Crushed Ruby, page 2
Ruby didn’t know how long they drove, but it felt like an eternity. When the car finally stopped, she felt butterflies start fluttering in her stomach.
This was it.
She was about to find out what the rest of her life was going to look like.
Someone leaned over and pulled off the blindfold, and she found Igor’s black eyes staring at her. He gave her an appreciative once-over, his gaze lingering on her face. “Your photos don’t do you justice. You’re a very beautiful girl. You’re going to bring me in a fortune.”
She was gagged so she couldn’t reply, but he was looking at her like he expected a response. What kind of response was she supposed to give? Did he expect her to be happy that she was now his prisoner? Did he expect her to be happy that he was going to exploit her? Did he want her to be angry? To fight? Did he get off on that?
Ruby had no idea, so she went with a simple nod.
That seemed to be enough, and she was taken out of the car and found herself standing outside another mansion. It seemed like rich people had so much money that they thought they could just use it to buy whatever they wanted—including people.
Instead of taking her in the front door, she was led around the side and down a short flight of stairs to the basement. A huge metal door was unlocked, and the rope was untied from around her wrists, and the gag was removed. Then, she was pushed through the door, which was then slammed behind her.
Faces looked up at her, and people whispered.
She was the new girl in a world that they knew while she was completely in the dark.
She wanted to keep it that way.
She didn’t want to know what this place was and what was going to happen to her here.
She just wanted the ground to swallow her up.
She wanted to disappear.
She wanted to cease to exist.
Ruby sank to the cold concrete floor and curled herself up into a tiny little ball. She couldn’t really make herself cease to exist, but she could just block out the world and let herself fade into nothingness.
December 24th
10:38 A.M.
“Look … there’s a new girl.”
Ruby looked up at the whispered words from the girl who had the bed beside hers and saw a scared young teenager standing by the steel door that opened to the outside.
An outside she hadn’t set foot in since she had arrived here.
She missed the feel of the sunshine on her skin, the breeze whispering through her hair, raindrops drumming down, making that kind of sloshing sound and feel as they hit your skin or your clothes. Right about now, she would even take snowflakes fluttering through the air, and she hated the snow—anything to feel like the real world still existed, and she was still part of it.
Only she wasn’t still part of it.
Her world had no part in the world that everyone else lived in.
Her world was this dank, dark basement and the rooms in the house above it.
“Maybe we should go say hi,” Anna suggested, and Ruby forgot that they had been talking about the new arrival.
The girl looked to be around fifteen, the same age as Ruby’s youngest sister, and was standing frozen in shock, staring at the room like she couldn’t believe that she was really here.
She remembered that feeling.
She remembered when she had stood there scanning the large, open space. Two of the walls were lined with beds. On the wall at the far end, there were showerheads and toilets. Here you had to clean yourself and do your business with an audience.
She remembered when she had curled up in a little ball on the floor, wanting nothing more than to disappear.
She remembered when two of the girls had approached her, taking her over to her bed and explaining what this place was.
She remembered when they had offered her their friendship, and she had gladly accepted because it was all she had—the only thing to keep her going.
“Yeah, we should,” Ruby agreed.
Together, she and Anna walked over to the girl, whose fearful eyes met them when they got close. The girl shrank back with nowhere to go but up against the steel door, and that wasn’t going to get her anywhere. They should know. They all had, at one time or another, tried desperately to get through it and escape.
“It’s okay,” Ruby told the girl. It wasn’t, of course, nothing about being in this place was okay, but she didn’t know what else to say. Hi, you just entered Hell, wasn’t the best opening line. “My name is Ruby, and this is Anna. What’s your name?”
“C-C-Cordelia,” the girl answered softly.
“Hi, Cordelia.” She smiled as warmly as she could. Warmth was something that was no longer a part of her life. It was always cool and damp down here, and they weren’t given many clothes to wear or many blankets for their beds. Most of the time, she was borderline freezing. The men who tended to them were pretty much the opposite of warm. They were cruel, and they treated them like garbage. And, most of the time, like their own personal toys. There wasn’t a lot of warmth from any of the other girls, either. Most were depressed. Some suicidal. All of them were suffering, but they offered each other what they could, and those friendships were the only things that got her through the day.
All 148 days she’d been here.
One hundred and forty-eight.
It was a lot of days to spend as someone’s prostitute and sex toy.
It was hard to believe that 150 days ago, she had no idea that when she climbed into her bed, she had just hours before her life would be all but stolen from her.
Christmas Eve.
Today was Christmas Eve. Instead of spending it preparing food for the following day’s big family lunch or baking Christmas cookies, she was here. Instead of wrapping gifts for each other and stacking them under the huge Christmas tree in the living room, she was here. Instead of celebrating with her family, she was here—in this basement—along with two dozen other girls who had been sold to Igor.
She had no idea how she would be spending tomorrow.
While Ruby knew it wouldn’t be exchanging gifts and eating a big lunch, she didn’t know if the perverts who paid money to come to this brothel and do whatever they wanted—literally whatever they wanted—to the girls here so long as they paid for it, visited here on Christmas or if they have families they spent the day with, pretending to be human and not the monsters they truly were.
She wondered where her sisters were today. Who had they been sold to? Where had they ended up? Were they even still alive?
“My friends call me Delia,” Cordelia said. “Well, they did,” she added.
“Come and sit down, Delia, we’ll find you a spare bed,” Ruby said, and she and Anna led her to a bed just a couple down from theirs.
“There should be some clothes in the box at the end of your bed,” Anna told her. “They probably won’t be your size, but they’re better than nothing.”
Certainly better than things she would wear when she was sent to one of the upstairs rooms. In a few hours, someone would come and collect Delia and take her to a room where they would dress her up and take her photograph. Those pictures would then be used for the men to browse through the catalogue and decide who they wanted to pay to spend time with that day.
“Is there a toilet, you know, with a wall and a door?” Delia asked, her terrified and overwhelmed eyes still scanning the room.
Ruby had long since stopped being self-conscious about going to the toilet or showering in front of the others, although she remembered how mortified she had been at first. The first shower she’d taken here, she spent the whole time attempting to cover herself as best as she could, and she had held on until her bladder felt like it was going to burst before she had finally succumbed and used the toilet. But now, it was no big deal. At least they had a toilet, and the showers had hot water—which was nice.
Before she could answer, one of the men who worked here approached. “Ruby, you have a client.” She hated how they called them clients. These men weren’t her clients; they were her rapists.
She knew the drill. She’d done this hundreds of times in the 148 days she’d been here. Sometimes she might be required to service four or five men a day. Which was, she supposed, why she had ended up here. She wasn’t a virgin, so the men her parents had sold her to probably couldn’t get as much money for her if they sold her to someone who wanted a private collection. But here, no one cared if she was a virgin. All they cared about was that she let these men use her body.
And she did.
There was no way to escape. There were no windows down here and only two steel doors—one leading outside and one leading to the rest of the house. She was always accompanied by an armed man who stood guard outside of her and her “client’s” room.
Ruby no longer felt like a person. She felt exactly like the sex doll she was. Lie there, try to let your mind wander, get through each day as best as she could—that was all her life was. To exist in this place, you had to accept that now, you were nothing.
Obediently, she got off the bed and trailed along behind the man. She paused while he unlocked the door and let them both out of the basement dormitory, then walked straight into the dressing room. Since she’d done this hundreds of times before, she didn’t need to be told what to do. She went quickly into the shower, and using the hair products and body wash, she quickly scrubbed herself and her hair, then dried off. A woman was waiting to blow dry her hair and apply the appropriate makeup, then whatever outfit she had been ordered to wear was waiting for her to put on. Today it was a low-cut blue dress that matched her eyes, and a pair of white sandals.
Once she was dressed, she was escorted from the dressing room, up the flight of stairs leading to the main house. The place was gorgeous and expensively decorated, but despite that, to her, it was just a filthy house filled with filthy men who wanted to act out their filthy fantasies on helpless victims who couldn’t fight back.
Some of the girls who came here tried to fight back, but all they got for their efforts was broken bones and black eyes and punishments that included not being fed for a week or more.
What was the point?
This was her life now.
She was nothing—just someone else’s possession.
She didn’t matter.
She wasn’t important.
She was just a doll.
They stopped in front of the door where she knocked, anxiously waiting to see who was inside. Some of the men were nicer than others. Others liked to beat her or use toys on her. Some wanted her to suffer, while others just wanted sex. Some used her so roughly she would bleed, and others were gentle like they thought that the two of them were equally as invested in the experience. Some had weird fetishes, and some liked role-playing. But, one thing was always the same; she was to do everything she was asked without complaint.
When the door opened, she immediately recognized the man. He was something of a regular of hers. He had taken a liking to her and usually came every couple of weeks—often, more. Sometimes he brought her chocolates or flowers or other gifts, but what he wanted to do with her was always the same. As far as men went, he was one of the better ones to deal with.
“Hello, Ruby,” he said as he closed the door behind her.
“Hello,” she returned, keeping her gaze fixed on the floor. Never make eye contact had been quickly drilled into her upon arriving here.
“You look beautiful,” he said, coming to stand before her and hooking a finger under her chin, tilting her face up so he could see it.
Her eyes met his for a brief second before darting away. She didn’t want to make him mad, and just because he’d never hit her before, didn’t mean he wouldn’t.
“Let’s go into the bathroom,” he said, taking her hand. While the bathroom in the basement was filthy, and the one in the dressing room practical, this one was ornate, and she saw he had already run her bath, filling it with fragrant oils and bubbles. He undressed her, his fingers lingering on her skin, then he took her hand again and helped her into the bath. After removing his own clothes, he stood and watched her for a few minutes—his hand stroking himself until he was hard.
When he was ready, he joined her in the bath, sitting behind her. His erection pressed up against her back, he reached for the shampoo. Over the next thirty minutes or so, he washed her hair, then with soapy hands massaged every inch of her body. It wasn’t until he was satisfied that she was clean that his hand settled between her legs and his fingers pushed their way inside.
Automatically, her body clenched at the intrusion, earning her a swift slap to her cheek, reminding her that while this man wasn’t as bad as the others, he was still a monster, and as such, nothing to be messed with.
Ruby forced herself to relax and let him do what he had come here to do.
While one of his hands stroked her insides, and his other stroked himself, she let her mind wander away and wondered how many times you could let your mind go before you could no longer get it back.
Four Years Later
March 4th
11:56 A.M.
One thousand six hundred and eighty-one.
That was how many days had passed since she was sold by her parents and snatched from her bed in the middle of the night. She was taken to Igor’s, where she spent the last four and a half years as one of his prostitutes.
The last four years felt like they had lasted an entire lifetime, and yet, at the same time, when she thought back to what her life had been before, it seemed like it was just yesterday that she’d been hanging out with her friends, swimming in the pool, and talking about boys and their coming senior year.
No longer was Ruby Hatcher a seventeen-year-old kid. She was now a twenty-two-year-old woman. Her birthday had come and gone the previous month and with it more thoughts of her sisters. If they were still alive, Diamond would be twenty-three now, Sapphire twenty-one, and the baby of the family, Emerald, was twenty—no longer a teenager. Her twin sister would also have recently turned twenty-two, and Ruby still felt the ache in her heart that came from not having her twin in her life.
That ache was pretty much the only thing she felt these days.
One thousand six hundred and seventy-nine days spent in this basement had taken everything else from her.
She was no longer afraid.
She was no longer angry.
She no longer bothered to make friends with the girls here. Anna had gotten sick a little over a year ago. Since their captors had refused to take her to the doctor, she had died down here. Delia was still here, and so were a lot of the other girls who had been here when she arrived, but many had since died.
Soon it would be her turn.
She’d get sick, or one of Igor’s clients would go too far, hurt her too badly, and she would die.
Part of her wanted it to happen.
Part of her couldn’t care less.
She didn’t care about anything anymore.
“Ruby, you have a client.”
She didn’t even think about what she was doing. She just stood on autopilot and walked toward the door.
How many more times would she hear those words?
At first, they had filled her with dread.
Now they couldn’t stir even the tiniest bit of emotion inside her.
She didn’t care that she was going to be raped.
She didn’t care if she was going to be hurt.
She just didn’t care.
About anything.
The steel door opened, and she took her shower, then sat quietly as her hair and makeup were done. She didn’t even look at the clothes that were laid out for her. She just put them on and followed her escort up the stairs and into the house.
“No, you’re doing a house call today,” the man said when she automatically started for the staircase.
A house call.
Those weren’t common, but this wouldn’t be the first time she had been taken off the property to cater to a client who preferred to use his own home. The last time she had been anywhere was over a year ago, and when she stepped out into the chilly outdoors, her skin immediately prickled as though it no longer recognized fresh air.
She was directed to sit in the back seat of a black car. No one bothered to restrain her in any way.
They knew she wasn’t going to cause any trouble and try to escape.
And they were right.
She wasn’t.
She was so pathetic.
Ruby was ashamed of herself.
She should be fighting back. She should be trying to take advantage of every single situation that presented itself and try to escape. She should be doing something. Anything.
But she didn’t.
She just did as she was told, like the obedient little zombie that she was.
Tears blurred her vision, and surprised—she hadn’t cried in over three years—she brushed them away.
She was a useless excuse for a person who deserved everything she got.
They drove for close to thirty minutes, leaving the quiet countryside where the brothel was located and entered the city. It had been so long since she had seen anyone besides her fellow captives, her captors, and the men who paid to spend time with her, that it seemed strange seeing people going about their lives. They were driving about and walking up and down the strip malls they passed. Parents played with their children in the parks. People laughed and talked; they looked so happy. She had almost forgotten that some people lived their lives doing whatever they wanted whenever they wanted to do it.
It was like she had been brainwashed.
She’d been conditioned to live the way she had been, and she didn’t know that even if she somehow managed to return to the real world that she would be able to break their hold on her.
