Lethal

After years of living wherever he could take shelter, he now had a permanent residence, although it wasn’t on any postman’s route. He circled the vacant building twice before approaching a padlocked door to which he held the only key. Once he was in, he bolted the metal door from the inside.

Total darkness enveloped him, but it was no impediment. He easily navigated the hallways, whose walls were black with mold. They were perpetually damp. Rainwater trickled down three stories to collect in rancid puddles on the uneven floors.

Deep within the bowels of this former bean cannery, Diego had made himself a home. He unlocked the door to the inner sanctum, slipped inside, secured the deadbolt.

The chamber’s air was cooler and drier due to a makeshift ventilation system that he’d adapted from the building’s original, using scrap materials he’d collected over time. On the floor was an expensive oriental rug he’d stolen off a truck parked in the French Quarter. He’d pretended to be one of the deliverymen. No one had challenged him when he slung the carpet over his shoulder and walked away with it. All the room’s furnishings had been similarly obtained. Twin lamps shed a welcoming glow.

She was sitting on the edge of the bed, brushing her hair with a brush that Diego had shoplifted yesterday. He’d paid for the goldfish, though. He’d passed a pet store he’d never taken notice of before. He saw the fish in their tank. Next thing he knew, he was carrying home one of them in a plastic bag. Her smile when he’d presented it to her had been worth triple what he’d paid for the fish.

He’d never had a pet before. Now he had two. The goldfish and the girl.

Her name was Isobel. She was a year younger than he, although she looked even younger than that. Her hair was sleek and so black it was iridescent. It hung straight to her shoulders, forming a glossy curtain against her cheeks.

She was slightly built, with a waist his hands could span. Diego figured he could snap her frail limbs in two with virtually no effort. Her breasts were small, barely tenting the T-shirt he’d stolen for her. And although he’d had many women of all ages and sizes, it was the delicate beauty of Isobel’s small body that made him feel feverish, short of breath, and weak with desire.

But he hadn’t touched her in that way. Nor would he.

Her fragile, youthful features had made her very popular with the massage parlor’s clientele. Men loved being stroked by her small hands. Many requested her. She had regulars. Her delicacy was a turn-on because it made those who sweated over her feel more manly, larger, harder, stronger.

Like thousands of others, she and her family had been promised that she would enjoy a better life in the United States. She was guaranteed a job in a fancy hotel or a fine restaurant, where she would make more money in one week than her father earned in a year.

Once she had paid off the debt of getting her into the States and well situated, which would take only a few years, she would start earning money to send back to her family, possibly enough to pay for her younger brother to come to the U.S. also. It had sounded like a fairy tale come true. She had bade her family a tearful but hopeful goodbye and had climbed into the truck headed for the border.

The hellish trip had taken five days. She and eight others had been crammed into the bed of a pickup and covered with a sheet of plywood. During the journey, they were given very little to eat and drink and few opportunities to relieve themselves.

One of the other girls, no older than Isobel, had become sick with a fever. Isobel had tried to hide the girl’s illness, but the driver and the heavily armed man who rode with him discovered it during a rare rest stop. The truck departed without the girl. She was left on the side of the road. The others were warned that they would also be abandoned if they interfered or caused trouble. Isobel had wondered many times if the girl had died before someone found her.

And that was only the beginning of Isobel’s nightmare.

When the truck finally reached its destination, she was made to dress in provocative clothing, which was charged against her earnings, and put to work in a brothel.

She didn’t know anyone. Even those who’d been trucked into the States with her, and with whom she’d forged a quasi-friendship founded on shared fear and despair, had been sent to other places. She didn’t know which city or state she was in. She didn’t understand the language that the first leering man crooned to her as he robbed her of her virginity.

Although she hadn’t understood his words, she’d comprehended completely what that act had signified. She was ruined, spoiled goods. No kind and caring man would ever want to marry her now. She was disgraced. Her family would disown her. Her choices were now limited to continuing to “entertain” the customers, or to kill herself. But suicide was a mortal sin, a ticket to damnation.