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And if they did come, who would they come for?
The girl detoxing, desperate for a cure, willing to do anything for the blissful escape?
Chris with her haunting stare?
Or me?
My stomach twisted at the idea.
And that was exactly why I needed to stop sitting, waiting for fate to come to me. I needed to take it in my own hands. Even if they were bruised and hard to bend. They were small and injured, but they would work, they could still do damage, they could help me claw, punch, crawl my way out of this if that was what needed to happen.
"Ugh," I groaned as I forced my knees to the floor, pushing my weight on them, then attempting to rise to my feet, immediately assaulted with the evidence of their disuse - pins and needles, sharp and throbbing and uncomfortable.
"You should have laid down," a voice called. Scratchy. Chris.
My head shot over, finding her watching me with those voids she called eyes.
"I didn't want to be that vulnerable," I admitted, seeing no reason to lie.
"You think you can fight."
"I will fight," I shot back immediately, the voices of the women who had raised me strengthening my tone as well as my resolve.
"It's pointless," she told me, gaze moving from mine, staring off across the room.
"Fighting for yourself is never pointless," I told her, shaking my head as I forced weight onto my other leg, leaning back against the wall to let it come back to life before I forced it to carry me across the room.
"There are more of them. And they're big. And they have no hearts in their chests. You can kick, bite, hit, and they will just hold you down harder, laugh at your weakness."
My heart crushed in my chest, deflated and bruised, and I knew at that moment that no matter what happened, if Aunt Janie detonated a bomb to kill them all, and Aunt Lo came storming down the stairs right now to save us, that it would never be the same. My heart. It would never be what it once had been - not ignorant, but innocent of the ugly in the world. Because here I was, looking at what it could do to a girl. A girl just like me. A girl who probably had a crush on a boy. A girl who had hobbies. A girl who realized when she was taken that she should have told her parents she loved them more, should have tolerated her siblings more.
"All it would take is one good hit," I insisted, unwilling to let go. Of my fight, my determination, knowing that if I did, all I would have left was defeat, acceptance of my circumstances.
And I couldn't let that happen.
I couldn't make myself a victim before I even had something to feel victimized by.
"They hold your arms down," Chris said, tone as empty as her eyes, her lips barely moving as she spoke. "There's never just one of them, you know? There's always two or three. I guess they get more money that way."
I closed my eyes tight for a second, willing my eyes not to tear up, not to let those pictures take root in my brain.
"There's no way to hit them. Even if you did, you still couldn't get away. And then they will make you regret hurting them. Whatever you think you can do to them, they can do worse to you. A lot worse."
I couldn't help the thoughts then, couldn't stop them from tearing through my brain, making me hate the world for creating monsters, hate society for allowing men to think they could use their bodies as weapons and get away with it, for taking a girl who had likely been just like me, innocent of men, and force them to learn nothing of them but the brutal, the evil.
"Look at me," I demanded, hearing venom in my voice. It was flooding my mouth, laced with some primal urge to infect, to sink in, to lace the bloodstreams with burning pain. I was alive with desire to do that to these men. For what they did to this girl. Her head turned, chin lifting, eyes settling on my face, seeing but empty. "I am going to get us out of here. No," I went on when she started to scoff. "Look at me. Listen to me. I am not going to die here. Or have that happen to me," I said, waving a hand across the room, "which is just as bad if you ask me."
"You've never even seen this place. The men with guns in it..."
"Not yet. But I will see it. I will see it. And I will remember every inch of it. And I will find a way to get a key, to get a weapon. And I will get us out of here."
