Jack Wilder - The Missionary

Through another room, this one larger, wider, with a higher ceiling. Couches lined three walls, an ancient TV flickering on the fourth wall. Except for the TV, she hadn’t seen any other sign of electricity. A clear plastic liter bottle hung down from a hole in the ceiling, fastened in place, filled with water. Sunlight refracted through the water in the bottle, shedding light into the room.

Wren had assumed it was nighttime, since every room she’d been in was dark or dimly light, but now she realized it was daytime, there were simply no windows to let it natural light.

In the center of the room was a long, low table littered with bottles of alcohol, ashtrays, needles, packets of various kinds of drugs, bongs, pipes, pistols, boxes of condoms, clips for guns. Men sat on the couches, watching a soccer game on the TV. When Wren entered, a dozen pairs of eyes focused on her. All of them went narrow and hooded with lust. Against all reason, she shrank against her captor, who only laughed and pushed her away from him.

“You aren’t for dem,” he said. “Dey can’t afford you.”

One of the men said something, and her captor responded with the same short barking negative. The man who’d spoken adjusted his crotch, and then leaned over the arm of the couch and shouted something through a doorless entryway. He was short, heavyset with beady eyes and skin greasy with sweat, a scar twisting his mouth into a permanent snarl. At his shout, a girl entered the room, a small, petite Asian girl no more than eighteen, with long, tangled hair and bloodshot eyes. She stood by the arm of the couch, head down, waiting. She was clad in a dress, a barely-there thing that left her chest mostly bare and didn’t quite hit mid-thigh. The man spoke again, tugging at the zipper of his jeans. The girl responded immediately, sinking to her knees.

Wren couldn’t look away, although she wanted to. Beside her, the man she’d come to think of as her captor spoke quietly into a cell phone. She didn’t dare move, or speak, so she was left watching the unfolding events on the other side of the room. None of the other men so much as glanced away from the soccer game, although one of them reached for a pipe and flicked a lighter, sucking at the pipe and holding the smoke in his lungs for a long time before blowing it out with a hacking cough.

Wren’s heart lurched as the Asian girl undid the man’s pants and lowered her mouth to his member, bobbing her head and making a faint slurping noise. The man let his head thump back against the couch and fisted his hand in her hair. After a few moments, he began shoving her head down with increasing force, and every time he did, the girl gagged audibly. Wren’s heart lurched, and her stomach twisted. But she couldn’t look away. She closed her eyes, but she could hear the girl gagging, the man shoving her head down, and that was almost worse. She opened her eyes again to see him lift his hips once, gagging the girl, who made an audible gulping noise, twice, and then he released her. She fell back onto her bottom, wiping at her mouth. The man grinned at her, and then, as she struggled to her feet, he slapped her. It was a desultory blow, not meant to really hurt her, and she stumbled, sagging against the doorframe.

Beside her, Wren’s captor uttered a short command without moving the phone from his ear. The other man grumbled, digging in his pocket and tossing a wadded peso bill at the girl. She scooped it up hastily, and then hesitated again, as if awaiting a command. The man who summoned her waved his hand in dismissal, and the girl scurried away. Before she vanished, the girl met Wren’s eyes.

The brief glimmer of sympathy Wren saw in those otherwise dead brown eyes frightened her more than anything else.

Her captor ended the call, stuffing his phone in the back pocket of his shorts. She’d never noticed his attire, before, or really much about him, but she did now. He was young-looking. No more than thirty, and he wore baggy khaki cargo shorts and a skinny black tank-top clinging to his wiry, muscular frame. He had a round face, rotten teeth, cruel, intelligent eyes, a small crescent-shaped scar beneath his right eye. And the green flip-flops. She knew those. She saw those every time he visited her.

He reached behind himself, withdrawing a black pistol, ejected the clip, checked it, and then returned it to the small of his back. He said something in Filipino, and one of the men grabbed a clip from the table and tossed it. Her captor caught it easily and shoved it into one of his pockets.

He glanced at Wren and seemed to see her thoughts. “Good show, huh? Miguel, he’s crazy for blow job. No regular sex, only dat. All da time, blow job, blow job. I don’t get it.” He pinched Wren’s cheek, shaking her face. “Maybe I let him teach you how to give a good one, huh? You gonna have to learn, yeah?”

Wren could only shake her head, couldn’t get the word no out. She backed away, but had nowhere to go. He grabbed her wrist, tugged her away from the wall. “Don’t like dat idea?” He grinned, evil, amused. “You had it easy. Good time to learn sometin’ new.” He shoved Wren toward Miguel, whose lips curled into a gleeful smile as he reached for her.

She stumbled, and scrambled away, tripping backward into the TV, blocking the view of the soccer game. Angry shouts erupted, and Wren moved away from the TV, watching Miguel, who’d stood up, and her nameless captor, who just watched, scratching a chicken-pox scar on his cheek.

Miguel dug his hand into his pants, adjusting himself, and then grinned again. “You come.” He twitched two fingers at Wren, an imperious gesture. “You come now.”

Wren shook her head, sliding along one wall, into the corner farthest from Miguel. She was cornered now, as Miguel stalked toward her, slipping a long folding knife from his pocket and opening it. Terror flooded Wren’s veins as he stopped a foot away from her, running his tongue over his bottom lip. He held the tip of the knife in her general direction, reaching down to his pants with his other hand. He opened the button, the zipper, and then pulled his privates out and held his member in his fist. Wren whimpered, shrinking away, closing her eyes, covering her mouth. Laughter filled the room, amused male guffaws. A fist grabbed her hair, and something sharp and cold pricked her cheek.

A command in Filipino. Then, in English. “Suck,” the last syllable emphasized with a click.

Wren shook her head, the movement cutting her cheek open on the knife point. Eyes clenched tight, she let the sharp pain sear her, expecting death. Still she waited, refusing. She felt the knife dig in, sharper, and then her captor spoke, emphasizing his order with the distinctive sliding-click of a pistol being racked. The knife point withdrew, the hand left her hair, and Wren opened her eyes. The man was gone, sitting back in his place on the couch, touching himself almost idly, despite the room full of other men. He called out, and a girl appeared, a different one, and she seemed to know what was expected of her, because she knelt between his knees immediately.

Her captor grabbed her and pushed her through the doorway beside Miguel. Wren focused on breathing, ignoring the wrenching agony of her rib, wiping the trickle of blood from her face. The room she found herself in was filled with girls, all of them her age or younger. Most were horrifyingly young, twelve to sixteen. Most were naked, some in underwear, others in short sort-of-dresses. They were crowded into bunk beds stacked three high against all four walls, a small gap left for the doorways in opposite corners of the room. Some were on the beds, others sat on the floor or beside other girls. One was reading a book. All looked skinny to the point of starvation, and all of them had tell-tale scars on their arms.