They came to us in a limousine. It was then we knew something was wrong; people around here could barely afford a day's food, let alone a vehicle. After being detained it took me about two minutes to figure out what was going on. This happened a lot to girls like me. Girls whose parents were dead, or weren't in contact with their daughters. Girls no one would miss.
My best friend Lissa had been taken a year ago. Wealthy men would send gatherers out to collect us and then he would take his pick. The girls who weren't chosen met a gunshot to the head. The 'lucky ones' who were chosen became concubines for the man who purchased them and spend the rest of their life in luxury and captivity.
We were shoved inside the car, and after the door closed on us, there was silence. We had been blindfolded, so I couldn't see who else was in here, or how many of us there were. Usually a picking would be fifteen to twenty, but sometimes for men looking for multiple women, there could be up to fifty. All of a sudden, air began to come out of the vents in the back of the limo, and it wasn't long before I blacked out.
I woke up and we were being piled out of the car. Our blindfolds were taken off and I began to take in my surroundings. There appeared to be about thirty girls, I recognized a few who worked with me at the club. I took in the rest of the room, four white walls, and one door heavily guarded. One of the guards saw me looking at him and let out an almost growl-like sound. I took a step back and hit the wall. And then the wall laughed.
I whirled around and saw what I hit was not a wall at all but a man. He looked down at me and gave me a condescending smile that made me shiver with fear. I could tell this was the man who would be deciding whether or not I lived or die. Before he could say anything a guard pulled me away and put me in line with the other girls.
The man whom I had bumped into began to walk down the line and when he reached me I froze. He spent longer appraising me then he had the other girls, and when I thought he was going to continue down the line, he reached towards me and grabbed a piece of my hair, playing with it in his hands. I let out an involuntary whimper; he didn't have the right to touch me.
He let out another dark chuckle and continued down the line. When he reached the end he began to talk to one of the gatherers, who was recognizable by their blue badge. They spoke for a while, then two of the other gatherers standing nearby took two girls whom I didn't know. Then the gatherer began to walk towards me. That was when the gatherer speaking to the man began to get angry though. From what I could pick up from this distance it seemed as though they were arguing over a price. Eventually, the gatherer got his way and that was when the gatherer came up and took me into another car with the two other girls. I looked back at the others, some of them my friends, but they came over to close the door to the car immediately after the man paid the gatherers. Right before they did, I heard the first gunshot.