yanks my head back, my eyes flying open. The man picks up his knife and presses it to my throat. I can feel the blood dripping down my collarbone. Either from me or from whomever else he had just killed.
I continue to refuse, so he presses the blade harder while his cock jerks against my soft lips.
Tears pour down my face as my resilience kicks in. My mouth parts, and his cock slips in. I’ve never been raped before. Never felt forced. Something happens when you’ve been taken advantage of. It’s as though they take some of your humanity and replace it with their odor. His dick slides in and out fast, forcing himself down my throat. When I bite down on it roughly, he leaves it lodged down my airway, cutting off my breathing. Once he’s had enough of me fighting him, he shoves me backward and crawls up my body, his hand cupping my pussy. He shoves through two fingers then three, before tearing off my shirt with his other hand.
With every thrust of his fingers, he takes a part of my soul, and I don’t want it back. He didn’t need to put his dick inside of me to rape me, but I’m still thankful that he didn’t. This was something else. There was a reason to why he exhorted himself into me by using his fingers only. He had a message to send, and unfortunately, I was going to be the deliverer.
Once he leaves, I fall asleep with tears crusted over my cheeks and memories flashing through my head of my father and the Thai food that I never got to eat with him.
Soft sobbing echoes around the room, along with snuffling and shuffling of a body.
“Do you know why they took us?” the voice asks, but I don’t pay it any attention. She is one of many, one of twenty-one, making her twenty-two. She starts crying again, and I have to fight the urge to tell her to be quiet. The tears only enforce their sick games, I am sure. “Do you talk?”
Actually, I do, but I don’t want to reply to your pathetic cries for help. Twenty-one girls have cried. Nothing I do or say can comfort you.
I remain still, going over the number, until I can see the grey marble that sits beneath the old crumbs. Twenty-two. I write.
I finally sit up, resting my back against the wall.
The girl’s eyes come to mine. They’re brown, the same color as the floor on which we sit. Her wrists are bruised by the shackles that keep us locked to the walls. Water drips down my back from the crack in the concrete above us. She’s pretty. But they all are.
“You’re pretty,” she whispers, swiping her long brown hair away from her face. Tears have left cleaned streaks down each of her cheeks.
I don’t speak.
She tilts her head. “I gather we’re probably going to die in here.” She leans her head against the wall, drawing her long legs to her chest. I want to be nice to her. Tell her that maybe they won’t kill her. Tell her that I don’t know what happens after this. But I don’t know. I never know. They come and they go, and I stay. For twenty-one girls. Some girls are in here for longer, some only a short time. Time. Something I’ve lost track of. The sun sets and the sun rises, but my world remains still, confined to these walls that keep me locked inside.
I examine the new girl closely. I’ve noticed how all girls are similar in one way. Age. That’s as far as I have gotten.
“I take it you don’t speak.” She exhales, her head bowing. “It’s fine. I guess it makes sense in a way. My name is Rose; I’m twenty years old, and up until yesterday, I was a dancer at—” I jerk forward, my eyes narrowing. “Wow!” she murmurs, flinching backward. I don’t blame her. I probably looked crazy. But all the girls who have been in here, none of them have spoken much to me. Mainly, they all cry. Scream. Then there was the one who tried to claw her way out of the bars on the door, her fingernails detaching from her flesh as blood seeped down her hands. None of them directly blurted their story to me. Were they all dancers? Like me? Maybe.
Rose searches my eyes, her face morphing. “You understand me?” She must think, because I don’t speak