The SUV pulls off the highway and onto a narrow dirt road, nearly identical to the other two I’ve driven on so far. It’s lined by massive oaks with fields beyond. The road is pitted and rutted, and I’m jounced and jostled and thrown around violently, each bump sending a lance of pain through my lungs. I bear it silently, enduring it the way I would the agony of a fresh beating from my father or Jerry.
Except this time, I’m going to do something about it. When the time is right, these idiotic, abusive men will feel my retribution.
After a few minutes of painful bouncing—the driver doesn’t seem to even be trying to avoid the ruts, no matter how deep they are—we turn off the dirt road and onto a two-track path between the huge oaks. I hear and feel rocks and branches ticking and popping underneath, and the bouncing and jostling are worse than ever. I can only grit my teeth and gut through it, pouring the pain onto the blazing inferno of my anger.
Finally, the SUV rolls to a stop with a sloppy forward lurch and a squeal of brakes. Through the front windshield, the pale, dull yellow headlights illuminate an old barn, the boards gray with age. It’s leaning heavily to one side, with gaps of a foot or more between some of the slats. Ivy grows over it, nearly obscuring the yawning black entrance. Something small with glowing eyes scurries out of the barn and vanishes.
“All right boys,” the driver says; he’s a short, pear-shaped man with a mostly bald head, yet the little hair he does have he’s grown into a skinny, greasy little ponytail. “Jimmy, you grab the lanterns. Mike, call the C-O and tell him we’re here. Matt, you and me will deal with the bitch.”
The bitch; the cunt: to them, too, I’m not a woman, nor even a person, just a thing, an object. Rage has my jaw clenching even after the jolting has ended.
I keep my hands behind my back and wait. The man in the front passenger seat exits and circles to the trunk and removes a pair of battery-powered LED camping lanterns and sets them up inside the barn; the interior, from what I can see, is about what you’d expect from an abandoned barn—dirt, leaves, fallen boards from the ceiling and walls, rusted hulks of old farm implements.
The driver waddles around the hood to the rear door and jerks it open. “Out, bitch.”
He doesn’t even bother pointing a gun at me, assuming I’m cowed by his constant name-calling, which I’m guessing he feels is his display of obvious superiority over me simply due to the organ between his legs.
I do my best to act timid, keeping my eyes downcast so he can’t see the fury burning in them. I shuffle awkwardly across the bench and descend even more awkwardly, without using my hands.
His eyes narrow, as if trying to recall something. “I don’t remember tyin’ you up.”
I don’t answer.
He glances at his comrades, and then at me, and then shrugs, figuring one of them did. Exactly what I was counting on: them being too stupid and stoned to think clearly.
I hear one of them on the phone, all “yes sir” and “no sir” and “got it, sir,” like my father is some kind of military genius instead of a bitter old man.
God, why did I let myself be cowed for so long?
But that’s not fair. I had no options. The first time a real shot at escape arose, I took it.
I let him shove me toward the walk, and I don’t have to fake the gasp of pain when I stumble and nearly fall. He snickers, and it takes everything I have to not pull my knife and attack him right then and there.
He shoves me every few steps, laughing every time I stumble. Once inside, the barn is even worse than I’d guessed it would be. It smells like rot and old dead things. Vines hang from the roof, and piles of droppings coat every surface. I hear rustling overhead, and look up: a bat flutters in panicked circles, and then swoops down and vanishes into the night with a pissed-off squeak.
My captor shoves me toward a rusting old implement of some sort, its purpose a mystery to me. “Sit,” he snaps. “And keep your bitch mouth shut, bitch.”
So clever, I think to myself. Bitch, bitch, bitch. Like that’s the worst thing he can think to call me. It probably is.
Once, I probably would have been afraid of him. I would have been cowed by his tone and his words and his maleness, the threat of violence. But I know better, now. I can survive the worst he can do to me; I already have. And what’s more, I know down to my very bones that Silas is coming for me. He’ll find me, and these men will regret ever putting their hands on me. They’ll wish Silas would have just killed them.
I sit on a narrow spar of rusted metal and wait, eyes on my feet.
They’ve left the headlights of their Suburban on.
My captor, the driver, pulls a soft pack of cigarettes from his back pocket, shakes a cigarette and a lighter out, and lights one, sucking in smoke and exhaling it through his nostrils.
The other three are clustered together, snickering about something with furtive glances at me.
Here it comes.
One of them, tall and lanky with salt-and-pepper hair buzzed short, his dark eyes bloodshot and greedy, ambles toward me. His hand rests on his belt buckle.
“Imma fuck her, Tony,” he mumbles, squinting at me. “It’ll be quick. No one has to know. Who she gonna tell? No one will believe a whore like her.” He shuffles closer, flipping the end of his belt free.
Tony, the driver, waddles over in a hurry and shoves the other man away from me, hard. “No you fuckin’ ain’t, Mike.No oneis fuckin’ her. She’s the C-O’s daughter and Jerry’s wife.”
“Aww, fuck, man. Ol’ Bud don’t give two shits about her. He married her off to Jerry like it was nothin’, and I wouldn’t let that man nearanyoneI gave half a shit about. I’m tellin’ ya, no one will care.”
