8
Nicole
The compound is stuffy and stale. The air doesn’t circulate, and it’s hot as Hades.
It’s dark, and the floor is even warm, although it’s made of concrete. There are bars that keep us contained, made of iron and rusted.
The smell first burned my nose when I arrived, but now I’ve gotten used to it. We’re given a bucket to piss in, and once a day, a guard comes to retrieve the metal bin and empty the contents.
The only food we’re given is bread and water. I scarf every bite before the guards can think twice about snatching it back from me.
Would they do that? They certainly don’t seem to care about us. They can’t even look at us.
I’ve been here for three days.
Or maybe it’s four.
There’s no sunlight. We’re kept in some type of cellar. We all arrived with bags on our heads and collars around our necks.
The bag comes off.
The collar always stays on.
I can’t speak unless spoken to.
That’s one of the rules. There are dozens more, but mostly keep your head down and do as you’re told.
Diamond has a long list of them, and if you cross her, disobey her, or just look at her the wrong way, I’ve learned that the collar around my neck sends a jolt of electricity barreling through me.
It turns out the other girls are linked to the same network.
If one of us does anything to betray Diamond or the men who took us, we all suffer together.
Today is different, and I’m not sure why. It scares me.
The girls don’t know who is behind their abductions.
Seven of them came up from Mexico and were promised passage into America. Coyotes.
Four girls are runaways. They barely look like they’re in high school.
They’re young children, and it makes my stomach roil. I want to vomit but it doesn’t come up.
The girls clutch each other as the men unlock the gate and rip us out one by one.
Where are they taking us?
What do they want with us?
We know better than to ask questions. Asking is met with revolting pain that makes us thrash wildly on the concrete floor.
The collars are a death sentence. Or maybe just being here will bring about death. Our death.
I want to fight.
There’s no fight left in me.
The other girls must feel the same. Dejected. Destroyed. Broken.