Becky
My body is screaming at me, my joints aching like I’ve been folded in upon myself for a long time. My mouth tastes all cottony, my tongue too heavy, like I’ve had something stuffed in there. My head is groggy, moving side to side on my shoulders, slumping. I try and support it, lift it, but I find it’s much more difficult than it should be. So for a while I just sit here, staring down at the dirty concrete, wondering where I am and what’s happened to me. I go back over today’s events, my mind clearing slowly. I remember Dad, this morning, looking into my eyes with a pensive expression and telling me I better still be a virgin because Julian is picking me up today. I remember Julian arriving in a suit, short, fat, dark-haired, green-eyed, with fingers which were always fidgeting. I remember wearing a too-short sparkling dress to please him, Dad’s superior, a Capo I am being forced to marry.
I remember sitting in a restaurant with this man: this man I barely know, but the man Dad expects me to give my virginity to and marry. This man Dad wants to sell me to so that he can pay off some gambling debts, some gambling debts. For the first time in a long time, I think I should’ve gone with Mom to California instead of choosing to stay here with Dad. But I wanted to help Dad, needed to help him, save him from himself. And look where it’s gotten me. Julian stared at my breasts the entire meal, a man more than twice my age at fifty, staring down this nineteen-year-old girl with something in his eye that made me uncomfortable. I like to think the best of people, but I couldn’t think the best of him when he was staring at me like that.
Slowly, strength returns to me, slowly, too slowly. I hate how it trickles into me like an empty gas container trickling into the tank. I remember Julian going to the bar and returning with a glass of wine. I don’t usually drink, but he pressed it into my hand and said, “Drink this. Now.” I didn’t know what to do. I felt trapped. This man is a Capo, which means he’s got way, way more power than Dad, who’s just an enforcer. As far as the Family is concerned, I’m just some nineteen-year-old token to be traded with this man. I think about Mom, sunning herself in Cali.
Finally, enough strength returns to me that I manage to lift my gaze. My eyes are blurry, distorting my vision, but there’s not much to see. I’m sitting on the floor in a small, windowless cell, the only light coming from one of those buzzing insect-zappers in the corner. All around the blue flashing light, flies converge, going tzz and then falling to the floor. The floor is concrete and covered in stains I don’t want to think about. I try to stand, but I’m too weak, and anyway my ankle is chained to the wall. I trail my finger along the chain. Thick, interconnected steel, enough to keep a bodybuilder chained, let alone a woman like me. I’m short, lithe. I sit back, knowing there’s no way I’m breaking out of these bindings. Listening, I hear some quiet, muffled movements in the room beside mine.
I freeze, my mind going crazy. Julian drugged me, I guess, drugged me and brought me here…why? Dad gave me away to Julian. Maybe now Julian has given me away to somebody else. I close my legs, fighting the urge to pee. Terror grips me, terror like I’ve never felt. It’s the sort of terror I’ve only read about in books: terror which opens up and swallows me and makes it so I can’t think or do or speak. I just sit there, shivering, as the movements continue in the next room. Something is going to happen to me, something horrible, something evil. Pain is going to become my reality. I begin to cry. I try and fight the tears, tell myself crying will do no good, but I can’t. They stream freely, dripping onto the stained concrete. In the corner, a fly goes tzz.
The door to the cell is one of those reinforced metal ones with a chunky handle. Whoever opens it goes out of their way to open it quietly. The handle squeaks slowly, an elongated scream which climbs under my skin and makes a home there, torturing me. I realize I’m panting, gasping. My heart is drumming so fast I’m sure I hear it slamming against my ribcage. I sit back, pushing against the wall, wishing I could disappear through it as the handle continues to turn unbearably slowly. Who is on the other side of the door? It might be Julian. Maybe he drugged me and brought me here for his own use. But why bring me here? As sickening as it is to think, I was given to him. He could’ve taken me anytime he wanted. No, I’m sure it’s not Julian. I’m sure it’s somebody else, somebody who’s been given me as a payment for some task. I hate that I’m thinking like this, but Dad selling me to Julian is evidence enough that these thoughts have some merit.
The handle is eventually turned all the way. Then the door begins to be pushed open by a man. I know he’s a man from the way he’s breathing: throaty, heavy, deep-voiced. He pushes the door open slowly, just like he turned the handle, trying to make as little noise as possible. When it’s fully open, he steps into the room. At first it takes my eyes a moment to adjust to the light which pours in from the adjacent room, powerful and yellow, making the man nothing more than a silhouette.
When it finally does, I see a tall, wide, bald man covered in so many tattoos it’s difficult to make out his features. He’s wearing a black overall, with a hood drooping at the back, so just his head and his bare hands are showing. His face is completely blanketed in swirling black tattoos, and when he smiles I see that his teeth have been filed down to sharp edges. I’m about to scream. I can’t help but want to scream. But then he brings his fingers to his lips and makes a shh sound. This is made even more threatening by the long length of rebar he holds in his other hand.
“If you make a noise,” the man says, “I am going to kill you.” He talks quietly. “We have a guest here who doesn’t know about this secret room—no friend of yours, little slut—and we need him to go away, so don’t make a noise.” When I don’t respond, he paces across the cell in two large strides and kneels down, bringing his face close to mine. “Are you going to make a sound?” His voice has an accent I don’t recognize, something Scandinavian. If he’s working for anybody, the mob part of my mind deduces, then he’s a hired contractor, not a Family guy. He leans in closer. “I said, are you going to make a sound?” He strokes my face with the bar, which is ice-cold, causing me to shiver. “It is no big thing to kill the man out there, but our employer would not be too pleased, you understand?”
I shake my head; talking would mean making a sound.
“Good, good girl. Because if you do, you die. You need to understand that.”
I nod.
What are they going to do to me? It doesn’t take much imagination to figure that out, does it? He reaches behind me, fiddles with the chain, and pulls me to my feet. “It wasn’t even locked, you stupid bitch,” he says, grinning and flashing those spiked teeth.
He drags me by my arm into the next room, which is a small office-type room with a desk and a chair. It looks odd, though, and it takes me a moment to figure out why. There is no door, just a bookshelf set in the opposite wall. Apart from that, and the desk and chair, the room is bare. Bare, that is, of furniture. Two men lean against the desk, both of them looking sleazy and hungry, like wild animals. I don’t even see the features of the men, my eyes are so blurred with tears: silent tears, because both of the men, despite their grinning and groaning, make no noise. I know that they’ll kill me without thought if I make noise. At least, I think they will. What should I do? How do I get out of this alive? I don’t know. Part of me knows that playing up to what they want might accomplish this, but I can’t bring myself to do it. I just want to be home, in bed, curled up in a ball where I can feel safe.
The man prods me in the back, leading me to the desk, where the two men begin pawing at me. They grab at my breasts and my belly and my legs, just grabbing and pawing and grinning without making a noise. I feel like I’m going to be sick, a churning in my belly. I swallow it, but it keeps coming back. I tell myself not to do it, to keep it down; it might make them angry. But then one of the men, for seemingly no reason, prods me as hard as he can in the belly. I keel over, coughing, but manage to keep the vomit back.
“So they didn’t want this little cunt, eh?” one of the men says. “Can’t see why not. She’s ripe looking.”
“What a fool.” Another man laughs.
I can’t tell them apart anymore. They all seem the same. The same voice, the same purpose. I swallow sick, acidic in my belly, but it doesn’t go away. My heart is beating too fast, my throat is too dry. I keep thinking about how I should’ve worn something less provocative than the sparkling dress, something these men wouldn’t find so appealing. I keep wondering if it’s possible for me to get free somehow. I keep thinking about Dad, and how I stayed behind because I thought I could get through to him, break through his armor of coldness and find some humanity in there. But he sold me, sold me, and now Julian has just passed me on. Sick, sick, sick…
“You better not make a noise.” He’s close to my ear, whoever he is. His hand is on my upper back. He pushes, bending me over. My stomach crunches up and I can’t help it. I can’t stop myself.
I vomit violently, loudly, all over the floor, causing the three men to leap away from me as I’m repeatedly sick on my feet. I’m still wearing one heel, I notice. All this time I’ve been loping around on one heel without realizing it. I have no idea why that seems important. I’m sick until I’m empty, and then I’m just dry-heaving, eyes stinging. Somebody grabs me by the hair and throws me to the floor.
I land, the wall slamming into my back, coughing, winded. I draw in breath, but my throat has closed. I’m panting, can’t stop panting. My vision is wavy to the point where I’m not even sure where I am anymore. Have they put me back in the cell?
Voices come to me as though from across a cavern.
“She’s no goddamn use. Good to look at, but has no stamina. I say we just gag her, drill her, and get out of here.”
“I like some life in my ladies. This is a disappointment. But still, can’t let good pussy go to waste.”
I manage to lift my head up enough to see that one man is holding a rag. A rag—to stuff into my mouth. A rag—to silence me. Even in my aching, terrified state, I understand that if that rag is stuffed into my mouth, I will die here silently and nobody will know what’s happened to me until these men are long gone. Maybe they’ll close that secret door behind them and nobody will find me for years. Maybe Becky Morris will simply go missing. Time slows down as the man takes the rag from a desk drawer and walks towards me. If I shout, they will kill me, but if I don’t shout, they will rape and then kill me. The decision should be obvious, but the threat of that pipe, dangling like a snake ready to strike at the man’s side, is enough to make me clamp down my teeth almost until the rag is in my mouth.
But then he keels down, rag coming at me, and I see it all too clearly: I see my shifting, juddering body; I see the life sinking from my eyes; I see the men pulling down their pants and taking turns and—and—and—
“No! No! Help me! Help me!” I scream. “Please! Help me! Please! Stop! Stop! Help me! Help me—”
“Stupid bitch!” the man snarls, shoving the rag into my mouth. It’s dirty, greasy, filling my mouth with an oily taste. I try and push it out with my tongue, but the man pushes it in all the way to the back of my throat, choking me. I cough, wriggle. The man goes to the desk and gets some duct-tape, wraps a piece around my mouth, around my head, three times around to make sure I can’t make any noise. Saliva pools in my mouth already. I’m going to drown in my own spit before they have a chance to murder me. I kick, flail, desperate to get away, but they hold me down as they argue over me.
“We have to kill her,” a different man says.
“I haven’t even fucked her yet.”
“We have to kill her! What if he heard?”
“We’ll take care of him. He’s just a Family man. Pussies like that, what’s he gonna do to us?”
“I’m killing her.” I focus, and see that it’s the tattooed man who wants me dead. He moves toward me with his metal pipe, shaking his head, making a little tutting noise. “I wanted to have fun with you, little whore. I really did. But sometimes, a man has to put his life over his cock, you understand?”
The other men move aside, muttering angrily, but moving all the same. The bald man lifts the pipe, aiming at my skull. He will hit me. He will hit me with all his strength and my head will explode like a watermelon.
I try and scream, but all I can do is squirm like somebody whose tongue has been cut out.
Then the shooting starts.