Page 4 of Maksim

My heart pangs as the man speaks with the finality of a judge slamming a gavel.

“Sold.”

2

ELIRA

Once again, my world is bathed in darkness, only now the rumble of the truck is a distant memory I long for. Music plays so loud wherever we are that I squint, seeing nothing through the black bag my buyer has put over my head.

He cut the bindings around my wrists when he hauled me out of the trunk of his car, so I have one arm wrapped around my stomach while he holds the other, guiding me.

Is this a party?

Where are we?

I almost ask, but I can’t. I don’t think he’d tell me anyway.

Will he be angry when he finds out I lied about not speaking English?

Should I ever tell the truth?

How much will he reveal in front of me if he thinks I won’t understand?

So many questions. Too many. I try to focus on what I do know, on learning the man next to me. He’s … evil. How could he not be?

Do I know anything else?

I think for a moment, my mind spinning, searching for information that may be important. All I can think of is for a guy who can afford to buy women, it’s strange that he can’t afford a good dentist.

My foot hits something, and I gasp.

“Up,” he commands over the music, tugging on my arm.

I cautiously toe the metal thing that I hit, but I have little time to figure out what it is before Chipped-tooth drags me off the floor. My feet seek to ground me and find the metal piece. Finally, it registers that we’re at a staircase.

Communication would really come in handy right now.

His touch made me recoil when he first grabbed me, but now I find myself leaning into him, begging him for guidance.

When my toe collides with metal, I cry out and try to pause, but he doesn’t let me. It isn’t until we reach flat ground a few moments later that I whimper my relief, pulling away from Chipped-tooth to create as much distance as his grasp will allow once again.

He knocks three times on a door we must be standing in front of, but it doesn’t open, and he doesn’t knock again. We stand silently, the music still loud but distant while I count back from forty in my head for the sake of slowing my mind.

Eleven, ten, nine, eight, seven…

“Come in,” a voice calls after what feels like an unusual amount of time.

A knob twists and the door creaks open right before Chipped-tooth shoves me forward, my hands flying in front of me to catch empty space. I manage to right myself, standing hunched with my arms crossed over my chest, itching to remove the bag.

I don’t have to wait long. Chipped-tooth rips it off my head, revealing three men staring at me. Two stand on either side of a desk that the third man sits at, his feet propped on top as he leans back in his chair with a cane balanced on his lap that he seems too young to have.

Do you remember when I said I shouldn’t have made eye contact with those men? That I could see evil?

This man… One nanosecond of eye contact has me lowering my head to the floor, hoping my hair will double as an invisibility cloak.

It takes less time for me to figure out that this is Chipped-tooth’s boss than it did for me to figure out the staircase.

He reeks of malicious authority. This room reeks of it. Now that the bag is off my head, it’s like I can smell it throughout the whole building, along with the stench of the truck that I seemed to have carried with me.

---