Annabell fell face-first into black.
Chapter 4
Boss Wants Pretty
"She ain't dead."
"But you ruined her pretty. Look, all this blood and I didn't even get the fun of making it happen."
"Boss, she doesn't have to be pretty to use."
"I wanted pretty," the second man, Boss, said. "I wanted to be the one to mess it up, Bacsh. And you had to go and clock her in the face and knock her off her feet."
"She was runnin'. You wanted me to shoot her?"
"Bacsh, you throw me another excuse and you'll be done. Getting tired of them. Got it? I have had enough slags and wastes-of-space to last a lifetime. I was looking forward to fucking lots of pretty, and you ruined this one."
Annabell could barely process the slurred, smudged language. Her face and head throbbed. Beats of pain like that time the donkey kicked her. Something sticky and bitter crusted over her lips and chin. When she managed to get a shaky arm up to touch it, her fingers were wet and it hurt. The sharp stab of her own touch stole her breath. She dared not bother to moan.
An open sky above her, the world had changed its position and orientation, with strangers leaning in and talking about her.
One stranger pointed at her nose. "Maybe it isn't as bad as it looks, Boss. Slap something cold on it and she will be pretty again." The man was hopeful.
"Are you a medic now, Bacsh? Get the rest of the crap and take her to the big house. I'm going with Runk to keep checkin'. If there was this one, there could be others we missed."
Rough hands pulled her up, yanking her about without any regard for her hurting. Her stomach had something to say about that treatment, protesting by emptying everything she'd forced into herself that morning.
Male voices laughed and hooted, the sounds crude and blaring. Someone said, "I won the bet, told ya' we'd come across another geyser today like those two from last night."
"This one can't be a part of that. There were rules. She's still got her clothes on, and that's from an injury. She don't count," protested another.
Someone pushed her from behind. She stumbled, throwing out her hands for another fall, trying to catch her breath and not step in her own vomit at the same time. At the last minute, deft hands caught her fall, directing her toward the bed of a wagon.
None of these men were familiar. The shape and slant of their accents, their words, were in the shared common, but they made no sense. Outsiders. They didn't belong in the village of Righteous. Drunkards. Bad men. A more mythical thing than stories of rare Dorsus wildlife wandering in from the Peace Lands. Stinking with evil—a smell all their own—somewhere between rancid body odor and bodies three days dead, she breathed through her mouth when they got too near her.
"Who that is human would refuse clean, when a little water does redeem?"
"These men, Mama. These men would refuse clean," Annabell said out loud.
Men moved around the wagon, filling it with stolen goods, with one standing near it at all times. There was no opening to jump out and run. She couldn't keep track of how many there were as they moved in and out of her messed-up vision like ants, putting goods into the wagon from the houses around them. Finally, one climbed into the bed. Annabell moved as far away as she could.
He laughed.
The wagon, pulled by a tired old draft horse taken from someone's property, started to move. Annabell cradled her head in her hands to keep it still. She lost herself in dizziness and pain until movement stopped in the shadow of a bigger building, the Gathering Lodge. The biggest, proudest structure in Righteous, built in the middle of the town next to the school and the market, the building showed off their community values and craftsmanship.
And it was overrun with strangers.
Head spinning, Annabell couldn't count how many strangers there were. She only knew for certain that she didn't see any of her menfolk. Not her brothers. No neighbors. Not one man whose face she recognized.
Horse hooves clopping on the stone-laid courtyard, the driver took the wagon around the back of the building to the bakehouse. Like the lodge, it was another proud Righteous structure. In her youth, Annabell attended dances in other community buildings along the Peace River. None of them boasted a shared bakehouse big enough to bake all the village bread or spit a whole cow for festivals. A mess greeted them between the two buildings. There wasn’t room for the wagon between chairs, tables, and, piles of stuff with no reason to be outside. Men dressed in dark, stiff clothing with shiny accents walked between the open doors of the lodge and the bakehouse. Some sat at tables. Others stood around, watchful.
She heard a woman scream.
Why had she come here? This was a huge mistake. How stupid to come to town and not run to another village. Missing the obvious right before her eyes."This is what happens when you look with your emotions and not with your eyes. Did I not tell you? All the rats in the barn have come out to play. You did not mind your manners,”Mama said.
"Papa said Righteous was the safest place in the world," Annabell told the voice.
Mama's shade had no mercy for her daughter."There is no excuse for stupid."
