I had no weapons, nothing to help me.
I pulled the tie done up in a pretty little bow concealing my breasts, and I slipped the dress from my shoulders, allowing it to fall to the floor. I stood, naked and vulnerable, perverted stares on me.
I kept my chin high, determined to hide the fear I felt. I filled my head with thoughts of sunshine. Of a future that I wanted to believe I’d get. Of the past and the people I loved. Woodrow, my dad, my mother. I forced myself to focus on anything else but my current situation.
A blast of pain dragged me back to reality. I looked down in time to see the first droplet of blood rush from my nipple. Ville had a blade in hand, something small and discreet and easy to hide, as he had clearly proved. It was still pressed to my skin, giving its own warning when I met his stare.
“Get in the cage, Jolie.”
“Écoute, putain.” Sylvia laughed, before jerking his head—a silent order for the man in the doorway to help him lift the deceased.
My French was rusty, being a subject I always had little desire to learn, but I’d heard those words in movie once, the subtitles dancing around in my head, telling me he’d called me a whore.
I listened, as they wanted me to, dropping low and scooting into the cage, pulling the door behind me without them asking. I partly did it, hoping to seal myself inside away from them, but Ville did that with a lock from his baggy pocket. Probably where the blade also came from. . . a venue for items of my nightmares to dwell.
The clicking sound of the lock closing broke the last piece of my strength, and I started to wonder how I’d survive the night, never mind the duration of my time down here.
“Where are you taking them?” I asked, my body against the back wall of the cage, my hands covering as much of myself as I could.
Sylvia and the man with no name lifted the girls. I glared over at the patches of their DNA, blood and urine, staining the floor.
“Well, maybe one day you’ll find out, you know, if Woodrow doesn’t get his act together.” Ville lit up a cigar, the scent adding to the fumes in this room.
“What will happen to them?”
I wanted to know now. I didn’t want the anticipation to kill me before the brutality of a heavy fist or the gun that may have already killed part of me. More tears fell at that thought.
Was he okay?
Please, please be okay.
“Well, darling, I’m taking them home.” Sylvia smiled down through the wires of my cage. The lifeless eyes of the girl hanging over his shoulder stared at me.
“To their homes?” I didn’t believe that to be true. . . but I wasn’t ready to face another possibility, despite asking the question.
Ville laughed, the sound ominous and oppressing. “Oh, Jolie. You really are too innocent.” He leaned against my cage—the cage. I scolded my inner self for thinking of this contraption as mine. The rumpty pen swayed with his weight, bumping me to my side. “He’s taking them home. His home.”
“Why?”
“I fuck ‘em,” Sylvia told me, plain as day.
I almost thought it was a twisted joke, my mouth forming an O-shape with shock.
“And when theystart to decline, I eat them before they go bad.”
“You’re lying.” I prayed that was true.
“Nope. That way, no one will ever find them. You’d be surprised how good human meat tastes.”
Vomit was eager to spill again, but it wasn’t my throat that had to swallow it down. The man with no name was eager to get out, clearing his throat as he asked, “Are we done here?”
A nod was the only reply Sylvia gave.
“Are you taking your friend?” Ville trailed the others to the steps, a puff of smoke billowing behind him as he questioned over Teena.
“Sure, but I won’t be fucking that one. I’ll see to it that he has a good send-off. I’ll let you know when,” Sylvia said, following No Name up the stairs, each with a female body lugged over their broad shoulders.
A good send-off?Something the creep didn’t deserve. The idea of him getting that and those poor women getting . . . eaten, turned me sick. I swallowed the taste down, and I looked up to Ville, smoke around him like an evil sorcerer as he said. . .
