Sweet Collateral

“Please, please, please,” I whisper under my breath. The door clicks open, and I breathe a sigh of relief, climbing inside. I need somewhere to hide. Feeling around behind the back seats, I find the latch to release the seats. They fold forward, and I slam a hand over my mouth, fighting back the urge to gag at the disgusting smell. Panic rises like a wave at the sight of horrified, bloodshot eyes staring lifelessly from behind a sheet of clear plastic. A body. There’s a body in the trunk.

I swallow back bile as I consider having to crawl into the trunk with a dead body. What if they remove it and find me? My heart pounds rapidly, my mind processing options, and then I hear voices. I reach inside the trunk space, breathing through my nose as I feel around. My fingers brush over cool metal, and I grab the object, pulling it out. The gun weighs heavy in my hand, the weight of it so foreign to me, and yet empowering. The voices move closer, and I have no choice. Steeling myself, I crawl in, next to the dead man. This is sheer desperation. I have no other options right now. Reaching for the back seat, I pull it upright, making sure it doesn’t fully click into place. The trunk plunges into darkness, leaving me alone with a corpse. I think of anything but the cold, waxy skin pressing up against my thigh. A door opens and then the car shifts under the weight of someone getting inside. There are voices and laughing before the engine starts. I strain to hear over the Spanish rap music blaring through the speakers. Adrenaline fires through my veins, the drive to survive riding me hard. I’m a girl with nothing left to lose and my freedom to gain. Fear blends with that long-forgotten feeling of hope. So near and yet so far. This really is freedom or death. There’s nothing else for me on this path, and there’s something thrilling in that. I’m taking control of my own fate for the first time in a very long time.

The car pulls away and pauses briefly. I silently pray that the guards don’t look in the trunk. There’s the low rumble of voices before we’re moving again. The car rolls over bumpy, pothole-filled roads for what feels like forever. The trunk gets hotter and hotter until the odor of rotting body starts to choke me. I try hard to breathe through my mouth so as not to retch on the ever-intensifying smell.

Eventually, the car stops and the second the engine cuts, my heart leaps into a sprint. I clutch the gun so tightly that my fingers start to go numb. The car doors slam and there’s a tense silence, broken only by the sound of my own erratic breaths. When I hear nothing for a few seconds, I tentatively push the back seat forward and peer through the gap. I can’t see much. People pass by the window, and there’s the faint red glow of what looks like neon lights cutting through the dusk. A cold, lifeless limb presses up against me, and I lose my hold on any semblance of calm control. Slamming my weight against the seat, I sprawl into the back seat, sucking air into my tightening lungs. Without hesitating, I yank the door handle and fall out of the car onto a busy street. People look at me as I get to my feet and glance around. The car is parked outside a run-down bar with rows of motorcycles out front. There’s a wooden porch outside, and several men covered in gang tattoos stop and stare at me. They study me intently, until one of them steps forward, a twisted smile on his face.

“Well, well, what do we have here?” he shouts over the music.

I turn and run. I run as far and as fast as I can on my injured ankle. At least my captors had a reason to keep me alive. Out here is where unleashed monsters live, and I’m now the limping gazelle in a city full of them.

3

Anna

I barely made it a few blocks from the car before a guy approached me. I tried to run, I tried to fight, but it was pointless.

And now I’m here. Wherever here is. I tug at the chain attached to the wall and clasped around my wrist. The skin beneath the metal cuff is chaffed and raw. Pulling my knees up to my chest, I rest my forehead on them and tentatively brush my fingers over my swollen ankle. A sharp breath hisses through my gritted teeth as pain lances up my leg. I think it’s broken. A tremor rips through me, and a chill sweeps over my sweat-slicked skin. My stomach rolls and clenches violently. Groaning, I lean over the edge of the bed and throw up on the floor. The coarse sheets beneath me feel like sandpaper tearing over my skin. I need…I need a hit. The craving is so intense, so all-consuming. It’s like my senses are being overloaded, and everything is too bright, too loud, too real. I crave the darkness, the feeling of nothingness that has surrounded me for so long and made my life bearable. Another convulsion rips through me, and my body feels like it’s tearing itself apart.