by Beth Mattson
“Yeah ok,” she agreed, and I heard a pan clanking from her cell and the moan of another girl, “I gotta go.”
I turned back to my cell mates and observed their sluggish movements.
One girl actually yawned. She was full enough to fall asleep. The rest huddled together in the sunny patches until mid afternoon. We opened and closed our eyes in sequence, me glancing every so often to make sure I wasn't touching anyone's bare skin. We looked longingly at the girl who fell asleep and was panting as she snored. We closed our eyes again when we had seen too much for too long, or when the flies crept into our eyes. They buzzed annoyingly, but they weren’t worth the effort of fanning our hands.
I wondered if we looked like the shaggy, golden tamarins in the first yellow, glossy magazine that Jim had given me. All scrunched around each other, hardly itching at our flea bites, luxuriating in mud. Maybe monkeys muttered “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can” to themselves like I was. But when the Dirtbags returned to the cell with their neatly suited Boss, he called us Birds, not any kind of primates. Not Humans.
“Ok, Birds.”
It didn’t sound as nice as Bean or Turtle from Dad. Or You Yahoo from Swan.
“Pay attention. I am leaving you with Jeff and Peyar. They are in charge and they know what to do. If anyone is able to run and tries it, they will kill you. You are not worth the trouble. You understand?”
Girls were already struggling to get to their feet. I stood up and held the arm of a girl who swayed in time with the footsteps of the Boss’ shiny shoes heading up the ladder. He took the ladder with him, leaving his men stranded in the pit with us, assumed too weak to fight them.
“Ok then,” Jeff pointed at me, “You’re clearly strong enough, take the one you’re holding over there and wait in The Yes Pile.”
Jeff watched us hobble over and sit down where the ladder had been. He picked up another girl who was standing, and thrust her at me. He kicked me in the knee for good measure.
“A little too strong, you are.”
I grabbed at my shin and moaned, pretending it was pain instead of hot flashes of tingling anger. He brought girl after girl to our pile. Seven from my cell, three and four from the next two. Swan’s cell was last. Swan was lying on the floor as the two Dirtbags carried the girls who could stand over to our mound of puppets. Her slump, face-down on the dirt floor, was too much for me to look at. I turned my attention to braiding the greasy, thin hair of the girl in front of me.
Jeff and Peyar lifted Swan to their level and set her down with her legs under her. She kept them limp and wobbled so that every time they started to let go of her she rushed towards the ground. Finally, they let her fall and she stayed down. I willed her not to truly be too weak. Maybe I had turned her into too much of an urchin to play this role. I hoped that my terrified sweating wouldn’t rinse the bleach out of my skin more quickly. Was my sweat clear or green and grey? I pinched the pigtails of the girl in front of me harder to keep from running to Swan and forgetting the Auction plan.
“Enough beauty shop,” Peyar yelled at me, “You! Come here!”
I stood and feigned a limp where he had kicked me, hobbling to the Dirtbags. I bowed my head and let them caress me all over, checking for major physical flaws. I was Warm from sitting in the mottled sun of our cell. The dingy cellar light suited me. My burned out pale kept my skin looking no greener than anyone else. I had no fresh cuts to ooze black blood, and I had no intention of opening my mouth to let them see my rotten gums. If they did, I prayed it would look like an advanced set of toothaches.
Jeff flipped my hands over in his own and looked at the soft underbellies of my arms. His face scrunched. He called Peyar over. They frowned together at my arms. I tried to tuck them back down at my sides. My face flushed with all of the Warm blood in my body. Peyar wrenched my arms back up to his face.
“Well, well, well, what do we have here?”
His comrade chuckled and ran his thumb down the not quite disappeared scars where I had hidden my weapons. They weren’t completely gone yet. They tingled uncomfortably, just like a real Human’s permanent scar would. I could feel the scalpels click against my bones. He pushed harder, with both of his thumbs.
“The street was that bad?” Jeff sneered, “Tried to fillet yourself, like a dirty, little fish? End it all? Bet you’ll be pretty glad to get a roof out of this deal. Stupid, Ugly Bitch. Gets a roof just for being a lousy baby-maker!”
They still thought I was an Ugly Bitch even though I wasn’t Brown or a green zombie. They considered palpating other parts of my body. I stood as still as ice.
“Well, uh,” Peyar wondered aloud, “Is suicidal a bad enough defect to keep her out of the Auction? Maybe keep her for ourselves?”
They had no idea I was hiding razor blades and planning sabotage. They had no idea that I was undead. They were only deciding if I was good enough to sell or if they could rape me themselves. They felt the glands in my neck.
“Naw,” Jeff shook his head, “She’s fine. Old scars are nothing compared to the fleas some of these Bitches got.”
“Guffaw,” Peyar brayed, “Boss, we’re ready for the ladder!”
They shoved me towards it as it dropped, “Yer strong enough to climb. Get up there.”
I took one last look over my shoulder. Swan was still lying on her face in the dirt. I willed her to get up. They pushed me forward. On the top rung, the well-dressed Boss yanked me by my scalp and bright orange hair. I wiped a tiny drip of black blood from my forehead and smeared it against my rags. They were so dirty that maybe no one would notice.
“Make yourself useful.”
The Boss handed me a box of rag dresses. For every girl who was handed up the ladders naked or only half dressed, I clothed them in enough rags to make them almost decent. The Boss lingered to be sure that I didn’t over-dress them or hide their best physical attributes. I hid tattoos and scars more lengthy and puckered than mine, trying to achieve the perfect balance of too pitiful to run away and grateful for any home but not yet fully dead on her feet. The Boss seemed to be over-shooting with his fashion advice and instructed me to make them appear grimly near death, but then, my taste in which girls to buy was hardly experienced. I thought that I looked more worthwhile before my makeover.
I whispered the girls no words of comfort, lest my bodily fluids burble and alert a Dirtbag to bash my skull. They shivered on the floor until everyone who was judged suitable for sale was upstairs. The Boss announced that he was going to go get the van, and his two Dirtbags stood by the doors waiting. Swan was still in the cellar. Why wasn’t she getting up? If she couldn't make it up to the ground level I would have to abandon all of these girls that I had just dressed to go and rescue her alone. Was she ok?
At the thud of the tailgate, the Dirtbags pointed at us to climb into the back. Some of the girls grimaced, hardly standing, much less walking. I took the arm of one and stumbled over to the van with her. Jeff and Peyar picked up the girls who could crawl. The girls who looked like they could be crawling but weren’t received sharp kicks and moved sluggishly forward on their hands and knees without the will to protest.
A gigantic moan echoed through the broken walls. Those of us who were able turned around to see the ladder. A hand poked over the horizon from the basement. A second hand followed it, loudly slapping the old boards and flopping limply. A curly, flaming red head appeared, and then a torso and two spindly legs in a rag dress. Swan slithered herself onto the main floor and let her arms shake as she pushed herself first onto her knees and then her feet. She swayed there. She smiled wanly and collapsed to the floor, lifting only one slight hand as an invitation to pick her up.
“She’s got nice teeth and she can stand. Bring her along,” the Boss ordered, tucking a new, unwrinkled button-down into his pressed trousers. He got into the driver’s seat and slammed the door behind him, cargo all piled in the back.
The Battle
With all eighteen girls in the back of the
seatless van, it roared to life and lurched away from our holding cells. We jolted against each other, knobby knees and bony spines bouncing off of pointed chins and scrappy elbows. We shifted until we were all sitting on the floor instead of someone else’s lap. I struggled to keep a layer of cloth between me and my neighbors.
We tried not to breathe too many of the diesel fumes as we went, huffing through our meager rags. We all hallucinated that we were on a horrendously long drive, our limbs cramping as we longed for our old, spacious dungeon quarters, but the van stopped after only a few minutes. The parking brake was applied with a sharp clank. We looked suspiciously at the walls and each other, not knowing what to expect. The doors opened. We startled and clung to our tightly packed and angular mates. I fought not to let any of them hold onto my bare skin.
Several hard, heavy objects were launched inside the vehicle at us, hitting us sharply on the heads and our already battered bodies. And then one of the girls grabbed at a missile and squealed. Not in agony, but in joy.
“It’s bread!” she held up a loaf, “and it’s not moldy!”
Arms shot out like lightning and vice-like hands clamped stale carbohydrates to thrashing mouths. Someone shrieked that there were water jugs too. The girls looked up and grabbed at them, taking long pulls and drooling happily after each drag. I rubbed a tingly spot where a jug had hit my hip. A small girl that I had held soggy bread for, looked up from her chewing and noticed that I wasn’t eating. She sheepishly handed me half of her loaf. I handed mine to Swan, who might need the extra about now and sipped more water myself. No eye contact, only focus on the door and when it would open.
The sounds of saws and hammers reverberated through the van walls while we waited. Men shouted. The familiar voices of Jeff And Peyar registered their opinions about the levelness and height of the stage, whether ramps or short stairs had worked better at previous Auctions. They decided on a ramp.
As they built it, the girls slowly drifted off into sleep, finally all full enough to sleep without the worry of using a dead body as a pillow. The doors swung open too early for anyone to twitch their eyelids in happy dreams. A leaden silence rested between our upturned faces and the Boss.
It was time for me to look strong. I held up my fist and shook it at the Dirtbags.
“You’ll never take us alive!”
It worked. The Boss pointed at me.
“She’s first.”
No other brave girls stepped forward, so Peyar just grabbed the ones that looked the best. As I was lead off to the stage, I saw Swan lying limply in the back with her head cocked off to one side and her tongue dangled out the corner of her bread-smeared mouth. She leaned against the thoughtful little girl who had offered me part of her bread. She patted Swan’s hand, but leaned away from her runny nose.
There was a large crowd gathering around the finished stage. There were more people than I had seen in one space, maybe ever. Certainly more people than had been at our Picnic. More than lived in our Squatters building. More people than had seen me in years. I checked my arms, which were still light and fishy.
The people were loud. And busy, checking their watches and the flyers that they held in their hands. They had numbers pinned onto their sleeves and they turned their heads from side to side, standing on their tiptoes to look around. They nodded their hats to each other. The few women in the crowd held their chins highly aloft and bobbed curtly to each other. They fanned themselves with their shawls and sipped bubbly substances from mugs that they clanked brashly together, spilling hideous wet streaks onto the blacktop. Each of these devourers still had a pulse.
Peyar lined us up against the back wall, me first. I squinted in the blinking lights. A short, weaselly man pushed me aside to wrap frayed wires around a cord deep inside of the bricks. The lights grew brighter. He scurried away. I could see the stage across the river of bobbing Human heads. Jeff held a long piece of rope in his hands.
He took the short end from the coil and motioned for me to turn sideways. He crouched and I felt the vine looping and tightening around my ankles. I worried that it would rub my skin down to show zombie blood, but Jeff moved to the girl standing behind me. I felt her head lean against my raggy shoulder blades as he tied her.
Jeff went up and down the line tying all of our legs together, a long string of shackled Wife material. We were all about to get married. Purchased. Absurd. I wondered how many of the Buyers lived in Cars. I wondered how many of them could actually take care of another person. I almost laughed. A snort escaped.
Peyar glared at me. He grabbed my wrists and held them together in front of him. He bound them brutally with very narrow twine. I winced and tried to smudge away my leaking, black goo. I tried to hide it under the frays of my shirt.
The Boss saw me and hurried over.
“Hey,” he slapped the back of Peyar’s head, “Don’t use that cord. It marks their skin, Dummy. We want them ready to go as soon as they are purchased. Use the soft rope!”
A man in a tall, silken top hat touched the Boss’ elbow. The Boss spun around and grasped the man’s hand firmly. They walked away together, chatting and smiling, humming and tapping his silver-headed lion cane.
Peyar scoffed but cut the twine and replaced it with softer rope, twisted out of the never-ending rag supplies. I found myself waiting in a line with all the other girls. We toed at the ground, occasionally glancing at the crowd and standing very still, counting down the time until the next unmoldy meal. It might come as a reward for being ready to go on the car ride home with our new husbands. Or it might not come for days, as hazing by the other Wives that he owned. There was no way to tell.
Perhaps the older, more established Wives would have been nice to the girls tonight only, taking pity on the helpless newcomers until they were strong enough to be sent off to the Markets the next day, unarmed, to retrieve the heavy goods for the household. If they had done all of their chores well they might have eventually been allowed to start eating enough to bear children, hopefully a daughter that could be sold or produce more daughters. Sooner or later another new girl would have come and taken the lowest spot on the breeding totem.
The Boss slammed his gavel down on a makeshift crate podium and the Auction began. He leaned into a crackling microphone. The weaselly man fiddled with some knobs and a board of buttons and the Boss’ voice came through more clearly.
“Welcome! Welcome, one and all! Ladies and Gentlemen, you have come to the best Auction in town! We have what you need! Are you ready? Ready to move on with your Family? Ready to move on with your future? Ready to thrive?”
The crowd cheered and clapped, bouncing up and down in their pairs of matching shoes with excitement.
“We have all of the high quality, willing Wives that you need! They have been collected out from underneath the noses of Families who didn’t know what a gold mine they had. And here they are, ready to join you. Right now, right here! Do you want to meet them?! What do you say?!”
The crowd cheered more loudly, craning their necks to see if we were on the stage yet. Peyar kicked us into motion. I stared at him angrily. Jeff tugged at our ropes until we took a step forward.
It was hard to align our steps and coordinate the sad shuffling of eighteen girls headed for sale. I led them the best I could, in a slow snake around the left, past the crowd, up the narrow, ramshackle ramp to the stage. I felt a splinter enter my bare foot. Shouldn’t the Buyers be more concerned with the quality of their precious, ragged goods?
A man decided to test the merchandise. A hand cupped my backside and trailed fingers up my leg. I cricked my neck to see who it was. It was a Ranger. He turned to the crowd, who looked at him, smiling. He nodded emphatically, beaming his approval, with a thumb high in the air.
“Yes, yes, very fine. An exemplary building block for any Family,” the Boss chimed in.
Every one chuckled and clapped. I clenched my jaw and moved past the Boss and the podium to the far right side of the stage. I stopped and a
ll of the girls behind me halted in tow. We faced the crowd. They murmured to each other and pointed up and down our line, speculating about which of us they could afford. Girls who hadn’t smiled in ages forced their lips to stretch out across their faces to attract a nice owner. I clenched harder and stood up straighter.
I strained my neck and eyes looking for Donnie. Would he try to stand up and claim me before I could be sold? Would he walk me away on a leash, instead of me getting sold to someone with a van and ruin our entire plan? I had high hopes that when he tried to claim me, The Boss would make him at least bid and pay to walk me towards a reasonable ambush point. He would certainly like my Lighter hair. I couldn’t see him anywhere. He wasn’t there. I needed to focus on being sold first, now. To someone rich with a van that would be parked at the front of the alley blocking all the others behind it.
The Boss cut my wrist bindings with his pen knife. He paused, rumbling into my ear,
“Behave. It’s for your own good, Bird.”
I was torn between spitting hatefully at the crowd and finishing our entire Plan. I made fists with my hands, but let my arms fall to my sides politely. I held my chin high when I caught the eye of the man in the top hat. He grinned. I looked away. I looked only at the opposite building, above the crowd’s head. Eye contact was too much to ask.
“Here we have a girl in her prime,” the Boss announced, shining an electric torch on me, “Of excellent health, quite strong and very nimble. In her child-bearing years. Stands up straight. Smart enough to know what is good for her,” he rested a hand on my neck, “She will represent your Family mightily. May require some breaking, but once broken will be the shining centerpiece of your fine work force, which we are honored to help you build. I will start the bidding at fifteen hundred coins.”
Hands flew into the air and into my line of sight. I had to raise my eyes higher on the buildings, over the hands reaching for me, wanting to grope and own my muscles. The Boss drove my price higher and higher, touting greater and greater of my submissive yet capable qualities. Fewer and fewer hands shot into the air each time, until finally there was only one hand. The highest bidder. My stomach sloshed and threatened to rebel. Tears that I imagined to be grey green and ruining my bleach job ran down my cheeks. I lowered my head. Coins jingled. A hand grabbed my wrist and pulled me down off of the stage.