by Marni Mann
I didn’t know.
I just knew that she seemed happy. That this place gave her a means to support her family. And it seemed like she really respected Huck.
Of course, it could all be a lie.
“Time to go outside,” Lawan said as she met me in the back room.
Somehow, she knew I was done with refilling all the jars and bottles and reorganizing the stockroom. I’d also done the laundry even though she hadn’t asked me to.
“Do you think it would be okay if I went for a walk?”
She nodded and brought me to the door where I’d gone out last time. “Have your phone on you? Don’t want you to get lost.”
I lifted it out of my pocket to show her. “I’ve got it.”
“Text me when you want to come through door.”
I didn’t have a key to get back inside, and I’d never gone in through the front, nor did I know what that door even looked like besides what I could see from my bedroom window. “I will,” I told her.
She bowed, and I walked outside, hearing the lock click behind me.
I was alone.
And this was the first time Huck and Lawan weren’t keeping an eye on me.
I took a deep breath, and I began to walk, remembering the route so that I’d be able to make it back. Behind the brothel were a series of alleys that ran between several different buildings. It was too quiet back here. Too nerve-racking. Someone could jump out and scare me, and I didn’t want to be in a position where that could happen.
I needed to be where the people were.
So, I turned down a side alley and reached the same street the brothel was on. I stayed on the sidewalk despite how narrow it was, sharing the thin space with so many other people, bikes, carts, and lots of animals.
This part of the world felt so much different than India. The pace seemed faster, the air was full of salt from the ocean nearby, and there was food everywhere. Everyone who stood on the side of the road seemed to be selling something that could be eaten. And then I reached the market a few blocks down, and that had even more food. Vendors were lined up under straw huts with baskets of produce, tanks of fish, and even cages of chickens.
I didn’t have any money.
I didn’t need food.
I moved toward the back of the market where the food turned to textile, and there were sellers of clothing and shoes and purses. I ran my hands over the fabrics. They were so rich in color, and so much of it looked handmade.
“You want?” a vendor asked me.
I glanced at the alley directly behind his booth and then back at him. “No, thank you.”
He rattled off something in Thai to another customer, a man who was looking at a shirt right next to me, and they started a brief conversation.
I continued walking, taking a left into the alley and going two blocks until I reached a store. It wasn’t like the convenience stores we had in the States. This one had insects and reptiles in the front. They were in tanks, separated by type. I saw grasshoppers and scorpions and some kind of worms. They grossed me out so badly, I had to stop looking.
While I went in through the front of the store, I remembered the fourteen numbers I’d rehearsed in my head since I got on the plane at JFK airport.
“English?” I asked the man who stood next to the register. I pulled a chunk of hair into my grip and twirled it in my hand, making sure he saw what I was doing.
The man raised his fingers into the air, and I noticed that he was missing one. It was his pinkie. But, using his thumb and pointer, he pinched them together until they were only an inch apart.
He was telling me he spoke a little English.
He was the man I needed to talk to then.
I smiled, giving a last twirl to my hair before I tucked it behind my ear. “May I please use your phone?”
He reached underneath the counter and handed me a cell. It wasn’t the kind Huck had given to me. This was a flip phone.
“Do you mind if I go to the back of the store?”
He used his pinkieless hand to shoo me away.
As I headed toward the other side of the room, I punched in the ten-digit code for the calling card. When the recording picked up, I pressed my four-digit pin.
And, after two rings, the call was answered, and I said, “Hi, Daddy.”
“Oh, baby, I’ve missed you so much.”
My breath hitched in my throat, and I talked through the tears that were forming, “I’ve missed you, too.”
And I had.
Much more than I’d realized now that I was finally hearing his voice again.
“You doing all right?” he asked.
I leaned my back against a rack of what looked like fruit and tried to hide my face. “I’m okay.”
“Good, good. I’ve been worried about you. It’s been too long since you’ve been in touch. I was afraid something had happened.”
“No, Daddy, I’m fine.”
“Of course you are, my sweet girl.”
I wanted to tell him everything that had happened to me. Tell him where I was and that I’d be back in the States soon.
But I couldn’t say those things to him.
“When am I going to see you, princess?”
Princess.
That was what my mother had called me, too.
I closed my eyes, and the tears began to drip. I wiped them with the sleeve that hung over my hand, the one that was way too big for me. The one Lawan had dressed me in for the brothel I was now employed by.
“Soon,” I said. “Really soon.”
“I was hoping you would say that.”
I quickly glanced over my shoulder, noticing that the store had gotten much busier. Several of the customers weren’t standing too far from me. One was looking at the fruit that was on the shelves that I was resting against.
“I have to run, Daddy. I just wanted to check in with you.”
“I’m glad you did.”
“Good-bye.” My voice cracked.
I didn’t want to hang up.
But I did.
I dried my face off with my shirt and walked back to the register where I handed the phone to the pinkieless man. “Thank you.”
He nodded and winked while he took it from me.
I didn’t return the gesture.
And, as soon as I got outside, I breathed in deep to calm the anxiety in my chest, and then I began to make my way back to the brothel.
I wondered if Huck would be waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs.
I wondered if he’d take me to his bedroom again and give me more than just his tongue.
I wondered if Daddy would be disappointed in me if he found out I was hooking up with the owner of that brothel. I definitely knew the answer to that one.
The Kid
Before
I broke my wrist today. I was skateboarding down a sidewalk, and a car pulled out in front of me. I didn’t have time to stop. The front of the board hit the wheel of the car, and I flew over the hood, banged into the windshield and broke it, and fell off the other side.
The driver rolled down his window and said, “You all right, kid?”
You’re the only person who calls me that.
I had to do a double take to see if it was you behind the wheel. But the guy looked nothing like me or the picture I have of you.
It hurts like crazy. Doctor says, once the swelling goes down a little, I’ll have a cast from my wrist to my shoulder.
Good thing it was my right hand, or I wouldn’t have been able to write back.
Did you ever break a bone while you were at the prison? Cut yourself where you needed stitches? Not in a clumsy way. I don’t think you’re that at all. I’m just wondering if you ever got hurt or if you only ever did the hurting.
In case you forgot, here are the things I know from your last letter. Beard was all messed up on drugs, my mother was inside a cell in your prison and had just lost Beard’s baby, and you had all intentions of killing her, but I know that
didn’t happen because I was conceived and born, and we all lived there together until we didn’t anymore.
The thing I don’t know—how I came to be.
Shank
Before
I walked out of the cell that was four doors down with a small pile of paper in my hands and an asshole that was so fucking sore. I had been right about the inmate I needed to trade with. To get the paper, he’d wanted my ass for a week straight instead of the three fucks he usually charged. After he’d gotten it, he’d demanded a second week. I’d just completed my fourteenth day.
I wanted dick. I craved dick. I liked that I could get so much of it in this prison. I wanted to be fucked with anger, my ass ravaged as hard and as fast as he could give it to me. And he had.
That wasn’t the problem.
The inmate wasn’t the only guy getting a piece of me. The guard was in on the action, too, because he wouldn’t let me out of my cell unless I sucked his cock.
That wasn’t the problem either.
It was my mouth. It hurt like hell from the guard knocking out my tooth this morning. He’d squeezed my skull, so I couldn’t turn my head, and he’d shoved his dick in. He hadn’t gone toward my throat. He’d banged against the side and straight into a molar. I’d needed to see a dentist for a while. This Venezuelan prison didn’t believe in them. They didn’t believe in doctors either. There was a nurse, and she was only here to treat the dying.
I wished I’d had a little warning before my tooth came out of its socket because, seconds after it’d happened, while it had still been floating around in my mouth, he’d filled the hole with his cum.
I guessed that was one way to clean it out.
Although spitting and rinsing in the shower would have probably been better for it.
The same guard was now walking me back to my cell. He unlocked my cuffs and said, “Same time tomorrow?”
“Yeah.”
Even if I’d fulfilled my end of the trade, maybe I could convince the inmate to go for fifteen days.
“Good,” the guard said. “Next time, I’ll aim for the top row.”
He’d done it on purpose.
Asshole.
But maybe I should thank him. The molar had been bothering me for a while, and now that it was out, it could heal.
I rubbed my tongue over the hole it had left as I sat on the bed with my new stack of paper. And, as I began to write, I swallowed the cum that I’d been keeping in my mouth.
Not from the guard.
That wad was from me.
It was the load I’d shot while the inmate was fucking me. I’d licked it off my hand and stored it there for safekeeping.
Kid, you were right about Beard. He was all drugged up.
As for Diego, he knew I was housing someone inside our prison, but I didn’t tell him who it was.
And your mother, she was in her cell, and she was staying real quiet in hopes that I wouldn’t kill her.
With Beard being too high to do his job, Toy filled in as a guard. That part worked out perfectly since I had to keep Beard away from cell twelve.
It also meant that, as each day passed, Beard got deeper into his addiction.
But the prison was so fucking busy, and we really needed him. We got clients from all over the world, and we had a waitlist at least a few months long. Our pilots worked full-time. We couldn’t kill fast enough. What held us up was the torturing. You see, some of our clients wanted information out of the inmates. In cases like that, we’d torture until the prisoners confessed. Sometimes, those fuckers could take a serious amount of pain, and they wouldn’t fess up for days. That would ruin our schedules. It would make our waitlists grow even longer, and having Tyler take up one of our cells was really screwing up our production.
I had no fucking idea why I hadn’t killed her yet. Something was telling me to keep her alive, and, Jesus, I was glad I had.
Because, one night, shortly after Tyler had been incarcerated, Beard came down into the prison. Diego was in his room, sleeping at the time, Toy was in the OR, and I was checking on the inmates.
“Scream for me,” Beard slurred from the other side of the cell block.
I rounded the corner toward cell one and saw him. He was all fucked up. He kept losing his balance, gripping the bars just to keep himself standing. He could barely even lift his head.
“Scream for me,” he grumbled again as he shuffled toward cell two.
It wasn’t the first time I’d heard him say that.
But it was the first time he’d been down here since Tyler arrived.
I had to make sure she kept her mouth shut. The last fucking thing I needed was for her to recognize his voice, shout out to him, and blow everything up.
So, I went into her cell and locked it behind me. She was curled in a ball, sleeping in between the toilet and sink. I’d slipped a Xanax into her food a few hours before, and it had obviously knocked her out.
I knelt in front of her and slapped my hand over her mouth. I yanked her back against my chest and said, “Don’t make a fucking sound.”
She nodded, and I stood her up, walking her to the corner of the cell, close to the bars. She exhaled through my fingers, her nostrils flaring as she tried to take in more air. Tears were streaming so goddamn fast, and her whole body shook.
“Scream for me,” Beard cried.
She heard his voice. I could feel when the realization passed through her. She tightened and started to tremble. The shaking had been out of fear. The trembling was from the lifeline she thought she could reach out to.
“Scream for me,” Beard repeated.
“Quiet,” I growled in her ear in case she tried to yell through my fingers.
Her voice might have stayed silent, but her body hadn’t. Now, she was bucking, and her ass was grinding against my cock. I knew she wasn’t trying to make me hard. She was trying to wiggle the hell away from me.
I wasn’t going to let that happen.
Every time I tried to squeeze her to stop moving, she would bang into me even harder.
It felt so good to have a nice round ass bumping into my dick. All the friction, all the tears, all the fear and panic and desperation gave me the biggest fucking hard-on.
There was no way to make it go down. Not unless I came. And that wouldn’t be happening for hours, not with Toy inside the OR and then him having to take several trips to the incinerator right after.
I didn’t see a reason to wait. Not when there were two perfect holes rubbing against me.
“Silence,” I reminded her. “Not a fucking sound.”
Still holding her mouth, I reached down and unbuttoned the top of her jeans. She tried to bite me when she realized what I was doing, and I kicked her in the backs of her legs. She fell on her knees and let out a muffled yell.
“Try it again,” I warned, “and I’ll reach up inside your cunt and rip your ovaries out.”
She was such a feisty one.
Every time she fought back, it reminded me of when I was younger and I’d go hunting in other countries. That had been so much fun. But so was tearing down your mother’s jeans and getting ready to stick my cock in her cunt.
“Scream for me,” Beard grunted.
Mmm, I thought. I’ll get this bitch to scream for him all right.
I put her earlobe in my mouth, and I bit down until there was blood on my tongue. It tasted so fucking good. So metallic and hot and just what I needed. “If you so much as breathe too loud, I will stick my fingers in your mouth, and I’ll suffocate you by tearing out your goddamn throat.” I twisted her neck until she looked at me, holding her face so tightly that it would probably leave scars. “Do you understand?”
Her eyes were so wide and so wet, and she quivered so hard as she nodded.
I grabbed her waist and pulled her to her feet again. Then, while I stood behind her, I pushed her into the corner, and I made sure her panties were as low as her jeans.
“Scream for me,” Beard said.
�
�Do you hear him?” I whispered in her ear.
She nodded again.
Without warning, without spit, I shoved my cock into her cunt. I buried it, tilting my hips back and diving in a second time. Her dryness was chafing my skin, so I spit on my hand, coated it over my cock, and thrust in.
“Scream for him,” I told her, clenching her neck in my hand and squeezing so that she choked. “But I’m warning you right now; if you do anything to alert him that you’re in this cell, you will lose your fucking tongue.”
She dragged her nails down the concrete. One of them bent back and bled. I’d tasted her blood, but this was my first time seeing it. It made me so turned on, I plowed into her even harder.
“Do it,” I hissed in her ear. I gripped her hair and yanked her head back, so her lips were pointed toward the bars. “Do it right now.”
“Ahhh!” she screamed.
I heard a crash, and I took a quick peek past the bars to see what it was.
Beard had fallen on the ground, landing on all fours, and he was crawling toward us. “Scream for me.”
“Do it again,” I growled.
“Ahhh!” she shouted.
She’d dried up again, so I took the snot that had fallen from her nose and the spit that had formed on the sides of her lips, and I rubbed it all over my dick.
“Scream for me!” Beard yelled louder.
When I checked, he was only a cell away.
“Again,” I said to her.
As she screamed, he moved in front of cell twelve, put his back against the bars, and used them like a wall. With him being only a foot away, it allowed him to hear her even better. And the way to get her to scream louder was to fuck her the hardest I could.
What gave me that boost of energy was the blood.
I took it from her nails and I painted it over my cock and I watched it slide in and out of her cunt.
This time, I didn’t have to tell her to scream. She was doing plenty of that already.
The sound she made was piercing.
It was full of pain.
Hate.
Resentment.
As she took a breath, Beard groaned, “Scream for me.”
