Jamie Freveletti - Running from the Devil

“I’m from the U.S. I need to talk to the police,” Emma said.

The woman said nothing.

Emma’s Spanish was nonexistent. When she’d moved to Miami, she had intended to take a language course, but somehow life had gotten in the way and she never found the time for it. Now she wished she had.

“Do you have any food?” She mimed eating.

The woman nodded and waved Emma toward her. She turned and headed into the jungle, following a small footpath no wider than her shoulders.

Emma followed the woman for half an hour, before she came upon a small village. Several children, also in homespun clothes, ran around in circles, barefoot in the dirt. Six huts, all in a semicircle, formed a small encampment. A fire burned merrily in the center. It was all Emma could do not to run to it and drop before it. Despite the heat of the jungle, she felt chilled to the bone. The woman watched her, a curious look on her face. Two children ran up to her, one about six and the other four. The woman seemed too young to have children that age or that many. She might have been twenty years old. The camp was devoid of men or any other women.

“Are the men out planting?” Emma said. She pretended to rake the soil.

The woman nodded.

The children stopped playing and surrounded Emma.

“Candee! Candee!” they said. They held out their hands.

Emma laughed. “The universal child’s word, eh?”

She plunged a hand in the pockets of her cargo pants. Luis and his men had taken her wallet, passport, and cell phone. They’d left the lipstick testers, two packets of gum, and a roll of mints.

She gave the mints to the kids.

They shrieked in happiness and ran off.

The woman didn’t smile.

Such sadness, Emma thought.

“Do you have any food I can eat?” She crossed her fingers. She was once again starving.

The woman nodded. She disappeared into a hut, then reappeared with what looked like some type of meat and rice. Emma sat cross-legged before the fire and tasted the meat.

“Pollo?” she said to the woman.

The woman nodded, with just a hint of a smile at Emma’s attempt at Spanish.

Emma wolfed the food. The woman watched her with consternation. When Emma was done, the woman took the plate and scrubbed it clean with some sand from a wooden tub.

She returned to stand before Emma. The children came back, too, jostling one another as they gathered around the woman.

“Gracias,” Emma said. “I know food must be scarce and you shared yours with me.”

The woman nodded, but it was clear she understood only the one word Emma said in Spanish.

Emma wished there was a way she could properly thank the young woman.

“Wait. I have something I know you’ll like.” She reached into her cargo pants pocket and pulled out one of the lipstick tubes.

The woman’s gaze locked on the tube.

Emma held it before her. “Lipstick. From one of the best cosmetic companies in the world.” She swiveled the tube and the red color emerged.

The woman sucked in her breath. Her eyes widened.

“I developed the red. Do you like it?”

The woman just stared at the lipstick.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Emma said.

Emma handed it to the woman. “It’s yours. Try it. You will be one of the first women in the whole world to wear the color. I designed it to last all day, and it won’t dry out your lips.”

The woman looked at Emma in awe. She seemed almost afraid to touch the tube.

“Here.” Emma moved the tube closer to the woman. “It’s yours. Gracias por pollo.” She knew she’d murdered the sentence in Spanish, but the words did the trick. The woman reached and took the tube from her.

She ran over to a bucket that held some water. She stared into it, using the water as a mirror. She applied the lipstick and turned to Emma.

“Oooh,” the children said in unison.

Emma sucked in her breath. The color looked perfect. It complemented the woman’s coloring and made her appear more youthful, even happier somehow.

“You make my color look beautiful. Gracias.” Emma whispered the words.

The woman broke into a shy smile. “Gracias,” she said.

Emma nodded. “I must go now. I don’t want to be here when the men return.”

The woman looked somber again. She waved Emma to the door of a nearby hut. Emma had noticed the hut when she first entered the camp, mostly due to its difference from the others. It was set off from the main circle of buildings. There were no windows, and instead of a cloth covering an opening, this hut had a real wooden door, bolted into the frame, with a bar that hung across it.

As Emma walked over to the hut, she noticed that the children all had fallen silent. Their eyes were huge in their heads, and for the first time Emma felt they were looking at her in fear. Emma didn’t want to open the door. Yet she felt compelled to see what was inside. She lifted the wooden bar. The door swung outward. It creaked on rusty hinges. The noise was loud and grating in the quiet clearing.

The inside was so dark that it took Emma a minute to adjust to what she was seeing. Only tiny shafts of light glowed through the occasional crack in the boards. The floor was dirt. Larger stones ringed the sides. The center of the floor contained a deep hole, so deep that she couldn’t see into it.

Emma glanced back at the young woman. The woman wasn’t looking at her, she was staring at the hole. Emma didn’t think it was possible for the woman to look any sadder than when she had first met her, but she did. Her eyes were dark pools of despair.

Emma took two steps into the hut and stared into the hole.

It was nearly ten feet deep and three feet wide. At the very bottom was a person. It looked to be a woman. Long hair tangled around her body. Her arms were like sticks. Her bones were clearly visible under skin so thin it seemed translucent. Heavy leg irons were wrapped around her ankles. She was lying on her side with her knees drawn to her chest in a fetal position. Her eyes were closed.

“Oh God, no,” Emma said.

The prisoner opened her eyes and looked at Emma.

Emma felt her head swim. Tears came so quickly that it left her feeling light-headed. She took a deep breath and forced herself to calm.

“Can you speak English?” she said.

“I can.” The woman’s voice was reed thin and soft. She spoke English with only a slight French accent.

“How long have you been here?” Emma said.

“I think two years.”

Emma knelt at the side of the hole. “Can you walk?”

The woman nodded. “They lower a ladder every day and I walk to the jungle to go to the bathroom.”

Emma looked around. She saw the ladder lying on the far side of the hut.

“I’ll get it,” she said.

Emma shouldered the ladder, swaying with the ungainly size of it. She felt it steady. She looked up to see the young woman holding the far end. Now she looked more determined than sad.

They lowered the ladder into the hole. The woman below crawled up it with surprising agility. The leg irons clanked against the wooden slats. Emma grabbed her hand and helped her climb the last four steps. They stepped out into the sunlight.

The woman was tall, taller than Emma’s five foot eight. Her clothes hung on her frame and her face was hollowed out. Her hair was matted and her fingernails caked with dirt. She stared around her, blinking in the sunlight.

“What is your name?” Emma said.

The prisoner turned her head slowly at Emma’s question. She stared at Emma, but it appeared as though she was trying to remember her name. She took a deep breath that she exhaled on a sigh.

“The sun is beautiful,” she said.

Emma nodded.

“And the air is warm. So nice. There were times that I thought I would never be dry again.”