Chapter 13-"The Meaning of Reality"
A/N: No more sporadic stuff for me..it's not fair to the rest of you. Hehe. Oh and a quick mistake on the "second location" of this story. Bangkok is a city in Thailand NOT China.
*****
SEATTLE
LADDER 12
"Three point conversion!" Ryan shouted, raising his hands in appreciation at the game on the screen.
"That was just feeding off a lucky interception," Jerry, a twenty-four year old fireman complained about his team loosing royally, even though it was just an old play off game from 2018. Neither one of them had seen the game. But Jerry had stumbled upon a copy on DVD and had wanted to settle an old bet he had with Ryan when the game broadcasted on TV that Oakland HAD in fact kicked the crap out of New England.
"No my man that was all skill." Ryan snagged up some more Cheetos in his hand and scarfed them down before Jerry had a chance to say anything.
"At least there's some level of skill in this room," Jerry returned. He put up his hands to fend off the avalanche of brightly colored cheese snacks Ryan was now smacking against his head. "Hey I was only preaching the truth."
"And so was your girlfriend when she met up with me last night." Ryan could be something of an asshole when he was trying to make a zany comment.
"Oh you're gonna, get it for that shit head," Jerry hissed, tipping the wooden bowl of Cheetos in Ryan's lap and poured the rest of his Sam Adams over them.
Ryan jumped when the beer hit his lap. "Fuck that's cold!" He shimmied up the back of the couch like someone had just lit a fire under him.
"Funny that's what your last date told YOU when she graded your moves." Jerry came back. His motto: the only way to tell off an asshole; be an asshole right back.
"Hey, ladies!" Ty shouted at them. He was sitting at the long gray fold out table with an open copy of "Black Hawk Down" resting on its surface. "If you two want to continue the cat fight, there are plenty of good clubs down town for that kind of thing." He was leaning against the wall in the matching fold out chair, defyinig the laws of gravity by not tipping over. His arms were crossed over his chest; the bare muscles revealed from his blue firehouse shirt flexing against his action.
Jerry was the first one to pounce on him, throwing the empty bowl at his head. Though he was only doing it to be funny. "Now what would that hot girlfriend of yours say if she found out you were into sniffing out ass downtown?"
"That's not what I meant you dill hole," Ty pitched the bowl right back at him causing it to bounce off his super spiky hair.
"Ow, damn," Jerry rubbed his head from the point of impact. His was the tannest out of all of them, being half Latino, and it showed on his arms, his face. He had the kind of exotic good looks women would lust to have their heart broken over. "Face facts dude. You seriously need to get laid. How long has it been since your last fix?"
"You make it sound like I'm a drug addict man," Ty looked back down to his book, pretending to be engrossed. However, he had been re-reading the same two paragraphs about the kid who fell out of the Black Hawk for the past ten minutes. His fellow fire fighters were way too loud for him to get into his book, but there was no other place to go. The garage down stairs still smelled like crap from where Jerry had forgotten to clean up after the Dalmatian mascot "Scooter" for three weeks. He couldn't go to the bunks either. Aaron Kipling had just broken up with his fiancé, and Ty had seen him go in there with a Christina Agularia poster and a bottle of hand lotion.
"I would be addicted to something as hot as that Scheshwan Spicy number you've been bangin'," Ryan raised an eyebrow at his remark. "Seriously you could've scored better on the gong banging side of China my brotha."
"Man Ryan, you're as white as marshmallow and you're speaking like you watched drive bys outside your window as a kid." Jerry said. He took a sip of his beer. Ryan loved to pretend that he wasn't a white boy from Farmer Creek Indiana trying to act ghetto. And Ty, who had lived for years on the south side of Chicago and Jerry born in the projects of Detroit let it slide, finding it completely hilarious.
"I'm just layin' it down straight aiight." Ryan notified. He didn't know when to shut up. "Any Chinese bitch that looks as fly as that is a great fuck investment."
"That's it." Ty hissed in a low growl. He slammed down his book and jumped Ryan, landing him on his back with Ty leering up at him. "My girlfriend is JUST Chinese, got it bitch?" He banged his head down on the pavement. "You ever try to lay that "'TV-ghetto' crap on me about her again I'll fix it so no woman find you a good fuck investment anymore."
"Chill man I was just messin'. Stop hatin'." Ryan got out, crawling out from under a furious Ty. He pulled himself to his feet and straightening out his shirt.
"Am I walkin' in on something personal?" A female voice entered the mixture of males.
All eyes shifted back to Original Cindy who stood at the entrance of the firehouse living quarters dressed for an evening of clubbing in a scarlet halter-top, black leather laser pimpster pants, high-heeled black boots and a gold arm bracelet.
Ryan immediately forgot about his confrontation with Ty and started blatantly ogling Cindy. "Sorry baby we can't take visitors." He stepped closer to her, inhaling to see if he would catch a whiff of perfume, or maybe sex smells indicating she was already hot for his suave self. "But if your working tonight I'm sure I can arrange somethin'." His hand moved out to touch her bare arm.
Cindy took this opportunity to smack him right across the face. "Work that out scank. Ain't nobody be touchin' Original's Cindy's arm like he thinks he can get a free lunch. This kitchen's closed with triggered bitch slaps at the entrance." She pushed past Ryan with an air of superiority, but laced with the more important pissed off attitude that she rightly deserved.
Cindy walked right up to Ty. "Mr. Aris we have to talk."
"I'm on duty tonight I can't go anywhere with you," Ty informed. The statement was actually a partial lie. He had swapped his overnight shift with another firefighter and was just hanging around the firehouse because he didn't feel like being alone in his apartment at the moment.
"Fine I'll break it down here." Cindy looked up to his face, which was a good two inches higher then hers. "You left Cree's broken heart out all over the ground for Original Cindy to have to pick up the pieces. And when it comes to my girls I have issues with cleaning up the messes some playa playa dropped on her."
"It wasn't like that," Ty defended. "She left my apartment on her own, I didn't do shit to drive her out."
"I don't care if aliens ran her out with light sabers, all I know is my girl is in pain over you Ty, which is something you brought on."
"You don't think I'm bothered by this Cindy? This isn't all just one sided." Ty went on,raking a frustrated hand through his hair. "I'm here at my job reading war stories just so I can picture some soldiers fucking entrails instead of her running out on me."
"The girl has been through a lot, she has her reasons for hesitatin' at a relationship." Cindy stopped her conversation with Ty for a moment to turn around and face Ryan's roaming eyes. "You better get your eyes off my ass before you loose them." She took two large steps away from him.
"Cree doesn't get to own the farm on bad times," Ty snapped her back into their discussion. "I don't know what it's like to have lived through the kind of hell that she did, but I already had a girl walk out on me and got a bad wrap automatically cause I'm the one with testicles. Never mind the fact that she shoved some BS on me about being pregnant just to get cash money out of our break up."
Cindy digested all of this new information for a moment before speaking again. "You need to talk to her Ty. Immediate past assessment aside, you're aiight in Original Cindy's books and I'd hate to see you two go down cause of lack of communication."
"Life isn't that simple Cindy you know that." Ty's voice dropped down a few notches. He wasn't angry anymore, just frustrated.
Cindy looked him full in the face, "You love her don't you?" Before he got the chance to respond she went on, "Don't lay any of that 'I haven't known her that long' shit on me before you contemplate things. Cause sistah girl is all about you. You move her furniture, rock her world and take out her trash. So don't pretend that there aren't thing inside your gut that you know are there."
"Why do I get the feeling you know her better then I do?" Ty crossed his arms over his chest.
"She's my boo Ty. Women know lots of intimate details about their home girls that the men in their life don't. But you have Original Cindy's word that I won't eva' know her they way you do."
"Baby I'd love to know her the way you do," Ryan kept trying to pour on his fake 'let's get down' voice. He appreciated every glare Cindy shot him; mistaking them for looks that she reciprocated his feelings.
Cindy got right up in his face. Her breath hot on his neck for reasons having absolutely NOTHING to do with her being turned on by his moves. "The only thing you're gonna learn is the sound of anotha slap across that dawg droolin' face if you don't back off!" Her hand moved to slap Ryan smack dead center across his face.
Ty grabbed at Cindy's hand to prevent the inevitable move, looking towards Ryan in a warning glare. "Ryan man, Go check to make sure Scooter isn't trying to break any of the hoses again."
"He wasn't breaking them man, he was gettin' it on," Ryan corrected Ty with what could be described as a 'sex look' plastered on his face.
"Then why don't you join him?" Ty was three seconds away from manually extracting the smile off of Ryan's face. "Gotta find a way to get SOME kind of action."
Ryan was pissed off now at the insinuation, but he couldn't think of any good cut downs to throw back to Ty. He made a sound in the back of his throat that could be interpreted as a growl and flipped Ty off as he pushed past him to the back of the room where a fireman's pole led down to the garage level of the firehouse.
"That boy needs to take one hand off himself and raise it up to find a better job then fake ass ghetto thug." Cindy was more then pleased that Ryan had opted to leave. Even Normal was a more decent human being compared to him.
Jerry couldn't help the laughter that emitted from him at Cindy's remark. He tried unsuccessfully to stifle the noise in his palm. "How about just the fake thug from the fake ghetto?"
Cindy's lips pulled back in a Cheshire grin at that remark. "If this was a church boo you'd be gettin' my 'amen'"
"Original Cindy-" Ty held out his hand to introduce Cindy to Jerry. "Jerry." He shifted his gaze to the other man. "She's a friend of Cree's."
"Sure the 'original' aspect of 'Original Cindy' mean's you're a woman that broke the mold after your casting." Jerry's said smiling at her good naturedly, not at all like the sleazy 'give me some' look that Ryan had laid all over her. Even though Ty had already informed him of Cindy being a lesbian, Jerry couldn't help the fact that he found her attractive.
Cindy returned the smile, she of course wasn't attracted to Jerry the way he obviously was to her, but the man was all right in her books. "Original Cindy thanks you for the props suga"
"You refer to yourself as "Original Cindy?" Jerry asked, not meaning it as a snub, it was merely an observation. Another lazy but impressed smile worked its way across his face. "I like a woman who knows how to represent herself." He took a long, seemingly painful pause. "But according to my man Ty over here you enjoy representing with OTHER women-"
"If I didn't swing with the hot momma's Jerry I'd be all up in you like brown sugar goes in my coffee." Cindy reassured the man, letting him know that he could've had a shot if she wasn't into women the way he was.
"So you talked to Cree?" Ty cut in with this question, changing the subject from Cindy's sass and charisma.
Cindy turned back to Ty, a more serious look coming over her face. "I tried, but her momma told me she was sleepin'. We had some communication at Crash before she sacked out though. She's takin' it pretty hard."
This time it was Ty who was digesting Cindy's words. "Everything was going great, but then-" he paused for a moment to nervously bite on his lower lip. "I just don't know what the hell went wrong. I want to treat her the way I would any other girl I've dated, but yet at the same time I'm still tryin' to figure out when I have to walk on eggshells because of her history until she gets over it." Here he gave a humorless laugh. "Hell who am I kidding? This isn't the kind of thing you just get over. And you're right Cindy, I love her, but I don't want to restrict it to handholds for the rest of our relationship."
"This isn't about you," Cindy told him straight out. "It's about understanding where Cree comes from." She took just the smallest step closer to him, then said: "While you were livin' out in a world where you got to decide what you would do when you woke up she was bein' defiled and humiliated, and if she can only work up to hand holds for the time bein' boo, you hold out your paw and accept it."
"I'd listen to her Ty. She dates women and she IS a woman," Jerry added his two cents to Original Cindy's suggestion. "I think she knows what she's talkin' about." He didn't know about Cree's past but he wasn't about to let his friend be an idiot about a girl he was obviously crazy over. "Call her and tell her the fight was all your fault."
Ty shot him a look. That was such a typical line for a guy to tell HIS guy friend to get back into a woman's good graces. "That'd be fine if we ACTUALLY had an argument man. People can just disagree sometimes."
"To women all arguments are 'actual arguments' Jerry notified, making quotes in the air with his fingers. His gaze shifted immediately to Cindy. "No offense." The look on his face was apologetic, but with an underlying feature of someone who wasn't through making their point yet. "If you try to tell a chick that your spat was just some sort of philosophical clashing of minds, and had nothing to do with a simple fight, she'll whack you upside the head faster then you can blink."
Cindy's gaze on Jerry now shifted to one of curiosity. "And where did you become such a wise shaman on women?"
"I pieced it together over the years, mostly from the pages of 'O Magazine,'" Jerry stated, grinning at Cindy to let her know he was kidding. "But in all seriousness man," Jerry continued, turning back around to face Ty. "Whatever went down last night isn't worth spoiling a whole decent relationship over. Women like Cree don't come along everyday."
= = = = =
It still feels like our first night together
Feels like the first kiss
It's getting better baby
No one can better this
Still holding on
You're still the one
= = = = =
"You don't think I know that man?" Ty snapped back, needing a way to vent out the emotions about Cree that suddenly came to the surface.
"Talk to her," Cindy spoke up again, her brown eyes locked on Ty's. She didn't put her hand on his shoulder, that's not the way she did things. But her gaze held all the compassion that she was capable of mustering. "Don't let it end like that."
= = = =
First time our eyes met
Same feeling I get
Only feels much stronger
I wanna love you longer
Do you still turn the fire on?
So if you're feeling lonely, don't
You're the only one I'll ever want
I only want to make it go
So if I love you a little more than I should ...
= = = =
*****
Cree had woken up two hours ago to an empty room. Her hair had gotten tangled in the night and she raked her fingers through it to work out the snarls. Her face felt very gritty and she felt partially dried tracks from tears that had run down her cheeks. /Shit I thought I was through crying in my sleep./ One hand moved to wipe the last few traces of moisture away.
A quick scan of the room revealed that her thoughts were correct, that the room was in fact empty. However, she still called out "Mom?" just to make sure Ming wasn't just out of sight in the restroom or something. She stretched her arms over her head, pulling down the black tank top that rode up because of her actions. A quick check of the cheap flip style white digital clock on the oak nightstand told her it was '9: 15'. The black Seiko watch her mom had left on the night stand the day before was gone. Also Ming's issued 9mm handgun and holster were missing as well. The only thing that was left was the small silver switchblade that Cree usually had strapped to her ankle in a holster. Ming had taken it off of her during the night and set it beside the bed. But where was she? Where was she going packing with her police toys?
Cree got up off the double bed so fast the top mattress slid apart from the box spring below it. She snatched up the switchblade sitting in its holster and strapped it to her leg before removing her black track pants. She then squatted by the bed for a moment in nothing but her black tank top and red bikini cut panties before unearthing a pair of army green cargo pants from her black duffle bag.
Her black leather jacket was thrown across pine desk chair that matched the hotel desk it was pushed against She grabbed it and slid it on her body and then sat down to lace up her suede Sketcher boots. After her task was completed she tore off the first piece of paper from the complimentary legal pad that rested on the desk, jotting down a quick message with a ballpoint pen.
"Mom, if you're back before I am, I went to see Ty. I just need to get some shit off my chest.
~Cree"
She wedged the note in the frameless mirror that hung from the front door of the hotel room before opening it and stepping out into the hallway.
A check of her watch told her it was now '9:35.' /He'll still be working. I'll check the firehouse first./ She unknowingly fingered the tiny jade dragon pendant strung on a silver box chain around her neck. Ty had given it to her the last night she had been in Seattle before she had gone home to Los Angeles.
/FLASH: "It's a Luck Dragon." Ty held out the necklace for her to see. I figured if anyone deserves luck it's you."
Cree smiled, "What if I told you I don't believe in luck?"
Ty grinned back "Then it's just sexy."/
= = =
Please forgive me, I know not what I do
Please forgive me, I can't stop loving you
Don't deny me, this pain I'm going through
Please forgive me, if I need you like I do
= = =
She held onto the little dragon as if it would suddenly come to life and escape if she didn't have a firm grasp on it. /God why did I have to be so fucked up? He was only trying to be with me. It's not his fault I have so many fucking demons./
She barely remembered getting down the stairs of the walk up hotel. Or of walking out into the light rain of the Seattle night. Her thoughts were running through her brain like a film reel, shooting dozens of images and memories of Ty. /But how could he love me? You can't love something if it's broken./
Her shoes barely made a sound on the concrete as she walked down the sidewalk, not keeping track of the time anymore. She soon spotted the firehouse a good three hundred yards in front of her.
She started towards, stepping over broken beer bottles and used condoms strewn out on the black asphalt. Out of the corner of her eye she spotted something moving behind a dumpster, and it wasn't a rat or a pigeon. Moving closer, the object's form gave way to a human's, a woman with dark hair and brown eyes. A green handkerchief was stuffed in her mouth and her hands were bound with rope at her back.
Cree approached her cautiously, kneeling down next to her. She reached over to undo the gag from behind her head. The woman jerked as if she had been electrocuted.
"I just want to help." Cree worked on the knot with one hand, all the while the woman kept frantically shaking her head and shouting something at her, which was not understandable through the cloth.
Cree finally succeeded in undoing the knot and pulled the fabric away from the woman's mouth.
"No!" the woman cried out as soon as she could speak. "Es aqui! Mira!(He's here! Look!)Vas, vas ahora! (Go, go now!)
Cree didn't understand any Spanish, so she couldn't get what the woman was saying. "You're okay girl, relax-" she felt a hand grab at her neck and throw her against the dumpster. Her head smacked against it hard, and she saw stars for a moment, but didn't have time to recover before she was grabbed again.
"Well looky what we have here." The voice belonged to a man, barely that, in his early twenties, with a long dirty blonde ponytail and torn jean jacket. "Not bad for a haul today huh?" A knife clicked open in his hand and he held the silver blade against Cree's throat. "You can make me a pretty penny." He traced the knife down her throat, almost caressing her jugular and aorta with the blade.
He glanced over at the other woman who was still crying out in her bonds.
"Pero, Eres pero guapo! (Dog! You fat dog!)
"You shut your trap bitch!" The man ordered. "Or I'll kill you right here!" He had placed her there on purpose, as bait to ensare a new victim.
Cree's mind was going a mile a minute piecing together the sickening truth about what this man waned from her. /Hell no!/ Her mind was screaming. /I'm NEVER going back to that./ She grabbed at the metal clip in her hair, which was actually an ice pick and lunged at her capturer. Her movement caught the metal into his chest and he screamed at the pain.
"You filthy slut!" He grabbed her hair and slammed her to the ground, landing her on chunks of broken glass that poked up at her through her jacket. He grabbed her chin and forced her to look at him. His gray green eyes glared at her. It was a look she had seen before, from countless men at the brothel. To them she was nothing more then a piece of meat for sale. "You don't EVER disrespect me again like that!" He slapped her in an act that drew blood across her face.
She squirmed to get into a decent position to get to her knife. But his weight was crushing her, and she couldn't move her hands down far enough. "Get off me you mother fucker!" She bit him hard on his collarbone making him yelp and reel back. Seizing the opportunity she grabbedher switchblade and slashed at his throat.
He coughed at the action, and blood splattered on her face and neck. But she ignored it and ran to untie the bonds of the woman. "Let's go!" Dhe didn't speak a word of Spanish, but the woman understood her.
Cree started to help her up but her attacker had recovered somewhat and seized her by her long hair, yanking her hard against his body.
"Where the fuck do you think you're goin'?" He positioned his knife at her neck. "I'm not lettin' an opportunity like you slink away from me." The slash at his throat had injured his larynx so much that his voice was only a soft, but still sadistic whisper.
"Let me go you bitch!" Cree hissed. Even though she had a blade to her throat ready to slash at any moment she wasn't about to go quietly. She saw the knife rise in the air, and she braced herself to fend off the impending attack.
A thud echoed in her ears, and the man was suddenly yanked off of her and slammed into the black dumpster. Cree backed up a few feet, and then knelt down to help the girl up.
Cree couldn't make out the face since there was hardly any decent lighting in the area, but soon the light cast from a small street lamp partially illuminating the face of Ty seconds before he dealt a powerful blow to the other man. The action knocked the man down, and he coughed once more, choking on the blood starting to fill his neck before finally passing out.
Cree finished pulling the girl on her feet, and her eyes shifted to Ty who was panting from his exertion. His eyes however, were not weary. They were filled with nothing but concern, concern for her.
She forgot about the argument from earlier, forgot about all the obstacles that stood between them for that moment and ran over to him, embracing him hard around the neck.
= = = =
Please believe me (Oh believe it), every word I say is true
Please forgive me, I can't stop loving you
= = = =
Ty hugged her back, just as strongly, running his fingers through her silky hair before leaning down to kiss her. He tasted a coppery flavor in his mouth and pulled back to see a trickle of blood descending down Cree's chin from a cut slashed in her lip.
"Are you okay?" He traced the cut with his finger.
Cree had to use all her will power to prevent herself from throwing her arms around him again. The situation certainly classified as one of those melodramatic moments, but that's not the way she did things. She had become too hard for that. There were no golden sunsets and professions of undying love in her life story.
Instead of responding to his statement she turned back to the Hispanic girl who was still shaking behind her. Her brown eyes were huge now, pupils dilated so much that there was no visible white around their edges.
"It's okay," Cree spoke in a soothing voice, the same tone her mother used to comfort her over scraped knee when she was little. "He's gone. He can't hurt you anymore."
The woman's eyes drifted down to the still form of the man lying in a heap by the dumpster. His eyes were halfway open, revealing nothing but white since his pupils were rolled back in his head. His neck still oozed crimson and filled the air with the sickening smell of copper and iron that always accompanied blood.
Her eyes turned back up to where Cree and Ty were standing. "Donde voy ahora?" (Where I go now?)
Neither Ty nor Cree could respond to that statement, because neither of them understood what the woman was saying.
The woman took their silence as a meaning of destitute. Her hands, raw and blistered from fighting furiously at her bonds, moved to cover her face. Her crying was very faint, blocked out by the deafening sounds of Seattle's nightlife. But the raw feeling that erupted from her could not be hidden by any amounts of noise.
= = = =
I'm so tired of being here
Suppressed by all my childish fears
And if you have to leave
I wish that you would just leave
'Cause your presence still lingers here
And it won't leave me alone
= = =
*****
BANGKOK, THAILAND
(In Chinese) "Mama?" The little boy tried to move his arms but they were bound by rope behind his back. The blue scarf that was tied around his head blocked off any of his sight, blinding him into a darkness. Only the ceaseless 'drip drip drip' of water leaking out of an old air conditioner kept him company.
"Mama?" His voice was very raspy because he had used it so much during the night, calling for his her. He had no idea where he was, or why he had been brought there. "MAMA-" A hand cut off his cries with a slap across his face.
"Shut your mouth you little bitch!" His capturer's hot breath breathed down his neck, causing the child to shake from the fear. "Your mama isn't here. She's dead! I shot the slut myself." The capturer's words were a sloppy mixture of Thai and Mandarin that he only learned to communicate duties to his collection of Chinese hookers.
The boy was only seven years old, and had never been out of China before his mother had moved them there, except once. So the Thai language was foreign to him. But his ears picked up the Chinese words for 'dead' and 'shot' from the man's mouth.
"No! She's not dead! I want to see her! I want to see her now!" The boy began to yank furiously at his bonds. "Let me go! I want to see my momma!"
The man slapped him again, harder, drawing blood across his face. "I SAID shut your fucking whole you filthy mongrel!" His hands reached into a pocket and pulled out a silver pistol. He cocked the gun and fired off three shots that hit the boy in the neck the chest and the belly.
= = = =
These wounds won't seem to heal
This pain is just too real
There's just too much that time cannot erase
= = = =
"NOO!" Mei-Mei's eyes suddenly snapped open in the dark. She screamed again, feeling something from a living connection deep inside of her.
= = = =
When you cried I'd wipe away all of your tears
When you'd scream I'd fight away all of your fears
I held your hand through all of these years
But you still have all of me
= = = =
*****
The boy's eyes rolled back in his head and he stopped struggling under his bonds, his hands falling limp at his sides. Blood began to leak out of the jagged holes left by the bullets.
The man lowered the still smoking pistol in his hands, glowering down at the boy's lifeless body. "I warned you to shut your trap."
A door opened into the drafty room, shedding a dull light inside from an ancient overhead light in the massage parlor entrance.
"I need room," A sixteen-year-old girl whined. She tapped her lime green stiletto sling back sandals on the ground impatiently. Her hair was cropped just above her collarbone and dyed a mixture reds purples and oranges. She had one arm impatiently over the breasts of her peek-a-boo pink Lycra Go Go dress. The other was stuck in the crotch of her male companion, the movement of her hand job evident under his dress slacks. She was not a sex slave. She was a willing participant in the flesh trade, but with limited spaces for sex rings she shared the same accommodations as the sex slaves.
"It's occupied right now," the man informed. "Take your job somewhere else."
The girl looked over to the little boy's body lying soaked in blood leaning against a wall. She didn't scream, but her face was still shocked. "I'm telling the Mamasan about this!" Any assault busts on a massage parlor by the cops would cause them to loose their police protection, leaving them to be shut down or run over by rival operations.
The man stepped over to the girl and slapped her. "Get lost little girl and take your walking dick with you!"
The girl cried a little at the slap, but it contained more elements of a whine a child would make when they were sent to their room then a grown woman who had just been hit by a man. She 'hmphed' and grabbed the John's hand. "We go other room, come on." She started pulling him out of the doorway.
*****
(In Chinese)"NO! NO NO NO!" Mei-Mei cried into her hands, not noticing that John was awake and trying to pry her arms away from her face.
"What is it?" he grabbed at her face with his hands, but she jerked away. "What the hell is the matter?"
"They shot him!" She made no sense to John but she didn't care. Her eyes were so full of anguish. "They shot my baby! I can feel it-" She ignored the taboo she use to hold about being with another man, and threw her arms around John, sobbing furiously. "They're gone! They took away my children! Oh God my babies are dead-" the last words drifted into the sobs that choked her breath and shook her body. She gripped his body tightly as if he was her only protection from a world that would break apart any second and swallow her whole.
= = = =
I've tried so hard to tell myself that you're gone
But though you're still with me
I've been alone all along
= = = =
John listened to her anguished filled cries for a moment before snaking one arm loosely around her body. She paid him no notice, lost totally in her anguish.
*****
SEATTLE
CHINATOWN
UNKNOWN LOCATION
The tiny Chinese bakery now resembled more of a refugee camp then a place to transact foodstuffs with customers. There was not a single amount of floor space that wasn't occupied by the legs, arms torso or back of one of the girls. They all lay with their hands protectively hugging their breasts and crotches. This was a practice established only after years of having to keep Johns from trying to get extra pussy while they were sleeping.
Sleeping was not an adequate enough depiction to describe the state all the women were in across the linoleum floor. Each one of them had simply passed out from exhaustion after consuming all they could hold of the Oriental pastries. The constant late hours they always kept at the brothel had drained them of even the primitive extra adrenaline humans' possessed when their bodies jumped over the point of exhaustion to force itself to keep going.
Only Ming was still awake, staring out through the small crack she had opened in the door. The streetlights cast large shadowy figures from the high rises and condemned remains of what were once high rises. The barrel of her black 9mm handgun glistened under the tiny sliver of moonlight that beamed down from behind a particularly looming glass skyscraper. She had loaded a new clip into the weapon, and her hand was poised on the trigger to be prepared to unload it at anything that had been sent out into the darkness to bring the girls back to the brothel.
Fatigue was no longer an issue with her. She was use to functioning at normal range without sleep. No cop in America ever got to their position without living through all night stakeouts and hostage situations that lasted for several continuous days.
/What if sleezes from the brothel manages to find a little eight year old boy from the slums to come scout out our location? They will promise him five dollars, enough to by a candy bar and maybe a sandwich at some vending machine. They'll give him a piece, a small derringer size weapon he can hold easily. He comes charging at this place, gun drawn, shakily, but thinking ferociously about that sandwich and candy bar. He manages to squeeze off a few lucky shots and I have no choice but to shoot him in the leg. Being so small and thin from malnutrition he hits the ground fast, the gun slips from his hand and blood leaks out of him.
No one notices the shots. No one wants to deal with the corruption of the police force and others just don't care about some dying street monger's kid. I never make a move to compromise my position or the safety of the girls with me. He slowly bleeds to death from his femoral artery through the night, a puddle of red pooling between his splayed legs as I watch, all I can do.
In the morning the men will not come. They'll just figure him for a coward and try for something else. The child's mother will begin to wonder about him. Days will have past, we'll have move on from this location before she'll spot the body, now pale with rigamortis setting in, attracting stray dogs. She'll wail and cry, but she'll never know that his last thoughts were not of her, but of not being able to get his sandwich./
"You have child?"
Ming let go of her thoughts for a moment and concentrated on the face of the woman in front of her. Her brown eyes inquired the answer to her question, spoken in her best broken English.
Ming nodded at her before answering: "Two daughters."
The young woman absorbed the information, chewing on the reply for a moment and then asked another question: "How old they?"
"One is fifteen the other is almost nineteen." Ming responded, with little to no emotion. She wasn't bragging about her children to her bridge club. She was presenting factual information to a victim of a terrible crime; there was a difference. A difference that only a cop would use in conversation.
The girl's eyes widened. "Not children. Women." She informed to Ming. Back in her small village in the country side of the Yu mountains of China girls Cree's and Jade's age would be considered grown women, and would have already been living with husbands chosen by their parents. "My baby-" The girl placed her hand on her chest to signify herself, smiling slightly at the mention of her child. "She two. She stay with my sister when I look for apartment back home." It was a very common thing for any female sex worker to have at least one child. There was no rule about this; it was just a phenomenon of their created culture.
"Where's her father?" Ming asked without a trace of judgment in her voice. She simply wanted to know.
"He play me." The woman responded, using a very Western term. "He came into bar and promise to pay my fee, be my sugar daddy, but he left after two day."
Ming's eyebrows rose just slightly. "You were a bar girl?"
She nodded. "I had to work to get money for place to live." A lot of those who had wound up in the slave trade had started out as bar dancers, or pool girls. (Prostitutes who played pool with foreigners in bars in order to relax them enough to get them to agree to a sexual business arrangement.) They had no pimps, only old lady bosses, or 'mamasans' who ran the parlors and took a cut from their earnings. Pimps would come later, in the form of a client offering to pay their full debt owed to mamasan for all their clothing and living expenses. After getting a girl alone in one of the private rooms usually complete with a silver 25-inch plasma TV and waterbed, he would make an offer of working for him privately for better cash then she was earning now. The naieve country village raised hookers would agree to this and would find out too late that he was a member of the flesh trade. They would have no choice then. The mamasan would not take back girls who had run off with a pimp. "I work in brothel in country area near my village. Lots of nomads and farmers came to see us. But then huge American takes me away to seaport with other girls. We loaded inside big box. Some did not want to go-" her eyes clouded over in pain, remembering. "Many die by gun. We come to city at night. Black man take small group to warehouse. I try to get in touch with my daughter, but building has no phone."
Ming stared at her for a long second, "You must love her very much." She had switched speaking from English to Chinese so her companion could talk to her without having to trip over her words.
The woman smiled. (In Chinese)"From the day she was born. Some of the girls use their earnings for liquor, fancy clothes. All my money went to her. I want her to go to school and learn how to read, I never learned myself." She paused, and took a step towards Ming, examining her facial features with rapt interest. "You're like an angel of mercy. The influence of Christianity across China had reached her small village when she was a small girl and her mother had become devoutly Catholic, secretly of course, because it was illegal to worship Jesus in China.
Ming shook her head, disagreeing, continuing on a second later, still in Chinese. "Angels believe in the good in every human soul. As a cop I know that there are people who embody no trace of goodness, who commit heinous crimes without any remorse. For some it's their profession and no one apologizes for just doing their job."
The other woman agreed silently before speaking again: "Before I came here I didn't have an issue with my job. I was making good money, meeting interesting people. The men at the bar were more real and understanding then the dirty men at my village. One of them could've easily fallen in love with me and taken me away to a richer district where I would work as a dancer in a local club, only turning out tricks until I got my baby's school tuition secure. Slave traders throw many men on top of a girl, as much as she can handle before she passes out. They don't understand that prostitution is art. Men will pay top dollar to feast their eyes on a perfectly chiseled out breathing sculpture for the night. They'll remember her curves, ivory skin and the taste of her in their mouth. She'll be left in their minds like Monet, vivid, alive, leaping out at them." Her eyes were somewhat proud as she spoke of her old profession. She was not ashamed of it, though hard the core Catholicism she was raised on since age eight strictly condoned sexual favors, it was a way to make good money. She said: "If the slave trade only figured this out they would have no need for forcing girls to work for them."
"If sexual slavery stopped it's force it would just be prostitution, only the pimps would become the mamasans." Ming returned, watching the girl take that in.
The girl stood up from the crate propped up by the door she had sat down at halfway through the conversation. She looked down on Ming for a moment. She said: "I miss my little girl. I'd do ANYTHING they said, even now, if there was just the slightest hint that I could see her again."
= = = =
How the hell we wind up like this?
Why weren't we able, to see the signs that we missed
Try to turn the table
= = = =
To Ming she seemed to be walking in slow motion, ready to lie down on a floor that wasn't even in her country, trying to sleep with the thought of never seeing her daughter again constantly in her mind.
= = = =
I'd wish you unclench your fist
And unpack your suitcase
Lately there's been too much of this
Don't think it's too late
= = = =
*****
= = = =
Nothing's wrong
Just as long as you know that someday I will
Someday somehow, gonna make it alright but not right now
I know you're wondering when..
= = = =
FOGGLE TOWERS
Max stepped into the darkened hallway, searching for the light switch to the living room. She hadn't been sleeping, she never slept but she HAD been interrupted in Logan's bedroom for 'other things'.
"Logan- Open up it's Cree."
Max pulled open the front door at the sound of Cree's voice.
"Are you okay?" Max asked, seeing Cree enter with Ty, dragging in a girl that looked pretty beaten up with bruises around her face and oozing blood from her nose. She also noticed the blood on Cree's body as well.
"I was attacked by some idiot who used her for bait." Cree glanced over at the Hispanic girl who was staring silently into the apartment with round eyes. Cree didn't say anything to the fact that Max was standing there in bare feet with a button up pink shirt that had been hastily refastened. "Ty took the liberty of kicking his ass with me, but he could still come back."
Max put one arm over the Hispanic girls shoulders and led her to the couch. "She needs to get her face looked at." Max observed the discoloration and the disfigurement of the skin near her eye sockets. "She looks like she broke a cheek bone."
"You know that's not gonna fly Max," Cree reminded. "That shit'll be waitin' for us to make a move like that so he can get the drop on her."
"Max-" Logan had emerged from his bedroom in a faded gray Knicks shirt and jeans. He slid his wire-rimmed glasses on his face. "What's going on?" It took his eyes a second to adjust to the artificial light before they eyes widened at the sight of Cree and a woman he had never seen before covered in sweat, grime and bits of blood which stained their clothes and hair.
"I'm not the one you should be askin'." Max informed Logan, nodding over to the people who were now occupying Logan's over stuffed dark blue suede couch. "Someone tried to get the drop on my girl and used some live bait for tryin' to make the transaction."
"Are you guys okay?" Logan looked at Cree in concern, spotting more blood on her hairline then he had originally thought was there.
"If by okay you mean we're bleeding, exhausted, but still kickin' it in the land of the living albeit sore as hell, then yeah we're coo'" Cree spoke up, placing a hand to the tiny laceration in her scalp that had been created the second time she had been thrown against the dumpster. "I never liked dumpsters as a kid, and now I know why. They hurt like a mother."
"You were thrown against one?" Logan asked. He stepped closer to Cree, stopping three inches short of the couch she was sitting at.
"I wasn't dumpster diving Logan," Cree informed, hissing when she pulled her hand back from her forehead. The tips of her fingers were now coated in blood from her cut.
"Did you get a look at his face?" Max asked Cree.
"Plenty of times when he was wailin' on my ass," Cree notified. "He might've been good with his other trade but the boy sucked at physical take down."
"What kind of other trade are we talking about?" Ty joined the conversation. He wasn't naieve, but when it came to true hard-core street life, Cree new painfully more then he did.
Cree stared down at the Hispanic woman who was rocking back and forth on the sofa cushions still staring off blankly into space, transfixed at something in the room that existed only within her eyes. Cree stated: "Exotic imports." Her anger was there, but so was the emotional detachment she had come to rely on over the three years when she had been one of those imports. "Flesh traders never wear disguises unless their dealing with new transporters, and then it's only so they can have control over where the pick up is. If no one knows what they look like their business partners can't double cross them and go to a new guy. But with the girls it's different. They WANT them to see what they look like. 'This is the face that owns you now girl.'" She quoted the exact words of what her first pimp had whispered in her ear after he had pinned her against the wall of his massage parlor. "It's them asserting dominance over 'their girls'." She made invisible quotes in the air with her hands when she said this.
There was a pause that hung in the air after that. The signs that this had been an attempted procurement for the sex trade were all there, but now that it was cemented in fact everyone except Cree and the nameless woman were rendered speechless by the shear impact of what it really meant.
Ty especially was dealing with the complete ramifications of how close his girlfriend almost came to being taken back to a life she had just escaped from. She had told him what it was like, but to see it for real made it much more grotesquely vivid.
It was Max who finally broke the crushing silence, shifting her attention to the young woman who was still lost in her own world. She said: "Obviously she's worth something to this bastard. He'll recon back here to knock her around some more and haul her back."
"If he finds her now he'll kill her." Cree corrected, revealing the knowledge she had picked up on the trade from years as forced active participant. "As sick as it is you hafta understand this industry. Sex slaves are very valuable to their traders. No one is allowed to touch a girl like that guy did tonight, or in any other way that prevents her from turning out. It's all about business to them. No ones' gonna pay full price for damaged goods. If for some reason she can't turn tricks he uses her for 'recruiting' shit like this Sometimes through the course of new procurement she'll get killed or have her pussy damaged and he can't use her anymore. So he's free do to do whatever the hell he wants. Sometimes this happens to a lot of girls at once, and he'll put them up for crap like this until he replaces all the ones he's loosing. Usually most pimps snare up two or three new girls with one old one. He most likely has all the girls he needs. He's just fuckin' greedy, he'll sell the ones he doesn't need to other traders for a jacked up price." Cree hadn't learned all her knowledge from living it, some of it she had heard from other girls in the numerous brothels and massage parlors she had been traded to over the years. One girl from Hong Kong told her that there was a tiny abandoned cabin the mountains where traders would take the girls they couldn't use and abandon them there to either be picked up as country hookers or starve to death.
"So she stays here tonight," Max stated matter of factly. "In the morning we get her across the boarder into Mexico."
"Mexico?" The woman finally spoke up, saying 'Mexico' the way only a Spanish speaking person would be able to. (In Spanish):"It has been so long since I've been there." She then starts to speak in decent English she learned in Catholic school, but still laced with a thick Spanish accent. It used to be my home." Her eyes filled with tears. "Before the 'guerillas' come and shoot down my brothers on the way to San Sophia. They want money, but my brothers they have no money so they take me and my sisters and make us whores instead." She turned her head back up "You don't know what its like there. They dump my brothers on the road to die and haul us away in my father's jeep. I never see them again. I don't want to go back. There's nothing left." She starts to cry again.
= = = =
Sound the bugle now - play it just for me
As the seasons change - remember how I used to be
Now I can't go on - I can't even start
I've got nothing left - just an empty heart
= = = =
BANGKOK, THAILAND
The man holds a heavy black garbage bag over his shoulder, hauling it down to the river. The food stalls that line the gray dirty shore are still open and a man behind a fried rabbit stall calls out: "Hey you can't throw trash here!"
"Fuck off old man!" The man spits back in Thai. He wades knee deep into the water and flips the bag off his shoulder and into the water. The black plastic bobs there in the dark blue water for a few seconds, slowly filling with water.
= = =
I'm a soldier - wounded so I must give up the fight
There's nothing more for me - lead me away...
= = =
The bag slowly begins to sink towards the bottom. A homeless man watches it disappear before swigging from his bottle of homemade rice wine. Soon only a tiny section of plastic is visible from the water's surface. From a tiny slit that hadn't been closed completely a small tuft of black hair and a small amount of flesh from a small hand peeks out.
= = =
Or leave me lying here...
= = =
There will be more of Jondy, Max and Logan in other chapters. I just wanted to remind everyone of the terribly powerful 'other world' that I am writing this story on.
The information about Thailand and its prostitution practices is taken from the fiction novel "Bangkok 8" If any of it is inaccurate; it was not done on purpose.
Songs used are:
Cindy talking to Ty-"Please Forgive Me" (Bryan Adams)
Cree helping the kidnapped girl-"My Immortal" (Evanescence)
Ming talking to girl inside the pastry shop "Someday? Somehow? (I'm guessing here I don't remember the name or the band)
Ending scenes-"Sound the Bugle Now" from "Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron" soundtrack (Bryan Adams)
Choices is in the works.
R/R on this one please
~mystic
A/N: No more sporadic stuff for me..it's not fair to the rest of you. Hehe. Oh and a quick mistake on the "second location" of this story. Bangkok is a city in Thailand NOT China.
*****
SEATTLE
LADDER 12
"Three point conversion!" Ryan shouted, raising his hands in appreciation at the game on the screen.
"That was just feeding off a lucky interception," Jerry, a twenty-four year old fireman complained about his team loosing royally, even though it was just an old play off game from 2018. Neither one of them had seen the game. But Jerry had stumbled upon a copy on DVD and had wanted to settle an old bet he had with Ryan when the game broadcasted on TV that Oakland HAD in fact kicked the crap out of New England.
"No my man that was all skill." Ryan snagged up some more Cheetos in his hand and scarfed them down before Jerry had a chance to say anything.
"At least there's some level of skill in this room," Jerry returned. He put up his hands to fend off the avalanche of brightly colored cheese snacks Ryan was now smacking against his head. "Hey I was only preaching the truth."
"And so was your girlfriend when she met up with me last night." Ryan could be something of an asshole when he was trying to make a zany comment.
"Oh you're gonna, get it for that shit head," Jerry hissed, tipping the wooden bowl of Cheetos in Ryan's lap and poured the rest of his Sam Adams over them.
Ryan jumped when the beer hit his lap. "Fuck that's cold!" He shimmied up the back of the couch like someone had just lit a fire under him.
"Funny that's what your last date told YOU when she graded your moves." Jerry came back. His motto: the only way to tell off an asshole; be an asshole right back.
"Hey, ladies!" Ty shouted at them. He was sitting at the long gray fold out table with an open copy of "Black Hawk Down" resting on its surface. "If you two want to continue the cat fight, there are plenty of good clubs down town for that kind of thing." He was leaning against the wall in the matching fold out chair, defyinig the laws of gravity by not tipping over. His arms were crossed over his chest; the bare muscles revealed from his blue firehouse shirt flexing against his action.
Jerry was the first one to pounce on him, throwing the empty bowl at his head. Though he was only doing it to be funny. "Now what would that hot girlfriend of yours say if she found out you were into sniffing out ass downtown?"
"That's not what I meant you dill hole," Ty pitched the bowl right back at him causing it to bounce off his super spiky hair.
"Ow, damn," Jerry rubbed his head from the point of impact. His was the tannest out of all of them, being half Latino, and it showed on his arms, his face. He had the kind of exotic good looks women would lust to have their heart broken over. "Face facts dude. You seriously need to get laid. How long has it been since your last fix?"
"You make it sound like I'm a drug addict man," Ty looked back down to his book, pretending to be engrossed. However, he had been re-reading the same two paragraphs about the kid who fell out of the Black Hawk for the past ten minutes. His fellow fire fighters were way too loud for him to get into his book, but there was no other place to go. The garage down stairs still smelled like crap from where Jerry had forgotten to clean up after the Dalmatian mascot "Scooter" for three weeks. He couldn't go to the bunks either. Aaron Kipling had just broken up with his fiancé, and Ty had seen him go in there with a Christina Agularia poster and a bottle of hand lotion.
"I would be addicted to something as hot as that Scheshwan Spicy number you've been bangin'," Ryan raised an eyebrow at his remark. "Seriously you could've scored better on the gong banging side of China my brotha."
"Man Ryan, you're as white as marshmallow and you're speaking like you watched drive bys outside your window as a kid." Jerry said. He took a sip of his beer. Ryan loved to pretend that he wasn't a white boy from Farmer Creek Indiana trying to act ghetto. And Ty, who had lived for years on the south side of Chicago and Jerry born in the projects of Detroit let it slide, finding it completely hilarious.
"I'm just layin' it down straight aiight." Ryan notified. He didn't know when to shut up. "Any Chinese bitch that looks as fly as that is a great fuck investment."
"That's it." Ty hissed in a low growl. He slammed down his book and jumped Ryan, landing him on his back with Ty leering up at him. "My girlfriend is JUST Chinese, got it bitch?" He banged his head down on the pavement. "You ever try to lay that "'TV-ghetto' crap on me about her again I'll fix it so no woman find you a good fuck investment anymore."
"Chill man I was just messin'. Stop hatin'." Ryan got out, crawling out from under a furious Ty. He pulled himself to his feet and straightening out his shirt.
"Am I walkin' in on something personal?" A female voice entered the mixture of males.
All eyes shifted back to Original Cindy who stood at the entrance of the firehouse living quarters dressed for an evening of clubbing in a scarlet halter-top, black leather laser pimpster pants, high-heeled black boots and a gold arm bracelet.
Ryan immediately forgot about his confrontation with Ty and started blatantly ogling Cindy. "Sorry baby we can't take visitors." He stepped closer to her, inhaling to see if he would catch a whiff of perfume, or maybe sex smells indicating she was already hot for his suave self. "But if your working tonight I'm sure I can arrange somethin'." His hand moved out to touch her bare arm.
Cindy took this opportunity to smack him right across the face. "Work that out scank. Ain't nobody be touchin' Original's Cindy's arm like he thinks he can get a free lunch. This kitchen's closed with triggered bitch slaps at the entrance." She pushed past Ryan with an air of superiority, but laced with the more important pissed off attitude that she rightly deserved.
Cindy walked right up to Ty. "Mr. Aris we have to talk."
"I'm on duty tonight I can't go anywhere with you," Ty informed. The statement was actually a partial lie. He had swapped his overnight shift with another firefighter and was just hanging around the firehouse because he didn't feel like being alone in his apartment at the moment.
"Fine I'll break it down here." Cindy looked up to his face, which was a good two inches higher then hers. "You left Cree's broken heart out all over the ground for Original Cindy to have to pick up the pieces. And when it comes to my girls I have issues with cleaning up the messes some playa playa dropped on her."
"It wasn't like that," Ty defended. "She left my apartment on her own, I didn't do shit to drive her out."
"I don't care if aliens ran her out with light sabers, all I know is my girl is in pain over you Ty, which is something you brought on."
"You don't think I'm bothered by this Cindy? This isn't all just one sided." Ty went on,raking a frustrated hand through his hair. "I'm here at my job reading war stories just so I can picture some soldiers fucking entrails instead of her running out on me."
"The girl has been through a lot, she has her reasons for hesitatin' at a relationship." Cindy stopped her conversation with Ty for a moment to turn around and face Ryan's roaming eyes. "You better get your eyes off my ass before you loose them." She took two large steps away from him.
"Cree doesn't get to own the farm on bad times," Ty snapped her back into their discussion. "I don't know what it's like to have lived through the kind of hell that she did, but I already had a girl walk out on me and got a bad wrap automatically cause I'm the one with testicles. Never mind the fact that she shoved some BS on me about being pregnant just to get cash money out of our break up."
Cindy digested all of this new information for a moment before speaking again. "You need to talk to her Ty. Immediate past assessment aside, you're aiight in Original Cindy's books and I'd hate to see you two go down cause of lack of communication."
"Life isn't that simple Cindy you know that." Ty's voice dropped down a few notches. He wasn't angry anymore, just frustrated.
Cindy looked him full in the face, "You love her don't you?" Before he got the chance to respond she went on, "Don't lay any of that 'I haven't known her that long' shit on me before you contemplate things. Cause sistah girl is all about you. You move her furniture, rock her world and take out her trash. So don't pretend that there aren't thing inside your gut that you know are there."
"Why do I get the feeling you know her better then I do?" Ty crossed his arms over his chest.
"She's my boo Ty. Women know lots of intimate details about their home girls that the men in their life don't. But you have Original Cindy's word that I won't eva' know her they way you do."
"Baby I'd love to know her the way you do," Ryan kept trying to pour on his fake 'let's get down' voice. He appreciated every glare Cindy shot him; mistaking them for looks that she reciprocated his feelings.
Cindy got right up in his face. Her breath hot on his neck for reasons having absolutely NOTHING to do with her being turned on by his moves. "The only thing you're gonna learn is the sound of anotha slap across that dawg droolin' face if you don't back off!" Her hand moved to slap Ryan smack dead center across his face.
Ty grabbed at Cindy's hand to prevent the inevitable move, looking towards Ryan in a warning glare. "Ryan man, Go check to make sure Scooter isn't trying to break any of the hoses again."
"He wasn't breaking them man, he was gettin' it on," Ryan corrected Ty with what could be described as a 'sex look' plastered on his face.
"Then why don't you join him?" Ty was three seconds away from manually extracting the smile off of Ryan's face. "Gotta find a way to get SOME kind of action."
Ryan was pissed off now at the insinuation, but he couldn't think of any good cut downs to throw back to Ty. He made a sound in the back of his throat that could be interpreted as a growl and flipped Ty off as he pushed past him to the back of the room where a fireman's pole led down to the garage level of the firehouse.
"That boy needs to take one hand off himself and raise it up to find a better job then fake ass ghetto thug." Cindy was more then pleased that Ryan had opted to leave. Even Normal was a more decent human being compared to him.
Jerry couldn't help the laughter that emitted from him at Cindy's remark. He tried unsuccessfully to stifle the noise in his palm. "How about just the fake thug from the fake ghetto?"
Cindy's lips pulled back in a Cheshire grin at that remark. "If this was a church boo you'd be gettin' my 'amen'"
"Original Cindy-" Ty held out his hand to introduce Cindy to Jerry. "Jerry." He shifted his gaze to the other man. "She's a friend of Cree's."
"Sure the 'original' aspect of 'Original Cindy' mean's you're a woman that broke the mold after your casting." Jerry's said smiling at her good naturedly, not at all like the sleazy 'give me some' look that Ryan had laid all over her. Even though Ty had already informed him of Cindy being a lesbian, Jerry couldn't help the fact that he found her attractive.
Cindy returned the smile, she of course wasn't attracted to Jerry the way he obviously was to her, but the man was all right in her books. "Original Cindy thanks you for the props suga"
"You refer to yourself as "Original Cindy?" Jerry asked, not meaning it as a snub, it was merely an observation. Another lazy but impressed smile worked its way across his face. "I like a woman who knows how to represent herself." He took a long, seemingly painful pause. "But according to my man Ty over here you enjoy representing with OTHER women-"
"If I didn't swing with the hot momma's Jerry I'd be all up in you like brown sugar goes in my coffee." Cindy reassured the man, letting him know that he could've had a shot if she wasn't into women the way he was.
"So you talked to Cree?" Ty cut in with this question, changing the subject from Cindy's sass and charisma.
Cindy turned back to Ty, a more serious look coming over her face. "I tried, but her momma told me she was sleepin'. We had some communication at Crash before she sacked out though. She's takin' it pretty hard."
This time it was Ty who was digesting Cindy's words. "Everything was going great, but then-" he paused for a moment to nervously bite on his lower lip. "I just don't know what the hell went wrong. I want to treat her the way I would any other girl I've dated, but yet at the same time I'm still tryin' to figure out when I have to walk on eggshells because of her history until she gets over it." Here he gave a humorless laugh. "Hell who am I kidding? This isn't the kind of thing you just get over. And you're right Cindy, I love her, but I don't want to restrict it to handholds for the rest of our relationship."
"This isn't about you," Cindy told him straight out. "It's about understanding where Cree comes from." She took just the smallest step closer to him, then said: "While you were livin' out in a world where you got to decide what you would do when you woke up she was bein' defiled and humiliated, and if she can only work up to hand holds for the time bein' boo, you hold out your paw and accept it."
"I'd listen to her Ty. She dates women and she IS a woman," Jerry added his two cents to Original Cindy's suggestion. "I think she knows what she's talkin' about." He didn't know about Cree's past but he wasn't about to let his friend be an idiot about a girl he was obviously crazy over. "Call her and tell her the fight was all your fault."
Ty shot him a look. That was such a typical line for a guy to tell HIS guy friend to get back into a woman's good graces. "That'd be fine if we ACTUALLY had an argument man. People can just disagree sometimes."
"To women all arguments are 'actual arguments' Jerry notified, making quotes in the air with his fingers. His gaze shifted immediately to Cindy. "No offense." The look on his face was apologetic, but with an underlying feature of someone who wasn't through making their point yet. "If you try to tell a chick that your spat was just some sort of philosophical clashing of minds, and had nothing to do with a simple fight, she'll whack you upside the head faster then you can blink."
Cindy's gaze on Jerry now shifted to one of curiosity. "And where did you become such a wise shaman on women?"
"I pieced it together over the years, mostly from the pages of 'O Magazine,'" Jerry stated, grinning at Cindy to let her know he was kidding. "But in all seriousness man," Jerry continued, turning back around to face Ty. "Whatever went down last night isn't worth spoiling a whole decent relationship over. Women like Cree don't come along everyday."
= = = = =
It still feels like our first night together
Feels like the first kiss
It's getting better baby
No one can better this
Still holding on
You're still the one
= = = = =
"You don't think I know that man?" Ty snapped back, needing a way to vent out the emotions about Cree that suddenly came to the surface.
"Talk to her," Cindy spoke up again, her brown eyes locked on Ty's. She didn't put her hand on his shoulder, that's not the way she did things. But her gaze held all the compassion that she was capable of mustering. "Don't let it end like that."
= = = =
First time our eyes met
Same feeling I get
Only feels much stronger
I wanna love you longer
Do you still turn the fire on?
So if you're feeling lonely, don't
You're the only one I'll ever want
I only want to make it go
So if I love you a little more than I should ...
= = = =
*****
Cree had woken up two hours ago to an empty room. Her hair had gotten tangled in the night and she raked her fingers through it to work out the snarls. Her face felt very gritty and she felt partially dried tracks from tears that had run down her cheeks. /Shit I thought I was through crying in my sleep./ One hand moved to wipe the last few traces of moisture away.
A quick scan of the room revealed that her thoughts were correct, that the room was in fact empty. However, she still called out "Mom?" just to make sure Ming wasn't just out of sight in the restroom or something. She stretched her arms over her head, pulling down the black tank top that rode up because of her actions. A quick check of the cheap flip style white digital clock on the oak nightstand told her it was '9: 15'. The black Seiko watch her mom had left on the night stand the day before was gone. Also Ming's issued 9mm handgun and holster were missing as well. The only thing that was left was the small silver switchblade that Cree usually had strapped to her ankle in a holster. Ming had taken it off of her during the night and set it beside the bed. But where was she? Where was she going packing with her police toys?
Cree got up off the double bed so fast the top mattress slid apart from the box spring below it. She snatched up the switchblade sitting in its holster and strapped it to her leg before removing her black track pants. She then squatted by the bed for a moment in nothing but her black tank top and red bikini cut panties before unearthing a pair of army green cargo pants from her black duffle bag.
Her black leather jacket was thrown across pine desk chair that matched the hotel desk it was pushed against She grabbed it and slid it on her body and then sat down to lace up her suede Sketcher boots. After her task was completed she tore off the first piece of paper from the complimentary legal pad that rested on the desk, jotting down a quick message with a ballpoint pen.
"Mom, if you're back before I am, I went to see Ty. I just need to get some shit off my chest.
~Cree"
She wedged the note in the frameless mirror that hung from the front door of the hotel room before opening it and stepping out into the hallway.
A check of her watch told her it was now '9:35.' /He'll still be working. I'll check the firehouse first./ She unknowingly fingered the tiny jade dragon pendant strung on a silver box chain around her neck. Ty had given it to her the last night she had been in Seattle before she had gone home to Los Angeles.
/FLASH: "It's a Luck Dragon." Ty held out the necklace for her to see. I figured if anyone deserves luck it's you."
Cree smiled, "What if I told you I don't believe in luck?"
Ty grinned back "Then it's just sexy."/
= = =
Please forgive me, I know not what I do
Please forgive me, I can't stop loving you
Don't deny me, this pain I'm going through
Please forgive me, if I need you like I do
= = =
She held onto the little dragon as if it would suddenly come to life and escape if she didn't have a firm grasp on it. /God why did I have to be so fucked up? He was only trying to be with me. It's not his fault I have so many fucking demons./
She barely remembered getting down the stairs of the walk up hotel. Or of walking out into the light rain of the Seattle night. Her thoughts were running through her brain like a film reel, shooting dozens of images and memories of Ty. /But how could he love me? You can't love something if it's broken./
Her shoes barely made a sound on the concrete as she walked down the sidewalk, not keeping track of the time anymore. She soon spotted the firehouse a good three hundred yards in front of her.
She started towards, stepping over broken beer bottles and used condoms strewn out on the black asphalt. Out of the corner of her eye she spotted something moving behind a dumpster, and it wasn't a rat or a pigeon. Moving closer, the object's form gave way to a human's, a woman with dark hair and brown eyes. A green handkerchief was stuffed in her mouth and her hands were bound with rope at her back.
Cree approached her cautiously, kneeling down next to her. She reached over to undo the gag from behind her head. The woman jerked as if she had been electrocuted.
"I just want to help." Cree worked on the knot with one hand, all the while the woman kept frantically shaking her head and shouting something at her, which was not understandable through the cloth.
Cree finally succeeded in undoing the knot and pulled the fabric away from the woman's mouth.
"No!" the woman cried out as soon as she could speak. "Es aqui! Mira!(He's here! Look!)Vas, vas ahora! (Go, go now!)
Cree didn't understand any Spanish, so she couldn't get what the woman was saying. "You're okay girl, relax-" she felt a hand grab at her neck and throw her against the dumpster. Her head smacked against it hard, and she saw stars for a moment, but didn't have time to recover before she was grabbed again.
"Well looky what we have here." The voice belonged to a man, barely that, in his early twenties, with a long dirty blonde ponytail and torn jean jacket. "Not bad for a haul today huh?" A knife clicked open in his hand and he held the silver blade against Cree's throat. "You can make me a pretty penny." He traced the knife down her throat, almost caressing her jugular and aorta with the blade.
He glanced over at the other woman who was still crying out in her bonds.
"Pero, Eres pero guapo! (Dog! You fat dog!)
"You shut your trap bitch!" The man ordered. "Or I'll kill you right here!" He had placed her there on purpose, as bait to ensare a new victim.
Cree's mind was going a mile a minute piecing together the sickening truth about what this man waned from her. /Hell no!/ Her mind was screaming. /I'm NEVER going back to that./ She grabbed at the metal clip in her hair, which was actually an ice pick and lunged at her capturer. Her movement caught the metal into his chest and he screamed at the pain.
"You filthy slut!" He grabbed her hair and slammed her to the ground, landing her on chunks of broken glass that poked up at her through her jacket. He grabbed her chin and forced her to look at him. His gray green eyes glared at her. It was a look she had seen before, from countless men at the brothel. To them she was nothing more then a piece of meat for sale. "You don't EVER disrespect me again like that!" He slapped her in an act that drew blood across her face.
She squirmed to get into a decent position to get to her knife. But his weight was crushing her, and she couldn't move her hands down far enough. "Get off me you mother fucker!" She bit him hard on his collarbone making him yelp and reel back. Seizing the opportunity she grabbedher switchblade and slashed at his throat.
He coughed at the action, and blood splattered on her face and neck. But she ignored it and ran to untie the bonds of the woman. "Let's go!" Dhe didn't speak a word of Spanish, but the woman understood her.
Cree started to help her up but her attacker had recovered somewhat and seized her by her long hair, yanking her hard against his body.
"Where the fuck do you think you're goin'?" He positioned his knife at her neck. "I'm not lettin' an opportunity like you slink away from me." The slash at his throat had injured his larynx so much that his voice was only a soft, but still sadistic whisper.
"Let me go you bitch!" Cree hissed. Even though she had a blade to her throat ready to slash at any moment she wasn't about to go quietly. She saw the knife rise in the air, and she braced herself to fend off the impending attack.
A thud echoed in her ears, and the man was suddenly yanked off of her and slammed into the black dumpster. Cree backed up a few feet, and then knelt down to help the girl up.
Cree couldn't make out the face since there was hardly any decent lighting in the area, but soon the light cast from a small street lamp partially illuminating the face of Ty seconds before he dealt a powerful blow to the other man. The action knocked the man down, and he coughed once more, choking on the blood starting to fill his neck before finally passing out.
Cree finished pulling the girl on her feet, and her eyes shifted to Ty who was panting from his exertion. His eyes however, were not weary. They were filled with nothing but concern, concern for her.
She forgot about the argument from earlier, forgot about all the obstacles that stood between them for that moment and ran over to him, embracing him hard around the neck.
= = = =
Please believe me (Oh believe it), every word I say is true
Please forgive me, I can't stop loving you
= = = =
Ty hugged her back, just as strongly, running his fingers through her silky hair before leaning down to kiss her. He tasted a coppery flavor in his mouth and pulled back to see a trickle of blood descending down Cree's chin from a cut slashed in her lip.
"Are you okay?" He traced the cut with his finger.
Cree had to use all her will power to prevent herself from throwing her arms around him again. The situation certainly classified as one of those melodramatic moments, but that's not the way she did things. She had become too hard for that. There were no golden sunsets and professions of undying love in her life story.
Instead of responding to his statement she turned back to the Hispanic girl who was still shaking behind her. Her brown eyes were huge now, pupils dilated so much that there was no visible white around their edges.
"It's okay," Cree spoke in a soothing voice, the same tone her mother used to comfort her over scraped knee when she was little. "He's gone. He can't hurt you anymore."
The woman's eyes drifted down to the still form of the man lying in a heap by the dumpster. His eyes were halfway open, revealing nothing but white since his pupils were rolled back in his head. His neck still oozed crimson and filled the air with the sickening smell of copper and iron that always accompanied blood.
Her eyes turned back up to where Cree and Ty were standing. "Donde voy ahora?" (Where I go now?)
Neither Ty nor Cree could respond to that statement, because neither of them understood what the woman was saying.
The woman took their silence as a meaning of destitute. Her hands, raw and blistered from fighting furiously at her bonds, moved to cover her face. Her crying was very faint, blocked out by the deafening sounds of Seattle's nightlife. But the raw feeling that erupted from her could not be hidden by any amounts of noise.
= = = =
I'm so tired of being here
Suppressed by all my childish fears
And if you have to leave
I wish that you would just leave
'Cause your presence still lingers here
And it won't leave me alone
= = =
*****
BANGKOK, THAILAND
(In Chinese) "Mama?" The little boy tried to move his arms but they were bound by rope behind his back. The blue scarf that was tied around his head blocked off any of his sight, blinding him into a darkness. Only the ceaseless 'drip drip drip' of water leaking out of an old air conditioner kept him company.
"Mama?" His voice was very raspy because he had used it so much during the night, calling for his her. He had no idea where he was, or why he had been brought there. "MAMA-" A hand cut off his cries with a slap across his face.
"Shut your mouth you little bitch!" His capturer's hot breath breathed down his neck, causing the child to shake from the fear. "Your mama isn't here. She's dead! I shot the slut myself." The capturer's words were a sloppy mixture of Thai and Mandarin that he only learned to communicate duties to his collection of Chinese hookers.
The boy was only seven years old, and had never been out of China before his mother had moved them there, except once. So the Thai language was foreign to him. But his ears picked up the Chinese words for 'dead' and 'shot' from the man's mouth.
"No! She's not dead! I want to see her! I want to see her now!" The boy began to yank furiously at his bonds. "Let me go! I want to see my momma!"
The man slapped him again, harder, drawing blood across his face. "I SAID shut your fucking whole you filthy mongrel!" His hands reached into a pocket and pulled out a silver pistol. He cocked the gun and fired off three shots that hit the boy in the neck the chest and the belly.
= = = =
These wounds won't seem to heal
This pain is just too real
There's just too much that time cannot erase
= = = =
"NOO!" Mei-Mei's eyes suddenly snapped open in the dark. She screamed again, feeling something from a living connection deep inside of her.
= = = =
When you cried I'd wipe away all of your tears
When you'd scream I'd fight away all of your fears
I held your hand through all of these years
But you still have all of me
= = = =
*****
The boy's eyes rolled back in his head and he stopped struggling under his bonds, his hands falling limp at his sides. Blood began to leak out of the jagged holes left by the bullets.
The man lowered the still smoking pistol in his hands, glowering down at the boy's lifeless body. "I warned you to shut your trap."
A door opened into the drafty room, shedding a dull light inside from an ancient overhead light in the massage parlor entrance.
"I need room," A sixteen-year-old girl whined. She tapped her lime green stiletto sling back sandals on the ground impatiently. Her hair was cropped just above her collarbone and dyed a mixture reds purples and oranges. She had one arm impatiently over the breasts of her peek-a-boo pink Lycra Go Go dress. The other was stuck in the crotch of her male companion, the movement of her hand job evident under his dress slacks. She was not a sex slave. She was a willing participant in the flesh trade, but with limited spaces for sex rings she shared the same accommodations as the sex slaves.
"It's occupied right now," the man informed. "Take your job somewhere else."
The girl looked over to the little boy's body lying soaked in blood leaning against a wall. She didn't scream, but her face was still shocked. "I'm telling the Mamasan about this!" Any assault busts on a massage parlor by the cops would cause them to loose their police protection, leaving them to be shut down or run over by rival operations.
The man stepped over to the girl and slapped her. "Get lost little girl and take your walking dick with you!"
The girl cried a little at the slap, but it contained more elements of a whine a child would make when they were sent to their room then a grown woman who had just been hit by a man. She 'hmphed' and grabbed the John's hand. "We go other room, come on." She started pulling him out of the doorway.
*****
(In Chinese)"NO! NO NO NO!" Mei-Mei cried into her hands, not noticing that John was awake and trying to pry her arms away from her face.
"What is it?" he grabbed at her face with his hands, but she jerked away. "What the hell is the matter?"
"They shot him!" She made no sense to John but she didn't care. Her eyes were so full of anguish. "They shot my baby! I can feel it-" She ignored the taboo she use to hold about being with another man, and threw her arms around John, sobbing furiously. "They're gone! They took away my children! Oh God my babies are dead-" the last words drifted into the sobs that choked her breath and shook her body. She gripped his body tightly as if he was her only protection from a world that would break apart any second and swallow her whole.
= = = =
I've tried so hard to tell myself that you're gone
But though you're still with me
I've been alone all along
= = = =
John listened to her anguished filled cries for a moment before snaking one arm loosely around her body. She paid him no notice, lost totally in her anguish.
*****
SEATTLE
CHINATOWN
UNKNOWN LOCATION
The tiny Chinese bakery now resembled more of a refugee camp then a place to transact foodstuffs with customers. There was not a single amount of floor space that wasn't occupied by the legs, arms torso or back of one of the girls. They all lay with their hands protectively hugging their breasts and crotches. This was a practice established only after years of having to keep Johns from trying to get extra pussy while they were sleeping.
Sleeping was not an adequate enough depiction to describe the state all the women were in across the linoleum floor. Each one of them had simply passed out from exhaustion after consuming all they could hold of the Oriental pastries. The constant late hours they always kept at the brothel had drained them of even the primitive extra adrenaline humans' possessed when their bodies jumped over the point of exhaustion to force itself to keep going.
Only Ming was still awake, staring out through the small crack she had opened in the door. The streetlights cast large shadowy figures from the high rises and condemned remains of what were once high rises. The barrel of her black 9mm handgun glistened under the tiny sliver of moonlight that beamed down from behind a particularly looming glass skyscraper. She had loaded a new clip into the weapon, and her hand was poised on the trigger to be prepared to unload it at anything that had been sent out into the darkness to bring the girls back to the brothel.
Fatigue was no longer an issue with her. She was use to functioning at normal range without sleep. No cop in America ever got to their position without living through all night stakeouts and hostage situations that lasted for several continuous days.
/What if sleezes from the brothel manages to find a little eight year old boy from the slums to come scout out our location? They will promise him five dollars, enough to by a candy bar and maybe a sandwich at some vending machine. They'll give him a piece, a small derringer size weapon he can hold easily. He comes charging at this place, gun drawn, shakily, but thinking ferociously about that sandwich and candy bar. He manages to squeeze off a few lucky shots and I have no choice but to shoot him in the leg. Being so small and thin from malnutrition he hits the ground fast, the gun slips from his hand and blood leaks out of him.
No one notices the shots. No one wants to deal with the corruption of the police force and others just don't care about some dying street monger's kid. I never make a move to compromise my position or the safety of the girls with me. He slowly bleeds to death from his femoral artery through the night, a puddle of red pooling between his splayed legs as I watch, all I can do.
In the morning the men will not come. They'll just figure him for a coward and try for something else. The child's mother will begin to wonder about him. Days will have past, we'll have move on from this location before she'll spot the body, now pale with rigamortis setting in, attracting stray dogs. She'll wail and cry, but she'll never know that his last thoughts were not of her, but of not being able to get his sandwich./
"You have child?"
Ming let go of her thoughts for a moment and concentrated on the face of the woman in front of her. Her brown eyes inquired the answer to her question, spoken in her best broken English.
Ming nodded at her before answering: "Two daughters."
The young woman absorbed the information, chewing on the reply for a moment and then asked another question: "How old they?"
"One is fifteen the other is almost nineteen." Ming responded, with little to no emotion. She wasn't bragging about her children to her bridge club. She was presenting factual information to a victim of a terrible crime; there was a difference. A difference that only a cop would use in conversation.
The girl's eyes widened. "Not children. Women." She informed to Ming. Back in her small village in the country side of the Yu mountains of China girls Cree's and Jade's age would be considered grown women, and would have already been living with husbands chosen by their parents. "My baby-" The girl placed her hand on her chest to signify herself, smiling slightly at the mention of her child. "She two. She stay with my sister when I look for apartment back home." It was a very common thing for any female sex worker to have at least one child. There was no rule about this; it was just a phenomenon of their created culture.
"Where's her father?" Ming asked without a trace of judgment in her voice. She simply wanted to know.
"He play me." The woman responded, using a very Western term. "He came into bar and promise to pay my fee, be my sugar daddy, but he left after two day."
Ming's eyebrows rose just slightly. "You were a bar girl?"
She nodded. "I had to work to get money for place to live." A lot of those who had wound up in the slave trade had started out as bar dancers, or pool girls. (Prostitutes who played pool with foreigners in bars in order to relax them enough to get them to agree to a sexual business arrangement.) They had no pimps, only old lady bosses, or 'mamasans' who ran the parlors and took a cut from their earnings. Pimps would come later, in the form of a client offering to pay their full debt owed to mamasan for all their clothing and living expenses. After getting a girl alone in one of the private rooms usually complete with a silver 25-inch plasma TV and waterbed, he would make an offer of working for him privately for better cash then she was earning now. The naieve country village raised hookers would agree to this and would find out too late that he was a member of the flesh trade. They would have no choice then. The mamasan would not take back girls who had run off with a pimp. "I work in brothel in country area near my village. Lots of nomads and farmers came to see us. But then huge American takes me away to seaport with other girls. We loaded inside big box. Some did not want to go-" her eyes clouded over in pain, remembering. "Many die by gun. We come to city at night. Black man take small group to warehouse. I try to get in touch with my daughter, but building has no phone."
Ming stared at her for a long second, "You must love her very much." She had switched speaking from English to Chinese so her companion could talk to her without having to trip over her words.
The woman smiled. (In Chinese)"From the day she was born. Some of the girls use their earnings for liquor, fancy clothes. All my money went to her. I want her to go to school and learn how to read, I never learned myself." She paused, and took a step towards Ming, examining her facial features with rapt interest. "You're like an angel of mercy. The influence of Christianity across China had reached her small village when she was a small girl and her mother had become devoutly Catholic, secretly of course, because it was illegal to worship Jesus in China.
Ming shook her head, disagreeing, continuing on a second later, still in Chinese. "Angels believe in the good in every human soul. As a cop I know that there are people who embody no trace of goodness, who commit heinous crimes without any remorse. For some it's their profession and no one apologizes for just doing their job."
The other woman agreed silently before speaking again: "Before I came here I didn't have an issue with my job. I was making good money, meeting interesting people. The men at the bar were more real and understanding then the dirty men at my village. One of them could've easily fallen in love with me and taken me away to a richer district where I would work as a dancer in a local club, only turning out tricks until I got my baby's school tuition secure. Slave traders throw many men on top of a girl, as much as she can handle before she passes out. They don't understand that prostitution is art. Men will pay top dollar to feast their eyes on a perfectly chiseled out breathing sculpture for the night. They'll remember her curves, ivory skin and the taste of her in their mouth. She'll be left in their minds like Monet, vivid, alive, leaping out at them." Her eyes were somewhat proud as she spoke of her old profession. She was not ashamed of it, though hard the core Catholicism she was raised on since age eight strictly condoned sexual favors, it was a way to make good money. She said: "If the slave trade only figured this out they would have no need for forcing girls to work for them."
"If sexual slavery stopped it's force it would just be prostitution, only the pimps would become the mamasans." Ming returned, watching the girl take that in.
The girl stood up from the crate propped up by the door she had sat down at halfway through the conversation. She looked down on Ming for a moment. She said: "I miss my little girl. I'd do ANYTHING they said, even now, if there was just the slightest hint that I could see her again."
= = = =
How the hell we wind up like this?
Why weren't we able, to see the signs that we missed
Try to turn the table
= = = =
To Ming she seemed to be walking in slow motion, ready to lie down on a floor that wasn't even in her country, trying to sleep with the thought of never seeing her daughter again constantly in her mind.
= = = =
I'd wish you unclench your fist
And unpack your suitcase
Lately there's been too much of this
Don't think it's too late
= = = =
*****
= = = =
Nothing's wrong
Just as long as you know that someday I will
Someday somehow, gonna make it alright but not right now
I know you're wondering when..
= = = =
FOGGLE TOWERS
Max stepped into the darkened hallway, searching for the light switch to the living room. She hadn't been sleeping, she never slept but she HAD been interrupted in Logan's bedroom for 'other things'.
"Logan- Open up it's Cree."
Max pulled open the front door at the sound of Cree's voice.
"Are you okay?" Max asked, seeing Cree enter with Ty, dragging in a girl that looked pretty beaten up with bruises around her face and oozing blood from her nose. She also noticed the blood on Cree's body as well.
"I was attacked by some idiot who used her for bait." Cree glanced over at the Hispanic girl who was staring silently into the apartment with round eyes. Cree didn't say anything to the fact that Max was standing there in bare feet with a button up pink shirt that had been hastily refastened. "Ty took the liberty of kicking his ass with me, but he could still come back."
Max put one arm over the Hispanic girls shoulders and led her to the couch. "She needs to get her face looked at." Max observed the discoloration and the disfigurement of the skin near her eye sockets. "She looks like she broke a cheek bone."
"You know that's not gonna fly Max," Cree reminded. "That shit'll be waitin' for us to make a move like that so he can get the drop on her."
"Max-" Logan had emerged from his bedroom in a faded gray Knicks shirt and jeans. He slid his wire-rimmed glasses on his face. "What's going on?" It took his eyes a second to adjust to the artificial light before they eyes widened at the sight of Cree and a woman he had never seen before covered in sweat, grime and bits of blood which stained their clothes and hair.
"I'm not the one you should be askin'." Max informed Logan, nodding over to the people who were now occupying Logan's over stuffed dark blue suede couch. "Someone tried to get the drop on my girl and used some live bait for tryin' to make the transaction."
"Are you guys okay?" Logan looked at Cree in concern, spotting more blood on her hairline then he had originally thought was there.
"If by okay you mean we're bleeding, exhausted, but still kickin' it in the land of the living albeit sore as hell, then yeah we're coo'" Cree spoke up, placing a hand to the tiny laceration in her scalp that had been created the second time she had been thrown against the dumpster. "I never liked dumpsters as a kid, and now I know why. They hurt like a mother."
"You were thrown against one?" Logan asked. He stepped closer to Cree, stopping three inches short of the couch she was sitting at.
"I wasn't dumpster diving Logan," Cree informed, hissing when she pulled her hand back from her forehead. The tips of her fingers were now coated in blood from her cut.
"Did you get a look at his face?" Max asked Cree.
"Plenty of times when he was wailin' on my ass," Cree notified. "He might've been good with his other trade but the boy sucked at physical take down."
"What kind of other trade are we talking about?" Ty joined the conversation. He wasn't naieve, but when it came to true hard-core street life, Cree new painfully more then he did.
Cree stared down at the Hispanic woman who was rocking back and forth on the sofa cushions still staring off blankly into space, transfixed at something in the room that existed only within her eyes. Cree stated: "Exotic imports." Her anger was there, but so was the emotional detachment she had come to rely on over the three years when she had been one of those imports. "Flesh traders never wear disguises unless their dealing with new transporters, and then it's only so they can have control over where the pick up is. If no one knows what they look like their business partners can't double cross them and go to a new guy. But with the girls it's different. They WANT them to see what they look like. 'This is the face that owns you now girl.'" She quoted the exact words of what her first pimp had whispered in her ear after he had pinned her against the wall of his massage parlor. "It's them asserting dominance over 'their girls'." She made invisible quotes in the air with her hands when she said this.
There was a pause that hung in the air after that. The signs that this had been an attempted procurement for the sex trade were all there, but now that it was cemented in fact everyone except Cree and the nameless woman were rendered speechless by the shear impact of what it really meant.
Ty especially was dealing with the complete ramifications of how close his girlfriend almost came to being taken back to a life she had just escaped from. She had told him what it was like, but to see it for real made it much more grotesquely vivid.
It was Max who finally broke the crushing silence, shifting her attention to the young woman who was still lost in her own world. She said: "Obviously she's worth something to this bastard. He'll recon back here to knock her around some more and haul her back."
"If he finds her now he'll kill her." Cree corrected, revealing the knowledge she had picked up on the trade from years as forced active participant. "As sick as it is you hafta understand this industry. Sex slaves are very valuable to their traders. No one is allowed to touch a girl like that guy did tonight, or in any other way that prevents her from turning out. It's all about business to them. No ones' gonna pay full price for damaged goods. If for some reason she can't turn tricks he uses her for 'recruiting' shit like this Sometimes through the course of new procurement she'll get killed or have her pussy damaged and he can't use her anymore. So he's free do to do whatever the hell he wants. Sometimes this happens to a lot of girls at once, and he'll put them up for crap like this until he replaces all the ones he's loosing. Usually most pimps snare up two or three new girls with one old one. He most likely has all the girls he needs. He's just fuckin' greedy, he'll sell the ones he doesn't need to other traders for a jacked up price." Cree hadn't learned all her knowledge from living it, some of it she had heard from other girls in the numerous brothels and massage parlors she had been traded to over the years. One girl from Hong Kong told her that there was a tiny abandoned cabin the mountains where traders would take the girls they couldn't use and abandon them there to either be picked up as country hookers or starve to death.
"So she stays here tonight," Max stated matter of factly. "In the morning we get her across the boarder into Mexico."
"Mexico?" The woman finally spoke up, saying 'Mexico' the way only a Spanish speaking person would be able to. (In Spanish):"It has been so long since I've been there." She then starts to speak in decent English she learned in Catholic school, but still laced with a thick Spanish accent. It used to be my home." Her eyes filled with tears. "Before the 'guerillas' come and shoot down my brothers on the way to San Sophia. They want money, but my brothers they have no money so they take me and my sisters and make us whores instead." She turned her head back up "You don't know what its like there. They dump my brothers on the road to die and haul us away in my father's jeep. I never see them again. I don't want to go back. There's nothing left." She starts to cry again.
= = = =
Sound the bugle now - play it just for me
As the seasons change - remember how I used to be
Now I can't go on - I can't even start
I've got nothing left - just an empty heart
= = = =
BANGKOK, THAILAND
The man holds a heavy black garbage bag over his shoulder, hauling it down to the river. The food stalls that line the gray dirty shore are still open and a man behind a fried rabbit stall calls out: "Hey you can't throw trash here!"
"Fuck off old man!" The man spits back in Thai. He wades knee deep into the water and flips the bag off his shoulder and into the water. The black plastic bobs there in the dark blue water for a few seconds, slowly filling with water.
= = =
I'm a soldier - wounded so I must give up the fight
There's nothing more for me - lead me away...
= = =
The bag slowly begins to sink towards the bottom. A homeless man watches it disappear before swigging from his bottle of homemade rice wine. Soon only a tiny section of plastic is visible from the water's surface. From a tiny slit that hadn't been closed completely a small tuft of black hair and a small amount of flesh from a small hand peeks out.
= = =
Or leave me lying here...
= = =
There will be more of Jondy, Max and Logan in other chapters. I just wanted to remind everyone of the terribly powerful 'other world' that I am writing this story on.
The information about Thailand and its prostitution practices is taken from the fiction novel "Bangkok 8" If any of it is inaccurate; it was not done on purpose.
Songs used are:
Cindy talking to Ty-"Please Forgive Me" (Bryan Adams)
Cree helping the kidnapped girl-"My Immortal" (Evanescence)
Ming talking to girl inside the pastry shop "Someday? Somehow? (I'm guessing here I don't remember the name or the band)
Ending scenes-"Sound the Bugle Now" from "Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron" soundtrack (Bryan Adams)
Choices is in the works.
R/R on this one please
~mystic