Page 4 of Loki
Before I could ask any more questions, a light brightened the room, and with each heavy footstep echoing on the unforgiving concrete floor, the whimpers and sobs grew louder and more desperate. Suddenly, a small hand clasped mine, making me jump in surprise. I locked gazes with wide doe eyes brimming with bone-chilling fear.
From the look of her innocent eyes and youthful dark brown skin, she couldn’t be any older than fifteen, maybe sixteen. Her hair, a dark cascade of tight coils that fell just beyond her shoulders, was tangled and caked with dirt. Her thinness was so extreme her bones jutted out from her dark brown, bruised, and dirt-covered skin. The filthy white satin nightgown she wore done little to cover up all the damage done to her body.
As her terrified gaze shifted away from me, her broken nails dug into my arm. Her focus drawn to the enormous man standing at the cage, his smile sending chills down my spine. While inserting the key into the lock, his gaze remained fixed on the ten to fifteen women huddled against the wall of the cage. There was no mistaken the lust and sinister intent clouding them. Like he was deciding which one to take.
Sick bastard.
As he stood there, the room seemed to constrict, the weight of the women’s fear saturating every corner. Their cries and whimpers consumed all the oxygen in the room, leaving it stifling and hard to breathe.
With a twist of the key, he unlocked the door and swung it open, taking a confident step into the room, the sound of his heavy boots thundering in the small space.
Like the other women, the young girl let go of my hand and moved towards the cage wall, her back pressed against the cool metal bars as she tried to get as far away from the man as possible. However, fear had me frozen in place, not just for my own safety but for every woman in here.
What the fuck is this place?
He moved towards the opposite cage wall, grabbed a woman by her matted hair who tried her best to hide among the other women, and forcefully lifted her from the ground. No matter how hard she kicked and screamed, her attempts to push him away done nothing to cause him to loosen his grip. However, a sudden punch to her stomach left her breathless, forcing her to stop resisting as he pulled her towards the cage door.
The echoes of her anguished screams and the trails of tears streaming down her face were heart wrenching and fucking angering. I couldn’t stand by and watch this happen. If I did, what did that say about me? She could be any of us in this room. She could be me. Despite my fear of what might happen to me if I tried to interfere, I had to stop this.
I didn’t have time to think about it because if I did, I wouldn’t go through with it, so I needed to act before I thought better of it.
I jerked to my feet, rushed him, then jumped on his back. The other women’s piercing screams resonated around me, but I blocked them out and focused on getting him away from the woman anyway I could.
Raking my nails across his face, I tried my best to gouge his eyes out.
“Bitch!” he shouted, but he did exactly what I wanted. He let go of the woman’s hair, causing her to fall to the floor. “I’m going to fucking kill you.”
With my best efforts to fight him off, the woman retreated to the back of the cage, out of his reach.
He grabbed me by my hair, and without any effort, flipped me over his head, slamming me onto the unforgiving concrete floor. As the air left my lungs, a searing pain gradually spread throughout my entire body, like it had waited patiently to take hold of me. I didn’t have a moment to think about how much my body hurt as unbearable pain shot through me when he delivered a forceful kick to my side.
My screams, as well as the other women, were only drowned out by another man shouting and his heavy footsteps sounding in the tight space. Curled into the fetal position, my own labored breathing reverberated in my ears, each exhale a painful reminder I was in danger. That I was in a fight for my life.
“You can’t damage the goods!” the newcomer shouted causing the man to stop kicking me.
“Get up,” he sneered, his words dripping with venom, as I was yanked from the floor, feeling an intense pain shoot through my scalp. “You’re looking for trouble, bitch, and you’ve found it. I’ll teach you a lesson on how we handle troublemakers around here.”
Despite my best efforts to free myself, I couldn’t escape the man’s grip while the woman I tried to save fought the first man who came into the cage again.
“Be fucking still!” the man who kicked me screamed.
He struck me in the stomach, forcing the air out of my lungs, causing me to collapse to the floor. Then, he grabbed my hair and dragged me out of the room where the cage was located.
At first, I suspected they were holding us in some sort of basement, but it appeared to be just a room transformed into a prison.
The man dragged me along a narrow hallway, following the crying woman and the other man. At the end of the hallway, it opened into a much larger room where men sat around laughing, drinking, playing cards and pool like it was a normalday and they weren’t holding at least twenty women against their will, including me.
Women with the same white satin nightgown as mine drifted around the room, their movements sluggish and their gazes vacant. They were high out of their minds or had disassociated themselves from what was happening to them.
After releasing my hair, with force, the man pushed me forward, causing me to stumble and land on ghastly green shag carpet that looked like it belonged in a 70s sitcom. The second man dragged the woman towards the men who were gathered around the card table.
“This one wanted to fight,” the man said, his eyes narrowing as he motioned towards me. “She needs to be taught a lesson.”
When the man he spoke to caught my attention as he sat in an armchair, his eyes glued to the screen of his phone, my eyes widened. Unlike the other men, Dylan had a distinct look that set him apart. His black suit was impeccably pressed, his dress shoes were polished so much the dull light in the room reflected off them, and not a single strand of hair was out of place. He looked like he didn’t belong here because he was surrounded by men in t-shirts and jeans that looked like they had been wearing them for days. He also looked very different from the man I had spent time with.
Dylan’s eyes tore away from his phone, fixating on me with an intense stare. He definitely wasn’t the man I knew.
“Did you lay a hand on her?” he interrogated the man who had shoved me to the ground, his unwavering gaze remaining fixed on me.
