Spiders in the Grove

by J. A. Redmerski

  My heart is in my throat; I try to swallow it down, but it’s just stuck there, choking me, beating in my ears. Am I keeping a calm face? I wish I had a mirror.

  “They called her his princess,” Cesara says, venom in her voice, “the little viper; the flower with poisoned petals. The great Javier Ruiz, known for his unshakable leadership, merciless heart, and barbaric tactics, wasn’t so unshakable, after all. The giant was taken down by a girl, reduced to nothing more than a fading memory.”

  He’s more than that to you, Cesara, or you wouldn’t talk about him with such resentment.

  I take another deep breath, and try to curb my need to ask her more about…me. “How did he die?” I ask instead, picturing the night at Samantha’s house in Texas.

  “An assassin took him out,” she says. “Some say the girl killed him, but I don’t believe that—one of the rumors that aren’t true—no way a slave girl could pull that off. Javier may’ve been blinded by that little bitch, but I know she wasn’t good enough to kill him.”

  Now I’m the one looking at the blue sky and sunshine, but seeing none of it.

  I shake it off. And I grin at her. “You sound jealous, Cesara.” I move over closer, brush her hair away from her neck with the back of my hand. “Should I be worried?” I ask seductively, dragging the tip of my tongue along her throat.

  She pulls me onto her naked lap, and I straddle her. “No, Lydia,” she whispers, flicking her tongue against my nipple, my breast cupped within her hand. “You’ve done things to me, to my…my heart…that Javier could never do.”

  “Tell me more,” I say, breathily, grinding myself against her lap. “Tell me what I’ve done to your heart.”

  Her mouth finds mine, and we kiss with feverish intensity; my eyes flutter when I feel the movement of her fingers between my legs.

  And then she just stops.

  I open my eyes and look down into hers.

  She smiles.

  “That wasn’t the deal,” she whispers, brushing her lips against mine. “I told you my dark secret, and now I want to know yours.”

  “Tell me how you feel about me, Cesara,” I say, kiss her lightly. “You never had to tell me any dark secrets to get me to open up to you. All you had to do was tell me how you feel.”

  With her arms wrapped around me, she plants kisses between my breasts. “I care for you, Lydia. I’ve never cared for someone like this. I feel like I can tell you anything, be anybody, and…”

  “And what? Tell me?” I kiss the top of her head.

  “I feel like we could go anywhere together, kill anyone who gets in our way—imagine the things we could do, Lydia.”

  My hips stop moving; I hold her face in my hands and peer into her eyes, searching them. “You want to leave this place, don’t you?” I ask, knowing. “You’re tired of being Joaquin’s cum rag; you’re tired of the filth, and the hungry eyes of the men following you everywhere you go—tired of them gang-raping you, and you can’t do anything about it because Joaquin will kill you for killing his men.”

  There’s nothing carnal in Cesara’s face anymore; her eyes are filled with darkness, the kind of darkness that breeds people like me.

  I lean in closer, still holding her face in my hands, still searching her eyes. “You’re tired of being someone’s property,” I continue, knowing I have her in the palm of my hands, literally and figuratively, “tired of living in a man’s world”—I touch my lips to hers; my fingers put light pressure on her cheeks in emphasis—“I am too, Cesara; I’m so fucking tired of following in the shadows of men. And…I will follow you anywhere, kill anyone who stands in our way, or who tries to stop us”—I kiss her again, and my mouth lingers on hers—“all you have to do is say the word.”

  After a passionate kiss, Cesara looks into my eyes as a different woman with a newfound trust—she’s finally who I wanted her to be since I met her, and I know now I can get her to tell me almost anything, without the fear of her becoming suspicious. Because she’s falling in love with me, and love is the only force in the world that can blind a person to even the most obvious truths.

  “How did you know?” she says. “About the guards?”

  “I see it when they look at you,” I tell her, stroking her hair away from her face. “They’re not afraid of you; they look like men who know they’re the ones in control, and are just biding their time, waiting for the right moment. How long have they been doing this to you?”

  “For as long as I’ve been here,” she says, solemnly. “Since Javier gave me to Joaquin—they never dared touch me when Javier was alive.”

  “They will pay,” I promise, peering deeply into her tortured face. “We will be the ones biding our time, waiting in the shadows for the right moment; and before we leave this place, together”—I tighten my hands against her cheeks—“we will kill every last one of them.”

  “Yes,” she whispers. “Yes…” I see that darkness in her eyes dancing to the rhythm of a whole new future, one of vengeance and love and desire and danger. “Yesss—together we can turn a man’s world into rubble; we can walk across the bones of men; we can bathe in the blood of our oppressors—together, Lydia, we can do anything.”

  “Yes. We can.” I smile down at her. “It is our destiny.”

  “Didn’t you ever wonder,” she says a moment later, “why the guards never bothered you?”

  “A little,” I answer. “But I figured you had something to do with it.”

  She nods. “When you first came here,” she begins, “they knew better than to touch you because they never touch the merchandise. But later, when you started working under me, I told them that Joaquin had his eye on you—technically that wasn’t a lie—and that if any of them ever touched you, they would pay with their heads.”

  “You’ve been protecting me.”

  “Yes. And I’ll keep protecting you. For as long as you’ll let me. But I need to ask you something.”

  “You can ask me anything,” I tell her right away, though it makes me nervous.

  “That girl, Uma, who you came here with”—(Finally! I can find out something about Naeva, and without having to bring her up myself!)—"I just need to know: was she special to you? Be honest. I know an attachment when I see one.”

  Ah, Cesara’s jealous; she’s worried my heart is with someone else.

  “Uma and I formed a small bond on the way here—technically, she was the one doing all the bonding; I just went along for the ride.” I brush the pad of my thumb along her jawline. “But no, she wasn’t special to me. And I don’t care what happens to her. Why do you ask?” Translation: Please tell me everything you know about what’s happened to her.

  “I just wanted to make sure your loyalties didn’t lie with another woman,” Cesara says. “The way she took up for you that day—I just had to be sure. But I believe you; I can see it in your eyes, that you’re telling me the truth.”

  I smile on the inside, deep down where she can’t see it, because if she did, she’d know I was laughing at her. Blinded to the most obvious truths…

  I kiss her lips and her chin and her forehead—ah, the forehead; one kiss there and you know the love is real.

  After a moment, I say, “My dark secret, the reason I am who I am, is not so different from yours, Cesara.” If she only knew…

  She tilts her head, curiously, interested.

  “I was practically given away to a man by my mother, when I was fourteen-years-old. I hated her for taking me to that place. And I killed her for it.” I bring my hands up between us, and look into them. “With these hands, I killed her.” I drop them between us again. “Like you—like so many women—I was violated; I was humiliated; I was lied to and loved and betrayed; and I was tired of it. After I killed my mother, I escaped the man who brainwashed me; I left that whole world behind me—and my child with it. And since then, I’ve encountered so many men like those who made me what I became. And I killed them all. And I’ll keep killing them until the day I join them in what
ever hell awaits me.”

  Cesara cups my face in her hands, peers deeply into my eyes with compassion and pain. “We will kill them together, Lydia; you and me, an unstoppable force.”

  “We will live—truly live for once—and die together,” I say with conviction. Where’s my Oscar?!

  Cesara pushes me down on the bed, and I picture only Victor’s face for the next hour.

  How did I come this far? And what is happening to me? Something is happening. When I woke up this morning, I could feel the lurking hands of inevitability all around me, inside of me, and I knew that something would happen before this day was over. But…I assumed it was something else altogether; I thought it had everything to do with tonight at the final auction; I was halfway convinced it would be that I discovered the real Vonnegut.

  But I was wrong about the source of that feeling.

  Despite the Oscar-worthy act, I think I’ve discovered the real Izabel.

  Izabel

  Day Three – Late Afternoon

  Four hours until buyers arrive for the final auction, and I’m on edge. Not necessarily because it’s the big night, my last chance—unless I want to be here longer—to find something, anything that will point me in Vonnegut’s direction, but because I don’t know how much longer I can stave-off Joaquin’s advances. I can’t kill him. Not yet. He runs the show; he does everything important to the auction—if he’s missing, everyone will notice, and there will be no show.

  With Sabine in tow, and both of us already dressed for tonight, I move quickly, but gracefully so as not to draw unwanted attention, down the long hallway toward the theatre. It’s early to be going there, but it’s full of people—workers, mostly—and anywhere with people is better than being caught by Joaquin, alone. Cesara has business of her own; something about an intruder on the premises; I imagine—I hope—Joaquin went with her.

  “I-I saw her,” Sabine speaks lowly, nervously from behind.

  I stop cold in the middle of the hall, and turn to look at her; my first instinct takes over, and it’s not Izel—it’s Izabel.

  “What did you say?” I whisper harshly; I wrench her elbow in my hand, but I know I’m not fooling her—if I was really as awful as I’ve pretended to be, Sabine would already be on the floor wiping blood from her mouth for speaking to me without permission.

  “Y-Your friend,” she says, looking at the floor, “I-I saw her.”

  “What are you talking about?” This could be a trick; Joaquin, even Cesara, might’ve put Sabine up to this; as soon as that thought enters my mind, Izel finally takes over. My hand raises like a hammer and Sabine is on the floor a second later.

  She scrambles backward on her bottom and her hands, shaking, blood dripping from her nose. “Please…I…I just wanted to tell you where I saw her.”

  “Saw who, girl? Speak!”

  “Uma,” she answers. “S-She was in the bathing room, with the other girls, and me. Yesterday I”—she wipes blood from her nose with the back of her hand—"I-I heard her talking.”

  “I don’t know an Uma,” I lie. Tell me more, please; tell me everything about Naeva you know. “Are you accusing me of something, girl?”

  She shakes her head rapidly. “No. I’m taking a risk. Kill me if you want; I’d rather be dead than spend another day in this place. A-At least I’ll have done something I-I feel good about.”

  I turn my head swiftly, looking down the long hallway, left and right, worried someone might hear, and then I grab Sabine by the arm and pull her to her feet. Dragging her into an empty utility room used by the housekeepers, I shut the door behind us.

  “Why are you telling me this?” I press her, tightening my fingers around her arm. “And what makes you think I know this girl, or that I’m her friend?”

  Sabine’s eyes look bright in the dark room; the only light is coming from underneath the door. She trembles, and her face shrinks with fear, but it doesn’t stop her from talking.

  “This morning,” she says, “w-when you were talking to Cesara about that girl, she said the name Uma. It was the girl’s name in the bathroom.”

  I bear down on her. “But what makes you think I—”

  “B-Because you lied to Cesara.” Sabine cuts in, and she flinches as if she expects me to hit her again. “And b-because you can’t fool me; you may be fooling everyone else, but I know a good person when I see one. Y-You lied to protect her.”

  Giving up the act—because the same way Sabine knows I’m lying to her, I know she’s telling me the truth—my shoulders fall into a slump as I let the breath out I’ve been holding for three weeks.

  “Please,” I say quietly, “tell me everything you know.”

  Sabine smiles softly, and she no longer stutters when she speaks. “It’s not much, I’m sorry, but I thought you’d at least want to know that she’s still alive.”

  “How did she look?”

  “Like the rest of us: unblemished and ready to be sold. I think she’s being put up for auction tonight. She talked about how she knew she’d be sold; but what I thought was strange about it, was that she didn’t seem worried, or afraid. She seemed…eager.”

  Leo Moreno. He’s going to be her buyer. I don’t know how Naeva did it, but I’m impressed.

  “What else did she say?”

  “Not much. She was careful, like you.” She curls her small fingers around my wrist, and it prompts me to look right at her. “I don’t know who you are,” she says, “and I’m not asking you to tell me, but I do know one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “God sent you here,” she says. “I’ve prayed every night since they kidnapped me, and I knew, almost the first time you spoke to me, that He sent you.”

  I scoff, shaking my head. “Sorry, but God definitely didn’t send me.”

  “No, He did, I just know it”—I feel her hand tighten around my wrist—"I see it in you, what you’re doing in His name, without knowing it.”

  Oh great—a bible-thumper.

  “You want to help us out of here,” she goes on, “and you will, because God wills it.”

  “Didn’t you ever wonder why God didn’t stop them from kidnapping you in the first place?”

  “That doesn’t matter,” she says, and I already know that no matter what I say, nothing will convince her otherwise.

  Voices funnel down the hallway beyond the door; I grab Sabine’s arm and pull her against me. “Shh!”

  The voices become more distinct as they get closer, and my stomach swims in a sea of anxiety as I realize that one of the men is Joaquin. Footsteps approach, and then the light from the hallway blinks on and off as they walk past the door. Ten seconds feels like forever as we stand unmoving, barely breathing, in the utility closet surrounded by bath towels and bed sheets and shelves chock full of toilet paper rolls and boxes of tiny soaps and shampoos.

  Finally, I release her and turn her around, my hands braced on her small shoulders. “This conversation never happened,” I warn. “When we go back out there, you can’t act even slightly different—do you understand?”

  She nods.

  “I can’t promise I’ll be able to get you, or anyone else out of here; so please, I’m begging you, not to rely on hope.”

  She smiles, and everything in it tells me that Sabine is filled with enough hope for the both of us. And that’s unfortunate.

  I open the door slowly, and look through the crack, peering down the hallway toward where Joaquin went. Confident enough to move on, I open the door the rest of the way and step out into the hall, pulling Sabine with my hand clasped around her elbow.

  “He got the doors mixed up,” I hear Joaquin say behind me, and I turn swiftly. “Thought it was the utility closet around the corner; apparently, the idiot who watches the cameras has been working in this mansion for five years, and still gets the hallways mixed up.”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” the man, presumably the idiot who watches the cameras says. “All of the halls look the same.”

  J
oaquin waves him off, and the man leaves us standing here. Alone. In the predicament I have been trying to avoid all damn day—but now it’s much worse. Much, much worse.

  “What do you want, Joaquin?” I round my chin, channeling fearless Izel, and hoping like hell it’s enough he buys it.

  Joaquin cocks his head, and he steps right up to me, his eyes studying me curiously and with hunger—but mostly he wants to know what I was doing in a utility closet with my slave girl.

  And I have an answer for him.

  “What exactly were you—”

  “Privacy doesn’t seem to exist in this place,” I tell him. “Haven’t you ever taken a girl into a closet before?”

  Joaquin’s smile is as slippery as he is. “Of course,” he says, glances at Sabine without moving his head, and looks back at me. “But I didn’t expect it of you”—he shrugs smugly—“y’know, having Cesara at your fingertips anytime you want her.”

  “What Cesara and I have is different.” I glare into his eyes, daring him to threaten me. “Cesara and I have an understanding.”

  “Then Cesara won’t mind if she”—he twirls a hand at the wrist—“just somehow happens to find out that you’ve been getting pleasure from someone other than her.”

  “I’m sure she does it all the time,” I come back. “This is just sex. With Cesara, it’s much more than that. And she knows it. Go ahead and tell her, but it’ll only make you look like a jealous, weak, piece of shit.”

  His mouth twitches on one side, indicating his annoyance with having to agree with me.

  Joaquin’s gaze veers behind me at Sabine.

  “You know what,” he says, changing his demeanor, “I don’t believe you.”

  Shit.

  “You don’t believe what, exactly?”

  Shit. Shit. Shit!

  He takes another step forward, and so do I, to keep him from getting any closer to Sabine, but he grabs my shoulder, stopping me. He glares into my face, daring me now, to threaten him. “Remember your place, Lydia,” he says coldly. “You’re only alive as long as I allow it; you only deny me for as long as I let you”—he leans in toward my ear—"I’m playing your game because I like it; so don’t mistake my reluctance for weakness. Now. Step. Aside.”