The Woman They Kept (10 page)

Going in as buyers was out of
the question, they didn't have the money and Leanin didn't think
that she could act the part if she needed to. They snuck to the
backside of the building. One of the windows was cracked open on
the second floor and there was a ladder lying on its side a few
houses down. As quietly as they could they climbed up the side of
the house.

The cracked window led into a
vacant bedroom; the walls were bare and a bed with the covers pulled
to one side sat in the middle of the floor. There were no personal
belongings nor pictures, but there was a garbage can to the side of
the bed that was filled with used condoms, the smell of week old
ejaculate wafting from it.

Outside the room there was a
long hallway carpeted in red. It was lined with doors that had
plastic name tags hung next to them with names like, “Chandra,”
and “Lilly.” The soft sob of a woman crying came from
behind a door labeled, “Vivian.” Leanin stepped forward
and reached for the doorknob before Gideon pulled her back and the
door swung open of its own accord. They stayed in the shadows as a
man stepped out of the room and walked away from them down the
hallway. He was dressed in a long and flowing black robe with a
strap of white frills draping around his shoulders. A large hat
with three pillars jutting out the top sat high on his head.

When he had gone Leanin and
Gideon listened at the door, they could hear a stifled whimpering
sound coming through. Gideon pushed open the door and stepped
through first, his mouth gaping open when he saw what was inside.
It was as sparse as the other, though lying on the stained mattress
in this room was a tied up young woman. She was naked and splayed,
a limb to each corner of the bed, and her dark hair was clumped
thick with some sort of fluid. Her skin was rubbed raw in places,
bleeding in others, tape covering her mouth. Leanin rushed to her
and slashed the cords that bound her hands and legs. As soon as she
was free the woman snapped into a cocoon like shape, her knees
touching her head, as though she could fold into herself until she
disappeared completely.

“
Gideon, I have to take
her out of here,” Leanin said. "I know we're on a
mission, but," her eyes were wide, face pale, and hands
shaking. “I need to get this girl home. You'll have to find
Malakir by yourself. I'll come back to help look if you want, but I
have to do this.”

Gideon took a deep breath and
resisted the urge to pull at his hair in frustration. He couldn't
stop Leanin, but without her help he wasn't sure he'd be able to
detain Malakir himself. “Go, I'll keep looking around, see if
I can't find Rolanda. I won't confront Malakir, though, unless I
can get him alone.”

Leanin nodded and they left him.
Gideon stepped gingerly down the hallway, trying other doors. The
rooms were in much the same condition; shabby, empty, but with a bed
and a garbage can. Gideon found no other occupants. At the end of
the hallway there was a staircase that wound down, opening up to a
large but dimly lit room. There was nowhere else, he was forced to
stop hiding and simply try to blend in. It wasn't difficult, there
was a whole crowd of men dressed in black robes in that room. They
paid him no mind, he milled amongst them without a second glance,
their eyes were all pasted to the front of the room, where there was
a stage with three naked women dancing on poles. The place was lit
a neon red and there was some sort of dance music playing, giving
the room and everything in it a bloody, beating heart feel to it.
Rolanda wasn't there.

When one dancer finished, they
walked to the side of the stage and down a little stepladder,
disappearing behind a door as another came up from the opposite side
of the room. Gideon followed the leaving dancer, staying to the
shadows, the pounding music kept him from being heard.

The hallway bent at a sharp
right angle, the walls bare red bricks. The woman stepped through a
door and Gideon followed, expecting another hallway. Instead he
found himself in a room full of women staring at him.

It was a small space, and
crowded. The floor was lined with cots no more than a few inches
apart, the walls the same bare brick as the hallway, and it was
cold. Almost all the cots had a young woman on them, some younger
than others, the women in various states of undress. They looked at
him with large, quiet eyes, the eyes of nervous animals. Rolanda
was not among them.

“
Please, don't be
frightened,” Gideon said, “I'm looking for a woman that
was taken from me, my fiance.” He pulled out his photograph
and moved among them, holding it forward. “Have any of you
seen her?”

One of the girls, her hair
platinum blonde but showing brown at the roots, reached for the
photograph and took a long look at it. She was wearing pajama
bottoms and a glittery black bra with tassels coming out of the
front. “She was here about a week ago. She danced a few
times, but she was very bad at it. Not many tips. Father superior
gave her a black eye and she was gone the next day.”

“
Do you know where she
went? It's very important.”

“
Malakir probably took
her. He takes the ones who won't dance,” she said.

Gideon sat down on an open cot
and the women moved away from him. He was losing her, he could feel
it deep inside. The thought crossed his mind that things would be
better for him if he had stayed dead and buried the first time, but
then little details about Rolanda pushed that thought away.

She had a mole on her stomach,
just above where her thigh curved tantalizingly inward. He loved to
kiss it, to sneak lower and lower until she stopped him. That was a
lifetime ago, but at times he could still smell the fresh scent of
spring that always hung around her. She was worth dying for, and
worth crawling out of that grave for, she certainly had to be worth
continuing for. A light touch on his hand startled him out of his
revelry.

“
Next stop on the track is
out in Imperium. Malakir owns another place there, rumor is that
that's where he takes them to be broken.” She held his hand
and looked him in the eyes. “I am married, or was, I guess.
They killed my husband when he tried to save me. You keep looking,
but be careful.”

Gideon thanked the girls and
left. Perhaps he really had died in that grave they buried him in.
This certainly felt like hell.

Leanin wasn't at the spot they
were supposed to meet. Gideon sat and waited for a bit, picking up
clumps of dirt and letting it sift through his fingers. Dirt on the
surface doesn't feel anything like dirt six feet down. That dirt
was stiffer, colder, chock full of little rocks that tore open
fingernails.

A hum in the distance caught
Gideon's attention. It was growing steadily louder, sounding
faintly like a large hive of bees buzzing. He walked down the main
thoroughfare towards the noise, and as it grew louder the little
buzzes separated, it was several people shouting at once. He
followed the noise slowly, his eyes darting this way and that, but
the street he walked on was deserted. When he got close enough, he
could hear individual voices, people were shouting out things like,
“Harlot!” and “Slut!”

Gideon rounded a corner and was
confronted with a large crowd of people all facing towards
something. They were wearing the black robes and the wooden
necklaces that seemed to be the standard garb here.

He elbowed his way through the
crowd, every person who was shouting seemed to be holding a small
pile of rocks in their arms.

In the center of the crowd were
two people he recognized, the man with the tri-pointed hat, and the
woman whom Leanin had saved. She had her arms tied behind her back,
blood was trickling out of her mouth and her eyes were wide with
fear. A trail of urine ran down her leg and puddled underneath her.
The man in black held on to her with one arm while waving for
silence with another. As the people quieted down Gideon saw Leanin,
she was at the edge of the crowd, being held back by two large men
straining to hold on to her. She too was bloodied around the face,
but she was fighting tooth and nail.

“
My people,” the man
cried out as the crowd finally settled, “it is a very sad day
today. The family of Arisa here,” he nodded to one side of
the circle where a fat ruby faced man held hands with a grey haired
old woman, “has come to me, their priest, and informed me of
her transgressions. They told me earlier today that she has been
selling her body, whoring herself to any who would pay, and
confessed as much to them. She has revealed her true nature to our
community, and we cannot allow her to taint our other children with
her wickedness.”

A man came out from the side of
the crowd gingerly holding a small mason jar full of liquid. He
carried it with outstretched arms, walking very slowly so as not to
spill a drop. The priest took the jar and nodded his thanks.

“
We are not uncaring,
though. We will not send her to the maker unclean, we will redeem
her soul so that she may find peace in the afterlife.” The
priest took Arisa by the hair and pulled back so that her face was
tilted upwards. Leanin renewed her struggles and the men almost
lost their hold on her. Holding her by the hair, the priest tipped
the jar over Arisa, slowly pouring it down her face. As soon as the
liquid touched her she began to give off horrible shrieking wails of
pain. A wisp of smoke came the liquid and her skin bubbled and
boiled, slipping off her. She jerked and kicked but the priest held
her tight.

Gideon couldn't watch any more,
he started to run forward to help, but an iron grip grabbed him from
behind and pulled him back. Turning, he gasped at the face of the
person detaining him. The thin and dragon-like features of Akem
smiled back at Gideon.

His insides shuddered as he was
silently reminded of his promise, he hadn't known it would be like
this. Though he stopped struggling, Akem kept hold of him, not
saying a word but rather watching as the woman was cleansed.

After the priest emptied the
bottle he stood away and joined the rest of the crowd. Arisa's
family had turned their faces from the spectacle, while Leanin
continued to struggle against the men holding her. Her face was red
with exertion and her muscles stood out taught and ropey. The men
holding her back were huffing and puffing with the effort it took to
keep her in check.

Abandoned in the center of the
crowd, Arisa fell to her knees, her face melted bloody red, her eyes
little more than burnt pools of blood, her lips peeling off and
exposing her bare gums and teeth. She wailed, a low moan that cut
through the noise the crowd was making.

The priest took a medium sized
rock from someone in the crowd and held it above his head, those
holding stones in the circle of people followed suit. The priest
was the first to throw, his aim true, striking her in the left
breast. She cried out and staggered this way and that, unable to
see where the rocks were coming from. Soon a shower of the hard
missiles were raining down on her. Little flecks of blood stained
the ground as more and more stones hit her. A large rock struck her
on the temple and she collapsed in a pile, the stones still raining
all around her until she was almost completely buried in them. Her
bound arms, jutting through the rocks, twitched a few more times and
then were still.

The crowd dispersed, the
afternoon's entertainment done. Arisa's parents blew a kiss to
their dead daughter and then they too left her in the street.
Gideon fell to his knees when Akem let him go, a cold chill ran
through his spine and he wondered what exactly he was dealing with
when he was dealing with a man like Akem.

The men holding Leanin let her
go without another word, perhaps thinking that she too would
collapse without a fight. Instead she swung wildly at them as soon
as her arms were free, catching one in the jaw and the other in the
nose. They scurried away from her like rats.

Leanin ran to the little pile of
rocks and scattered them. Gideon followed, his legs watery and his
pace slow, almost dream-like. By the time he got to her Leanin's
hands were bloody and torn.

“
Leanin, she's gone, look
at her,” Gideon said.

The body was just that, a body.
There was no more Arisa there. The face was melted away, red bone
sticking out here and there, the eye sockets hollow and empty. The
dirt around her had turned black as it soaked up her blood.

Leanin turned and vomited,
gasping and sobbing as the contents of her stomach left her.
Afterwards she stood and took great gasping breaths. “It's
not Jenny. Jenny's long gone. That's Arisa, and I don't know her,”
Leanin said quietly. “I didn't know Arisa, and I have no
feelings for her. We never shared any experiences together. We
never laughed at a joke together. There is nothing tying me to her,
she is just a decomposing bit of trash on the ground.” All of
this was said in the slow, quiet pace of a mantra.

“
We should burn her,”
Gideon said. He could still feel Akem's touch on his shoulder,
holding him back.

“
Burn who?”

“
Are you serious? Arisa,
this girl. We have to do something for her. I have to do something
for her. We can't just stand by and watch while her body rots out
in the street.”