Trey - Shandi Boyes Page 0,4
women as nothing but commodities more than necessary, but I honestly don’t know how much longer I can live like this. The small portions of food they’ve been giving me the past ten weeks are now laced with hallucinatory drugs with the hope of sparking a personality out of me, and the once meaty parts of my body no longer exist.
I’m nothing but skin and bones.
That won’t stop these men, though. Some will beat me to rouse a response from me. Others will stroke themselves from a distance, happy for my nudity to get them off. Then there are the ones who won’t care if I never speak to them. They paid for me, so they’ll do whatever they want to me.
They’re the men who scare me the most.
Once I’m certain the food in my stomach has been expelled, I frailly climb the cracked bathroom sink to wash my vomit-smeared hands. As I stare at myself in the scum-coated mirror, I try to recall a time when I felt pretty and cherished. It was so long ago, the memories are fading from my head as quickly as the light is from my eyes. I barely recognize myself, so I doubt anyone who saw me previously would. I’m not out to impress anyone, so I guess it doesn’t really matter how I look, does it?
Ignoring my grumbling stomach, I step over the sloppy meat concoction I think was supposed to be shepherd’s pie before making my way to the main part of my ‘room.’ It’s more a prison cell than a bedroom, and the fact I have a mattress and attached bathroom doesn’t glam it up in the slightest. If anything, it makes it worse. Only the women Vladimir wants to ‘entertain’ his guests for the night get mattresses. The thought alone has me wanting to vomit again. I would if it would bring up anything but my stomach’s lining.
When I slump onto the bed, too tired to remain standing, my eyes stray to the goop I knocked over when I realized it tasted funkier than it should have. It looks like someone had an accident on the floor, and it pops a brilliant idea into my sluggish head.
“You think you’re smart, don’t you?” My teeth crunch together when Vladimir backhands my cheek for the second time. He must be super mad because he usually makes his goons do his punishments on his behalf. “You wasted both my time and my money this evening.” The urge to bend in two overwhelms me when he gets right up in my face. For a guy pushing seventy, he’s fit and healthy, but his insides are so hideously ugly, no number of good genes can save my stomach from heaving about his closeness. “And to think I was going to invite you to the feast after this round of guests.” He taunts me with food as he knows it hurts me more than his earlier threat about selling me twice this week. “Now, you won’t even get the scraps left on their plates.”
I deserve to be punished. I wasted food, but at least I put the sloppy meat of my ‘dinner’ to good use. I coated it from the apex of my thighs to the back of my knees. The man who paid three thousand dollars to spend an hour with me was less than impressed he didn’t get a woman close to the image Vladimir uses to sell me each week, and it had nothing to do with the fact I looked like I had pooped my pants.
He wanted the woman I was before I was shunted into this life, the one who exuded freedom even though she’s never truly been free. He wanted Kristina, a woman I no longer am, and will most likely never be again.
After delivering the rest of his scorn solely with his eyes, Vladimir releases my face from his clutch before stepping back. The chains holding me hostage from a U-bolt in the ceiling jangle on the protruding bones of my wrist in rhythm to his boots tapping across the concrete.
When I unearth the reason his punishment was reduced to two slaps tonight, they clank even more. A large brute of a man is standing in the doorway of my room. He has a fire hydrant hose in his hand and an abhorrent smirk on his face. Even if my ruse was real, it won’t be effective the instant he switches on the nozzle that’s dribble has more