Page 23 of Born for Silk

“Aster…” A female voice finds me as I stare at them. I turn to see the Wardeness and Iris beside me on the floor. Shadows move across their faces, but both are awake and waiting. Scared.

“The Guards?” I mutter.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” Wardeness warns the men, her voice a tremoring mess. “These girls are the property of The Cradle, and I am their?—”

“Shut up, woman!” the biggest one, with a bald head and square jaw, snarls before reaching for her and pulling her to her feet. She stumbles as he leans in, “You’ll keep for weeks with all that blubber.” Her eyes lock in on mine. She doesn’t speak, but the terror she feels screams from her gaze. “Take the fat one to the basement.”

While three Endigo keep watch, two drag our Wardeness into a hallway, and I slide my hand along the floor, looking for a piece of glass or debris.

My stomach churns.

I can smell burning flesh and hair. The air is electrified. I find myself inhaling a putrid smell and nearly gag as the body of air seems to roll down my throat.

“That’s something aint it?” the same one says to me, grabbing a hold of my elbow and pulling me to my feet. “The smell of contaminated flesh. See,” he pulls me further into the room, toward a fire in a barrel. “We cut his leg off and cooked it when it was fresh. Nice. Not as sweet as your legs will be.” He licks his lips. “Don’t worry. Usually, we keep the live meat clean, but the water stopped running when the mill went down last week, so we couldn’t.” He pushes me down onto a bloody bed; the cushions are stained, brown and red.

I take in my surrounding through side eyes: old mattresses, sofas, and barrels. So many different barrels, and one is on fire, the light illuminating a ring around us.

Then I see the man—the live meat.

My eyes hollow. My heart rings in my ears like an alarm. He is missing a forearm, sliced off at the elbow, and a shin; the kneecap is an avocado colour and oozes with yellow puss.

I cover my mouth to stop from vomiting.

Should I run?

Scream for help?

“No. No!” I hear a woman scream from somewhere inside the building. I snap my head toward the sound. I don’t need to see anything. I can imagine what they are doing. Like my raptor’s teeth—slicing into flesh, sucking muscles from tiny bones.

Screaming won’t help.

The woman’s guttural cries wind up, building and building until they cut off. Right in the middle. Like her voice box was severed in half, or perhaps she just passed out.

Hunted, killed, raped, eaten.

If you’re lucky, it’ll be in that order.

She wasn’t lucky.

Across from me on another soiled sofa, Iris has her eyes squeezed shut, her hair is dishevelled, and her dress is stained and ripped. I sit upright and still, watchful.

“Can I touch that one?” A younger one bares his teeth, thin like sewing needles, and rubs at the swell between his thighs, staring at Iris. “I like that one.”

“Not now, you fool,” the largest one says.

Iris sways. Her body gives way and flops to the side on the filthy sofa.

“Iris,” I whisper-shout. I won’t be able to carry her out if we get a chance to escape. I need her to run. Fight. Survive. “Iris.” But she’s out cold. His words were too much for her to handle.

As I sit stiff like an obedient doll, my eyes veer around the room to watch the men as they go about their routines. The young one plops down on a stained pink sofa and picks his teeth with a rusty knife, angry eyes never leaving Iris’s unconscious body.

The big one, the leader, moves over to a bench and lifts a barrel onto it; it must weigh a ton. He’s strong.

Can’t overpower him, not even with Iris.

A skinny one lays down on a tatty bed and rests his forearm over his eyes; a large automatic weapon is thread into his belt. The gun could fill us with holes in seconds if we tried to run away from them.

Can’t run.

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