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I swipe at my skin, my nose pointed to the ceiling with disgust, before hanging it back up and walking back across the hall to my room. My bed isn’t as welcoming as I’ve felt about it times before, but I climb under the threadbare sheet anyway.
Sleep never comes. I spend the early morning hours staring across the room, reliving my entire life. I try to stick to my earliest memories, of the day my parents smiled at me when I walked into the hospital room to see my sister for the first time. I think of holding her in my arms, my mother’s soft warning about being careful with her head. I remember my vow to love and protect her, to be the best big sister in the world. I attempt to lock on to that promise, but the unspeakable things that have happened to me start to take over. I see the grinning faces of deviants, hear the maniacal laughter of criminals as they get pleasure from hurting me. I feel Pirro’s hot, sticky breath on my skin, the memories so real it makes me sit up in bed.
That’s how the girl finds me when she carries a plate of food in my direction.
I’ve never seen her before, but it isn’t the terrified look in her eyes that makes me gasp for air. She’s wearing a ripped and stained Lindell Lemur shirt.
I try to meet her eyes, but she refuses to look in my direction.
I know to take the sight of the shirt as the threat it’s intended to be. It’s one more reminder about how easy it is to snatch someone right out from others’ noses. It tells me just how likely it is that Alani could be next.
I can’t ask how she is or what happened to her. We’d both get punished if either of us spoke. She pulls away when I try to squeeze her hand. She is no more interested in a reassurance than I am. We both know it’s a promise neither of us have the capacity to keep.
I can tell by looking at her, in the briefest second that we lock eyes, that she isn’t new to this experience. She doesn’t beg for help as she places the plate on the bed in front of me. She looks as hopeless as I feel and that comes with time in this world.
All the people here serve some kind of purpose. The house operates with mostly prisoner labor, with the exception of the men tasked with keeping us in line. Why pay someone to prepare meals when you can just snatch someone off the streets and have them do it for free, and in exchange, they get to live?
The roles are rotated. Last week, this girl could’ve easily been earning her keep, so to speak, on her back just like I’ve been forced to. Next week, she could be working the laundry service before returning to a spot in front of the camera.
I pray every time I see Raul that I’m going to be getting a new assignment. I relished the days that I worked in the kitchen, but the nights were worse. The servants who aren’t earning money are kept in tight quarters, practically living on top of each other. How fucked up is it that I’ve come to value the limited semi-private space I’m allowed for being one of the ones who gets assaulted on a regular basis?
I watch her back as she leaves the room, the four eighty-seven on the back of her neck a clue as to how long they’ve had her.
The man I’ve interacted with recently was tattooed as five hundred twelve, so she’s been here longer than him, but possibly not by much. There were six other women who I traveled with after getting abducted. I don’t know how often they make the rounds snatching people up, but I’ve heard from whispers that this is the only house they’re operating in Mexico. They could easily take turns dropping people off across several locations.
Just as she turns down the hall, Pirro replaces her in the doorway.
I can’t help the way I swallow in fear. Of all the people here, he’s the most violent, the one most prone to hurting people just for the hell of it. His behavior is so erratic he could be calm and collected one minute and the next, he’s shoving a knife through someone’s heart, his pulse never changing as he does it.
He smiles when he notices my reaction. He wants people to be afraid of him. It’s what he lives for.
“Raul left on another business trip.”
His words are more than just informative. He’s issuing a warning. He’s at his worst when Raul is gone. The boss is the only one capable of keeping him in check, and I think, deep down, he hates the man for it.
