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They didn’t break my Miri.
They wouldn’t break me.
I would break them.
More cries and slaps echoed from the speakers. I nearly lost it when Cuchillo’s hand snaked down and squeezed Miri’s breast.
Yes, I would break them. Every last motherfucking one of them. And I would enjoy each fucking minute of it. The longer it took for them to die, the better.
4
Miri
Except for the hour or so I spent strapped to a chair in front of a camera each day, I was left with Cat in the locked bedroom. It wasn’t fancy, but it wasn’t the cold, damp basement. Besides, this room was still better than ninety percent of the places I’d slept in my life over the last three years.
The fact that my captors left me in a room with Cat was good and bad. Bad, because it meant Cat had been trapped here for almost a full year. Those sick bastards obviously had no problem holding us here indefinitely. Good, because I finally found my best friend. Though it seemed very little of Cat remained in the hollow shell of a woman. She was like a walking corpse.
“Cat, you have to stop taking the drugs.” I gazed into her empty brown eyes and knew from experience I was wasting my time.
I might be free from heroin’s nasty hold, but I remembered all too clearly how horrible it was when I didn’t get my hit. The nausea, the burning skin that felt too tight, the itchy, restless legs, and the horrific stabbing stomach pains. Without Jag, I may never have untangled myself from the addiction that ran every part of my life, from where I lived to who I had sex with.
“I miss you, Miri,” Cat said. Tears leaked from her eyes and her mouth pinched in the corners. She sniffed and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “I-I can’t leave. I need my dose, Miri. I need it!” Cat was on her way to becoming hysterical, her voice rising sharply.
“Shhhhh.” I pulled her close and ran my fingers through her dull, limp hair. “I know you do, Cat. I can get you plenty of drugs. We just have to get out of here. I know someone who has more than enough heroin and you won’t have to have sex with him to get it.”
Even though that was exactly what you used to do, and what you did with Jag, Miri, you hypocrite.
Although, when I thought about it, Jag didn’t actually touch me until I was completely off the heroin. Except for that horrific dinner party. I suppressed a shudder. I didn’t like what he did, but I understood Jag’s reasons for what happened that night and forgave him a long time ago.
Cat pulled back and her eyes brightened some. “You can get me H?”
“Yes,” I nodded emphatically. “He gave it to me. I know he has it and I know he’d give it to you.”
My best friend deflated in front of my eyes. “There’s no way out of here, Miri. I’ve tried… when I wasn’t…” Her cheeks flushed, putting much-needed color in her pasty skin. “When I first got here. Before I was dependent on the drugs. I tried to get away. There are men everywhere and…”
“And what? Cat?”
She trembled and closed her eyes. “If you try to escape, whoever… whoever catches you gets to
… gets to…” She sobbed and the tears poured from her eyes. “They throw you down and fuck you right there with the others watching. And it’s allowed, Miri. I stay in here so no one can find me. Except for… you know, the main one.”
“El Cuchillo?”
“Yeah, him and his giant bodyguard. They come in whenever they want.” Cat straightened up and her eyes flew open, scanning me up and down. “Did they… you know, to you?”
I shook my head. “No.” I had wondered why I hadn’t been raped yet, not that I wasn’t glad no one had touched me. It was just that I knew exactly what misogynistic assholes like Cuchillo did to women and what they thought of us.
Cat leaned close to whisper. “I think there might be other women in the house, Miri.”
“Other women?”
“Shhhhh.” Cat motioned for me to be quiet. “Yes. Sometimes, usually at night, I hear car doors closing outside. Once, I saw a couple men carrying unconscious women, girls really, into the house. I’ve heard them cry.” She pointed to the air vent above the bed. “The noises come from there.” Cat shook her head. “But the next day, it’s quiet. They’re always gone after one night.” Cat began sobbing again and covered her face with her hands. “I want to get out of here, Miri. I can’t… I can’t… Before you showed up I was about two days from breaking the bathroom mirror and ending the pain.”
“Oh, Cat.” I held her face in my hands and cried with her. For her, for me, for our lost childhoods and broken dreams. For everything that was stolen from us by cruelty and circumstance and sick, greedy men.
We must have fallen asleep and been out a while, because I woke to darkness. Next to me on the bed, Cat was moaning and twisting restlessly in her sleep. She was close to needing another dose. I recognized the symptoms easily enough. While she continued her fitful sleep, I wandered around the room, looking for something, anything, to use as a weapon or a way out. Cat mentioned the bathroom mirror. We could easily break it and use the shards as knives, but the reality was, neither of us was strong enough to attack anyone at such close quarters.
I checked each and every window. Cat said they were reinforced. She had tried breaking one her first day imprisoned here and told me the glass didn’t crack. Not even when she threw a lamp at one. Instead, the guard simply told his boss about the destroyed lamp and her escape attempt. She was punished in a way Cat refused to discuss.
