After an hour, another truck arrived. A tall black man in jungle camos climbed out. The other pirates flocked to him, calling him “Captain.”
This man had a copy of People magazine and showed it around to the delight of the other pirates. Emma caught a glimpse of it: July 7, 2011. Her face was on the cover.
The captain walked over to her. He smelled awful and she told him so. He had a digital camera and began to take her picture. She tried to look away, tried to hide her face, but the man grabbed her hair and made her pose. When she spat in his face, he raised his hand to strike her, but stopped.
“You can’t hurt me!” she screamed at him. “I’m worth too much!”
The man wiped the saliva from his face and glared at her, but then he turned and went back to the bonfire. Emma mocked him as he retreated. Even in this precarious situation, she felt in control, invulnerable and above it all.
Then the woman in the kerchief passed by her again, carrying more wood for the fire.
“You’re only making it worse for yourself,” she whispered to Emma. “If you just shut your mouth, they might get so drunk, they’ll forget about you for a while.”
Emma laughed. “I’m not making it that easy for them. Why should I? They’re animals. And like I said, they won’t dare kill me. So I have nothing to worry about.”
“Oh, but you do,” the woman warned her. “And instead of insulting them, you should be praying very hard. Because what they’re planning for you will be worse than dying.”
Emma laughed at her. “Nothing is worse than dying,” she said.
Clearly Emma wasn’t catching on, so the woman pointed to a pair of pirates sitting close to the raging fire. They were holding a steel rod over the flames. It was nearly white hot.
“They are going to use that on you,” the woman told her starkly. “To brand you—understand? Mark you up like a blooming pig or a cow. That makes you their property. And after that happens, they’ll rape you. Sodomize you. All of them, and more than once. And God be with you, because while you might survive, you will never be the same.…”
But Emma simply refused to believe the woman. She challenged her: “How do you know all this? Maybe you’re just crazy.”
“‘How do I know?’” the woman spit back at her. “Let me show you…”
The woman pulled down her kerchief to reveal horrific burn marks all over her face. Strange symbols and inverted numbers were permanently branded into her cheeks and forehead. Then she lifted her shirt to expose her chest, which was covered with horrendous cuts and bruises; on her stomach was what looked like a crude cesarean-section scar.
Then the woman said to Emma: “I know all this because at one time, I was just like you.”
Then the woman ambled away.
* * *
FOR THE NEXT ten minutes, Emma fought very hard to keep her composure.
But the woman’s words would not stop echoing in her ears and the sight of those scars was burned into her retinas. Emma’s face was beautiful, and that beauty was her life. Even if she did get out of this somehow, what good would it be, if she were made ugly? If she was scarred? She began to panic. She began fighting against the ropes. Her spirit was abandoning her; her aura was draining away. Fear was taking over.
The gang’s leader walked over to her again; this time his eyes were red and glassy. He motioned to the pirates closest to the fire. They retrieved the hot branding iron and brought it to him. All the pirates gathered around Emma now. Some were drunkenly poking her breasts with the tips of their assault rifles.
She screamed; she tried to kick them. But the pirates just laughed at her.
“Rich American bitch,” the captain sneered in thick English. “Think you own everything? Think you own the world?”
He raised the branding iron to her face. The heat was so intense, it melted away her mascara.
“We are going to give you something now,” he told her, his breath putrid. “Something to make sure you remember us forever.”
Emma fought and screamed and kicked, but it was all to the pirates’ amusement. And after a short while, she could scream no longer, fight no longer. She could do nothing more but shut her eyes tight and wait for the pain …