by Quinn, Fiona
I moaned loudly. “Consuela? Are you there, Consuela?”
“What?” she asked in English.
“I need to go to the bathroom badly. I need some water.”
She conferred with Hector in Spanish. I guess this was the part they hadn’t figured out. We stopped. Hector took the bag off my head. I could see out the front window that we were at an old mom-and-pop station with the bathrooms on the side. Maria went in for the key. She brought back some bottled water and two packages of peanuts. Hector swung the van around pulling up next to the girls’ bathroom. Maria opened her van door and then opened the bathroom door – effectively screening me from view.
“Make a sound, and I’ll cut your tongue out of your head.” Leopard eyes sliced at me, hard and glittery.
Hector had to help me; he half carried me out of the back of the van. I reflexively looked down at the license plate: SNK OIL.
My legs were numb from lack of circulation. Maria unlocked my hands, and I quickly considered my options. If I had any use of my legs, I knew I could have made a good try for freedom. I was still woozy; my knees buckled under me. Hector ended up having to take me into the bathroom; I couldn’t manage it on my own.
I would like to say that Hector was a gentleman and turned his face to the door while I lowered my jeans, but that wasn’t the case. He gawked, and smirked, and watched everything I did with a leer. I took a chance, and used my sleight-of-hand skills to take out my phone and turn the ringer sound off. Hector was pretty much focused on other parts of me as I lowered my hand beside the toilet. I turned my phone on and dialed 911, then quickly disconnected before a voice could come out of the receiver. I prayed that it was long enough to ping over the cell tower, that Iniquus would know about where I was and was now sending the Calvary.
I set my phone on silent mode and stuck it back in my bra. I yanked a clump of hair out of my head to leave in the van as DNA evidence. I wouldn’t be able to reach my head once I had the cuffs back on. As I finished up in the bathroom, Hector stared at me, glassy-eyed. He licked his lips, making me nervous for my immediate safety. I was depending on Maria’s authority, whatever that was, to keep Hector’s lascivious hands off me.
As Hector put me back in the van, I looked around to see what I could see. The sun was almost directly overhead, it was close to noon. That meant we had been driving for about eleven hours. The cars parked across the back of the station all had Florida plates. We must be on 95 heading south. There was nothing else to see, and no one around to see me. No one would be making a sheepish call to the police to say they saw something unusual; a shackled woman was being thrown in the back of a van.
We sat for a few minutes while I ate my peanuts and drank a bottle of water, then they cuffed me behind my back, and we took off. The bag was back on my head. I lay on the cold, dirty, metal floor and prayed
Thirty
I woke up to hard hands on me. They pulled me from the back of the van by my ankles. I could smell pine trees. A flock of geese honked in the distance. I was hoisted up like a bag of potatoes and slung over someone’s shoulder. Hector’s? I had seen his face when I was in the bathroom. I was afraid that that meant he would want to kill me, but he seemed satisfied to dump me unceremoniously into an airplane seat and buckle a belt around me.
Another door opened, and I heard Maria talking to the pilot in Spanish, “The package is tightly wrapped. You won’t have any problems with her. There will be a guard from the prison at the airport to pick her up. Remember - you want your money? You get her there on time and in good condition.”
“Done,” came a man’s voice in front of me.
As we flew, I couldn’t talk to the pilot to get information. I tried a few words, and he told me clearly, “No English.” I listened to the radio instead, trying to get a grasp on where we were headed. My pilot wasn’t staying in contact with a tower. He didn’t call in when we took off, and he never reported our position.
I had no sense of time and no sense of direction. I slumped in the seat, dazed and confused, struggling to get enough air through my bag. The plane bucked across uneven ground - this was not a normal runway landing. This was a field landing, rough, and nauseating. I knew we were in a prop, not a jet, by the sound of the engine.
If we left from Florida, how far could we possibly get? It depended on how big this plane was. It felt substantial. I was sitting behind the pilot so it wasn’t a two-seater. It might have been reconfigured with extra fuel bladders; still, we wouldn’t have the fuel range to fly far. Four, five-hundred miles? Maria said I was leaving the States. The best they could do was to get out into the Caribbean to an island somewhere.
I heard the pilot make noises on the side of the plane. Refueling. It sounded like he was using a hand pump. After some time, the pilot opened my door. He touched me, and I keeled over. I wanted to see how much this guy wanted to deliver his package in good condition. I made choking noises, and went silent. Sure enough, Pilot panicked. He grabbed the bag off my head and unfastened my hands from behind my back. He rubbed circulation back into my arms.
I listened to the radio. I could hear pilots talking to a control tower. Isla de la Juventud. I was in Cuban territory. That preempted any thoughts of escaping. The last thing I wanted was to get stuck in Cuban territory with the possibility of being charged with espionage. With my Iniquus credentials… well, things were looking dim. I was going to have to try my escape at our next stop – if there was a next stop.
Pilot worked hard at bringing me back around. Now that an escape wasn’t on the table, I was done playing with him. I blinked my eyes open. The pilot let out a sigh of relief, handcuffed me again — thankfully in front of my body — and put me back in my chair - this time without the bag.
We didn’t take off. We sat on the runway. I wondered if we were waiting for someone here. I desperately hoped this wasn’t our final destination, and that he was waiting to do a transfer. Day turned to night. There was the sound of an engine, and lights bounced toward the plane. My heart stammered in my chest. Now what? The pilot got out and spoke with someone. They weren’t talking about me. They were talking about boxes. The pilot didn’t want the man to approach our plane. He would transfer the boxes himself. I counted twenty, not that it mattered to me. I guessed I needed something to do with my mind. Terror was an insidious emotion. Even this little distraction was helpful.
Come morning, the pilot opened a brown paper bag and ate breakfast. He had bread, cheese, and a couple of juice boxes. I had been more than 36 hours with only a bag of peanuts, but he didn’t offer me anything. I was faint from the heat. I asked for some water, pretending to painfully search for and finally come up with the word agua. The pilot pulled out a plastic bottle and handed it to me. It wasn’t particularly clean, yet I couldn’t have cared less. My throat was parched.
The pilot jumped out and made a check of his plane. We took off again. Now I could see some of the instrumentation; we were heading southwest. Not good.
We were in the air for hours. As we descended, I scanned the terrain for clues, for possibilities. This time we landed at an actual airport, not some drug smuggler’s secret grass strip. The airport was small, though, and not in the best of shape.
The door opened to a uniformed guard. He unbuckled me. I had been dozing with my head down. Damp and limp, the effects of Maria’s drugs still hadn’t fully worn off. He brushed my hair from my face and took a good look at me. I was obviously not a threat. He released my cuffs and the shackles on my feet. The guy’s partner protested.
“Are you kidding?” the guard asked in Spanish, “You’re worried about this little thing? Look at her. She’s half dead, and it will be easier for us to get her out of here if she can walk out on her own.”
Well, that was optimistic. I couldn’t walk at all. My legs had lost all feeling hours and hours ago. It took the two of them, on either side of me, to half-carry, half-drag me to their truck and push me in, to sit between them. They handed the pilot a fat envelope.
He saluted and took off again. I never heard the pilot’s name.
No one talked while we drove. I begged my body to cooperate –to focus and stay lucid; I needed to know how to get back to this airport. We drove about half an hour, never making a turn. 20 kilometers - that’s about twelve miles – less than a two hour run. Hah. There was my optimism again.
Our truck slowly rolled through the middle of a huge forest with nothing, absolutely nothing, but trees. Suddenly, a break exposed cleared land and a prison. A third world hell hole. The menacing razor wire...Oh, I definitely didn’t want the car to turn in there.
The prison was composed of three large rectangular buildings, three stories high, made of cinder block. There were guard towers at each corner of the compound and a large open space making a dash for the chain-link fence and freedom pretty much a suicide run. We slowed and the driver steered through the front gate, passed through a check point, and drove to a large gray building, where I was unloaded and dragged inside.
I wasn’t trying to be uncooperative, though maybe I was being a little histrionic. I thought weak, sweet, and innocent was the way to go. I wanted their guard down, literally.
The interior looked economy model. Industrial green paint, old metal furniture bolted to the floor, dust. I scanned for anything that would tell me where I was – even just the country.
The intake officers shifted quickly from sheer boredom to elation. Here was a new show to entertain them. They jeered at me, calling me names, making lewd suggestions. I looked confusedly at them, and then at the guards holding me up. “English, please?” I asked with my scared, little girl voice. I can’t say I was acting any more.
A unformed man stepped forward. His fat gray mustache twitched. “I speak English.”
“Where am I? Why was I brought here? Can I call home? Or a lawyer?”
Gray Mustache translated back to the men, and I focused on my blank look while they laughed. Gray Mustache told me to take off all of my clothes. I did as I was told, as best I could, swaying on rubbery legs and trying not to collapse.
I unzipped my hoodie and laid it on the desk. One of the guards pulled it over and searched it. The phone. The phone. I looked for options as I tugged off my cross trainers and socks, and then came my T-shirt. As I pulled the shirt over my head, I got my cell phone out of my bra and slipped it into Gray Mustache’s pocket – standing in the middle of the room, all eyes on me, I couldn’t find any other options. And this was a dangerous one, but I took it.
I pulled off my jeans and saw blood caked on my knees from when Gater tried to stop me—to save me—had I only listened. I unclasped my bra and let it fall; Gray Mustache stopped me from taking off my panties. The other men were disappointed and yelled at him. They wanted the whole show.
Gray Mustache fixed his eyes on my torso, where Psychopath Wilson etched my souvenir scars. He lifted my right arm and traced the line of the knife wound that ran from under my arm to over my hip. He turned me into the light to look closer at the red spider web of scars that crisscrossed my torso and hadn’t yet faded. He brushed my hair back from my forehead to see the three inch scar along my hair line, still pink and new.
“Someone hurt you badly,” he said in a fatherly voice. I couldn’t tell if this was an interrogation tactic, or if he was being genuine. Maybe a bit of both.
“Yes, sir,” I said, lowering my lashes.
“How did this happen?”
“There was this crazy man who thought that I needed to suffer.”
“And did you need to suffer?” He crossed his arms and scowled at me.
“I thought I already was suffering.”
“Why do you say this? You look like a nice girl.”
Why did I say this? Hell, I didn’t know. Words bubbled from my mouth; for a moment the connection between brain and tongue seemed to be severed. He picked up the gold cross that Nona Sophia had given me before she moved to New York.
“Are you Catholic?”
“Yes, sir, Catholic.” That seemed the safest thing to say.
“And why were you already suffering?”
“My mom had just died, and then there was a fire in my apartment building — my home burned down with everything in it. Then a crazy man attacked me.” I desperately wanted him to feel pity, that I was victimized, traumatized, maybe he would help me.
Gray Mustache picked up my left hand. “No rings. You are not married?”
“I don’t have a husband, no.”
“Your father, you are living with your father?”
Was this guy trying to determine if I had anyone looking for me? Better let this one play as a great big “no” so they don’t take extra security measures with me. “No, sir, my father died when I was seventeen.”
“And, how old are you now?”
“I’m twenty.”
“Twenty? What do you do for a living?”
Uh-oh. My mind scrambled. What did they know? “I’m a student.”
“Where is this? At a university?”
“Yes, sir.” Fluffy. Innocent. Watch your facial reactions. Watch your tone.
“And you are studying…”
“I haven’t declared a major yet, sir. I’m still trying to make up my mind. I thought maybe I might like to be a nurse.”
“I see, and you have no job?”
“I sometimes have a little job singing at a neighborhood restaurant.” Damn. I’m going to have to tell them about Iniquus - Gray Mustache probably already knew and was seeing how honest I was. The more harmless and stupid I seemed the better.
“Right now I have a job at a place called Iniquus.” The other men in the room had been mostly ogling me, since they didn’t seem to understand what was being said. I had an arm over my breasts, trying to look as modest and demure as possible. Their attention changed when they heard the word “Iniquus.” Holy hell – they all recognized the name. I was no longer a victim. I was a what? Soldier? Spy?
“What is it you do for Iniquus?” Grey Mustache asked.
“I deliver mail to the offices. I run errands - you know, to the dry cleaners, or to get birthday gifts for the wives. I pour coffee, whatever they need me to do.”
“Iniquus will be looking for you.”
God, I hoped so. But could they get me out of a prison? They’d be in terrible danger. Would I ask them to? Should I hope for this? I let my face brighten for a minute, and then I let it look crestfallen. “No.”
“And why is this?” Gray Mustache peered closely at me. I could see the plaque on his teeth. His clothes smelled of long unbathed days. I hid my revulsion.
“My boss is out of the country, and I don’t know when he’s expected back…weeks maybe months. No one else really keeps track of me. If I’m not there to fill their coffee cups, they’ll ask some other low level person to do it. No one will notice I’m gone.”
Then I let myself cry silently, tears dripped down my face. Nothing feigned here. I looked around for a tissue. Gray Mustache pulled a hankie from his pocket. My heart caught in my throat for a minute, until I realized my phone was on the other side of his pants.
Gray Mustache pointed at my clothes, laying crumpled on the table. “Get dressed.”
Then he walked me upstairs, down a long hall, to a metal door with a window and a chute. I retrieved my phone from his pocket, repositioning it in my bra, as he took a massive set of keys from his belt and unlocked the door. Gray Mustache gestured me in.
As the door clanged shut behind me. I stood in the middle of a small room. Mouth agape. Eyes wide.
I’m in a cell. My mind whispered in disbelief. I was in a cell! I sagged, my skeleton failing to hold me upright. Holy FucKING HELL! …What?...How the…? But why…? Cell? I tilted my head back and let the banshee-scream rip from my throat.
Thirty-One
I perched on the edge of the sleeping-shelf, bewildered. My feet barely brushed the floor. My focus scraped from my knotted hands held tightly in my lap to the holes in the knees of my jeans, dark where t
he cotton absorbed my blood when I fell. Gater, I’m so sorry — my defiance landed me in this cell. Holy crap. My brain still stuttered on the words — reeled with shock.
I couldn’t believe I was alone in this grimy, stark, cement-walled, eight-by-eight box. The smell of decaying flesh filled my nostrils. My gaze flickered across to the puddle stain on the floor by the wall. Blood? My body convulsed at the thought.
I blinked vacantly in the bright light of the sun that shone through an opening on the wall and imagined a Cyclops staring at me. An empty track surrounded the hole. Thick, rusted, unyielding bars created stripes in the sun’s rays that fell across the shelf. No glass, I registered. Right now it let in fresh air and light, but what about nights? Or when it rained?
My focus travelled to the stainless-steel toilet with a tiny sink at the top, and a tin cup hanging from a chain, and I blew out the breath I had trapped in my lungs.
Next to me on the shelf-bed lay a mattress stuffed with straw, folded in half. Beside it, piled haphazardly, I found a set of threadbare sheets, a moth-eaten, musty wool blanket, and a misshapen thing that I guessed would pass as a pillow.
I opened my phone to call home, and I had no bars. No tower? No ping. No triangulation. No one knowing where the hell I was holed up.
I walked to the window and gripped the bars. Standing on my toes, I could see the flat, dirt-and-weeds stretch of the security yard, the fence line, and beyond that the tantalizing tree-tops of freedom. So close…I reached my hand out to the sunlight. Why am I here? What are they going to do with me? I pulled my hand back inside and angled my head to watch a lazy cloud roaming, listless and alone in the blue sky.
I turned my attention to the door, testing the latch to see if it locked behind Gray Mustache. It wouldn’t budge even though I shook the handle and pulled with all my strength and weight. I pounded my fists until they were bruised, screaming bloody murder the whole time, to no avail.