Deep Woods

“This is all a mistake,” I said, my voice cracking. “I’m going to a call center! In San Francisco!”

They all laughed. And just as the laughter died away, a noise split the air from upstairs. A woman’s scream. It was followed by the crack of a violent slap, and then whimpering.

Oh Jesus Christ. Raw fear pushed away the last of the fogginess in my brain. For the first time, I saw everything clearly.

When people thought of kidnapping, they imagined women grabbed off the street and pulled into a van. What these men had created was much more insidious.

I thought of my boss at the call center, watching all those little video windows of the call center workers. Almost all of us were young women. We all lived in cheap, shared apartments, moving jobs frequently, with no time to make connections. The call center was even set up to discourage making friends. We were women no one would miss.

I imagined the videos of us flowing over the internet to some website, where members of the club could browse workers: watching us, listening to our voices before making their selection. And then my boss would make the offer he’d made me and the woman would be taken here. I felt ill. How many times had this already happened, since I’d been working there? There were close to a thousand workers. One a month could be disappearing, their jobs instantly filled, and no one would ever question it.

And...God, this was probably happening in the San Francisco call center, too: they were telling those women they were being sent to Seattle. And in how many other call centers, and warehouses, and other places with high turnovers of staff? All legitimate businesses whose bosses were paid a fat bribe each month to let the club skim off a few women.

I thought of the bottle of water in the limo. Drugged, to make sure I slept for the journey. I don’t even know what state I’m in!

“I take it you’re satisfied?” the owner of the club asked Ralavich.

Ralavich grunted. He turned to a man I hadn’t noticed before: he had the same suit and tattoos as Ralavich but looked to be in better shape: a bodyguard, perhaps. “Get the others ready for transport. We’ll leave tomorrow.” Ralavich turned back to me. “Tonight, I’m going to enjoy this one.”

He grabbed my hand, his fingers clammy and flabby, nothing like Cal’s warm grip. He jerked on my arm with terrifying strength, pulling me towards the stairs. The other men were nodding approvingly and some even slapped his back. My stomach churned. They were waiting to hear my screams.

Upstairs, he pushed me into a bedroom and stood there gazing at me, his face flushed red with excitement. “Where are you taking me?” I asked. “You said others, there are others?” I thought that if I kept him talking, maybe I could escape.

“Back to Russia. The other nine, to brothels. American women are our most popular.”

It all slotted together in my head, now: the tattoos, the bodyguard, the way the other men feared him. Ralavich was Russian Mafia.

He leaned forward and cupped my chin. I shrank from his grasp. “But you, Bethany,” he continued. “You, I keep for myself.”

Me? Why me? There’s nothing special about me!

He pointed to an ivory dress on the bed. “Put that on. And make-up. Shoes.” His English was fracturing as his excitement increased. “Be quick. I have to smoke.” He went into the hall and slammed the door, trapping me inside.

I pictured him watching me as I worked in the call center, fantasizing about this night for weeks or months. I looked at the clothes on the bed and my nausea rose. He wanted to dress me like a doll, have everything just right before he—This is not happening. This cannot be happening. I dug in my purse for my phone. It had been taken while I slept. Shit!

I didn’t want to give him an excuse to hurt me so I changed into the dress, my hands shaking. It was made up of lots of thin, gauzy layers and looked expensive. It had a square, low cut neckline, an ankle-length hem and splits up the sides of the skirt. There were fancy white heels, too, and a panties and bra set made of silk and lace.

As I pulled on the clothes, I looked frantically around the room for a way out. The window looked like it opened but below it was a paved driveway and we were on the third floor: I’d never survive the fall. I was taking huge panicked gulps of air, now, imagining what would happen when Ralavich came back in. There was something wrong with this man. I could feel the hatred oozing out of him, and he wanted to take it all out on me. I thought of him raping me every night...and then, when he got bored of me, I’d join the others in one of his brothels. My legs went shaky with fear. Think of something! Think!