Lavish Lies

by Charlotte Byrd

  I tend to eat when I’m nervous and that’s exactly what I’m doing now. As I swallow, I try to formulate a plan.

  What am I going to do when someone comes to my room?

  Am I going to follow her advice or am I going to resist?

  I pour myself a cup of tea from the kettle I find on the tray and go to the dresser. In the drawers underneath the clothes, I find the books and the DVDs that M told me about. Plenty of entertainment. It’s bad enough being here, locked in by strangers, waiting for some unknown competition that I’m supposed to win. With a dubious prize, mind you. The opportunity to be someone’s wife? Some asshole whom I’ve never met.

  But all of those things are abstract worries right now. Instead, what is freaking me out is the stranger who might walk up to this room.

  What will he want?

  What will I have to do?

  What will happen if I don’t?

  I run to the bathroom and throw up. Afterward, I flush the toilet and wash my hands. When I come out of the bathroom, I see him. The door is locked. He’s lying on my bed with his muddy boots on top of the bedspread. He has long stringy hair and a big scar all the way across his face.

  “Well, hello there,” he says.

  Everly

  When I have a visitor…

  So soon? What is he doing here so soon? A lump forms in the back of my throat. I’m not ready for this. I need more time. I can’t deal with this now. My legs feel like they are about to give out. I steady myself by leaning on the dresser.

  “Don’t be afraid,” he says, crossing and uncrossing his legs.

  “Who…who are you?” I mumble under my breath.

  “You can call me Abbott.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “What do you think?”

  He runs his hand across his scar and licks his lips.

  “What is this place?”

  “Your hell. My heaven.”

  “Why am I here?”

  He shrugs. “For our entertainment.”

  Abbott rises from the bed. He walks slowly toward me. My eyes dart away from him in search of a way out. I make a run for the door.

  It’s futile.

  I know that even before I reach the doorknob. I tried it before. But it’s fake. The whole door slides with the push of a button.

  “Didn’t M explain things to you?” Abbott asks, grabbing my shoulders. A strong smell of liquor and stale cigarette smoke engulfs me.

  “Do you really want to fight me?”

  I don’t. I’m not a fighter. In school, I couldn’t even argue with another person without feeling sick to my stomach. Conflict is not my thing.

  He runs his fingers down my arm.

  “Get away from me.”

  “Now, c’mon, Everly. Don’t make this harder than it has to be. You will be mine whether you fight me or not.”

  I peer into his dead eyes and know that he is telling the truth. This is not his first time. Perhaps, not even his tenth.

  “Why do you want to do this?” I ask.

  “Because you’re pretty. And you don’t want me to.”

  My chest seizes up. I take a step away from him. He takes a bigger one closer to me.

  He runs his fingers down my neck and cups my breast. I push him away, so he returns but this time squeezes it so hard that I wince.

  “Don’t fight,” he says. “Or actually, maybe it will be more fun if you fight.”

  The twinkle in his eye scares me.

  I try to get away from him, but he grabs my arm and pulls me closer to him. He then presses his lips onto mine, so hard that our teeth collide.

  The pain triggers something in me. Something I didn’t know existed.

  I open my mouth and bite down on his upper lip until I taste iron. It’s blood.

  His blood.

  “You bitch!” He starts to say, but I knee him in the balls. Hard.

  One swift motion and he’s down on his knees before me.

  Shocked by my own power, I take a step back. I’ve never hit anyone before. Let alone done any of this. Where did this come from?

  “You cunt!” he screams.

  Again, something else takes over my body.

  I run over to the desk and grab the chair that left a dark bruise on my shoulder. When Abbott climbs up to his feet, he lunges at me. Grabbing onto the legs of the chair, I swing my body from one side to another for maximum effect.

  Boom!

  The chair makes a loud crackling sound as it collides with his head.

  Abbott falls to the floor. His body goes limp.

  I back away and search the desk for something that could be used as a weapon. I grab a pen and grasp it tightly in my fist.

  Abbott still doesn’t move. Blood starts to pool under his head.

  I look down at my hands. They are shaking and the tremors are spreading throughout my body. My mind races.

  What if he doesn’t wake up? Or worse yet, what if he does?

  I wait.

  A few minutes pass. He still doesn’t wake up.

  I let out a little sigh of relief and then take a few deep breaths to try to figure out what to do. I need to get out of this room.

  If Abbott let himself in, then he was planning on letting himself out. And for that he would need some sort of button. But where? I search the walls for something, but can’t find anything.

  Then something occurs to me.

  What if it was on him? Like a remote control?

  I glance back at his lifeless body lying on the floor. I need to search him. But I don’t want to touch him.

  I have no idea if he’s actually dead. He may just be passed out. And if he wakes up? Then what? Fear throws my body into a cold sweat.

  Of course, I could kill him. He’s lying there lifeless before me. Why not just finish him off? If he wakes up, I’m sure he would have no qualms about doing the same to me, prior to doing something a lot worse first.

  I grab a pen from the desk and kneel over him. With one swift motion, I can lunge it into his chest or into his carotid artery. I try to make myself do it. But I can’t. I’m not the monster that he is.

  Instead, I search his clothes for something that resembles a remote control. I have no idea if this is even something I should be looking for, but it’s the only idea I have. I don’t find a thing.

  So, how the hell was he going to get out of this room after he was done with me?

  Before I can come up with an answer, something tightens around my ankles and pulls my legs out from under me. I fall to the floor.

  When I land, the wind gets knocked out of me and I can’t take a full breath. My vision fades and then turns to black.

  When it returns, all I see is a large ugly scar. Something heavy is pressing me to the floor, pinning my arms back and spreading my legs open. My hands are falling asleep from the weight. I’m still struggling to take one breath.

  “Get off her,” someone says. When he doesn’t, they pull him off me.

  “No, let me get a go at her!” Abbott roars.

  “You are bleeding from your head. Severely. You need to see a medic.”

  “Not until after I’m done with her.” He punches me in my stomach and across my face. I double over in pain. This time, the blood I taste belongs to me.

  “Get him off her.”

  Two guards pull Abbott away from me. A tall man dressed in an elegant suit kneels over me.

  “You shouldn’t have done that.”

  “What?” I ask.

  “He likes his revenge. And he takes his time with it.”

  Shivers run down my spine.

  “You should’ve listened to M.”

  I pull myself to my feet and pull my shoulders back.

  “This place will break you. It has broken women much stronger than you,” the guard says. “This is York.”

  I narrow my eyes and don’t look away.

  “Take her to the dungeon,” he says to the other guards. “If she doesn’t want to act civilized
, we will show her just how uncivilized we can be.”

  Everly

  Where darkness has no light…

  Tears start to gather behind my eyes, but I don’t dare let them out. The guards take each of my arms and escort me out of the room. My legs refuse to move, so they half drag me down the hallway.

  The hallway is painted taupe. The carpet is thick and dense and the walls are decorated with paintings of serene scenes of ocean waves and palm trees. By all accounts, it looks just like a hotel hallway. Even with keyless entry doors.

  The guards drag me onto the elevator and press the lowest button on the panel.

  “You should not have fought him.” The left one laughs. “I have no idea why some of you do that. You don’t know how easy you had it.”

  “Fuck you,” I say.

  “That’s not going to help either.”

  “Your life upstairs was a dream in comparison to what’s going to happen,” the other one adds. “But you’ll soon see that.”

  I shake my head and try to stand up on my own two feet. Their hands are pressing so hard into my arms that I wince from the pain.

  Once the doors open, the look of everything changes completely. No more carpet or paintings. It’s dark and menacing with only a few fluorescent lights illuminating the way. The doors are stainless steel and there are thick bars on the windows.

  They lead me to one of the cells at the end of the hallway. One of the guards presses his hand against the screen on the wall. After it scans his fingerprints, the door slides open.

  “You never had a chance upstairs,” he says. “There are cameras everywhere. Someone is always watching. In your old room. In the shower. In the bathroom. In these cells. Everyone knows what’s going on here and everyone is okay with it. You will not find any friends here.”

  There’s that statement again. No friends. That’s exactly what M said.

  He leads me into a large black room, which smells like a wet dog. The floor is soaked and I slip as he leads me to the wall.

  That’s when I see them.

  Girls.

  Most are naked.

  All are chained to the wall.

  By their necks.

  The fear in their eyes makes my instincts kick in.

  No, no, no. This is not happening to me.

  I push one guard away and kick the other.

  But one zap of their electric pen and I fall to the floor. My limbs become strangers to me.

  I watch as the guards drag me to the wall and put a large metal cuff around my neck. It’s chained to the wall.

  When I regain sensation in my body, I realize that I can’t move more than a few feet in either direction.

  The metal cuff sits heavy on my shoulders. There’s nowhere to go. The guards leave as women around me yell obscenities at them.

  Their words are foreign, all in different languages, but I feel the hatred spewing from their lips.

  And then, somewhere in the distance, there are those who whimper. And some who cry.

  As the guards leave, a group of men dressed in suits walk in. They walk around the room and point to certain women. Those women shake their heads and plead no.

  I dig my fingers into the metal around my neck.

  The men gather around the first one and start to do unspeakable things to her. Tears run down my face as others yelp wildly to get them to stop. But the sounds of anguish just make them even more excited. Once they are done with the first one, they move on to the one next to her.

  “You have fresh meat there,” one of the guards says, pointing to me.

  The men laugh. A moment later, they are crowding around me.

  Fear overtakes me and I melt onto the floor.

  I slap but they slap harder. I kick but they kick harder.

  There’s no way to fight.

  When they sense my defeat, they come closer. I close my eyes and take myself away. It’s the only way to escape.

  I’m standing on the edge of the ocean.

  Warm water caresses my feet.

  The sky is blue and the sun is bright. There isn’t another human soul anywhere in sight.

  A little fish with yellow and black stripes swims over to me and waves its tail.

  I reach to touch her, but she swims away.

  I take a few steps into the water. Then a few more.

  I feel the sensation of water engulfing me.

  A few more steps and I’m in up to my shoulders.

  The heaviness of the chain down my back vanishes.

  One more step and I will be completely under water.

  I would give anything to descend into this crystal blue heaven and disappear forever.

  Away from evil.

  Away from hate.

  Away from pain.

  As everything around me turns to black, I keep reaching for the light.

  Everly

  When there’s nothing but darkness…

  Communication is a problem.

  None of the girls here speak English and I don’t speak anything else. I took Spanish for two years in high school, but I don’t know enough to learn anything significant. I wrap my hands around my knees and sit in silence like everyone else.

  A few girls speak to each other in hushed tones, but everyone else just stares into space. The lucky ones sleep.

  How long have they been here?

  How long will I be here?

  Is this it now? Is this my life?

  I thought that I couldn’t tell time upstairs in the room, but I definitely can’t tell time here. The only things that break up the day are two bowls of food, water, and men. They come in packs of two or three, sometimes more.

  They speak different languages, but they always wear suits and expensive watches.

  Sometimes they know exactly who they want. Other times, they pick girls at random.

  I get picked a lot. They know what happened to Abbott and they are making amends. Avenging him.

  But I’m getting good at checking out. I’m getting good at not being here.

  I no longer fight because there is no point. Instead, I let my mind wander and drift away. They think I’m being compliant. Some of them like that. Others want to see the girl who did that to Abbott.

  I feel myself becoming a zombie.

  Here, but not here.

  Present and yet not.

  This is not happening to me because I am not here to experience it.

  I’m walking in the clear blue waters.

  I am running my fingers through the white sand.

  I am dancing in the warm tropical rain.

  Hours blur into days and days into weeks. I’ve counted until eleven and then I lost track. Now, I have no idea. Most of the girls are just as despondent as I am. We look at, but barely acknowledge each other anymore.

  Maybe this is all that my life will ever be.

  But what about the contest? The competition? Is that why they brought me here? What happened to that?

  I want to ask someone about that. But who? And do I even have the energy to try?

  Starving, thirsty, and tired, I sit against the wall and close my eyes. If I had the opportunity, I would kill myself. I can’t deal with this anymore. Just give me the chance.

  More time passes. More girls arrive. Terrified and loud just like I was.

  More men come to do bad deeds.

  I find myself checking out more and more. Reality is too hard to handle.

  As I drift away, I lose myself in my fantasies.

  My imagination is my only weapon. It’s my only escape.

  And then things get worse.

  It happens all of the sudden. Without warning.

  She dies.

  Small and frail, she has been coughing for many nights in a row. Sick from the horrible conditions. Sick from all the torture. Sick from a life underground.

  Her body gives out. When a new group of men arrive and choose her, one of them realizes that she’s not just pretending to be lifeless. She really is gone.
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  The guards take her body away, and the men continue as if nothing happened.

  That’s when something inside of me snaps.

  Living in my imagination, pretending to be somewhere else, alleviates my pain temporarily. But it’s not a solution. Far from it.

  No, I can’t spend my days in a daze. If I’m going to be here, I have to summon the strength to fight. If I want to survive, I have to look for a way out.

  That girl had red hair, freckles, innocent eyes, and a broken heart. They took all hope from her. No one can live without hope.

  That’s not going to be me.

  I will not let darkness take me.

  I will fight with every strength I have against the dying of the light.

  But to fight the men directly is futile. There are too many of them. I am chained. No, there’s nothing to do but give in. But there are other ways to fight. I need answers to my questions. I need knowledge.

  I need to know what this place is.

  Where it is.

  Who these people are.

  I don’t know what I don’t know, but every scrap of information I can put together will give me the armor to protect myself and, maybe, eventually free myself.

  First thing’s first. I need to speak to someone.

  I search my brain for any words in Spanish that I can remember. I cobble them together into a sentence.

  Then I say them out loud. Loudly.

  No one responds.

  “How long have you been here?” I follow up my more than broken Spanish question with the translated English.

  “When did you come here?” I simplify the question in English.

  No one responds.

  “Everly,” I say, pointing to myself. “You?”

  The girl next to me repeats my name, “Everly,” and then points to herself. "Esme.”

  The next one does the same thing. After a few rounds, everyone can say everyone else’s name.