There was some other stuff she remembered too—mostly depressing statistics about how if you did get taken to a secondary location, you had much less chance of ever getting rescued and a much better chance of getting killed. But since Jillian couldn’t help the fact that she was being hauled off to the Trollox’s house for “tea,” she tried to concentrate on the first part about being an inconvenient victim.
Apparently she wasn’t inconvenient enough, though, because before she knew it, they had reached a low building on the corner of a broad street. Unlike the main part of the Buy-All-Sell-All, which had lots of stalls and booths, the Dark Market had more permanent structures. The place Ripper was taking her looked like a corner shop in a big city—a bodega, maybe. A sign on the window in glowing, blood-red holo-letters said, Ripper’s Fine Meats.
“Hush now, girly—all that racket hurts Ripper’s ears,” the yellow-eyed head told her. Keeping her firmly under one huge arm, the Trollox fished some keys out of his pocket and unlocked the shop door. He pushed inside, with Jillian still tucked close to his side and shut the door behind him, though he didn’t lock it this time.
“Let me go!” Jillian shouted, for probably the hundredth time. She was getting hoarse from all this useless shouting and screaming but damn it, she wasn’t going to just give up!
She sucked in a breath to scream some more—and coughed it out again, almost gagging on the horrible smells that assaulted her nostrils.
As a professional chef she knew the smell of a butcher’s shop—even the best ones had the thick, salty scent of dead flesh. And Ripper’s shop was not one of the best. A good butcher shop was cold, for one thing, which kept spoilage to a minimum. Ripper’s Fine Meats was warm—much warmer inside than it had been out in the Dark Market. The smell of old blood and rotten meat rose strongly in the clammy, humid air—it was disgusting.
Then the huge Trollox flipped on the lights in the darkened shop and the rancid smell suddenly took a back seat to the horrors that were revealed.
It was all Jillian could do not to scream when she saw what was displayed in the long butcher’s case that ran the length of the shop. In the first bin were a bunch of jumbled, fleshy things that she at first thought must be some kind of mushrooms. But then she read the little sign at the front and saw that it said, Humanoid Ears—five credits per scoop.
Wait…ears?
Jillian couldn’t believe what she was seeing but it just kept getting worse. The next bin held noses and the one after that had fingers of all shapes, sizes, and skin colors. But it got worse—in the far case, she saw piles of legs—some cut off at the calf and some that were both thigh and calf, with the foot still attached. There were arms too. Some still had hands clenched into fists as though their owners had died in agony. There were long loops of intestines, buzzing with flies and a bucket of toes marked, Half off—twelve for a credit!
And there, displayed on the cutting board in the middle of the shop, was an entire human-looking head. It was a man’s head, with short black hair and olive skin, Jillian saw. It was impossible to say what color the eyes were since they had been removed. Its mouth was open, as though in a cry of pain and it was balanced on the ragged stump of its neck, staring sightlessly over the shop.
Jillian stared around with wide eyes. It was like walking into a serial killer’s lair or opening Bluebeard’s locked room and seeing the butchered remains of his dead wives—horrifying.
Oh my God! She felt her heart stutter like a faulty motor in her chest as the reality of the scene hit home. He’s going to kill me! Going to chop me up for parts and sell me like a butcher sells a cow or a pig! Oh my God, I am in so much trouble here!
“Please!” she gasped, barely able to talk, she was so terrified. “Please, don’t kill me! I know I owe you something for the handkerchief you gave me, but you can’t do this—you can’t just chop me up and sell me off in pieces like this!”
The yellow-eyed head gave a high, evil cackle.
“Oh, is that what you think we’re going to do, girly? Well don’t worry—we have other plans for you first—yes, we do!”
“Yes we do! Yes we do!” the red-eyed head yelled and laughed hugely. “Hyuck-hyuck-hyuck!”
There was a tall, narrow jail cell made of rusty iron bars at the far corner of the shop. Ripper took Jillian over to it, swung open the door, and shoved her inside before snapping a thick padlock through the latch.