Thirty Days of Shame

by Ginger Talbot

  He looks disappointed at my lack of reaction, and slides his finger back out. “You’re a pig-ugly bitch, but I’m gonna fuck you anyway. Because I know you don’t want me to.”

  I meet his gaze. Sooner or later, I know I will break, but I’m going to make him miserable in every way possible for as long as I can. “Sounds like a personal problem.”

  He slaps my face. I stifle a cry.

  “Mommy didn’t hug you when you were growing up?” I taunt him. If I can make him angry enough to kill me, then I’ll be spared the rape and torture that’s surely coming.

  “Shut up, whore!”

  “Or maybe she hugged you too much.” He slaps me again. “Or was it Daddy?”

  He punches me in the side of the head. Sparks explode behind my eyes. “Ooh, I struck a nerve,” I gasp.

  He cocks his arm back, and I can’t help but flinch, because this one’s going to hurt.

  But a strange feeling swells up inside me, a feeling of power. I’m tied down, naked, and I’m still jerking his strings.

  He’s weak where it counts. I’m strong where it counts.

  Maybe I can manipulate him into untying me. I’ve got a few tricks that he’d never expect. Yeah, I’ll end up dead no matter what, but the thought of getting in some final blows, maybe even killing him, lights a beautiful flame inside me.

  Suddenly I’m not weak and disgusting, polluted by my own genetics. I’m a warrior planning a campaign of resistance.

  He punches me on the side of the head, and I grunt in pain. Tears flow down my cheeks.

  But at the same time, I flex my face into a manic grin.

  “What the hell you smiling at, bitch?” he shouts, eyes bulging with rage.

  Yes.

  I stare right up at him. “My uncle has big plans for me, and they don’t include dying at the hands of a yapping Chihuahua like you. So I’m picturing how, after you kill me, he’s going to cut you up into little bits while you’re still alive, and feed you to sharks.”

  His face contorts with dismay. It’s true, and he knows it – if he kills me, he’ll be in deep shit and then he’ll die.

  He kicks the bed frame in frustration.

  Yes.

  “I can make you wish I’d killed you,” he spits.

  “All right then. Let’s get this party started, little man.”

  He kicks the bed again and again, in a frenzy.

  Yes, yes, yes. Even though I’m dizzy from the blow to the head, I feel like I’m soaring with triumph.

  “Biiiiiitch!” he howls, helpless with thwarted rage. He raises his fist to hit me again.

  “Stop hitting her! Stop!” someone wails.

  I twist on the bed, looking around the room for the first time. I think we’re in a mobile home. The windows are all blacked out and the lights are dim, but not so dim that I fail to see a girl who’s chained to a wall maybe ten feet from me. She’s also stripped naked, and her hair is limp and stringy. There are bruises all over her abdomen.

  My body tenses.

  And an evil smile twists the man’s mouth.

  His creepy gaze skitters from her to me and back again. “You think she’s a virgin? I don’t think she’s no virgin. I’m going to find out.”

  “No!” I cry out, and instantly regret it. I’m so, so stupid. I’ve just encouraged him to hurt her, and all she did was beg him not to hit me.

  He swaggers over to her, and bends down and bites her left nipple so hard she howls in agony.

  Then he goes and fetches a revolver from a cabinet, and walks over to her, and he thrusts the gun up between her legs. He forces the barrel up inside her vagina, violently. She screams and screams, her eyes bulging with terror.

  “I just remembered, she ain’t a virgin. Cause I popped her cherry for her yesterday. You shoulda been here, she screamed real pretty.”

  “Please don’t,” I cry. “Please. I’m sorry. Take me instead. I’ll do anything you want.”

  “Oh, I’m going to take you in every hole you got. Right after I play Russian roulette with this bitch’s cunt.”

  He spins the cylinder on the revolver and then pulls the trigger. She faints in terror.

  He slides the gun out, walks over to the bucket, grabs it, and takes it to the sink. She is sagging on her chains. He fills the bucket up, and carries it over and dumps it on her head to wake her up again.

  She thrashes and cries. He goes to fetch the revolver from the counter.

  I bite my lip to keep from screaming and begging. It’s what he wants, so I won’t give it to him.

  “Do you feel lucky today, bitch?” he croons to the woman hanging from her chains. He slides the gun in again.

  “No, no, no, no, no!” she screams.

  The door bangs open, and light floods the room. A man sticks his head through and looks at him.

  “You fucking idiot,” the man snarls. “She’s worth fifty grand easy. You going to pay Vilyat fifty grand after you shoot her in the snatch?”

  Reluctantly, the man slides the gun out of the woman’s vagina. He starts to head back towards me, and a sickening wave of relief that leaves me gasping. Nothing he could do to me is worse than watching him abuse that girl. Then there’s a cry from outside.

  “We’re under attack!” a man shouts.

  Our tormentor runs out of the room.

  I hear shots, and curses.

  Sergei. Please, please, please…

  A little while later, Jasha runs in the room, and I start to sob with relief. He has a bolt cutter. He cuts my chains and takes his jacket off, and gives it to me. I put it on. Fortunately, he’s huge and I’m short, so it covers me. Then he frees the girl hanging on the wall. She falls to the ground, on her knees, and cries and cries. Jasha sheds his T-shirt and gives it to her, and she pulls it on quickly, hugging herself. Trying to shield herself from touch, from abuse, with those skinny arms of hers.

  Jasha pulls me to my feet. I’m still weak and shaky from pain and terror and whatever knockout drug they gave me. There are no more shouts and no more gunshots.

  “Helenka!” I cry out. “Oh God, is she all right?”

  “She’s fine. She’s back at Sergei’s house with Yuri and her mother. They’re very worried about you.”

  “Where is Sergei?” I demand.

  “He’s busy. I’m going to take you home.” He sees the look of hurt and bewilderment on my face, and he adds, “He’s busy with Vilyat.”

  And that actually makes me smile, despite everything. Because that means that me and Anastasia and my cousins are finally safe.

  “All right then,” I say.

  More men pour into the room. One of them has a blanket, and he wraps it around the girl and picks her up in his arms.

  “Let’s go. Don’t worry about her; she’ll be taken to the hospital,” Jasha says, and he has to hold me up as I stumble out into the daylight.

  I sway on my feet, trying to orient myself. Where the hell am I? I don’t recognize this place. It’s twilight. We’re in a wooded area at the end of a dirt road, and there’s another trailer huddled next to the one I was in. There are a dozen cars parked on the grass, scattered around the trailers. There are men lying in the dirt, leaking out their life’s blood, empty eyes staring up at the sky.

  I catch a glimpse of Sergei hustling a man with a bag over his head into the back of a van.

  Vilyat.

  Jasha helps me into the back seat of an SUV, and I curl up there, shaking all over. As he drives me back to the house, I remember a joke Sergei made earlier, about a microchip. And I know how Sergei found me.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Day twenty-one…

  SERGEI

  “Nice of you to join us,” I say to Jasha as he hurries into the back of the warehouse.

  He blinks in the blazing fluorescent lights. I’ve lit this room up like the sun; I don’t want to miss a thing. “Oh, good, you didn’t start without me,” he says, squinting.

  “Are you kidding? After all these years? I w
ould never.” I grin. “We’ve all just been enjoying the show while we waited for you.”

  Vilyat has already pissed and shit himself with terror. I had him stripped naked and tied up, hanging from his hands in this private warehouse that I own, waiting for Jasha.

  All my men are there, lined up, watching.

  The air crackles with anticipation. We have waited for this moment for so long. We always knew it was possible that one of Vilyat’s enemies would get to him first. That was the risk we ran, with our long, drawn-out campaign of terror. But luck smiled on us, and we have him now.

  I’m on a manic high. Willow is safe. There were six girls being held in the trailers; they’re all being cared for now, recovering, after my men dropped them off in the parking lot of a supermarket minutes from a hospital. Vilyat’s henchmen are all dead.

  With all the heat on Vilyat right now, it was insane that he kidnapped those girls. College students partying at a night-club, waitresses, a girl stepping outside her apartment for a smoke…they babbled their stories to my men as they were driven to safety. Vilyat had his men roofie them, or grab them as they walked to their cars after work. He just couldn’t stop himself.

  It’s a sickness with him, with all the Toporov men. They get high off torture, and the softer and sweeter their victims, the more exciting it is for them. They make my dark desires seem vanilla and sweet by comparison.

  Well, now he’s going to get more than a taste of his own medicine.

  I walk over to a table full of cruel instruments, and pick up a skinning knife. He sees it, and shrieks and bucks and kicks.

  “I’ll pay you anything!” he pleads. “I’ll work for you for free. I’ll let my wife and kids go, forever, I’ll never pursue them again. I’ll let Willow go.”

  I just look at him, stroking the blade of my knife like a lover.

  “They’re already gone,” I tell him. “They’re my family now. They all hate you, did you know that? Not just your wife. Your children. They feel nothing but contempt and disgust for you. You’re a failure as a human being, and a failure as a father.”

  I walk up to him and he tries to squirm away from me. I draw a thin, shallow line vertically down his stomach, the same way he does to his victims when he’s finished with them. Except I only cut the skin.

  “Who is Cataha?” I demand, on a hunch. Cataha guts his victims the same way Vilyat does. Maybe the two of them worked together at some point.

  “Satan?” His bloodshot eyes widen in bewilderment. “I’m…I’m a Christian…” he snivels. Riiiight. Yes, he has been known to go to church now and then. And he’s a Christian like I’m a fucking Martian.

  I punch him in the stomach, and he whimpers in pain. “Cataha. The trafficker in Russia.” I jab his chest with the tip of the knife.

  “I’ve never heard of him. I can find him for you! Do you want him?” So desperately eager to please me.

  My men are crowded around me now. I slash another line across Vilyat’s belly, right next to the first one. “No, I’ve got what I want right here.”

  “I can make you rich!” he screams, mindless with pain and terror.

  “Really?” I say gently. “How? Maybe we could go into business together dealing in little boy whores?”

  His eyes light up. He gasps with relief. Idiot.

  “Yes! You like little boys? I can get you all the little boys you like, all day long! I’ve got a house full of them back in Russia; they’re all brand new! Most of them haven’t even been fucked yet! Sweet, innocent…” Then he sees the look on my face.

  And he figures it out, finally.

  “You…you were from the orphanage. I think I remember now. The way you looked at me. Those eyes…”

  “Orphanage?” I punch him in the nose and it breaks with a satisfying crunch. “You mean the child sex-slave whorehouse?”

  Vilyat wails in agony. “Oh fuck, oh fuck…I should have killed you then…for looking at me like that…”

  “Yes, you should have.” I punch him again and break his jaw. No symphony could ever sound sweeter than the noises Vilyat is making right now.

  “Your customers raped my little brother. His name was Pyotr. He’s the reason you’re going to die before the sun goes down.” A wave of wild euphoria floods through me. I’ve been rehearsing those words in my head for fourteen years. Fourteen. Fucking. Years.

  Jasha approaches with a bullwhip. His eyes are black as sin and he’s shaking with the need for vengeance. “Let me,” he begs.

  I step back.

  “Go,” I say. Jasha slashes Vilyat with the whip so hard that blood pours out of him. Vilyat howls to the heavens – just like Jasha did when the men at Vilyat’s whorehouse tore into him.

  Then Slavik takes a turn.

  Then Maks.

  The coppery reek of Vilyat’s blood coats our nostrils.

  My men are sweating and grunting with effort, gasping with satisfaction. It’s everything we’ve dreamed of.

  I push forward and shove the knife blade up against Vilyat’s crotch. “Tell me where you’re keeping the little boys, or I’ll cut your dick off,” I say.

  “No, no, noooo….” For a man who likes to dish out pain, he sure can’t take it. I approach him with my knife. I start to saw away at the root of his limp, dangling cock, slowly, and he goes mad, screeching like a woman. Kicking his legs. What does he need his dick for? He’s going to be dead soon anyway. He’ll never get to use it again.

  He vomits on himself.

  Then he tells me.

  Jasha hurries out of the room to make a phone call to one of our best connections – the Russian journalist, Akim. We work with Akim and the newspaper Reforma so much, they’re practically business partners. Reforma doesn’t know that we created Akim, and they’re puppets whose strings we jerk. That’s okay. They have their job to do, we have ours.

  We’ll have the children freed within a few hours.

  Of course, after what Vilyat and his men put them through, they’ll never really be free. I know that better than anyone.

  While Jasha is on the phone, I slowly saw away at Vilyat.

  I let each of my men have more turns with the bullwhip, with knives, with cattle prods inserted in places that make Vilyat scream and convulse until he passes out. Watching them at work is every bit as satisfying as doing it myself.

  We manage to stretch it out for hours. I wish we could make it last longer.

  Finally his last tortured breath whispers from his body, and he dangles, limp and lifeless, his toes trailing through a pool of his spilled fluids.

  A good man would feel sick at what I just did. As we leave, I feel clean and light and free. I am not a good man.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Day twenty-four…

  SERGEI

  It’s nine a.m. Willow has a concussion and she gets dizzy when she walks, so she’s been taking it easy in bed the last couple of days. I’ve been busy with our final project, which is unfolding over the next few days, but my craving for her is distracting me again, so I finally give in to it.

  If I let myself be with her like a normal man, sleeping with her every night, spending time with her every day, if I didn’t force myself to stay away from her for days on end…I wouldn’t be consumed with these fits of desire that pull me away from urgent business. But if I did that, I’d grow accustomed to the peace and lightness that only she can grace me with. And I can never do that.

  She’s sitting up in bed, propped up on a mountain of pillows. The right side of her face is swollen and splotched purple and blue. Helenka, Yuri and Anastasia are sitting with her. Yuri’s holding a storybook that he must have been reading to her. I see some drawings on her night-table that are clearly Lukas’ work. That kid’s got talent, it can’t be denied. Of course, Willow was the one to spot it; she sees the best in everybody.

  Willow manages a weak smile. The rest of them look at me warily. We’ve reached a shaky truce. Vilyat’s dead, but after months of being on the run and jumping
at every shadow, they don’t feel safe yet. So they’re back at my house for now, but not my prisoners any longer. Of course, they still don’t fully trust me. That’s smart; their instincts are right on track. I’m not a man who should be trusted.

  “You guys run along,” Willow says to them. “I’ll see you after lunch.”

  They stand up. “Watch yourself,” Helenka says to me. “I’ve got my eye on you. I know where you sleep.”

  I do admire her fiery spirit. Even if she is a Toporov. “Fair warning. I sleep very lightly. With a gun under my pillow.”

  She snorts. “Jasha says it’s stupid to brag about things like that. Why tell your enemies what you have prepared for them?”

  “If Jasha told you to jump off a bridge, would you do it?”

  “Only if I knew I could land directly on you,” Helenka says smartly. She and Yuri laugh and high five each other.

  They file out of the room, and I settle down next to Willow. She has circles under her eyes and the bruises are really in bloom now, dark against her pale skin.

  I trace them very lightly with my fingertips. “How are you feeling?”

  “Forget about me. How are you feeling? Now that he’s gone?”

  She looks at me searchingly. There’s genuine concern in her eyes. Even lying in her bed like this, in pain, dizzy, she is worried about me rather than herself.

  After everything I’ve done to her.

  She should loathe the sight and smell of me.

  But she doesn’t. She can’t. Her heart is so strong, she’s still her good self, even after exposure to a toxin like me.

  I smile at her gently. “A burden that I have been carrying for years has been lifted from me.” I lean in and brush my lips across hers. Her lips part with a soft moan.

  Blood rushes to my groin and makes me stiff and achy with need, so I move back. If she weren’t injured, I’d take her right here, rough and hard.