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

to stop him. She was but a tiny mouse standing before a lion.

Standing there gasping for air, her head aching from where she’d hit the wall, this demented wildebeest simply looked at her, all of his good-natured boisterousness gone.

Before she knew what happened, he pulled something out of his jacket then jammed it into her side. The electrical charge that hit her ribs had her muscles grabbing the bones hard, her guts practically sucked together and overheating. She fell over on the bed, stiff and scorched inside.

And then she was out cold.

When Callie felt herself coming around, she tried to move but found a sharp pain in her wrists. Blinking her eyes, her body heavy and hurting, she shook off the effects of having been hit with a stun gun. That’s when she found her arms and legs were bound together with heavy plastic cuffs, the kind cops sometimes used in the movies.

The man was on the phone. She turned her head to look at him. He was sitting in his white underwear, his big body brown and carpeted with hair. The phone’s volume was up loud enough to hear the other person talking to him in English. It sounded like a woman.

“The bidding will start at twenty-five thousand,” he was saying. “This is one day only where everyone wins.” He paused then said, “Yes, it is the same as last time. The highest bidder gets her first, the second gets her second, and so on. The only rules are that you cannot beat her face, and you cannot kill her.” Another pause, then, “Yes, I know that twenty-five thousand is a lot of money, that’s why you will announce that this is a US congressman’s daughter.” A further, short pause and then he said, “Yes, of course. Yes, she is white.”

The horror of the situation set in with such ferocity, the tears practically sprang to her eyes, spilling over her cheeks and down the side of her face. He didn’t know she was awake so he continued to speak plainly.

“Yes, she is a virgin, but don’t put that. I am about to change that. She will be in pristine shape though, so make sure you let the bidders know.” Another short pause, then, “Yes, I’m going to take pictures now.”

He opened up his laptop, logged onto a website, then entered a passcode and said, “I will upload the pictures in just a few minutes. Let them know that this one is a fighter.”

He turned and saw that she was awake. “Oh, hello,” he said, “how was your nap?”

“That was hardly a nap. Why are you doing this to me?”

“She is awake,” he said to the woman on the phone. “I’ll get those pictures to you soon.”

“Why is anything done to anyone?” he asked, the sing-song tone back in his voice. He took his cell phone off the dresser, activated the camera, and then began taking pictures of her. When he was done, he said, “Wow, there are some good ones here.”

“You disgusting pig,” she said.

He laughed as he uploaded the photos to the internet. “Do you know how many names I have been called? Hundreds, thousands. As a kid, I was the product of a tremendous amount of abuse, but that only made me strong. It only fortified my resolve.”

“You still turn my stomach.”

“This I know,” he said with a smile. “But do you know something?”

She turned away. He grabbed her face, jerked it back around to face him, and then put a smile back on his face.

“I know that you will be with me and there is nothing you can do about it,” he said, almost like she had no choice in the matter. “The only question you have to ask yourself is if you want it the hard way or the easy way.”

He said this with a chuckle, almost like being cute would excuse him from raping her and selling her off to other men who would pay to do the same.

“The easy way,” she said.

“Suit yourself.”

And with that, he hit her with another burst of the stun gun. When she woke, it was under immense physical pressure, but the stun gun jolted her back to sleep. This happened several times until when at last she came around, the weight was not there. Instead, there was a new pain, the hot, fuzzy discomfort of having her body fried over and over again, and the sharp sting of burned flesh where the stun gun had seared her skin.

Her eyes fluttered open and she didn’t feel well. Her head was full of electrified cotton, her hips and pelvic bone ached, and she felt sticky below, like when she’d had her period.

Looking over at him, almost like she was stuck in the loftiness of a dream, she saw him sitting naked on the bed. He was looking at the laptop again.

He turned and saw her, and then he smiled. “Judging by the way the bids are coming in, it looks like you’re going to have a very bad day tomorrow.”

“Your name is Mohammad,” she said, her own voice sounding so far away. “Are you…a Saudi?”

“Persian,” he replied. “My father hates your government, as does most of the Iranian government. I don’t hate the government, though. They do business with us, business like this. Do you know how they butcher a cow?”

She nodded, her soul feeling out of alignment with her body, her limbs agitated and uncooperative.

“They sell as much of the cow as they can, hoping to maximize profits,” he said. “When we get girls like you, we do the same thing. We maximize profits.”

“How much can you really get selling me to a bunch of fat pricks like you?” she asked,