The Beasts of Juarez, R.B. Schow [books to read for self improvement .txt] 📗

“Now that we’re through,” Cira asked, “where are we going next?”

“Independence Avenue,” he replied, still short of breath. He wiped beads of sweat from his temples and reminded himself that they made it. “There’s a sewage treatment facility nearby. Degremont Planta Sur.”

“Your underwear will fit right in,” Atlas mumbled.

“Yeah, well, the way you smell,” Cira said to Atlas, “you two can be shit brothers.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

CALLIE FOX

Guillermo woke Callie up to the nightmare that was now her life. She was sleeping on a sweat- and blood-stained mattress in a room with a boarded-up window, a pot meant to pee in, and a blanket that looked as though many different fluids had stained it.

“It’s time to go,” Guillermo said.

“Where am I going?”

“Home I think,” he said.

She started to shake with joy and then he laughed and said, “Ah, I’m just kidding. I think you’re going to Prague.”

When he left, she started to cry.

Later that morning, she was driven to an airfield where she met a rather boisterous man with a large belly, lots of gold rings on his fingers, and a pair of sunglasses too gaudy and encrusted with diamonds to be worth anything less than a small fortune. She hated him already.

She boarded the plane, then quickly ran to the bathroom and threw up. The tears that started came on fast and they wouldn’t stop. She continued to retch and puke, her stomach purging itself until there was nothing left but hot, bile-smelling air.

There was a slight knock on the door.

“Almost done,” she said, wiping her eyes, although it was no use. Now, to add to the misery, her mouth tasted sour and acidic.

“Let me know if you need anything,” the man said from the other side of the door.

“Okay, thank you.”

She finished in the bathroom when the jet started to move. With no choice but to get to a seat, she emerged from the bathroom and sat down as far from this man as she could.

The jet taxied down the runway, swung right, then came to a stop and waited. She had been on commercial airliners before but never a jet as nice as this one. When it was their turn to go, the jet entered the runway then put on a burst of speed. She felt her fingers grip the end of the armrest while the rest of her body clenched tight for the takeoff.

The engines were powerful and loud, and before she knew it, the wings caught the air and the jet pushed hard into the sky, the nose tilting north for a short time. When they reached cruising altitude, this creature who had procured her unfastened his seatbelt, walked down the aisle, and sat beside her.

“My name is Mohammad Jawahir and you are the girl I bought,” he said in a thick accent, with a passable command of the English language.

“I wasn’t aware I was for sale,” she said, biting back more tears.

“You women are not aware of a lot of things. That is why, in my country, you do as you are told under penalty of death.”

“Well, I’m not from your country and we don’t have those rules in America.”

“You are not from any country right now,” Mohammad said with a sick grin. “Now that we are alone and heading to Prague, you may lie down and relax before the excitement begins. I have a room I think you will like.”

She wasn’t sure what he meant when he said she had a room in which she could relax. Was she going to be in the room alone? Or would he try to join her? The way he said they were “now alone” not only scared her, it flat out terrified her.

“What kind of excitement do you have planned for us?” she asked, wiping at the pools gathering in her eyes. She didn’t want her tears to spill over and make her look weak, especially now that he confessed to having such a low opinion of women.

“I will show you the room first,” he said. “Stand up, walk to the back. The closed-door on the right is where you will lie down and relax.”

She got up, walked back then opened the door to a room that was not much bigger than the bed it held. Mounted around the room were four small video cameras, like Go-Pro cameras, and various sex toys on display. She started to back out.

“No,” she said, panicking.

“Yes,” he replied, pushing his belly into her.

She tried to turn, but a meaty hand pushed her inside the room. Filled with fear, she knew she was stuck on the plane with him, but if there was one place she could not go, it was in that room.

She fell forward on the bed, which allowed the creep a chance to grab her ass. But the second he tried, she drove her heel straight up into his balls. He folded forward and let out a groan. She pushed herself up, cracked him under the chin with the point of her elbow, and scrambled for a way out of there.

The guttural cursing started instantly, and though she bought herself a little breathing room, the man filled the entire doorway and he wasn’t budging.

She spun in the tight space between them and then she kneed him in the nuts, this time from a different angle. He still wouldn’t move so she raked her nails down his face until he palmed her head and shoved her sideways into the wall.

The impact slowed everything down and she found herself stuck in some sort of disoriented haze. Was she going to survive this? Fighting for her life, her virginity, and her virtue, she went after him with everything she had, and though she’d drawn first blood, it was not enough to slow him down and certainly not enough