by Raine, Meli
I’ve never seen anything like the Atlas compound before, though. I know if I gawk, Frenchie will say something. If I want to see anything, I have to pretend I’m not looking. As far as I can tell, there are four buildings. The one I came out of, the one we’re headed to, a big one with giant doors that looks like a garage with four bays, and a smaller one that is like a huge, sprawling house. There are three dogs running loose. They seem friendly. All three are big German Shepherds.
As if on cue, one of the dogs runs over to us. Its tail is wagging. Within seconds I have a nose in my crotch. The dog is big and nudges up, hard.
At least it’s not Frenchie.
“JuJu! Get down. At least you got good taste,” Frenchie cackles, pushing the dog away. I hold out my hand so JuJu can smell me. The dog looks me in the eye with more humanity than Frenchie’s shown me. JuJu wags its tail, licking my hand. He wants to be petted. I’m afraid to even try.
“JuJu don’t like people,” Frenchie says, eyeing me carefully. “She’s mine. Raised her since she was five weeks old. Maybe I misjudged you, Girlie Girl.”
I want to ask him what that means, but I don’t. I have to remember to say as little as possible. Make them think I’m stupid. Submissive. Passive.
Broken.
That way I can do whatever Chase needs me to do when the time comes.
Frenchie spits on the ground, missing my foot by a few inches. “Sometimes JuJu’s wrong, though.”
Something Frenchie said earlier won’t leave my head. “Maybe she’ll be the one to cure him.” What did he mean? Cure? I want to ask so badly, but I can’t. I shuffle forward. Frenchie grabs the doorknob and yanks it open. He plants a thick, callused palm on the small of my back and shoves me forward into the dark building.
I step over the threshold and try not to fall. His body is right behind me, the crusty jeans sliding against my thighs, his slightly sour scent surrounding me. He’s everything Chase isn’t. Gross and nasty, intimidating and vile. Frenchie seems like he’s enjoying what he’s doing with me. Making me ready for another man’s torture of me.
“Jackie’ll make you nice and ready for what’s coming, Allie,” he says with a hiss, his finger tracing a long, slow line from my earlobe to my collarbone.
Allie. A chill runs through me when he says my name. I want to look at Chase, but I can’t. I just freeze and close my eyes, trying to think about anything but Frenchie’s fingers traveling down into my bra. He’s doing this right in front of Chase.
Chase is looking out the window. He knows what Frenchie is doing to me.
And he’s not stopping him.
“What is coming?” Chase asks him under his breath, making Frenchie’s hand jerk and pull away from my skin. “You keep talking about it like El Brujo is the fucking second coming of Christ.”
Frenchie snorts as he grabs my wrist and wrenches it, pulling me to the right. “Hardly. He’s chasing a cure for the bug.”
“The bug? What the fuck is ‘the bug’?” Chase asks.
“The bug? You don’t know what the bug is, man?”
I keep my head down, my hair hanging like dead snakes around me. Out of the corner of my eye I can see them, heads together.
“The bug,” Frenchie whispers, “is AIDS.”
Chapter Five
“What?” Chase shouts, incredulous, breaking his act of being bored and morose. “Quit fucking around with me, Frenchie.”
“Not fucking around, man. This is serious. El Brujo got it from some whore in Mexico. Or from shooting up. No one knows. Once you got it, you just got it. Who cares how you got it, you know? He knows a guy from South Africa who took a virgin’s cherry and was healed. So now he’s on a quest.”
I feel like like someone cracked my head like an egg and poured my brains out into a vat of boiling oil. I can hear the panic in Chase’s voice.
I can hear it over the sizzling in my head.
I’m dead, aren’t I? If Chase can’t get me out of here, I’ll die today. If El Brujo doesn’t actually kill me, I’ll get AIDS and die anyway.
But that’s not how I’ll die. No way.
If Chase can’t get me out of here, I’ll just kill myself. I’d rather die at my own hand than face what El Brujo has planned for me.
The clarity of that thought gives me hope. I have a choice now. I didn’t have a choice before. A calmness seeps into my bones, making me less afraid.
I have a plan. A direction. Something to do.
Chase avoids looking at me and says to Frenchie, “That’s fucked up.”
“No shit.”
“You think it’s okay for him to do that to someone?” Chase’s voice makes it clear Frenchie better say no.
Frenchie shrugs as we walk up a set of stairs. “Not for me to decide.” We get to the top and stop. “Besides, so far it ain’t worked. She’s his third one.”
My entire body jerks violently. I can’t help it. “He’s done this before?” I rasp, my voice foreign.
“Shut up,” Frenchie says with a sneer.
“It didn’t work before, so why would he—”
I feel the bones of his hand before I see it, my mind registering everything out of order. The slap makes my neck twist hard and fast to the right. Something pops behind my ear. I crumple to the floor as the taste of metal fills my mouth. My cheekbone slams into the hard tile floor and my knee cracks against it. The sudden cool of the floor makes me stop, breathing hard.
I really do just want to die.
“Mouthy bitch,” Chase says from above. He’s right there and a million miles away at the same time. I breathe in. I breathe out. I feel pain. I feel nothing. I can’t tell who slapped me.
I don’t really care any more.
My blood smears the floor, marking the grout between tiles. It will stay there forever, a stain that marks my torture in this place. The thought gives me comfort.
I’ll take comfort where I can find it right now.
Someone grabs my hair from behind and pulls me up. I don’t look. I don’t want to know whether it’s Chase or Frenchie. I’m pulled tall enough to stand. I force myself to put my feet on the floor so my scalp doesn’t get torn off my head. My body has become a fireball of pure white light. It’s so bright I can’t tell whether it’s pain or something else.
I don’t think it matters.
The hand holding my hair lets go. A shove against my kidneys makes me go forward. I swallow a mouthful of saliva and blood. My tongue feels along my gums, counting teeth. None of them are loose. I limp, my knee almost unable to work.
But it does.
Somehow, I find a way to walk.
The room they make me go into has a fancy bed covered in what looks like hundreds of pillows. Thick curtains cover wide windows. Paper lanterns dot the edge of the ceiling, hundreds of them chained together. There is a hot tub, carved out of adobe, right in front of an enormous stone fireplace, the large rocks crawling up to the ceiling. The hot tub is made to look like a natural hot spring, and candles are lit around the edge of it. Lavender fills the room. This is a room meant for romance.
Until I see the chains on the bed.
And a set of gleaming, silver instruments laid out on the nightstand, like a surgeon’s set of tools.
That’s when I finally start screaming.
The screams die in my throat, though, when Frenchie sighs. It’s a sound of annoyance. He pulls me into a bathroom with an enormous bathtub in it. The tub is full, with steam rising from the water.
“Get naked,” he demands.
I look at Chase. He doesn’t look back.
I do as I’m told. Why not? Frenchie’s seen me naked before, tied to a chair. If I don’t do what he says, he’ll make me naked again, and those hands are capable of more than pain right now. I’d rather have a small shred of control. Besides, it distracts me from wondering what those pointy, steel instruments do.
I flinch.
“Get in.” Frenchie points to the tub. I climb the three stairs to enter, the water
enticing. It’s super hot. Almost scalding, and I back my leg out after getting calf-deep in.
“Get in, I said,” he growls.
“It’s too hot! Look at my skin,” I argue, shaking my ankle in his direction. He has a full-on view of my body when I do that, breasts shaking. It makes him laugh.
“Too bad. Get in.”
“If I get in I’ll faint.”
He shrugs. “I got my orders.”
Chase finally speaks. “It won’t do El Brujo no good if she’s passed out from heat stroke, Frenchie.”
Frenchie just cocks an eyebrow. “El Brujo wants her alive and clean. Didn’t say nothing about being conscious.”
The pit of my stomach twists.
I get in.
My mom used to use the phrase “frog in a pot” to describe finding yourself in trouble you didn’t see coming. It’s not that I didn’t see this trouble coming. It’s more that suddenly, I knew what it was like to feel like a small animal being slowly cooked for someone else’s enjoyment.
“Get your hair wet,” Frenchie orders. I dip under the impossibly-hot water, my face suddenly ice cold, then on fire. I come up as fast as I can and stand straight up. My skin feels like thousands of fire ants are biting me.
“Now shampoo it.”
I reach up and drop my arms immediately. They feel like noodles. I try again, this time bending gingerly for the shampoo bottle he put on the edge of the tub. I smear the shampoo on my hands and reach up.
Bam. My arms go down. I literally don’t have the strength to reach up and wash my own hair.
I am suspended in space, too hot when I sit in the water, too tired to wash my hair. Tears form in my eyes and I let them fall. My emotions meet my body’s pain and ragged ache and finally, finally, I can cry.
Frenchie gets angry. “Wash your fucking hair!”
“I can’t.”
He grabs my arms and pulls my hands up, sinking them into my seaweed-like strands. They hang there, then drop.
I fold down, my ass hovering on the water’s surface. It’s cooling down now, and when I drop a few inches in, it’s not as painful. I sob and sob, unable to move. They broke me. They really dismantled me, heart, bones, will and all.
I’m done.
“Fuck,” Frenchie says in a slow sigh. He looks at Chase, who is staring out a window, his expression blank.
“I can’t! I can’t!” I wail. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” I say it over and over, my chest heaving, breasts bobbing on the water, pink and tender. My whole body looks like it’s been sunburned and my skin feels like I could peel it all off in one big sheet. The heat from the water does nothing to soothe my hurt bones and muscles.
There is no escape.
Whatever I am feeling at any given moment is what I will feel for the rest of my life.
“I can’t believe you ever dug her, Chase. She’s a fucking wimp,” Frenchie says.
“Never dug her. That was all for Dad. All for show. You know that. I told you.”
Frenchie snorts. “Yeah. Right. We chased you two down all those times because you were playin’ a part.”
“That’s right.”
“I ain’t stupid, Chase. You fell for her.”
“Would I have helped bring her here for El Brujo if that was true? You know anyone in Atlas who’s in the habit of handing off their old ladies to a fucking drug lord for their pleasure?”
Frenchie’s face goes to an expression of angry shock.
“When you put it that way...”
“Yeah. I didn’t fucking think so. Keep your theories to yourself, Frenchie. You’re good at cleaning up messes. Not so good when it comes to using your brains. You might pull a muscle in your head if you keep trying to figure shit out.”
“Fuck you.”
“No thanks. I like chicks.” Chase looks at me, grabs the shampoo bottle, and pours a ton of it straight on the top of my head. “But not this one.”
His hands sink into my hair, hard, and he rubs like someone who has no idea how to wash a woman’s long hair. He swirls and digs, making a tangled rat’s nest that will be impossible to unravel when it’s dry.
I don’t care.
He’s touching me.
Rough hands yank and pull, pushing hard against my scalp, making my eyes feel like marbles shaking in my head. Frenchie laughs, a vulgar sound of pleasure at watching Chase treat me like this.
“You become a beautician in your spare time?” he teases.
“Rinse,” Chase barks at me. I sink under the water, which no longer burns, and spend as long as I can with my hands in my hair untangling it with splayed fingers. The hot silence feels like a coffin. Like heaven. Like both at once. I don’t want to come up for air but I have to.
“Get out,” Chase barks.
Something buzzes in the room. Frenchie pulls a smartphone out of his pants pocket and looks at it.
“Fuck. Gotta answer this. You get her dressed.”
Dressed? Hope flares in me. Maybe I get clothes again. Real ones. They’ve stripped me of everything. Getting tiny slivers of humanity back is like being handed diamonds and gold. A shirt that covers my belly seems like wearing a royal ball gown.
Pants would be like winning the lottery.
I stand. Chase hands me a wide-toothed comb while Frenchie turns away and mutters angrily into the phone. At no point does Chase make eye contact with me. Our fingers touch for a second as he gives me the comb. It’s like being embraced.
Chase can’t say a word to me about how to escape, but it’s like he decides to use his eyes as much as possible suddenly. They widen and he looks at the door. I follow his glance and look back at him with a tiny shrug. I don’t understand.
He pulls out his phone and types something, then holds it up so I can see.
Blonde guy. Looks like me. He’ll be here. Go with him.
I frown and have a million questions but he turns the phone away from me and taps the delete key until the message disappears.
A blonde guy who looks like Chase? What’s that supposed to mean? A million possibilities shoot through my looping brain. Is this part of an escape plan?
Frenchie gets off the phone, mumbling a string of curses and something about hell freezing over. He looks at me, standing naked, with my hands struggling to comb the ends of my hair. I can’t reach up to get it at the crown.
“Eh. Good enough. Jackie can do the rest.” He motions toward the door.
I’m supposed to walk around completely naked now? Even I have a tiny bit of dignity. “What about a towel?” I ask.
“Oh, aren’t you getting spoiled?” Frenchie says with an eye roll. He grabs a washcloth and flings it at my head, deeply amused by his own joke.
Chase says nothing, though he makes a sound of amusement with his nose. Frenchie gives him a broad smile, pleased with himself.
“Get your bra and panties back on. That’s more than you’ll need today, anyhow. But Jackie’s got all the rest for you.”
“Who’s Jackie?” I ask. I’m bolder now. I can be. If Chase’s friend—the mysterious blonde guy who looks like him—can’t get me out of here, I can always kill myself. I’m not sure how, but I can. A bra and a doorknob and I can hang myself. That’s all I really need. Something to loop around my neck.
It’s amazing how the safety of having a choice makes me feel better.
“Jackie’s your fairy fucking godmother,” Frenchie says, shoving me down the hallway. Abruptly, he jerks me to the left, through a door, back into the room with the big bed and the hot tub. The romantic room that looks like a honeymoon suite.
I see a woman in there, standing in front of a vanity that has hair products, make up and perfume. Her back is turned to us and she’s lining up bottles, humming to herself. The tune is familiar.
A lump forms in my throat.
It’s the song my ballerina music box used to play.
She has long, black hair that cascades down her back. It flows as she moves. Her hands are practiced and touch with gra
ce, like she’s done this a thousand times before. She’s trim, with a nipped waist and a big, round ass covered with well-worn jeans. Black cowboy boots with a practical heel are on her feet and she’s wearing a tank top, a wet spot in the center of her back. She’s been outside today.
“We ready for her? You know, Frenchie, you never told me why we need to get her all made up.” She speaks as if she’s comfortable. Casual. Like she’s part of the club.
My spine goes numb.
I know that voice.
“What’s going on?” she continues, and I stop in place, Chase bumping into me, not jostling me at all. I am a steel post. I am a redwood tree. I am, suddenly, standing frozen and unmovable.
She continues chattering away. “No one’s ever asked me to do this before, and I—”
She turns around.
It’s my mother.
Chapter Six
Her eyes catch mine, and I almost scream “MOM!”, but self-preservation kicks in. I’m dead if I do. And, I realize, so is she.
Except she’s already dead, so how could she be twice dead? Hysterical laughter threatens to come out of me again. I pinch the aching skin of my hip to stop it. The gash on my bone tears open. I feel blood, wet and viscous. I don’t care.
Her eyes comb over me, wide as headlights. She swallows and turns away. Her hands shake.
“I see. She’s pretty rough, guys. I’ll need a lot of time to make her look good.”
“You’re a chick, Jackie. It ain’t rocket science,” Frenchie says in a distracted voice. He’s paying attention to his phone now.
“Right,” she says in a light, airy voice, but I know that voice. My God. My mother is standing right here. My dead mother. A vibration starts in me. I can’t control it. My heart has turned into a butterfly that needs to escape from my chest and land on her.
“Shit,” Frenchie mumbles. “Galt’s up my ass. New shipment of meth got stolen from some douchebag in Blythe. I gotta go.” He looks at Chase, then Jackie—her, my mom.