Heroine Hearts: Darkness Made These Heroine Hearts

by Kirsty-Anne Still

  “Is that really such a bad thing?”

  Offering a curt grin, Isla pushes hair behind her ear and I take a good look at her. Even though she’s clearly underfed and lacking appropriate nutrition, she still holds a certain beauty. I’m pretty sure that’s what all the men here love about her. Personally, I think it’s the fact that she’s yet to lose that light in her eyes. I’ve seen the girls here, watched them and how they interact with one another and the men they serve, but Isla is the one that seems to still be holding onto her self-worth and sanity – even if she doesn’t think so.

  “Yeah,” she replies, a snigger in her tone. “It’s a real bad thing,” she rubs her hands over her face, before she sits back, lowering her legs from her chest just a little. “I know how bad it hurts to get close to people here and I vowed to never do it again. The last person I really got close to, I lost them.”

  “Jenny?” I assume, questioning her.

  “No,” she says, shaking her head at me. “This happened about six months ago. She was like a sister to me. We were brought in with the same bunch of girls and we just clicked. We were there for one another after the rapes and the drug binges. We picked the pieces up for each other when we didn’t have the strength to do it for ourselves,” tears start to fall in large droplets, Isla refusing to catch them. “We became so interconnected that when she was here, I felt safe.”

  I shift in my seat, waiting for more details.

  “What happened to her?”

  Isla’s breathing escalates in an instance, racing harsher and harder, but she steels herself, closing her eyes and biting down on her lip as if to push courage upon her own shoulder.

  “I saw the signs before anyone. I did enough training as a nurse to know an overdose. I knew that one of the balloons had burst. She was sinking fast and the pain she was in was killing me. She was dying so slowly, so I-I killed her,” her eyes widen as she speaks those words, as if the truth is new to her. “We had a pact that if it happened, we’d kill the other before anyone else got the chance or before the drugs could... kind of like a mercy killing. We felt we owed the other that chance of freedom. I took a knife and I killed her and with it I killed any hope I still had in this fucking place. It took everything from me and it took the one person I could depend on. I had to do that because I promised her I’d always save her!”

  I don’t tear my eyes away from her, I just listen. This tale is so twisted yet so bitterly liberating that I can’t look away or not listen in. However, Isla looks enraged, her grief morphing to something far more dangerous.

  “We had that moment planned since the first time Santiago forced us to swallow those balloons. I knew enough to know the most fatal place to hit on a body that meant no amount of help would matter. She bled out in my arms. I held her until she died and I carried on holding her until Hector literally pried her away from me.”

  I sit completely silent, unsure of what I should say. Isla just admitted to murder and while I can see the grief and guilt it’s brought to her, I cannot believe that she is capable of it. No matter how premeditated and merciful it was, the innocent one killed another.

  “Want to know the worst part of it all?” she breaks the silence, asking me in such a sad voice.

  “What?”

  “No one knows I killed her. Another girl took the fall,” her tears hasten their onslaught down her face. “I killed her and then I didn’t accept my punishment for it. I got away free with only the guilt of her death. Another girl paid the price and I watched as she was dealt her sentence because I wasn’t prepared to die just yet.”

  “Are you now?” I ask, albeit hesitantly.

  “I deserve to be alive so I can feel everything,” she admits and my understanding deepens. “I killed her and I don’t deserve the easy way out that death enables. I deserve to live every day with her death hanging over me. I need to be reminded that even if I ever got free, her family would never know that she died at the hands of someone she called a sister. I’d carry that shame to my grave.”

  I have no idea how to help her or to comfort her at this moment. She’s admitted her darkest sin to me and I have no idea how to deal with the predicament I’m sitting in or the secrets bestowed upon me. So I bravely pave the way for her repentance. I decide to force her to remember the girl who made a pact with her in a bid to sacrifice the others ultimate innocence for a final dose of peace.

  “What was her name?” I ask, my tone pushier than I wanted, but I want her to say the girl’s name. She hasn’t given her a name, which tells me how consuming her guilt complex has become. She doesn’t even identify a woman she claimed to be her sister. “Say her name, Isla. Tell me her name.”

  Isla casts me a look so heavy with fear, so laden with woeful regret that I forget what we were talking about. She’s still caught in a whirlwind of mournful repentance and compunction, one she clearly doesn’t let herself forget.

  “Gabi.”

  The name penetrates my mind, bringing me back to this reality with a loud, resounding thud.

  “Her name was Gabriella, but I called her Gabi. She was called Gabi.”

  I feel like my throat is closing up on me and my entire world-view of Isla shatters in an instant.

  I fall from my perch on the large windowsill, stumbling to get away from her. She’ll never know the pain she just inflicted upon me because I can’t bear to look at her.

  “Javier?” she queries, getting up to follow me as I make it free of the dorm. “Javier!” she cries out, catching my hand.

  “Get off me!” I roar, my anger flaring as my emotions begin to collide. I swing around to face her, slapping her hand away. “Don’t touch me!”

  I can barely form words, only those that have the ability to reject Isla.

  The sight of her causes my stomach to bottom, an ache begins to rise in me and all I want to do is reproach her, condemn her and force her to realize that by getting her to admit the name of her fallen sister she has just torn my entire life apart.

  “What did I do?” she asks so innocently and it sickens me. “Javier, please?”

  I take a few steps backward, she follows. Every step I take away from her she covers the distance by pursuing me.

  I can’t bear her near me, can’t focus with her here begging me to explain.

  “What’s going on here?” Santiago asks as he runs around the corner, Joaquín not far behind with two of his main men. “We heard the yelling.”

  I fix Isla with a look and I see that I have devastated her. The venom in my look wounds deep and her shoulders slump as she watches me so totally unaware of her wrongdoing.

  I just want her gone, so I use the only excuse I can think of to get her out of my sight.

  “I’m done with her rejecting me,” I say, my words sliced with venom. “Your precious golden girl is nothing but full of total bullshit.”

  Fear ignites across her entire face without a second thought.

  “No,” she argues, her tone tear-ridden with disbelief that I’ve just turned her in. “That’s not true!”

  I narrow my gaze on her as she fights for her blamelessness. She goes to approach me, but she’s caught by two of the henchmen, both wrapping hands around her, stopping her from coming any closer.

  “Also, she killed Gabi...”

  That admission slips out of my mouth before my brain could even process and stop me from saying it. I force myself to look at Isla and the look on her face is of total destruction. I offer her complete defamation, handing it to her so violently.

  “Is this true?” Joaquín asks as he steps toward Isla.

  Isla doesn’t speak anymore, clearly seeing as doing so would be futile.

  “If it’s true it’s about time she got her punishment,” Santiago comments, looking up at his father. “What do you think, padre? Are you willing to let her off that pedestal at long last? Every girl must learn their place... hers isn’t at your feet anymore,” the look that smothers Santiago’s face shines bright with sadistic int
ent. “Even good girls sin, padre. So even good girls deserve their day of reckoning.”

  “Please,” Isla mutters, fighting against the hold on her. “Please don’t.”

  Her face twists with such maddening emotion that slowly gives way to sheer panic that I resent myself a little, but the gnawing sensation of my grief is enough to eclipse it all.

  Santiago breaks my attention as he approaches Isla with slow, heavy steps.

  “I’ve waited for the day I got to break you, Eighteen. I knew your time here would end and you’d fall from your post, but I wish it had been fucking sooner than this. I like Javier a little more for arriving if it’s caused such delinquent behavior out of you.”

  “Fuck you,” Isla spits, unwilling to bow to him.

  For that, she’s rewarded with the back of Santiago’s hand connecting with her check. Held by two of his henchmen’s, Isla doesn’t move, allowing Santiago to step closer still, he grabs onto her face, forcing her to look him dead in the eyes. He sniggers at her, shaking his head as if in condescension.

  “What do you say?” Santiago asks, looking over his shoulder to his father.

  I watch so much conflict highlight Joaquín’s face, his silence says more than the words he could ever speak. He stands, sidelined and silent as he watches the horde before him start to unravel. I see disappointment lighten his eyes as he looks at what has become of Isla, but I remain on the side – forever the culprit.

  There’s a slow burn in his eyes, but his words offer an indication that he’s not far from blowing with total fury.

  “Throw her into isolation...” Joaquín announces, looking at Isla with pure disdain. “The party can begin in a couple of days. Make sure she doesn’t eat. We want her weak.”

  Isla all but collapses in the hold of the two men, crying out with such a guttural noise that it almost thaws out the coldness that has claimed me a victim, but I remain standing by what I’ve done.

  There are rules and regulations, a protocol for miscreants who are found guilty and I’m learning now that isolation and starvation are only two of the beginning phases.

  As I look between father and son, I realize Isla is about to get it ten times worse.

  She was clearly never punished, but now is the time she is.

  “We all know that after the party she won’t ever step out of line,” Joaquín states, straight-laced and serious. “And if she does, we won’t stop until she just does what she’s told,” his eyes narrow on Isla, stepping closer. “You could’ve been so powerful here, Eighteen. Now, I can’t wait to hear you scream as you get what is finally deserved. I let you get away with too much. Now, I find out you killed Gabi. You knew how important she was to me, how much I loved her. You deserve a fate worse than death,” he turns, beginning to walk away from her as his anger exceeds his control. “Get her out of my sight now!”

  “Time for you be thrown away for a few days, puta,” Santiago threatens her, even as she fights the men. “This is going to be the highlight of your life with us... or it will be for me anyway.”

  I allow her to get taken away as my grief doesn’t permit room for any semblance of guilt to take over.

  Even her screams don’t dent what I’m feeling, not when I just found that the reason I’m here is completely gone, and the girl I started to fall for is the reason for it.

  It’s as I head to my room I have one thing in my mind: Eighteen has the bloodiest hands in this place and no amount of repentance will rid her of those stains.

  It’s taken me almost three years to hit rock bottom.

  Yet the moment my body met it with impact, I embraced the place I had spent so long trying to run from. Here I don’t have to wear a mask or fake being strong. Here I am what they’ve forced me to become, the girl so beyond broken, her pieces don’t align.

  I no longer have to pretend that one day everything will be okay.

  And my reason for being okay with my newly found position is because Gabi finally gets justice.

  I told myself what I did was a gracious act of God we both would’ve been made to do at one point in this godforsaken life. For six months, I never met anyone’s gaze while discussing Gabi’s departure; I forced myself to become the mothering one, cover for the void Gabi’s death left in our duo act. We had become the protectors, but now that job was mine to do alone.

  As my head lolls to the side, touching the cool concrete of my cell, I come back to reality, forced from my own thoughts. Being imprisoned has driven me crazy, but only because I don’t know what is happening to the girls as they continue life upstairs. While I’m here, the minutes ticking past, I can only imagine that Joaquín and his men are having their wicked way with them.

  Then there’s Javier.

  To think I nearly gave myself to a man that for some reason has the clear right to hate me. I hadn’t realized my true feelings until I came to understand just what consequence my actions inflicted. My heart didn’t pang for the fact I killed someone he loved, but because I lost a man that could’ve been my salvation.

  I hear footsteps coming yet remain slumped in the corner of my concrete cell, I weakly reach up ridding my tears with the back of my hand. My energy has been draining away since Santiago began his games with me – per his father’s orders.

  We want her weak, he ordered. They’re going to have me at my weakest just as Joaquín wished.

  “Hola, Chiquita,” Santiago says the moment he’s crouched down to my level, his hand on the bars of my door. “You’re not looking too good,” he grins at me, leering through the bars. “Guess you’re going to want what’s in my pocket.”

  I can feel the slightest of tugs on my lips, the corners wanting to fight the delicious smile that Santiago evokes. If it’s like all the other times he’s been here, then I’ll love his company.

  He stands back, falling into the same routine of pulling the key out of his pocket and unlocking my door before slipping the key back away, stowing it in his pocket.

  “Get in there,” Santiago orders, ushering one of his two men toward the open door.

  While Diablo, Santiago’s most trusted beside Hector, comes into the small space, the other reaches for my feet before I can curl up. I’m yanked, my exhausted body hits the ground and I’m dragged out enough to give Santiago space to work.

  Diablo lifts me, putting one arm around my chest, holding me strongly as the other brute who’s nameless to me sits on my feet and takes a hold of my arm. Both hold me in place and Santiago strikes, firstly by tying a tourniquet around my bicep. I try to fight, attempting some futile attempt to free myself. He’s moved to my right arm now, having destroyed every vein in my left arm. The track marks he’s left on me make me feel sick, remind me that the moment this high begins to dwindle, I’ll begin to crave another hit as the withdrawal sets in.

  That’s the only reason I like Santiago coming here – the heroin high.

  Fearing that moment as I remember the downer it pours upon me, I fight like I did the last several times, but it’s no good. He doesn’t admit defeat but my weakening body does. Santiago pulls out a syringe, already filled with the same weak brown drug as before and he brings it to my arm. I yank, trying my hardest to move my arm as he flicks the protective cover away, but his henchmen just hold on tighter, using breaking force. I stand no hope against him with my weakened limbs.

  “You’ll do more damage you keep fucking moving,” Santiago sneers, his grip tightening as does the brute holding my legs down. “I’ve already fucked a vein in your left arm; don’t make me do it again on this one.”

  I don’t listen and he continues to press the tip of the needle against my skin and soon it disappears into my arm. I feel it in my vein and as I watch him press down, the brown liquid disappearing, a tender heat starts to spread throughout my entire body.

  “Keep a hold of her,” Santiago orders, replacing the cap to the needle before tossing it aside. He leans in, tearing off the rubber tourniquet. “I want to make sure she’s settling down with th
e drug now.”

  The warmth that smothers my body is, regrettably, soothing after being frozen to the core, but along with that comes the feeling that the world around me slows me down. I barely react at first to Santiago hitching the skirt of my dress up and I feel like my words slur as I beg once more with him not to do this.

  He’s changing the game and for a moment, the way I’m handled, I wonder if this was what he was hoping for. He pushes my skirt right up, hitching it around my waist and he yanks at my panties, ripping them from me. I try to move, but I’m completely held down, no one is here to save me and the heroin sends waves of nauseating dizziness through me.

  “I fucking hate you,” Santiago growls, his words coming from between gritted teeth. “Grab her ankles and spread her legs.”

  His man listens as the weight disperses and my legs part. With it, I feel the tears beginning to form. Through bleary vision, I see him move, covering my body. He reaches out, pushing wayward, greasy hair out of my face and I recoil, flinching to his touch. My fight or flight response doesn’t trigger, numbed by the immediate effects of the drugs in my system. They don’t use a lot, no more than one bag at a time, but the effects are instant, knocking me down, making me easy.

  “I think it’s safe to let her go. At least, she stopped vomiting with it,” Diablo mocks. “Means we won’t have to watch her.”

  “She still needs guarding you fool!” Santiago roars, smacking Diablo hard as he becomes distracted from his task. “She’s got to make it through the night yet! The puta hasn’t had regular access to drugs like you and I do. You really think you can leave the girl when she’s being given drugs like we have for the last forty-eight hours?” He sits back, my breathing slowing as I fall victim to the drug and they prolong my torture. “If she were to die during the night, I’d have you strung up and gutted for it.”