One Among Us

by Paige Dearth

  Max noticed the sudden change in Maggie’s demeanor. “Come here, Maggie,” he said, giving her a squeeze. “We think it’s great that you got to have a treat. You know how it works. We don’t think about these things that much. But when one of us gets any bit of pleasure, I think it’s important that we share it with each other. Fuck, there’s nothing wrong with that. It beats thinking about being a prisoner all the time, right?”

  “Sure. Sorry if I made you feel bad, though. If she comes to see me again and brings more candy, I’ll try to save some and sneak it back to you guys,” Maggie offered.

  “No!” Cali snapped. “You won’t sneak anything back. Maggie, if John William ever caught you doing that, there’s no telling what he’d do to you. He looks for reasons to punish us. Promise us that you’ll never try to do that.”

  Frightened by Cali’s reaction and the thought of John William punishing her, Maggie agreed.

  A short while later, Maggie left to talk to Shana and Seth. They were sitting in Seth’s cell, and Shana was telling him a story about when she was a little girl and her parents took her on vacation to Disney World. Seth listened intently as she described having breakfast with Mickey Mouse. They looked up at Maggie as she walked in.

  “What do you want?” Shana asked, annoyed that Maggie had interrupted her moment of sweet remembrance.

  Maggie wanted so much for Shana to like her. “I just wanted to see what you guys were doing. You know, I went to Disney World, too. When I was eight years old, my parents—”

  “Guess what?” Shana interjected, cutting Maggie off.

  “What?” Maggie asked, hoping they were making a connection.

  “I don’t give a shit what you did when you were eight years old. It doesn’t change the fact that you stole Myles from me, and I still hate you. I’ll always hate you. So why don’t you take your bony little ass out of here and find someone else to bother,” Shana barked, turning back to Seth.

  Maggie was stunned. She looked on for a few moments more, willing herself not to cry, and then she quietly turned and left them. Back in her own cell, she sat on the dirt floor next to her cot. She desperately wanted Shana to like her. Maggie had believed that by helping her when she had been beat up that Shana would suddenly like her. She never asked for Myles’s attention and hadn’t done anything to hurt Shana intentionally.

  Maggie despised her own existence and the little whore she’d been reduced to just as much as Shana did.

  Chapter Eleven

  Maggie had been missing for just under a year. Lorraine sat at her kitchen table, nursing a third cup of coffee. From the moment her daughter disappeared, she did not let a day go by without doing something to try to find her. However, Lorraine’s relentless pursuit of Maggie left her son and husband feeling neglected. The tragedy had put an insufferable strain on the whole family.

  Rob had made it a point to spend more time with Keith since his daughter disappeared. He did it because Lorraine was unable to concentrate on anything other than her deep, unrelenting, nagging loss. But Lorraine thought the reason Rob smothered Keith was because he no longer trusted her to watch over their son. She didn’t blame him. She would feel the same about Rob if the tables were turned.

  Immediately following Maggie’s disappearance, the media swarmed the house day and night. Search parties sprang up out of nowhere. Volunteers came in from New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and Washington, DC, to help look for Maggie. Then, over time, when there was not a single trace of evidence that Maggie was still alive, slowly but surely, people went back to living their own lives. Except for one person, that is: Detective Rae Harker, the lead investigator assigned to Maggie’s case.

  Rae Harker was a tall, black man, a touch under six feet tall. His lean body and bulging biceps made him look a lot meaner than he was. The detective had warm brown eyes, a slender face, and strong jawbones beneath his dark skin. When Harker smiled, which wasn’t often, he gave off an air of ruggedness that Lorraine found comforting and oddly sensual, given the circumstances of their relationship.

  Based on the length of time Maggie had been missing and the lack of a ransom demand, Detective Harker suspected that she was dead. He kept explaining to Rob and Lorraine that there was a high probability that Maggie had been murdered. Lorraine refused to believe that without seeing proof. She vowed never to stop looking for Maggie until she was found, dead or alive.

  Shortly after the first month had passed and there were still no leads, Lorraine and Detective Harker began to meet regularly at the Clarkes’ home. Lorraine was constantly harping on Rae not to give up the search for her daughter. Finally, the detective felt that he had to come clean with Lorraine.

  “I won’t ever give up my search for Maggie,” Detective Harker vowed.

  “Sure, you say that now. But then the next big case will come along, and you’ll give up, just like everyone else,” Lorraine said accusingly. “Why should I believe you?”

  “You’re right. There will be other cases that will require my attention.” Harker hesitated, but then decided to give Lorraine the information she needed to understand his loyalty to Maggie.

  “Three years ago, I took my eight-year-old daughter to the Eagleville Fair. She was at the top of the Ferris wheel when one of my junior detectives rushed up to me completely freaking out because a guy was holding a gun to a woman’s head at the cotton-candy booth. I looked at my daughter at the top of the Ferris wheel, and we waved to each other. The ride had been stopping every thirty seconds to load more people into the empty seats. The young detective pulled on my arm. I looked up at my daughter again and knew it would be at least five more minutes before she was off the ride. So, I decided to leave her and go check out what was going on with the man who had the gun. By the time I got to the cotton-candy booth, another detective had detained the gunman, and the area was flooded with police officers. Satisfied that things were under control, I rushed back to the Ferris wheel. I stood and watched as people unloaded from the carriages. I watched a second time to make sure I hadn’t missed the carriage my baby had been sitting in. I had been gone less than five minutes, and my daughter had disappeared.” Detective Harker seemed to be caught in a depressing trance of reminiscence.

  “Oh dear God, Rae, I didn’t know,” Lorraine said sadly. She was at a loss for words.

  “You wouldn’t have known, Lorraine. What I’m trying to say is that you and I are the same. We are the same person, Lorraine. We both made one bad decision that cost us everything. That’s why your case is so important to me. I know how you feel. I understand the ongoing regret and self-blame. I get it,” Harker asserted.

  Lorraine lowered her head. “It’s the worst feeling any human being can endure.”

  “Yes, it is. I became obsessed with finding my daughter, just like you,” Harker stated.

  “Did you find her?” Lorraine asked cautiously.

  Detective Harker nodded. “We found her fourteen months after she was taken. The police found her body in a broken-down wooden shack in the middle of the woods one hundred miles from our home. When they discovered her body, my wife and I were relieved and devastated at the same time. We were relieved because she had been found and because she was no longer suffering. Yet we were devastated because the hope that we’d held onto for so long was gone. It was hard to move away from that place of hope. It left us with nothing to look forward to. And knowing she was dead meant that the pain would never subside. It is the most unnatural and unsettling feeling anyone can imagine. The unknown, the constant wondering and inability to stop your imagination from getting the best of you…it’s enough to drive anyone insane.”

  For some reason, Harker felt that if he could return Maggie to her parents, he could redeem himself for failing his own child. But he didn’t dare tell that to Lorraine.

  Lorraine knew then that she and Harker would be friends for the rest of their lives. She trusted him more now than she had thought possible.

  “Harker, did you have a feeling that yo
ur daughter was dead?”

  Harker nodded. “So did my wife.”

  If truth were told, Lorraine wasn’t certain if Maggie was dead or alive. That fact, in itself, made her feel inadequate. She wondered where her motherly intuition was. Didn’t she have any? Shouldn’t she be able feel if Maggie was dead or alive? Of course, she was a complete failure, Lorraine told herself. If she had any motherly instincts at all, she would never have let her kid go off by herself in the mall.

  Chapter Twelve

  Two weeks went by before Bernie and Sabrina came back to see Maggie again. Just like the first time, Maggie was instructed to sit on the chair naked and watch the adults engage in sex. When they were finished, the two adults got dressed.

  “Maggie, let’s get your clothes back on, and then we’ll leave,” Sabrina told her.

  Maggie grabbed her T-shirt and slid it over her head. When she turned around, Sabrina was holding her underwear. “Come on. Let me help you,” she told Maggie.

  Maggie walked over to the bed where Sabrina was sitting. Putting her hand on Sabrina’s shoulder, she put her right foot into her panties, and then her left. As Sabrina pulled the panties up for her, Maggie felt something poking her skin in the bottom of her underwear. She lifted her arm to reach back and find out what it was, but Sabrina quickly gave her a funny look that told Maggie not to do anything more. Bernie was still on the other side of the room buckling his belt.

  “OK, Sabrina, it’s time to go,” Bernie said. Then he turned to Maggie. “We’ll be back to see you again, and hopefully next time Aunt Sabrina will want you to join us instead of just sitting there playing with yourself. Wouldn’t that be nice? Would you like that?”

  “Sure,” Maggie said without enthusiasm. “Whatever you and Aunt Sabrina want.”

  Maggie couldn’t stop thinking about what was inside her panties. She hoped it wasn’t something that would hurt her. By the look on Sabrina’s face, she knew to wait until she was back in her cell. Maybe it was candy or a piece of gum, she thought hopefully.

  After John William had locked all the kids in their cells that night, Maggie waited for over an hour before she reached into her panties and pulled out a small piece of paper. She slowly opened it and could see that something was written on it. In the dark of the cold, damp room, she squinted, straining her eyes to make out the message: Flush all the notes down the toilet.

  Baffled by the message, Maggie went over to the toilet and looked down into the black abyss. The toilets in their cells didn’t flush. Every few days, John William made Max open the metal flap with a stick and dump a bucket of water in each toilet to wash the waste down. Then he would let the flap close and dump another bucket of water in to fill it back up. Maggie sat down and peed. Then she took a small strip of newspaper they used as toilet paper and wrapped the note into it. She wiped herself and dropped it down the hole. Maggie didn’t tell anyone about the note, not even Cali. She didn’t know what the message meant, and she was afraid that Cali would be mad at her for bringing something from a client back to her cell.

  The next night, all of the children except Shana were used by perverts and spit back into their cells. After John William locked Maggie’s cell door, Cali called out to him. “John William, where’s Shana? Is she OK?” she asked.

  “Shut the fuck up and mind your own business,” John William scolded. “She’ll be back when she gets back. I don’t answer to you, and if you ever question me again, I’ll beat the shit out of you!”

  “I’m sorry, John William,” Cali immediately replied. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I just wanted to know if you needed my help with anything. I mean, maybe you need me to talk to Shana and make sure she behaves,” she babbled, trying to avoid a beating from John William.

  “Well, when I need your help, I’ll tell you to do something. Until that time, keep your mouth shut and stop interrogating me. You’re my slave, and slaves don’t get to ask questions or have an opinion. Understand?” he blurted. He stared at her, waiting for an answer.

  “Yes, sir,” Cali replied, wishing she could rip the metal door that separated them off its hinges and beat John William to death with it. Cali was a practical girl. She was raised to obey and respect adults, which is exactly what had landed her in sex trafficking.

  When Cali was thirteen, she’d been walking home from school when a car pulled up next to her. The woman inside was hysterical. “My daughter was just in a car accident. I need to get to Beebe Medical Center. They called and said she is probably going to die. I just have to get there. Do you know where it is?”

  Cali, a compassionate girl, felt sorry for the woman, who looked to be the same age as her own mother.

  “Yes, just turn right at the next light. Keep driving until you get to Savannah and make a left. Stay on Savannah, and you’ll see Beebe on your right,” Cali explained.

  “Oh, please, honey,” the woman begged, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue, “I can’t remember all that. Just get in, and you can show me. Please, please, this may be my only chance to see my daughter before she dies.”

  Unfortunately, Cali got into the car with the woman, who turned around and drove in the opposite direction. On instinct, Cali reached for the door lever, but it had been removed. When she began to scream, the woman told her that a couple of men were sitting outside Cali’s home, just waiting for a signal from her to kill Cali’s mother. The woman drove her to an abandoned building nearby.

  The woman shut off her car as Cali looked up at the old broken down building. Right before two men took Cali from the car, the woman leaned over and chastised Cali with a sneer. “You stupid girl. Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to get into cars with strangers?”

  Cali was forced into a van with other teens. She was taken to an isolated house, and since then, not a day had passed that she didn’t regret her decision to get into the car with the stranger. She missed her family and home in Lewes, Delaware, as much now as she did when they took her four years ago.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Cali stayed up all night, waiting for John William to bring Shana back to her cell. Finally, at daybreak, she heard him trudging down the hall. She rushed over to her cell door and peered out the small window to see him dragging a lifeless Shana behind him.

  As John William opened the cell doors, the children spilled out into the hallway. Cali didn’t dare rush to Shana’s cell. When John William opened Maggie’s cell, he looked down at her with disgust. “I want you to go over to Shana’s cell and fix her up. Something’s wrong with the little wimp, and I expect you to figure it out and fix it.”

  Maggie scooted into Shana’s cell. John William scraped his oversized, sneakered feet on the floor as he followed her. Max and Cali exchanged worried looks. Shana was lying on her cot naked. Her hair was knotted, and her skin was raw, as if someone had rubbed sandpaper all over her body. Maggie’s eyes were glued to Shana’s feet. Both feet were covered in large, angry blisters.

  “What did they do to her?” Maggie asked, feeling short of breath as icicles ran down her spine.

  She looked at John William for an answer, but he continued to stare at Shana. “Just fix her. If she dies, it’ll be your fault,” he said coldly.

  Maggie knelt down on the floor next to Shana. She looked at her raw flesh, afraid to touch her and scared that she might do something to hurt Shana more. Maggie could see that Shana had been burned. Based on what she had read, most of her body appeared to have first-degree burns. However, her feet were cherry red and blistered. Maggie fought back the fear that threatened to seize her own body and prevent her mind from functioning.

  “We need to get her into the shower, fast!” Maggie said.

  John William stepped into the hall where the other kids were huddled together, waiting to hear that Shana would be all right. “All of you back in your cells,” he told the other kids.

  After John William locked the last cell door, he went back and lifted Shana from her cot. He carried her to the shower and placed her on the
broken floor tiles. Maggie ran to the nearest shower and turned on the cold water. Then she went back to Shana and gingerly dragged her under the water. She sat with Shana in her arms and let the cold water douse her entire body, but especially her feet, to bring down the temperature of her skin.

  Almost thirty minutes later, Maggie’s lips were turning blue and her teeth were chattering from the cold shower.

  “We need to take Shana back to her cell. I’m going to need soap, water, and clean rags,” Maggie delicately instructed.

  Once back in the cell, John William left and returned with the items Maggie needed. She washed the blisters with soap and water and then she gently laid a clean cloth over the top of them. Maggie ran into her own cell and grabbed the pillow and wool blanket from her cot. She rolled them methodically and put them under Shana’s feet to keep them elevated. There was nothing left for her to do but wait and pray that none of Shana’s burns became infected.

  Over the next twelve hours, Maggie stayed by Shana’s side. Every couple of hours, Maggie would place cool water on a cloth and dab at the yellowish blisters on her feet. Shana, only half-conscious, moaned as the hours wore on. The blisters filled with fluid, and Maggie could only imagine how painful they were. Around dinnertime, John William stood at the doorway staring at Maggie.

  “She’s doing OK. She’s in a lot of pain, John William. Is there anything you can give her to help?” Maggie almost begged.

  John William’s face showed no concern whatsoever. “Yeah, I’ll get her something. Just make sure I’m not wasting my good drugs on this little tramp. You better be certain that she doesn’t die. ’Cause if she ain’t makin’ money, then I ain’t makin’ money. You get me?”

  “Yes,” Maggie replied, almost offering to take on more clients for Shana.

  When John William returned, he handed a small bag of pills to Maggie. “Give her one at a time.”