Creeping Beautiful

by JA Huss

  She’s wearing a thin, white, cotton dress that hangs down the length of her torso and barely covers her white panties. It’s a shapeless dress. We’re not meant to see their curves tonight. We’re meant to use our imaginations. Indulge in the fantasy.

  Blood is dripping down her bare arms and staining the shoulder straps of her dress. A moment later I see why. The tiger drops to the roof and slips his huge, meaty paw between two bars, snagging the top of her hand with a three-inch claw.

  Anastasia screams, twisting in place, desperate to get away from that claw.

  She’s not successful and the tiger snags her again.

  “She’s loud right now.” Gerald shouts this over the roar of the tiger. But he’s still calm. “Trust me, though. She’s very well behaved under normal circumstances. She would make an excellent concubine.”

  “I’m not looking for a concubine.”

  “Right.” Gerald sighs, but wisely decides to keep his disapproval for why I’m here tonight to himself.

  “Can she fight?”

  Gerald gives me a tight-lipped smile. “Onward, Philip. Not this one.”

  Anastasia begs us not to leave but her wails are drowned out by the roar of the tiger and the starting of the Land Cruiser’s engine.

  We do leave her there, our vehicle slowly meandering down the gravel road that twists and turns through the jungle until we get to a massive double gate. Thick beams of vertical steel wall one enclosure off from another. We have to drive up, press a code in the security system, then drive through. Stop, as the gate behind us closed, then wait as security cameras scan the lock for animals, and then drive through the second gate once some unknown signal indicates we are clear to move forward.

  Think Jurassic Park. That’s what that gate looks like.

  The next girl is pretty much the same. Blonde and blue-eyed. White dress. Screaming. Maybe a little louder than the last one. But she is surrounded by gorillas. One has a hold of her long, yellow hair and is yanking her head towards the bars of the cage.

  “Jesus Christ, Gerald. When did you get gorillas?”

  “These old things?” I can just barely make out his chuckling words over the screaming girl. “Some shipping intercept late last year.” He is practically yelling over the ruckus. “Smugglers. They’re only temporary. We have seven internationally famous zoos coming for a bidding war next week. But while they’re here, might as well make the most of them.”

  “Hmm.” I say this just as the girl breaks free of the gorilla’s grip—losing a handful of hair in the process.

  “Her name is Dalia.” Gerald is still raising his voice to be heard. “Any interest?”

  “Does she fight?”

  “Onward, Philip. Mr. Boucher will be putting us through our paces tonight.”

  Philip didn’t even bother turning the engine off for this one so he just starts rolling forward. But in that same instant a gorilla attacks us, flinging his massive four-hundred-pound body against the bars surrounding the back of the truck. We rock to the side and for a moment I hold my breath and wonder if we will be tipped over.

  “Fuck!” Another gorilla attacks, his face right up against the bars where I’m sitting, his arms reaching in to grab at my shirt. He yanks it tight until the fabric is almost choking me around my neck.

  Then he opens his mouth, baring long, inhuman canines, and vocalizes some mixture of a scream and a roar.

  Gerald leans an outstretched arm past me and an airhorn blares in my ears.

  The gorilla drops off, temporarily stunned, my ears ringing as Philip drives forward with some speed.

  I glance over my shoulder, expecting them to trail after us and attack again, but they turn back to the girl in the cage.

  “Fuck!” I say again.

  “It’s all very exciting, isn’t it?”

  “I guess.” Then I take one last look over my shoulder as I adjust my shirt, pulling it away from my neck. “Why do you do this? What’s the point? I mean, can’t you just sell them on a stage somewhere?”

  Gerald huffs. “Like a racehorse? Like something ordinary? These girls are not ordinary, Adam. We are not ordinary. We want everyone to know what they’re getting when they come to a sale like this.”

  “Animals?”

  “Some of them. But these girls deserve this much drama. They are worth it.”

  “I’m not sure the one who just lost a chunk of her hair would agree with you.”

  “She will look back on this night with awe. One day her life will be predictable and boring and she will remember the night she was chosen and paid for. She will remember the way her heart beat fast. She will remember the pain of getting her hair ripped out by a massive, full-grown silverback gorilla. She will remember her fear and she will long for it.”

  I find that hard to believe, but I don’t say so.

  “Really, it just makes the men feel good.”

  Which is just… sick. But I’ve said enough tonight. My disapproval has been communicated and logged. No need to make a scene. My position in the Company is high and absolute, but only to a point.

  If they ever figured out how that whole Santa Barbara incident came to be… well. I would no longer have this position and influence and that kind of defeats the point, doesn’t it?

  So I shut up about the girls.

  “They see one.” Gerald is still on topic though. “Connect with her. Feel sorry for her. Want to alleviate her fear and save her. It’s a special moment for both parties.”

  I look through the bars of the truck and bite my tongue.

  We drive through the next lock, then cross a bridge and enter a swamp. The first cage holds a girl—younger than the other two, and perched precariously at the top of the cage. Her bare feet are planted on two shallow ledges on either side of the cage walls so that her legs are spread open.

  When I look down I see why.

  Gators. Lots of them. And a slot in the bottom of her cage that allows some—the smaller ones—to slither inside the cage with her.

  This girl is not screaming. She’s panting. Mad, ragged, breaths that come very near to being hyperventilation.

  Philip shines a spotlight on her cage to give me a better look. There are at least five gators inside the cage with her. Some of them are leaping up with snapping jaws.

  The girl’s legs are spread so wide because her feet need to prop her up on each of the small ledges. And for a moment I wonder just how long she can last up there. What would happen if she fell? Would someone come get her? Would some hidden attendant jump out and fight off the gators?

  Maybe. But honestly, I just don’t think it works that way.

  Her face is bright red and sweaty, her white dress dirty.

  She glances at us. But just quickly, just for a moment. And then her eyes go back to the gators.

  “This is Maria. Twelve years old. Very pretty, very sweet girl. She’s a pleaser. Just look how she concentrates on her situation. So focused. So intent on staying alive. You’d really like her, I think.”

  “Can she fight?”

  “She can learn. She’s young enough. And she’s a virgin. We have the certification to prove it. Only one of two, this time around. Of course, that means her price is higher than most of the others. Two point five million for this one.”

  “Pass,” I say. Not because I don’t have the money, and not because I’m not enticed at the idea of a virgin. But because Maria doesn’t look intent on staying alive. She looks like she’s considering her options right about now. Like maybe she should just let the gators eat her and put her out of her misery. And while I would like a girl who’s not afraid of dying, the last thing I need is one who will give up in the middle of something terrible and take the rest of us down with her.

  I’d bet money right now that Maria snaps before she turns fifteen. She either kills her owner—and that’s more common than Gerald or anyone else out at this island would ever admit to—or hatches plot after plot to escape, or kills herself if all else fails.
>
  Yeah. Maria is no survivor. She’s a quitter if ever there was one.

  We go through the motions after that. Gerald tries to interest me in each of the remaining twenty-four girls. But none of them are what I’m looking for. And I’m sick of this little tour. I’m fuckin’ hot, I’m fuckin’ disgusted—with myself for being here, and with everyone else because they’re probably enjoying it—and I’m fuckin’ tired. All I want is to go back to my yacht, take off all my clothes, and dive into the tepid waters of the Caribbean for a midnight swim.

  Hours later, when Gerald finally gives up on me, he says, “OK, let’s head back, Philip.”

  “Wait. I thought you said there were two virgins? You only showed me one. Unless you forgot to mention it?”

  “No. I didn’t forget. But the last one, Adam. She’s… not very high quality. Not what you’re looking for.”

  “Maybe you don’t really understand what I’m looking for? Because none of those other girls you showed me even came close.”

  He pauses. Sighs. “Very well.” He leans forward in his seat. “Philip, take us into the garden enclosure.”

  “Garden,” I mumble under my breath. “Sounds… promising.”

  Gerald huffs out a laugh. “The Garden of Evil is the enclosure’s full name. Snakes.”

  “Nice touch.” I lean back in my seat and look through the bars at the thick vegetation all around us. “What kind of snakes? Not rattlers, right? Tell me you don’t actually let them get bit?”

  “Rattlers?” Gerald chuckles. “No. Anacondas.”

  I lean forward in my seat once again. “All right then. That’s kind of badass.”

  Gerald shoots me a look.

  “Do not judge me, old man. You have twenty-seven girls out here in the jungle screaming for their lives as wild animals try to eat them.”

  “We take every precaution. It’s not a sport, Adam. It’s a well-researched matching exercise.”

  “Whatever. Just show me the snake girl and then we can go back for the auction.”

  It takes almost fifteen minutes to make our way to the other side of the island where the garden is. And the name fits. The moment we drive through the lock I feel like we enter another world. The air is even more humid and heavy than the rest of the island. The whole place smells like a bog. The trees alongside the road cover it in a canopy of dark, menacing branches and leaves.

  I like it.

  It reminds me of the marshy woods back home. It makes me think of all those days I spent as a kid out there in a small boat, fishing on the river and catching little gators, and generally being a wild heathen.

  But I am not prepared for what I see when we pull up to the cage and Philip turns the Land Cruiser’s engine off.

  Maybe there’s more than one snake in this swamp but it doesn’t even matter. The one I see is the only one necessary.

  It has to be more than thirty feet long. Has to be. The thickest part of its long, almost greenish, body looks wide enough to eat me whole if it was hungry enough. And when Gerald shines the spotlight on it, a deceptively small head arcs towards us and stares with unblinking eyes that are as dark as pits. The forked tongue slips out, then back in, then out again. Like two baby snakes. And even though I’m not a hundred percent sure the hissing sound I hear isn’t just insects, I’m fairly sure it’s the snake.

  A chill runs up my spine.

  Not because of the snake, but because of the girl.

  The cage she’s in is a skinny rectangle standing on end. Or, more accurately, hanging from a large support beam. I would not fit inside it. Only a child like her would. And just barely, at that. She’s standing upright, arms at her side, head forward. The bars of the cage press against her shoulders. Trapped in this position until someone buys her.

  Or… that snake crushes the cage and her with it.

  Because that’s what it’s in the middle of doing.

  The entire body is wrapped around the bars of the upright cage, squeezing it with every bit of power it possesses. I lose a few seconds watching the serpentine muscles contract underneath the skin and then blink out of it when I hear the cage creak.

  “What the fuck?”

  “She won’t last long.” Gerald says that loud enough that I know the girl heard him. Though, he doesn’t have to speak loudly. Even with the hissing that may or may not be insects, this enclosure is very quiet.

  She doesn’t move. No screams from this girl. No begging. Not even a squeak of panic when the snake contracts again, desperately trying to break the bars of the cage and reach the meal inside.

  The air here is thick and musty. Like dirt on the ground after a hard rain. And I swear to God, I think there’s a bit of drizzle in here. Like this garden is separate from the rest of the world. A little walled-off piece of paradise.

  If you’re a snake, that is.

  Its skin is shiny and smooth, a little bit of green mixed in with the black and brown. It looks slick and slippery and a little bit soft, if you were to touch it. Just a glint of light here and there along the edge of the scales on the bend of its body ruins the imagery.

  And the girl. She is a haunting figure. Shadows from the Land Cruiser’s headlights climb up her body at weird angles. Her blonde hair is straight and some of it is caught between the snake’s body and the bars of the cage, because it’s being pulled taut and tugging on her scalp.

  Her dress is longer than the ones I’ve seen the other girls wearing tonight. But the space is so tight, it’s riding up her legs. Like she was squirming at some point and that was what she got for her trouble.

  But her face is… angelic. Calm. Pale. No frown. No smile. Her lips are a flat line and nothing more. Like she finds herself inside cages trying to be eaten by snakes every now and then and this is no particular big deal.

  She stares at me and a chill runs up my spine.

  The whole thing is repulsive and evil, but creepingly beautiful at the same time.

  “We’ve been withholding food for over six months.”

  For a moment I think he’s talking about the child, but then I realize he’s referring to the snake.

  “She has probably eaten some rodents and even a few of the smaller males, but there are no other large animals in the enclosure so she is very hungry tonight.”

  Again, Gerald says this loud enough for the girl to hear.

  She does not even blink.

  “Can she fight?”

  “Doubtful. She’s not smart, or talented, or even pleasant, if I’m being honest.”

  “I can fight.” The small girl spits her words out, venom in her voice. “I’d kill you both with my bare hands if I wasn’t in this cage.”

  “Not a great way to attract a buyer, Indie Anna.”

  I let the little girl mesmerize me for a moment. I get lost in her future and potential. Then repeat her name back at Gerald. “Indiana? That’s what you call her? Sounds pretty trailer trash if you ask me.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “That’s quite enough, Indie. Remember your manners. Rich men don’t buy little girls with dirty mouths.”

  “He’s not a man. He’s an animal like this snake.”

  The bars of the cage creak again and this time I can actually see them collapse a little. The girl hisses when the hard steel presses tight against her shoulders.

  “How will you even get her out of there?” I ask, because the head of the snake is positioned right over the top of the cage like maybe it’s considering swallowing the whole thing. Metal and all.

  “She’s not getting out. Let’s go, Philip. We’ve seen enough.”

  Philip starts the engine and we begin to roll forward. I wait for the girl to call out. To beg us to come back.

  But she doesn’t.

  The last thing I hear is another dramatic creak of the cage as the monster snake takes another go at collapsing the bars.

  And that’s that.

  That is my first look at Indie Anna Accorsi.

  I see Donovan mingling with
other men in the pavilion just before the auction starts. I have known him his whole life. At least, I know who he is and I know how he’s connected to me, and we have met maybe a handful of times in the past before our fathers died.

  Here’s the most important thing I know about Donovan: I understand who and what he is. I appreciate how we are the same, even though we’re different.

  Donovan Couture is Gerald Couture’s grandson. Donovan’s father and my father had a team together back in the day. They came to these auctions a lot for girls, and like me, they were not looking for concubines.

  At least… not at first.

  Gerald can talk all the shit he wants about my desire to be part of the Company black ops, but he took the same path. Most people in the Company don’t get choices like us. You’re given an assignment, and God help you if you don’t follow instructions.

  But our families—mine and Donovan’s and about a dozen others—they go back to the very beginning of the Company. You can trace our pedigrees back nearly three hundred years. We are called the Founders, but more commonly referred to as the Untouchables.

  Because we do get a choice and Untouchables is a very dramatic name.

  We are into drama.

  Anyway, the point is—Donovan is here. He’s a skinny, fifteen-year-old kid wearing a ten-thousand-dollar suit and a fifty-thousand-dollar watch, clean-shaven, dark hair slicked back like he’s a mafia boss.

  I don’t laugh because he catches my eye just as I recognize him, but I want to.

  He holds up a crystal glass with a couple fingers of whiskey in the bottom in a ‘cheers’ gesture.

  I hold up my champagne flute and cheers him back.

  He must decide this is an invitation to join me, because he crosses the room. “Adam Boucher. As I live and breathe. I heard you were coming this year. How’d the tour go? See anyone you like?”

  I shake his hand, because he’s offering, then nod. “Yeah. I have one on the list.”

  “Just one?” Donovan raises an eyebrow. “Let me guess… snake girl.”

  “Yeah.” I chuckle. “She is creepy as fuck.”