Hi Guys!
So, I got some fairly good comments about the first chapter of Convincing Karen. Thanks so much for giving me another shot after I discontinued Hand In Hand To Hell.
Today I must recommend Knowing Ode by JessRachel. I read it earlier and really want to read the rest. I really liked it. It had nice characters and shows our Benedict Brothers as the lovely gents they are. And Ode is lovely. A very good book. Well done.
Another plug I'm afraid. If you want to read my other books. Helping Kate, Thinking of Marian and Snatching Sarah. I am most proud of the first.
Hope you like this one.
"Let me go! Please let me go!" I whimpered as I was thrown over a tall man's shoulder and carried along painfully towards and concrete block of a building with search lights and electric fences. I tried to reach out for her mother, also being carried, but the other man laughed and moved out of my desperate reach.
"Where are you taking us?" Mum tried to hit the man carrying her but all she managed was a half-hearted thump. The man snorted with contempt and horrible images filled my brain of what he would do if he could. I felt the blood run cold in my veins and I croaked when I spoke to her mother.
"Mum, don't."
Mum caught my eye and nodded helplessly. The pain and confusion was still rife in both of us, but was shown without disguise in my mother. Tom was dead, Dad was dead, our home possibly destroyed, we'd been taken by psychopaths to who-knows-where.
The electric fence opened with a buzz and the men walked through into the floodlit courtyard of the compound. Men holding guns swaggered up and inspected us with laughter and a poke or two. I noticed I was still wearing my red dress, the hem soaked in blood from my brother's body and the cut on my head from the pistol butt.
"Two more then?" A gruff man pulled my hair back to look at my face. "This one's a looker."
I looked away from the man's fierce eyes, full of pain of a divorce and a child's suicide.
"Charge?" He barked, still staring into my face.
There was a rumble through my stomach as the man holding me spoke. "A loan needed repayment."
The man nodded approvingly. "Excellent. This one has power, she'll go for a pretty penny, that's for sure." He laughed sardonically, "And if she doesn't, well, I'll have go with her myself."
Fear filled my mind, ideas pouring off this man and into my imagination, letting them run wild. There was no one sane here, my power told me. Each and every one had something from their past that was twisting their present mentality and souring their attitudes.
Mum started squirming on the man's shoulder. "Don't you dare even touch my daughter you filthy little-"
He voice broke off as one of them men stuffed a rag into her mouth.
"Regular screamer aren't you?" The psychopath laughed. "Well, don't worry Darling, we'll have you broken in no time. Take them away."
The men carrying us split from each other, taking Mum away to the right and carried me across to the other side of the courtyard.
"Mum!" I reached for her desperatly as the older woman was taken away. Mum was wriggling and thrashing around on the man's shoulder, her eyes rolling with terror and determination to get free.
"Mum, I'll find you! I promise!" I screamed, clawing at the man's head. He swatted my butt and laughed.
We turned a corner and my mother disappeared. I sagged across the man's shoulder, all hope draining away from me in one foul swoop.
Where had they taken me? Why had they taken me? I didn't know these men, I'd never done anything I shouldn't have, why me?
Dad was dead. Tom was dead.
A sob racked my body, ricocheting around every corner of my heart. Tom, my brother, my confidante, my everything. One shot, and he left my life, one shot. The world suddenly seemed very empty.
A red metal door clanged as the man barged through it into a metallic white corridor, lights flickering and cries echoing off the walls. I stared around as we passed door after door labelled with their purpose.
Hairdresser,
Washrooms,
Wardrobe.
A frown marked my brow. Where in hell's name were we?
Through another door and we were on a white suspended walkway among many. It only took one look on either side to explain the contradiction.
Rows upon rows of cells. White prison cells full of women. I felt my mouth fall open as I was carried past a row of cells full of girls, with dirty clothes, sunken eyes and grimy faces. Many cried out to me, calling for help or warnings to get out while I still could. Others just watched, hope and happiness completely drained from their eyes.
"Hey Maggs! I got you the Bolton girl!" The man yelled at a small, wizened woman bending towards a cell at the end of the row. She straitened slowly, her back cracked and the light glinted off her silver hair. She smiled and her uneven teeth contrasted with the hollow darkness of her mouth.
"Excellent! What's she look like then?" She stepped away from the cage and two pairs of cracked and scrawny hands reached out for the silver bucket she pulled after her.
The man answered by pulling me round roughly and dumping me on my knees in front of this ancient old woman.
"Hmm." Maggs bent and grabbed my chin, pulling it harshly around and scraping my brown hair out of the way. "Yes, nice. Very good. Once we get her cleaned up she'll be gorgeous." Her voice was strong and crackly, showing me a comfortable childhood, loving if always under the thumb of her older sister.
I looked away, not wanting to show her anything residing in my head.
I met the eyes of a thin girl a few years younger than me. Normally, when I looked into the eyes of someone I would be filled with images of their past, problems with their mental started, feelings, anything. This was nothing. No feeling. She was blank, all emotion drained and a void inserted in place. This was self-inflicted, not Savant activity. This girl had deliberately stripped her mind, losing anything that made her human. She stared at me with her hollow blue eyes, clouded with hopelessness and pain. I looked, wanting to help, trying to find anything that would make her react.
Nothing.
She turned away.
Maggs had finished talking to the man who had brought me in. "Brilliant, I'll give her over to the 20 to 25 groups. They'll put her somewhere. Tell Steve to add her name, power and age onto the website and tell our high ranking guests we have a 24 year old." She smiled wickedly down at me. "Oh, sweetie, you are going to be so much use!"
The man pulled me to my feet and pushed me in front of him down a series of white walkways, past rows and rows of cells full of women. They looked awful, all thin and tired, starved of everything. I felt undertones of fear, sorrow, weariness and disease.
I was pushed through a maze of cells and walkways, all a sickeningly sterile white. I searched; looking everywhere I could for my mother. I didn't see her. There was nothing I recognised, no difference from one corridor to another, they were all the same.
We stopped suddenly by a cell in the middle of a row of others, nothing stood out about it, just one of many. My captor unlocked the white bars and pulled back the gate. The girls inside didn't try and escape. The worry that I would end up like that coursed through me. No hope, no effort to even try for freedom.
He shoved me forward into the cell and pulled the gate closed behind me. "Someone will come and get you in a while." He said dully through the bars as I sprawled on the cold, hard floor and stared in confusion and fear at him. "They'll clean you and give you the uniform."
He turned sharply on his heel and sauntered away, leaving me shivering in this cell.
"So, another gets added to the family." A thin voice drawled behind me.
I spun round, breathing sharply from the sudden freedom of my diaphragm. A scrawny girl the same age as me was lying in the corner of the cell and staring at me with harsh ice blue eyes. Her dirty blonde hair was matted and hanging next to her sallow cheeks like a dead animal. She sat up slowly and bent forward to look at me. "She's a pretty one." She announced. "No doubt you'll go for plenty. And fast too, if your precious soulfinder bothers to show."
Soulfinder.
The word echoed around my head.
Soulfinder.
"What?" I breathed, confused and scared of this feeling less girl.
"Oh shush Tilda." Another voice sounded on the other side of the cell to me. I whipped around and saw a shorter girl with mousy brown hair scrambling to her feet and walking slowly over the tiny cell towards me. I flinched as she bent down and she held her hands out slowly. "Hey, don't worry. I won't hurt you. My name's Lenny."
I looked into her eyes and saw a calm, quiet life leading to a calm, quiet girl. I held out my own hand which she took carefully in her small one. "I'm Karen."
I heard a snort behind me and Lenny and I both looked over our shoulders to where Tilda was inspecting her dirty, scraped nails.
Lenny shook her head. "Don't mind her. It's not that we're not happy to see someone else. Well, we kinda aren't. We really hoped there wouldn't be anyone else taken like this. But at least you're ok."
I stared around, the extent of my position finally downing on me.
"What is this place?" I whispered as I rubbed my cold arms to generate some kind of heat.
Lenny smiled sadly and pushed some of my blood soaked hair behind my ear. "As close to Hell as you can get."
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Thanks for reading!