Pennies (Dollar 1)

It disgusted me.

How dare they decide my worth? What my fellow slaves were worth. No price tag existed on a human life.

My life.

I hadn’t said a word since the third day of my incarceration. I hadn’t answered their questions about my age or sexual history. I refused to share any number of invasive requests.

I’d taken that small power even though they no doubt knew everything they needed thanks to my driver’s license and social media.

But now…here, on the eve of my sale, I had something to say.

Balling my hands, I glared at the indistinct man who wished to own me. My voice rang out, soft but pure, the only feminine sound in a nest of men.

“I bid one million. Let me buy myself, sir, and I will forget any of this ever happened.”

The bought girls, already ushered and clung to by new masters, gasped. My audacity could shorten my life or prolong it. Either way, it was a gamble I willingly and knowingly chose.

I didn’t have a million. My mother might if she sold our two-bedroom flat in London. But just like I pushed other worries to be solved on a later day, I pushed this one aside, too.

Money was just money.

Pennies added to dollars and dollars added to hundreds.

In the end, the prettily printed paper was worthless because inflation stole its numerical profit, unable to keep those who owned it happy.

My life, on the other hand, would increase in value, growing wiser and richer in experience the longer I survived. I was an investment, not a liability. And I would invest everything I had into giving myself a future.

The man stepped forward, cutting through the glare so his silhouette turned into physical mass. His dirty blond hair was the only thing visible behind the princely mask of some English Lord. “You’re bidding on yourself?” His voice sounded foreign, but I couldn’t place the accent. Mediterranean, perhaps?

Tipping my chin, the podium put me higher than him as I looked down as if he were my subject and I was his queen.

I would rule him. I would never bow.

“That is correct. I am too expensive for you. One million pounds, not dollars. I bid well over your pathetic amount.”

The auctioneer fumbled, clearly uncertain what to do with this change of events. His business was in the money-making game. Selling women was high profit, but if he could earn more by selling me to myself, what did he care if certain corporate rules were broken?

He got paid either way.

Ignoring the man in his English Lord mask, I faced the executioner, begging his gavel to fall on my offer. “One million, sir, and I walk away and never mention this again.”

What about the other girls?

My mother would curse me for the shame and guilt I suffered at the thought of leaving the sold women. But she’d also be proud because I’d chosen a path with decisiveness and conviction. Something she said I’d always lacked.

Happy now, Mother?

The room erupted in murmurs of deliberation while I stood in the sea of ebbing voices.

For a moment, I stupidly believed I’d won. That I’d played my hand at the perfect time and earned my freedom. But I hadn’t learned my final lesson.

Pride goeth before the fall.

And I was about to plummet.

“I see your offer and raise you,” Lord Mask murmured. “One million, five hundred thousand pounds, not dollars. What say you?”

Before I could reply—before I could increase my bid and change my circumstances, the dreaded gavel fell.

“Sold!” the auctioneer yelled. “To Mr. Lord for one million, five hundred thousand pounds.”

* * * * *

To No One,

That was the last time I spoke. The last time I lost. The last time I knew what it was like not to live every day in pain.

From that day onward, I was Pimlico the Mute, the Voiceless Woman in White.

No matter what that man did to me, I didn’t break.

No matter the beating he gave or the sexual punishment he delivered, I remained speechless and strong.

I’d like to say I found a way to escape. That I ran. That I’m writing this to you from a quaint coffee shop in London with a handsome boyfriend on my left and a best friend on my right.

But I’ve never been good at lying.

This toilet paper novel was never going to be fiction.

This is my autobiography so that one day, when my worth has been used, and every penny my master paid for me has been cashed, someone might recall the wordless slave who endured so much.

Maybe then, I’ll be free.

INSTEAD OF COUNTING what I’d lost and would never see again, I preferred to count what I did have.

It kept me occupied as the transaction for my sale went through, the room emptied as successful bidders took their new possessions home, and my arms wrenched behind me for coarse twine to wrap around my wrists like some sort of twisted wedding ring.