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I was shoved back into that dressing room alongside the half a dozen or so other women in there, most of them around my age, none of them looking half as terrified as I felt right now. I plucked up the courage to speak to one of them, the oldest, my voice low and shaky as I tried to get the words out.
"What’s going to happen to us?" I asked her. She frowned at me.
"You don’t know, hun?” she asked gently. I shook my head.
"No idea."
She reached over to give my hand a squeeze.
"It’s an auction," she explained.
"An auction?" I replied, fear rushing up the back of my spine. "What … What’s being auctioned?"
She gestured around, as though it should have been obvious.
"We are."
Cold dread washed over my body. No. No way. This couldn’t be happening. This was some kind of sick nightmare, nothing more than that. I was going to wake up in bed in a few moments, in a cold sweat, breathing hard and thanking God that none of this was actually happening …
But, as I sat there, nothing changed. I was still trapped in this place. And I was starting to understand just what was happening here.
An auction. An auction of women. I knew what that meant. This wasn’t about paying for our company. No, this was about … about paying for our bodies. I knew New Ruska had an underground of girls who did this kind of work, but I had never in a million years imagined I would wind up here. There had to be some kind of mistake; there was no way this was actually happening; I just couldn’t believe it.
"Are you okay?" the woman asked me, and I shook my head.
"No," I bleated back. "I don’t know what I’m doing here. I—"
"You didn’t volunteer?" she asked, her eyes widening.
"No, of course not," I blurted out. "Wait; did you?"
She nodded.
"Of course I did," she replied. "Paying off some debts to one of the guys … Shit, it’s not something I’d agree to if there was any other way, but it’s not for long."
"What do you mean?” I asked her, lifting my head to look up into her eyes. "What happens when … when we get bought?"
A few of the other girls had started paying attention to the conversation now, and I could tell they all thought I was crazy. But how could I be the crazy one in the midst of all of this? There had to be some kind of explanation for it, some kind of reason they were all talking like this was the most normal thing in the world …
But they were all here because they had chosen to be, one way or another. Because they had debts to pay or something. But me? I was here because I didn’t have a choice. Because, according to the men who had kidnapped me, my own father had thought nothing of condemning me to this life.
"You usually spend a few months with the … guy who pays for you," she explained. "Maybe longer. Until he gets tired of you."
"And then what?" I asked. I didn’t even want to know. She shrugged.
"Depends on whether he wants to hand you off to someone new," she replied. "You might be a bribe for someone, or a way to seal a deal, or …"
I dissolved into tears. I couldn’t take this in, I just couldn’t. I wasn’t that kind of girl; I never had been. Yes, I had been with a few guys in my time, but that wasn’t the same thing as me just signing myself over to some man I had never met before, being used as a tool in whatever twisted games he wanted to play with me.
"Hey, it’s okay," the woman told me. "Let’s get you put together, huh? You don’t want to look sad when you go up on that stage, trust me. If they see you’re hurting … well, it attracts the wrong kind of man, trust me."
I shivered at the thought of it, the thought of some twisted man who would see how terrified I was and get off on that. I didn’t know what I was going to be faced with out there, what my life was going to look like, but I didn’t want to know. I just wanted to pretend none of this was happening. Blink out of this existence and back into my old life. And I thought working a double shift at the cafe had been hard …
The girls got me together, helping me do my hair and makeup and getting me changed into some flattering clothes. I knew I had to put on a game face here; I had to be ready to act like I knew what I was doing. I didn’t want any of those men looking at me and thinking I was weak, thinking I was easy to exploit. The thought of that sent a shiver down my spine.
What kind of men would have paid for a girl like this? I hardly even wanted to consider the answer. I knew it wouldn’t be anything good. The kind of man who would want to be able to do anything he wanted to a woman without any sort of reprimand—the kind of man who never wanted to have to pay for his actions, who wanted to use and abuse a woman as he pleased for as long as he liked. The thought of it made me feel sick.
They slicked a deep red gloss onto my lips, and soon, the auction was beginning. The first couple of girls went out, and I heard the raucous cheers and whoops and hollers as they made their way out onto the stage. I blinked back the tears that were threatening to fall from my eyes, praying I could hold myself together, even though I felt like I was about to come apart at the seams at any moment.
