“A weaker man would be fired.” Ma'am assures him, sweeping into the cell with her dark eyes narrowed. She draws up to me so that I think she's trying to intimidate me; she's at least a foot taller than me and built like a Mack truck, but I'm not intimidated by her; I'm repulsed by her. “You know the bull doesn’t let anyone touch a girl after they’ve been purchased.”
The bull. I don’t know who he is. I’ve never seen him before, but he’s supposedly in charge. They all have stupid names, code I’m sure, that I’ve heard enough to pick up on context for.
The badger is the one who made the girl in the back of the truck choose their next victim, the one who was so fucking relentless that he had to have someone every single time they stopped. While I don’t think he’s the one that pulled the trigger, he’s the reason the first girl was shot and left on the side of the road.
Bear is the guard I don’t see very often since he tends to take the night shifts where we’re cast in complete darkness. That doesn’t mean he isn’t there, but I suppose his self-control is a little better than the rest.
Other than them, Joker, and Ma’am, we don’t see anyone else.
And Ma’am is the one I like to see least.
I’ve always known men take anything they want. And I’ve learned, thanks to my shitty fucking foster mother, that there are women who will look the other way. But having a woman actively participate in our imprisonment and pain? It’s a betrayal that makes me hate her more than the rest. And she knows it.
“I see how proud you are,” she sneers down at me. “You think you're better than them because you haven't broken yet? You're not. You're as filthy as the rest of them, a wicked little slut who needs a man to own you because you don't have a single thought inside that pretty head.”
Her long nail taps against my forehead to illustrate whatever point she thinks she's making. I'm not going to tell her that she's missed her mark; I don't need a man to own me, and I sure as fuckambroken. She just doesn't realize that I came to her this way.
“Any final words?” Joker taunts, taking advantage of Ma'am's hesitation as she brandishes the needle, already filled with whatever drug they're going to pump inside me. I know, based on watching the other girls, that it will drag me into the darkness immediately.
I welcome the warmth in my veins, the opportunity for these ugly cells to fade away.
When I say nothing, Ma'am laughs, plunging the needle deep into my neck.
I intentionally stayed relaxed, refusing to clench my body and brace myself. The needle is sharp, tearing into my skin harshly. A small gasp slips out of me, and then I feel the plunger emptying something into my veins. It's warm, fuzzy, and safe like my favorite blanket.
And just like my favorite blanket, it drags me to sleep.
5
Cal
The girl comes in a fucking box?
Like she's spare computer parts or a grocery order. I don't know what I expected— for it to be like when I ordered girls by the hour, maybe? For her to be escorted by someone? For someone to grab me off the street and throw me in the back of a van and take me to a secret warehouse to collect her?
I sure as hell didn't expect to get a message that said my package was out for delivery or to open my door a few minutes later to the shipping crate on the doorstep that said 'live animal'.
My heart beat like crazy as I looked around to see if anyone had stuck around to take notice, but the hall outside my door was empty, so I went around the side and pushed the box inside.
I've been staring at it for the last twenty minutes, wondering how to go about this. Will she jump out, ready to run? Will she know that it's better to just obey? Will she still be alive? I can't imagine it's easy to breathe inside this thing.
I've thought about how I was going to do this for the last week. I prepared the space, got all my tools and toys set up, and played it through a dozen different ways, each time ending in my release. You'd think, then, that the fantasy would be enough. It was, for a long time.
I've tried to resist my urges for as long as I can remember, but they began to control me at some point. I held off as long as I could.
I grab the key that was mailed to me the day after I completed my purchase and fit it into the padlock attached to the outside of the box. It fits perfectly, clicking free so I can slide it off and set it onthe ground.
When I lift the top off the box, I jump, nearly pissing myself as the movement catches me off guard. There's a layer of cardboard covered in straw that's been swept all around the inside of the box by the snake lying atop it, raising its head to hiss at me.
The live animal, it turns out, wasn't the girl inside. It's the fucking snakes that slither out as I step back, looking for something to pick it up with. I assume they aren't venomous, but I have no desire to find out as I lay dying. I can't tell, at first, how many of them there are. They're all tangled up, slithering to their freedom. The one that begins edging out of the box is a pretty thing, black and shiny with a powerful-looking body and a flat head.
I remember learning somewhere that venomous snakes have a flared hood, so I decide to go for it. I grip it by the tail as it tries to escape, keeping it at arm's length as it coils in on itself, trying to strike.
I take it to the bathroom, dropping it in the shower and shutting the door. I'll have to order a terrarium for the damn things, but I can't just throw them over the side of the balcony.
It's not their fault they got sent to me.
Besides, it will be good to have an alibi of sorts... just in case.
