Escape
Among the circles she grew up in everyone had an escape plan. For some it was marriage. For some it was working up from the low-paying laborer positions into something substantial. For some, as had once been true of her, it was university. And for some, there was the travel option. Leave Ukraine altogether. Start over in some other European country where things really happen and there's supposedly more of a chance to make a decent living. Travel was often correlated with some degree of fantasy. It was commonly discussed but seldom done.
When her mother got ill at the same time that she found out her test scores didn't meet the bar to also cover living expenses at university, her new plan was drawn up for her. She was the oldest daughter, after all, and her father had outright demanded that she keep the house together for her two younger brothers and younger sister.
She worked awful grueling hours at jobs she hated and hoped that her father would bring home something at the end of the week from his factory job instead of spending his paycheck on alcohol. Her mother was unhelpful and ungrateful, telling her that her father needed to be allowed his indulgence because his job was so hard. This was his escape. Sometimes her mother would propose that she should go attract a rich man who could help support all of them.
Her attempt to break the cycle of poverty had been stalled.
But she still had hope.
She would find a new plan.
When the news that an American modeling company was scouting girls in Irpin had reached her ears, she was more skeptical than excited. Every friend who approached her with the news was more than ready to put themselves out there, but nothing about the situation sat right with her.
"Why are they here and not Kiev? Has anyone heard of this company?" she would ask, and no one could give her a clear answer.
Despite insistence, she did not go to the casting call.
In the end two girls had been chosen, both barely teenagers, and they left with dreamy eyes.
One month later, the first of the two returned home dejected and unwilling to talk much about the experience. Three months later, the second girl returned, fiercely in debt and with only a few pictures in a Korean fashion magazine to show for her career.
From that moment on, anytime someone told her she was pretty enough to be a model and why didn't she consider trying to do that, she winced and thought of those poor girls.
"Hungry enough to be a model, perhaps," she would comment dryly, wrapping her hands around her small waist.
The lack of humor in the comment made people uncomfortable and was usually pretty effective at deflecting unwanted suitors who were often the ones giving her the dubious compliment.
She was not a foolish girl. Modeling was not a real plan.
The cautionary tale of the American modeling company did not stop many of the poor girls in town from thinking there was fame to be had in the west. Every once in a while someone would actually leave but it was usually just talk.
"You could go to Paris or London. New York if you can afford to travel that far. Become a singer or an actress. I swear I heard of a girl who . . ."
"I think those cities probably have enough singers and actresses without needing to import," she would interrupt before she got too swept up in the idea. History was her favorite subject in school and seeing the world had always appealed far too much to her, but her family would be livid if she abandoned them.
And even if she did decide that travel would factor into her escape plan, her singing was only good enough for Irpin and she had never acted in her life.
Yelena Stanislavivna, a woman in her building who was something of an acquaintance, told her that traveling was not as impossible as it may seem. She had a cousin who had connections in London and he gave her a name and address of one of his business partners in case she ever wanted to start over there. Those connections would help her find a job where she could make more money than she could in Irpin and then she could send a portion of it home to her relatives.
She had heard rumors about Yelena's cousin. Heard that he went off to Moscow to make his own way and then disappeared for a few years. When he reemerged from isolation, he had acquired some new tattoos and was spending money in a way that implied he was doing well for himself.
But those were just rumors.
But she still didn't entirely trust the situation.
Yelena showed her the name and address anyway. She memorized them and couldn't really say why she did.
London had burrowed its way into her mind, probably because it didn't seem too far and she knew a little English although she did not understand it as well as she understood Russian. She found time to brush up on her language skills and spent a lot of time trying to find books on London so she could look at pictures of the city and study the convoluted map of the London Underground. After an hour or two, she would walk away from her projects in disgust with herself. She didn't even have an idea of what she would do when she got there. She was as irrational as the girls who fantasized about becoming singers.
She met up with Petro, a friend from school who had returned home from university in Kiev where he was studying aerospace engineering. In another version of her life she could see herself marrying him one day and living happily and comfortably. She knew that he had some level of romantic affection for her, but she never broached the subject of dating. She was too independent to settle any time soon, too busy working to date, and she also believed somewhat that it would be cruel to tie him to a poor girl from his hometown when he could do so much better.
He asked her how she was doing, sympathy in his green eyes as he glanced down at the grave set of her mouth.
"I'm finally starting to understand why my father drinks so much. I'm not sure if my manner of coping is less harmful though," she said vaguely.
From her purse, she produced a beat up magazine of pictures taken around the world.
"You really could leave, you know," Petro said. "Some of my classmates get jobs in other countries over vacation. You could get a job doing something simple, like waitressing, and your standard pay would be so much more than it would be here and you'd get tips on top of that, big tips from American tourists who don't know any better. In one of the capitals, you might even make some influential friends."
She thought about it for a minute. This was easily the most appealing and realistic travel plan she had heard.
"Where would you go?" he asked, taking one of her callused hands in his smooth ones.
"London."
She started saving up whatever she could. She took on more shifts, found new hiding places for her money. She needed enough for the plane ticket and a small surplus in order to get her started while she looked for a job and a place to live. Her plan was one of steadfast determination: getting off the plane, heading for London already dressed for an interview, and not quitting until she had found somewhere to rest her head, realistically a bed in a cheap hostel, and at least three potential jobs lined up. She was going to try for waitressing jobs in the nicest restaurants she could find. Places like that were where she could meet important people and they probably paid more.
She felt good about her plan but unsure if anyone else would.
The night before her flight, she left a note for her family with a promise to write as soon as she arrived. She hoped they wouldn't be too upset with her.
The flight was over three hours and early in the morning but she was too anxious to sleep, constantly fiddling with her hair and smoothing down imaginary wrinkles in her skirt.
She followed the crowds in London Gatwick to the lobby near a set of doors to the outside and then looked around for a sign that would show her to the Underground. Finding none, she approached a man at a desk and asked in slow, careful English how to get to the Tube. The man's speech was heavy, rounded, unlike the crisp BBC sounds she had studied and she couldn't make out the specifics of his instructions. He spoke quickly, gesturing to a sign that said, "Taxi" and it became clear to her that the Tube did not connect to the airport.
She followed the taxi sign out the doors and approached one of the black cars. The driver nodded to her and she entered the back, a thrill going down her spine at the newness of the experience.
"Where to?" the driver asked.
She paled, realizing she didn't have an address or anything specific in mind. When her plan had been to ride the Tube, she was going to go to one of the stops that sounded familiar on whatever line connected to the airport. Now, with the freedom to pick anywhere, she was stuck.
She thought about just naming something famous in London that she could go to as a starting point: Big Ben, Trafalgar Square, Buckingham Palace, Piccadilly Circus, the Tower of London, anything. But her mind was blank. She was not ready to be here.
"How much to center of London?" she asked, partially to stall and partially because it seemed like something she should ask.
"£40 for anywhere in London proper."
That was far more than she had planned on paying for transport from the airport and a notable portion of the money she had on her. For a second she thought about getting out of the taxi. But then what? She would have come this far for nothing.
Suddenly she remembered the address the women in her building had shown her.
"34 Fortescue Street, please."
It wasn't the best plan, she knew it wasn't the best plan, but at least it would lead her to someone she could talk to about her situation.
She wasn't sure what she was expecting but the building the driver pointed to was most definitely not it.
"This?" she asked, pointing to the huge, white brick building. It looked out of place among the plain brown structures around it, with its beautiful windows, the lower level of which had ornately designed wooden covers that looked expensive to create. Overall, it looked like it had fallen into the city from another place. Venice, perhaps.
"That's it," the driver confirmed.
She fumbled in the pocket of her coat for some wrinkled notes and handed them to the driver before exiting the car, suitcase rolling behind her.
The building was intimidating and she started to rethink her plan. This didn't seem like somewhere that would be willing to help a lost immigrant looking for work. She looked up and down the street at the other, less daunting buildings and wondered if she should just start walking and hope she found someone who she could talk to on the street.
Before leaving, she curiously approached the front step of the building to read the golden sign placed on the right of the enormous door. The cursive script was difficult to make out at first but after a minute she was able to read, "Trans-Siberian Restaurant."
She couldn't believe her luck, all thoughts of leaving flying away. Originally she thought she would just say she wanted to speak to Sergei, since she could no longer remember the rest of the name, and ask him where the best restaurants are located that might be looking for help, but this could be an actual job opportunity. The place certainly looked upscale enough to be well-paying and a restaurant specializing in Russian cuisine would have some comfortable level of familiarity. She started to smooth down her hair and clothes in preparation of ringing the bell.
Everything was falling into place. Hopefully, they were hiring.
She rung the bell and a nondescript older man answered.
"Hello. Yes?" he said smiling. He had a Russian accent.
"Hello. Is Sergei here? I heard he has jobs."
The man raised his eyebrows and looked her up and down.
"Come in," he said, switching to Russian.
She followed the man into the restaurant and her eyes took in the décor. The restaurant inside was as beautiful as the outside with red chairs at tables and half-circle booths along the perimeter and more carved wood of different hues on the walls. Everywhere there were touches of silver, golden light fixtures, dark green artificial plants, and random homey touches like framed photographs. It was large but welcoming and completely empty at this strange time of the morning in between breakfast and lunch. In a corner of the room, a bus boy was wiping down a table, but he soon disappeared into the backroom.
She smiled as she looked around, sliding into one of the red booths that the man gestured to and leaning her suitcase against the wooden divider.
"I would love to be a waitress here," she said in Russian. "I have mostly done factory work in the past so I could also work in a kitchen but I am best at working with people."
The man grinned at her enthusiasm.
"Are you hungry?" he asked.
"I haven't eaten all day," she admitted.
"I will bring you something," he shouted back as he disappeared into the kitchen.
She continued to look around until he came back out with a bowl of cabbage soup and a glass of red wine on a tray in one hand and a napkin and spoon in the other. He carefully laid out the items in front of her and slid into the booth across from her. She tasted the soup cautiously so as not to burn her tongue.
"Good?"
"Yes. It's delicious," she replied sincerely, taking another spoonful.
"So you said you were told to come here and ask for Sergei?"
"Yes, my neighbor back home, Yelena Stanislavivna," she paused, suddenly realizing she couldn't remember her last name for some odd reason. She quickly took a sip of the wine. "She said that her cousin knew a man called Sergei who was in London and could help someone new to the city find a job."
The man nodded but said nothing, watching her eat. After a few minutes, she noticed he hadn't really told her anything useful and she put her spoon down. She placed her fingers in the corners of her eyes and pressed gently. The soft lighting was giving her a headache.
"Is the restaurant hiring?" she asked finally, the words coming out a bit louder than she intended.
"There are open positions," he said vaguely.
She nodded as if that somehow explained everything and then realized again that he wasn't saying anything unambiguous. He hadn't even told her his name and she had never said hers.
She leaned her head against her hand and closed her eyes. The lighting was driving her mad.
"Is Sergei here?" she asked, knowing in the back of her mind that wasn't the question she meant to ask, but it was what came out of her mouth. Her voice didn't sound right either: too slow and like it was coming from miles away.
That was the last thing she remembered.
When she opened her eyes, the first thing she noticed was that she ached all over. Her vision was only slowly coming into focus as her head pounded and her insides twisted.
The next thing she noticed was that she was completely naked.
She groaned, the details of the narrative all too clear, and she closed her eyes again, hoping she was just having a nightmare.
When she opened her eyes again, she had to face the truth. She wanted to cry, it seemed like crying would be an appropriate response to the situation, but she couldn't muster up any tears. She was more scared than sorry for herself.
She looked around the room she was in, still feeling too weak to move. She was on a circular bed with mismatched sheets. The interior looked like it had been chosen in the 1970s with leaf wallpaper, shiny curtains, and a large spherical lamp over the bed. There was a sink with a mirror over it and some furry pillows to her right and an armoire opposite the bed that had many drawers and was draped with a sheer shawl.
After a few minutes, the affects of the drug wore off enough that she was able to stand up, but this caused the pain between her thighs to intensify and she had to stand still for a minute to wait it out. She noticed she was still wearing her metal bracelets and hoop earrings and assumed that was probably because they were valueless. She looked around for her suitcase or her clothes and was unsurprised to see that they were not in the room.
With heavy steps she made her way across the room to the armoire and opened it up. Some of her clothes were in it: underwear, sleeveless tops, pairs of shorts she would wear to bed, the two shortest skirts she brought in the hopes that she might one day make some friends in London and could dress up for a club or something. All her makeup and some of her costume jewelry had also been haphazardly tossed in. In the second drawer she found a bunch of miscellaneous items that probably belonged to someone else: a sequin headband, pink fishnet tights, thigh high socks, a black lace crop jacket, a bottle of purple nail polish, a large bottle of shampoo, a pair of strappy high heels, and a few other things she didn't care to categorize. None of it was hers and the other drawers were empty. Her jacket, her jeans, her dresses, even her shoes were gone.
She got dressed in three tank tops, two pairs of shorts, a skirt, and the thigh high socks. It was the warmest attire she could manage under the circumstances. She thought about putting on the strappy shoes but decided that they would only slow her down. The socks weren't very thick and they had holes in both the toes, but they would protect her feet until she found real shoes. Then she made for the windows only to find that they were completely sealed and covered with trash bags so no one could see in or out. She glanced over her shoulder to see if anything in the room could be used to smash the window but the lamps were all made of thin metal or glass that would have no effect.
She walked over to the only door in the room and slowly turned the handle.
It was locked.
She was trapped.
She didn't know how long she was stuck in the room before the door finally opened. In the minutes since she had tested the door, she had methodically gone over the entire room, looking for anything that could help her or give her some clue to where she was. She found nothing except that the carpet was coming up in one corner of the room and the sheets were covered in stains.
She had just taken a seat on the edge of the bed in defeat when she heard the door unlock.
A man entered the room, a different man from the one in the restaurant but probably close to him in age. He locked the door behind him.
Without a word, he slapped her across the face and shoved her into the mattress.
When he left, she heard the door unlock but did not hear him lock it again.
She finally cried and didn't even try to leave the room.
A little while later, a third man opened her door and placed a plastic cup of water and a plate that had what looked like the remains of a meat and potato dinner on it onto her floor and swiftly left.
She didn't touch them.
It didn't take long to learn the rules.
The next day the man who had delivered her dinner forced her out of her room and into a common area with some seating, a bar, and a stripper pole where a bunch of other girls were all lounging around. Girls was the accurate word for most of them but it was hard to tell their ages as most of them seemed to be young but bore marks of premature age in their frown lines and weathered complexions. She had asked them all what their names were and had wanted to ask where they were from, how old they were, how they ended up here, but they were all so dazed it felt like speaking to children. Conversation among them was actively discouraged although she couldn't imagine that any of the girls would have the strength to formulate an escape plan anyway.
Most of the day was spent in this room with men coming in and out. There were no clocks in the house but not long after she had been imprisoned there, when she still felt motivated to grasp something tangible, she would sneak looks at the men's watches and determined that "night time" in this place seemed to exist from 3AM to 11AM but they would often be woken up at random times when a man arrived. The coverings over the windows ensured that no one was quite sure when days began and ended and many girls would just sleep whenever and where ever.
She seemed to get two meals a day, never served at the same time. At first she was afraid to eat them after what had happened in the restaurant. The man who served them, the man who ran the place she came to understand, had one time laughed at her and said that she didn't even need to get doped because she was deliberately choosing to make herself weak from hunger. After a few days of this, they force fed her, probably out of fear that she was trying to kill herself, and gave her a shot of heroin on top of it. She ate her meals after that and kept her head down in hopes that they wouldn't give her drugs again. Some of the girls were addicted and just let it happen. She knew the man was shooting for dependency and compliancy but she hoped if she was compliant enough that she would be forgotten.
Sometimes she was.
She still had clear thoughts of her family in those early days and wondered if they would forget her too.
She never did get to write.
The men who came usually had the tattoos that Yelena's cousin was said to have and they weren't exactly quiet about their illegal businesses. To the men, they were bodies or farm animals and nothing they said in front of them mattered. The house was often called "the stables."
She wondered if they came here to find an escape.
She never saw any money except on the times when the owner would be in the common room after a man was finished. The man would pass him the bills and they would shake hands amiably. With so little to think about she wondered how they were sold. Did they pay a flat rate for time? Did some girls cost more? Did certain acts have certain prices?
When men were in the room there was an expectation of performance. Not performing some kind of pleasant demeanor sometimes meant a beating. She was usually able to just sit in an easily seen location and disassociate without any trouble from the owner unless he decided that it had been too long since she last worked and she would be punished.
She was not an actress but some of them were. Maybe that was how they came to be in this city in the first place. The girls who put forth effort were always younger and had hopes that one of the men might take a particular liking to them and take them away from the house or buy them presents that might make life seem a bit more meaningful. Or they were too high to care and just searching for any entertainment. They would drink or dance or try to chat with the men and she would just sit and stare, her mind full of disjointed thoughts about the past and present. There was no future.
In spite of her idleness, she still got picked and she learned the only real advantage to being picked was that if it was late enough in the night you usually were not expected to return to the common room unless there was an influx of men. This was good for her because whenever a man was finished with her, all she could think about were thoughts of home and how she thought so much about leaving her family's poverty cycle only to end up in a worse cycle. The grief could make her immobile for hours.
She couldn't fathom why anyone would pick her. She had once been pretty she knew but many of the girls were. She wouldn't drink anything, faking a sip if she had to but mostly just avoiding it entirely. She wouldn't dance and had never touched the stripper pole. She didn't chat with the men; she hardly ever chatted with the girls. She wasn't the youngest girl or the oldest or the thinnest or the largest. She thought maybe she got picked for her blonde hair. There were two other blonde girls but they were both older than her and more worn looking.
If there was something that made her superlative, it was that she was the saddest. She was the one without any way of coping except to fade away.
There were a few men whose names were important to learn.
The most important was Semyon. He was clearly in charge of all the other men and when he came, everything became focused on him. He was an older man and often came only once a week. His expectations were high and he would not hesitate to harm a girl for not doing what he wanted, but at least he didn't have any peculiar requests.
When she first saw him, she remembered him and had to fight to keep from crying in his presence. After a few visits, she no longer even thought of what he had done to her but a few tears would still fall automatically.
Second most important was Semyon's son, Kirill. Kirill came more often but he was always with someone else. Also unlike Semyon who seemed to like to make rounds of the girls, Kirill did not often pick a girl at all. Usually he would hang out in the common room, drinking to excess and dancing until he passed out, while whatever friend he brought with him would pick a girl and take her into the other rooms. This was for the better because being picked by Kirill was one of the worst experiences. The girls who had been picked were helpful enough to report that he was often unable to rouse himself and would blame the girl, hitting her repeatedly until he was somehow sated. It was worse the drunker he was.
She had never been picked by Kirill. He preferred girls with dark hair and there was one girl in particular who did a better job of pleasing him than any of the others so she was usually his choice when he bothered to choose at all.
Kirill often came around with a man called Soyka, who he was always clutching around the shoulders. She heard that originally some of the girls had been interested in Soyka because he was fairly handsome and most of the men who came by were not. Some girls thought that being chosen by an attractive man somehow made the experience less terrible but she knew that it didn't matter one way or the other. Handsome or not, none of the men were kind. Even the gentler ones looked down on them like they weren't even human.
And either way, Soyka had fallen out of favor quickly when the girls realized that his tastes were very specific: the younger the better.
One day Kirill came to the house with a new man they had never seen before. He was clearly already drunk as he proudly introduced the room to the man, Nikolai, and then ran off to find a full bottle of vodka.
Nikolai was a bit older than Soyka, with silver hair slicked back from his forehead and cold blue eyes, but he was also fairly handsome. He calmly observed the room and took a seat in an empty chair across from where the girls were sitting. With little delay, one of the girls, the youngest and Soyka's favorite, perched herself on the edge of Nikolai's chair and held out a small bottle of alcohol to him to drink from. She was one of those foolish girls who thought it wasn't as bad with handsome men.
On seeing that Kirill had arrived, his preferred girl had taken to twirling lazily around the stripper pole and he joined her, stealing bites and kisses in between swigs from his giant bottle. His attention wasn't held for long however as he went over to Nikolai, pulling him away from the girl he was kissing and sitting in his lap.
She felt herself slipping away and started to give into the blankness until Kirill smashed his bottle against the stereo and everyone froze. He grabbed the girl sitting next to Nikolai by her face and shoved her away from him and then pulled Nikolai out the chair. They started arguing or, more accurately, Kirill was having a fit and Nikolai was replying calmly. It seemed that Kirill wanted Nikolai to pick a girl and was angry that he was giving any resistance. She had stopped paying too much attention. Arguments were common where Kirill was concerned.
Then she felt it. They were standing in front of her. She raised her eyes to see Kirill grinning and Nikolai eyeing her expressionlessly.
"That one," Nikolai said.
She had thought she would be safe today when Soyka's favorite had sat down next to him.
Why her?
The merciful thing was that it was short. In a way it seemed like he wanted to get it over with as much as she did so he used her like a tool, taking her from behind and moving erratically. It was no surprise why he wanted it done quickly: Kirill had stood in the doorway, watching the whole thing. The small ease she may have felt at not having to look at Nikolai was completely destroyed by having to see Kirill standing there, studying the scene intently.
Every time she thought she had lost the ability to feel anything, that her ability to disconnect was now incorruptible, she would be subjected to a new humiliation.
When Nikolai had finished, he slumped over her and she pressed her face into the mattress, allowing her hair to cover her face and throwing her hand over her head to block out her vision and protect her from any potential blows from Nikolai. He did not hurt her though. He put his hands on her shoulders as he tried to catch his breath over the sound of Kirill's slow clap of approval. She let a few tears fall.
She heard Nikolai tell Kirill to get out and then felt him slap a hand against her hip. It was not painful, under another context it may have been affectionate, and finally he stepped away from her and she allowed herself to fall to the bed.
As always happened in the aftermath, thoughts of home entered her mind but they only came in abstract concepts now: a chair with a torn cushion, russet hair over kind green eyes, a song her mother used to sing. The lyrics slowly took form as words coming from her mouth without much thought behind them. She would absent-mindedly sing a lot under her breath when she was at home, but the songs had all left her when she got here.
"Oy u hayu pri Dunayu
Solovey shchbeche
Vin svoyu vsyu ptashinu
Do hnizdechka klyche"
In a grove by the Danube
The nightingale is singing
He's calling his family
Into the nest
"Okh-t'okh-t'okh i-t'okh-t'okh . . ."
The song faded away from her; the effort to repeat the lyrics was too much.
Her family cannot hear her. At this point, she didn't know if they would even bother to listen.
"What's your last name?"
She hadn't noticed that Nikolai was still in the room.
She didn't respond or even look up. No one had asked her last name in the entire time she had been in London. Only once or twice had a man asked for her first name. She didn't say anything and they forgot about it entirely. They didn't really care who she was. She was just a body to be used.
"Tell me your last name."
She sighed. His voice was soft but he was insistent and she had it beaten into her long ago that she needed to comply. Why he wanted to know her name so much she couldn't imagine.
"Kirilenko," she murmured, her voice small and defeated.
The name didn't even sound like her own anymore.
Valeriya Oleksandrivna Kirilenko.
That was who she was once.
"Where are you from?"
She didn't need him to ask a second time. Remembering her name helped her remember where she was when she was called that.
"Ukraine."
"Which village? Which town?" he asked, switching from Russian to Ukrainian.
"Irpin. Outside Kiev," she answered automatically.
She glanced up at him. Why did he want to know these things? Of what interest was a whore to a man like him?
She looked at him for the first time since he had selected her in the common room. His face was not as hard as it had been before. His hair was falling in front of his face and he still hadn't buttoned up his shirt. On his chest she could see tattoos, most prominently a large cross that spanned the upper portion of his torso. She didn't know what it meant but she knew that prison tattoos were more symbolic than literal.
Nikolai reached into his pocket and pulled out some money. He took a quick look at the door as if to make sure no one was watching him and then placed a small stack of bills in front of her on the bed. She could see multiple £20 notes in her peripheral.
"Stay alive a little longer," he said as he gave her the money.
The thought she had before echoed in her mind: Why me? Why did he pick me? Why does he want to know about me? Why would he do what he did and then say something like that to her?
On top of the stack of bills he placed a prayer card. She looked at his cross tattoo again.
"Understand?" he asked.
She didn't reply and he left.
She lay prone on the bed for a little while longer before reaching for the things Nikolai had left her. She studied the prayer card, the image reminding her of going to church with her family when she was young, and then flipped it over to see the prayer on the back. There wasn't one. Instead it said in Russian, "Need help? You can escape this," with a phone number underneath. She had learned her lesson the last time not to trust mysterious addresses. Phone numbers were just as suspicious.
She ran her fingers through the bills, counting them slowly. He had given her £100. Enough for a taxi ride back to Gatwick but not a flight home, she thought.
She took her treasures and hid them in the corner under the carpet that wasn't nailed down.
Nikolai had left her door open and a few hours later a small figure appeared in her doorway. It was the girl who had been kissing Nikolai earlier.
"Did he hurt you?" the girl asked. "Did he do anything weird?"
It was not uncommon for the girls to share information about new men so that the other girls would be prepared if they came again. She wasn't surprised that this girl in particular had been the one to question her.
She shook her head, answering both questions. He hadn't hurt her more than any of the other men and he hadn't raised a hand against her at all. Although in a way, he had done something weird. He had asked about her, paid her, and told her to stay alive a little longer as if he cared that she did. As if he knew something she didn't. When was "a little longer"?
"Okay," the girl replied, clearly thinking that if he came around again, it would not be a waste to try to pursue him a second time.
Valeriya looked at the girl before her as if she was only just seeing her for the first time.
All the girls here had families once. Hometowns. Maybe even friends or significant others. She had stopped thinking of any of them as people when she stopped thinking of herself as a person.
The girl's name was Kristina. Kirill's preferred girl was Sonya. There was Natasha with her long brown hair, Svetlana and Polina who found amusement in each other, and Yulia who was never without a drink.
Maybe one day they'd remember too.
A little longer was probably only a few days but then, time didn't exist in the house.
The police knocked down the door and some of the girls ran, but Valeriya stayed put on her usual chair. She didn't have anything left to fear.
"We're looking for a girl called Kirilenko. Where is she?" one of the two policemen shouted, making sure the entire house knew their purpose.
At the sound of her name, she looked up but otherwise didn't move. The two men noticed and approached her.
"Are you Kirilenko?"
She nodded.
"Go get your things."
"What?" she asked weakly.
"You're going home."
For a second she studied the policeman who spoke, an average, frowning British man in his mid-thirties, with a blank expression. He nodded slowly at her, as if trying to answer a question she did not ask, and she stood. She didn't know if she believed the man, but if he was going to take her away from this place, she would go with him. It couldn't get any worse.
She went to her room and looked around, realizing there was nothing she wanted to take with her. She never found out what happened to her suitcase. The only things in the room that were hers were her clothes, her makeup, and her jewelry and those all bore memories. She wanted to forget everything.
Then she remembered her treasures. She pulled up the carpet and grabbed the little stack of money with the prayer card on top. She stuck the money into her shorts pocket, but before she pocketed the prayer card, she looked at the back of the card again.
Need help? You can escape this.
Maybe she could.