Some are quiet, staring ahead wide-eyed. Some are sobbing. Many have bruises on their faces, or on bits of exposed skin. Almost none of us are wearing shoes I realize.
“You okay?” the voice to my right croaks.
I look over at the girl. At twenty-two I must be one of the oldest ones in here. I nod to her, and she holds up a bottle of water. It’s almost empty.
I lick my lips, nod.
She stretches her arms out to me. She’s bound too, but her wrists are in front of her.
I drink a sip of the lukewarm, stale tasting water. “Thank you.”
She can’t be more than sixteen, I think, and beneath the dirt and bruises and fear, she’s beautiful.
“Are you okay?”
Tears spill down her cheeks. “I want to go home,” she says with a noticeable accent.
My eyes fill up looking at her. Looking at all of them. I feel responsible for them. Like this is my fault. Like this is something I need to somehow fix.
I shiver and she reaches behind me with her bound wrists, tugs at something. I look back at it. It’s a man’s jacket.
She pulls it over my shoulders, the lining cool against my skin as I lean back against the wall. “Thank you.” With my next breath, I smell the subtle scent of a familiar aftershave just beneath that of vomit and urine and fear.
“Where are they taking us?” I ask the girl sharing my mattress.
She shakes her head. “We’ve been on the boat for a while. And before that, the truck. I don’t know how long it’s been anymore.”
Is Cristiano looking for me? Does he know what’s happened? And who was the man with Marcus? The one who told him to cover me up. The man whose jacket I’m wearing.
“Where are you from?” I ask her.
“Croatia. Those two are from Croatia too. The others I don’t know.”
“How did they take you?”
“I was walking home from school. It was the middle of the afternoon. Bad things don’t happen in the light.” Her voice breaks and she starts to sob again.
“What’s your name?”
“Sonia,” she manages.
“Sonia. It’s okay. It’ll be okay.”
Neither of us believes this lie but I can’t not tell it.
A door slams against the wall of the room, metal clanging against metal. Startled, I gasp, my head snapping to the man standing in the doorway. It’s the one from the dock. The fat one who cut the restraints at my ankles.
The women cower away as if one entity.
The man enters and from behind him follow another three, all with leering eyes, reeking of alcohol and days-old sweat.
But the one who frightens me the most is the last one to appear at the door. The one who looks clean. The handsome one.
I know he’s the cruelest of the lot.
Marcus sneers as he looks in my direction and I remember how he shot my uncle. I wish I could wipe my face because I know I didn’t imagine the blood that splattered it, but I’m not sure if I really feel it or if it’s my mind playing tricks on me.
The men fan out, moving swiftly as they scan the room. They look at something on the wrist of each of the girls before taking their pick.
The screams start then but all it takes to shut that down is the big one backhanding a girl so hard that her whole body spins and she slams face-first into the wall. I hear a crack and she drops to the floor of the boat. She’s unconscious or dead. I can’t tell. Broken for sure.
The screams become whimpers then as the men get back to what they came in here for.
I open my mouth to speak, to make them somehow stop, but one of the men grips my arm then and hauls me to my knees. I’m flipped over so I’m lying face down on the filthy mattress.
The girl beside me screams as I feel his hands on me, but then there’s a sound, someone grunting, and I’m hauled to sit upright again.
“Not that one,” Marcus says. “No one touches that one.” He runs a hand gently over my cheek then grips my jaw so hard he’s about to shatter it.
“No one but you?” I manage through gritted teeth.
“Not yet,” he says, eyes darkening. “But it’s coming.”
He lets go of my jaw. In my periphery, I see the others moving behind the women, hear them grunting as the women whimper and sob. I don’t want to look, but I know I have to. I have to catalog each of their faces for later. For when I can kill these men. For when I can free the women.
“You like the show?” Marcus asks me. “Is that what turns you on?”
I turn my gaze to him and spit the biggest spitball I can manage onto his face. It hits his right eye and smears down to his cheek. “Only monsters are turned on by this.”