gave me just a slip of space. It was all I needed, though.
I pushed harder, sprinting as fast as my bare feet could take me. They always removed my shoes when I was taken to a new holding place. To better prevent me from escaping, I supposed.
But even that wouldn’t stop me now.
He yelled, swearing and rushing after me.
Erik’s voice came too.
The clatter and commotion of them both hurrying to get to their feet and chase me followed me like a dark cloud of anger.
But I was gone.
Running, jumping down stairs, then barreling through the front door. Details blurred as adrenaline pushed me forward. Faster. Further.
Away.
I was away. I’d escaped to the street. Cold snow and ice had me sliding, but I caught myself. Shaking and scared, with my heart thundering so fast in my chest, I didn’t stop.
I couldn’t.
It almost seemed too easy.
Too simple.
To rush out when they were drunk.
Too soon, the extremes of the world caught up to me.
I was no longer the captive woman in a windowless room. I was now a free person, in the real world where normal things could happen.
I was no longer the sheltered bride tortured to bow. I was now the scared individual with no clue where to go or how to hide.
I’d lost them. Erik and Yusef weren’t chasing me any longer.
All that followed me was the drifting snow still falling. The icy precipitation that stung my cheeks.
Power through it.
Keep going.
Pain stabbed at my soles, making my run nothing more than a limping jog. Then a stilted walk. I had to keep moving, to put more distance between me and my brother. I had to keep searching, desperate to find a phone.
If Raisa was the only family I had left, if she could be my lifeline, I had to find a phone and call her.
And pray.
I had to hang on to the hope that she was alive and free to hear me. Because I needed someone to count on other than myself. At this rate, my experience of being free would be short-lived. I wouldn’t make it like this, coatless, shoeless, with nothing of value but my virginity.
Pigeons swooped and dipped, soaring close then taking off higher. I couldn’t help but look up at them, drawn to the ease of their smooth movements when I was so jerky to take another step. In awe of their superiority, free to fly, I stared up and didn’t look where I was going.
Crashing into someone startled me.
But the haggard-looking woman who hunched over under blankets and plastic tarps frowned.
“Oh, sugar honey,” she drawled with a strange lisp like she was a whimsical fairy or drunken siren. “You shiver so.”
I swallowed, unused to speaking to anyone.
Only one word came to mind.
“Help.”
She nodded, not judging or asking questions. Bobbing her head like it was a dance to which only she heard the music to, she draped a blanket over me and guided me to follow her.
I didn’t have the strength to protest.
I couldn’t find the energy to move away from her. The faint warmth of her smelly blanket soothed me, and the huge mismatched boots she pulled from her shopping cart nearby helped the breath-stealing pain of my cold feet.
“Help. Help. Help.” She chanted it, almost like a song to the pigeons that cooed and strutted around her near a lamppost that held a sign labeling this area as part of Central Park.
“Help. Help. Help.” She wove and slanted, guided me toward her bags of trash. From within one she extracted a phone.
Hope soared within me, but I couldn’t move my fingers to touch the buttons.
In a croaky voice, I told her the numbers. One by one.
Just reciting the number was all I could do.
Drowsiness pulled on my soul.
Gravity urged me to sit, then slump, onto a bench.
The bum held the phone to my ear as I lay back.
Closing my eyes, with the cooing pigeons in the background as the call rang, I prayed that help was a normal thing that I could deserve out here in the real world.
Blackness came too quickly, robbing me of ever finding out as I fainted.