“Eres un idiota! You gave her too much. He likes his girls awake, you pinche pendejo.”
“Relax. She’ll come around in a minute. They always do. Once she’s broken in, we won’t have to give her as much.”
The voices floated around me, rising in volume as the argument progressed—sometimes speaking English and sometimes Spanish. Sometimes a combination of both. I didn’t recognize any of them anymore. Not since they carried me out of that first house and threw me into the back of a truck with a group of other girls ranging in age from fifteen to forty. At least from what I could tell, because I’d been drugged. To keep me quiet, I would guess. And it worked. As we drove along, I’d faded in and out of a weird dreamlike state, not sure what was reality and what was a dream.
The trip to where I was now seemed to take forever, and yet no time at all. I don’t remember much of it, except that we didn’t stop once the entire way. And by the time we got here, the bucket in the corner of the truck was so full of piss and shit it splashed over the sides every time we hit a rut in the road. Some of the girls were too out of it to get up, and laid in puddles of their own waste. They hosed us off like cattle before they brought us into the house.
The feeling of complete and utter terror that kept me paralyzed? I remembered that.
I heard the clink of coins outside of my room as money was exchanged and then the latch of the door. I had no idea how much time had passed, or whether it was day or night. The single window was completely boarded up and heavy curtains hung over it. There was a new voice now. Deep, with a hard accent I couldn’t place. “Wake up, woman.”
But I didn’t want to wake up. I wanted to float in this hazy place in my mind where I didn’t feel the stagnant air on my naked skin, and I didn’t remember the men that came and went from my new prison.
Sometimes though, they would be late with my next dose and the drugs would begin to wear off, and in these moments, I would claw my way to the surface of my consciousness only to find myself back in the real world surrounded by the overwhelming stench of body odor—mine? Or from the others?—rough hands tearing at my tender skin as I was thrown around on the dirty mattress, my muscles refusing to obey what my mind was trying to tell them. To fight. To run away. To do something other than lay there with words of denial clogging my throat. I didn’t like it in the real world. There was only pain and humiliation there. But sometimes, sometimes they were late with my next dose.
And that’s when the screams would come.
They simmered within me, starting deep in my gut, then gaining strength as they erupted up through my chest and throat, where they escaped out of my mouth with a force that exhausted me. And yet, I couldn’t stop them from coming. Not until the men who kept me here came in with the pills.
In the beginning, I fought them hard, and they would have to hold me down and force them down my throat. But that only lasted the first day or so. Now I was grateful that they gave me a way to escape the horrors of my new reality, and I swallowed them greedily, eager to fall back into the blissful nothingness. To forget where I was and what was happening to me. Or at least be able to endure it until I woke again with only hazy bits of pieces of memories that swiftly faded away. Much like a dream.
Surprisingly though, in those moments when I was conscious enough to wonder if anyone was looking for me, it wasn’t my father who came to my mind, the man who raised me. The man I’d known my whole life. The man who needed me so he could marry me off to the highest bidder.
It was Enzo.
The terrifying mafia man who’d promised to save me.
Would he still want me now? In this vortex of time I was lost in, men came and went from my room, too many for me to keep count. Blurry figures with faces that all blended together. Some were more gentle than others, but they all took what they wanted from me. The words of refusal I tried to say coming out as incoherent moans that only spurred them on as they held me down on the filthy mattress that was covered with my own sweat and blood and the secretions of their bodies. My face and body were sticky with it all.
I wished I could fall sleep and never wake up. I wished I could leave this disgusting body.
“Get up, puta.”
Someone yanked me off the bed, their fingers digging cruelly into my upper arm. “Stop!” I tried to yell, but the word was nothing but a whisper that barely made it past my lips. I didn’t know if he even heard me. He stood me on my feet, not giving me time to steady myself before he was dragging me out of the room and into the hallway. As I stumbled along behind him past the doors across the hall, I heard the sounds of headboards slamming into walls and the slap of bodies colliding.
We’d hit the stairs before it came to me that I was still naked. I dug in my heels, trying to stop the forward momentum of his grip on my arm, but instead of stopping, he just gave it a sharp tug. I jerked forward and fell onto my knees, my free hand shooting out to catch myself. I cried out when there was a sharp pain in my wrist, and I tried to scramble to my feet, but I was slow from the drugs and ended up sliding along the floor, feeling like the arm he still held was about to be ripped from my shoulder socket.
When I wasn’t moving fast enough, he cursed in Spanish and hauled me to my feet with a look of disgust on his face. I couldn’t blame him, really. I smelled horrible, even to myself. Keeping his grip on my arm, he removed his other hand from my sticky skin as soon as he saw I could hold myself up. Then he proceeded me down the stairs.
I kept up with him out of sheer willpower, ignoring the whistles and shouts when we reached the bottom of the stairs and crossed through the main room of the house. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw men lounging around the room, some with women on their laps. Unclothed, like me, with dead, unseeing eyes and slack mouths. I kept my eyes on the scuffed wooden floor, unable to even try to cover myself since the guy taking me out still had a bruising grip on my arm and was walking so fast it was all I could do to keep up with him without falling again.
He took me through a door and out into a small concrete courtyard surrounded by high walls, releasing me so suddenly I stumbled, but I didn’t fall this time. It was dark outside, and cold, unlike my stuffy room. But there was enough light from the streetlights behind the house that I could see well enough. My arms crossed over my bare breasts and my right wrist throbbing in pain, I lifted my face, enjoying the fresh air and the breeze that brought goosebumps to my skin. Behind me, I heard water hitting the concrete, but my mind was too fuddled to comprehend what that meant. A second later, ice cold needles of pain were blasting the skin from my back. The spray of water was such a shock, it knocked the air from my lungs.
My immediate reaction was to run away, but there was nowhere to go. Nowhere to escape except back inside the house, and he was blocking my way. Huddled in the back corner of the courtyard, I tried to protect myself as best as I could.
After he sprayed me down from head to toe, he cut off the water and dropped the hose, then picked up a bucket and came over to me. I stared at him through strands of wet hair, watching as he took a soapy sponge from the bucket and dropped it on top of my head. “Wash,” he ordered, using his hands to mimic washing his hair.
I blinked at him as suds dripped from the strands of my hair, my thoughts still too convoluted to be able to think clearly. He repeated the motion, and I slowly lifted my arms and put my hands on my head and started to scrub my scalp and hair as he quickly and efficiently rubbed the sponge over the rest of my body, even kicking my legs open and scrubbing me there. There was something dark on the sponge when he finished, and I realized it was blood. I vaguely remembered having pains in my stomach, and I realized now it wasn’t because of the men who’d come to visit me. It was because I’d had my period.
Was it over now? Was that why he was cleaning me up? As I had no idea when it had started, there was no way for me to know. But there was an overwhelming sense of relief that my body had chosen this moment in time to clear everything out, as my chances of getting pregnant were reduced since my birth control pills were still in the bag I’d left in my car. Honestly, I’d totally forgotten about them until just now.
Oh my god. What if I’d gotten pregnant?
I tried to think, to figure out how long I’d been here. How long after you stop taking the pill do you become fertile again? I had no idea, but I didn’t think I’d been there that long. A week, maybe? Two?
My thoughts were cut off when I was hit with the cold water from the hose again. He rinsed my hair and body thoroughly and then left me shivering in the corner, my teeth chattering, as he wound it back up and left it near the front door. Then he stepped inside the house and came right back out with a dingy white towel in his hands. He gave it to me and I immediately wrapped it around my body, soaking up what moisture I could before I rubbed it briskly over the rest of me, drying my hair as best as I could.
When I was finished, he held his hand out for the towel, but I quickly wrapped it around myself again. “No,” I told him with a shake of my head that made the world tilt around me. I was hungry. And thirsty. And I could feel the panic rising inside of me as the drugs wore off. The thought of walking back inside of that house without something covering me making me feel nauseous. “No,” I said it again. I knew he understood that word. It was the same in both languages. Besides, he spoke some English.
He sighed heavily, looking at me like he was just so, so tired of dealing with people like me and our foolish demands. Between one blink of my eyes and the next, he was directly in front of me and the towel was ripped from my body. Stepping back, he gestured with his arm for me to go back into the house.
I stood there, swaying on my bare feet with my arms crossed over my front to cover myself, as I tried to remember why I didn’t want to go back inside even though I was now fucking freezing. But my brain was still so foggy and I couldn’t think. I just knew instinctively that I didn’t want to go into that house.
And then I remembered, and the screams began to rise.
But before they could erupt, he cursed in Spanish and looked around real quick as he took my arm and dragged me back inside. Once the door was closed behind us, he pulled me around in front of him and held me tight against his chest as he started yelling orders at a short guy with a shaved head standing in the far corner of the room.
Hands reached out and touched me as he moved me across the room to the stairs, pinching my breasts and grabbing me between the legs as I fought to keep the panic under control. My companion kicked them away. “No dinero, no mujer!”
Apparently, they wouldn’t be getting any free feels today.
I was back upstairs and in my room in no time at all. The short guy followed us in, a glass of water in one hand and a pill in the other. He shoved them at me and I took them gratefully, swallowing down the drug that would take me away from here. They stayed with me until I stopped shaking and my eyelids got heavy. Slowly, I drifted off into my own world. Even the throbbing pain in my wrist lessened. It didn’t take long, probably because I’d barely eaten in days.
As I made my way over to the mattress, I hated the thought of lying on it now that I was somewhat clean, but to my surprise, it looked like it had been flipped over, and a blue bedsheet had been thrown across it. Tears filled my eyes when I saw it, and I gratefully sat down and pulled the sheet up around my shoulders. It smelled musty, but I didn’t even care. Leaning back against the wall, I huddled under the thin sheet as I fell into the dream world of my mind.
I don’t know how long I was asleep when I was suddenly jolted awake, but it must’ve been hours, for my hair felt dry and I was semi-aware of where I was, but not to the point where the screams would come. My eyelids were so heavy I could barely open them as I pushed myself up onto one elbow and waited. Then I heard it again.
Pop! Pop! Pop!
My heart began to pound. Was that gunshots? I tried to move, to get off the mattress, but I couldn’t make my muscles respond to what I wanted them to do. Silent tears tracked down my cheeks. I wasn’t sure if they were from fear or hope. Maybe a little bit of both. It could be anyone down there. A rival gang. A disgruntled customer. Or someone who’d come after one of the other girls. I knew the chances that it was someone my father had sent were few and far between. He didn’t even know I was in Austin, so how would he have followed me here?
I heard shouts downstairs and more gunshots. Then a guttural scream that morphed into a wet, gurgling sound. In a rush of panic, I dragged myself off the mattress and over to the corner of the room. There was a spot I’d found there after my first “customer.” A floorboard that was loose where two of them connected. Pulling it back as far as it would go, I fought to stay conscious as I squeezed my hand inside, my fingers searching for the items I’d stashed there. A ring. A watch. A money clip. Small items that I barely remembered taking while they were too distracted to notice or that were left in my room. I didn’t take something from everyone who entered my room. Most of the time I was too out of it to even realize what was happening until later when I found the evidence on my body. Clutching everything in my fist, I made my way back over to the mattress and curled up under the sheet. I don’t know why I felt like I needed to have these things on me, but I was either about to be rescued or killed, and for some reason, I felt it was important.
And then everything went eerily quiet. Cowering in the corner of the mattress, I tried to make myself as small as possible.
The floorboards outside my door creaked, and I heard the door across the hall open. I listened intently as the footsteps faded as the person outside my room made their way down the hall to the other rooms. Maybe it was one of the guys who ran the house, checking to make sure we were all still here now that’d they’d killed whoever had tried to interrupt their business. Or maybe they were all dead. Maybe one of the customers decided he didn’t want to pay anymore. Hysterical laughter bubbled up inside of me and I slapped my hand over my mouth, trying to keep quiet.
The footsteps stopped outside my room. I tried to keep my eyes open as the doorknob turned and the door slowly creaked open. Hope flared inside of me, but I dashed it down. No one knew where I was. No one was looking for me…
A gun barrel appeared through the crack in the door and slowly swung around the room until it pointed directly at me. The door was pushed open a little more.
Oh, my god.
A violent sob burst from me before I could stop it.
He’d found me.
