Killing Sarai

17

“The first time I saw Javier, I knew he was different from the other men my mother brought home. More powerful somehow. He walked with this proud air about him. Unafraid. Confident. The other men—and there were a lot—were scumbags. They couldn’t wait to get through our tiny living room and past me before feeling my mother up. They were disgusting, pathetic.”

“And Javier wasn’t?” he asks.

I shake my head, gazing off toward the wall now. “He was disgusting because of what he was and how he used my mother, yes, but he was too professional to be pathetic.”

“Professional?” He looks upon me with slight curiosity.

“Yes,” I say with another nod. “Like I said, he was powerful. Though I wasn’t aware of it at the time, about what he was, I knew he was different. I stopped worrying about my mother and the things she got herself into when I was twelve-years-old. I was used to it all by then. She always managed to make it home. Despite being strung-out and sometimes beaten, she never called the police or seemed scared of anything so I guess I started believing in her safety as much as she did.” I look at the wall again, my hands pressed against the edge of the bed on either side of me, my body slouching down in-between my shoulders. “But when I saw Javier, I was scared for her again. I was scared for me.”

I lock eyes with Victor and say, “The moment he saw me, I knew my life was over. I didn’t know how or why at that time, but I just knew. The way he looked at me. I knew….”

My gaze drops to the carpeted floor.

“Why are you asking me this stuff, anyway?” I turn to him again. “Why the interest all of a sudden?”

I catch him glance over at the digital tablet lying on the table next to him. I look at the tablet for a split-second, too, wondering about all of the secrets it holds. Victor stands up from the table and my eyes follow him as he walks toward me.

“Turn around,” he says, standing over me.

I tilt my head back enough to see his face; he’s too close, crowding my space and it’s frightening. “What?” I ask, confused and getting the worst feeling.

He leans over and reaches inside the duffle bag in-between the beds and retrieves another rope just like the one I used to tie Izel to the chair with.

“Turn around,” he says again.

I shake my head frantically. “No,” I say and start to back my way across the bed.

He grabs me by the waist and flips me over onto my stomach.

“I have to get some sleep,” he says, pressing his knee, although carefully, into the center of my back. “You’ll have to make do. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t tie me up! Please!” I try to wiggle myself free, but he grabs one of my wrists with his free hand and fastens it against my back. I struggle and kick and thrash about, but he’s too strong and I feel like a fawn under the paw of a lion. “You’re sorry?! Then don’t do it! Please, Victor!”

His grip around my wrists, now with both of them restrained behind me, tightens harshly and I can’t help but believe it has everything to do with me calling him by his name, rather than my struggling against him. With one side of my face pressed into the mattress, I feel the rope wind around my wrists and then he ties it into several firm knots. After he’s satisfied that I’m unable to get my hands free, he stands up from the bed and grabs my ankles next. I pull one foot back and manage to kick him square in the stomach, but it doesn’t faze him. He just looks at me, catches my leg in mid-air on the second attempt and binds my ankles together with one hand.

Tears barrel from my eyes. But I stop fighting.

He carefully rolls me over onto my side, facing me toward the wall with my back to the bed where I know he’ll be sleeping. The thought of him being behind me like that all night and unable to see him unnerves me to no end.

The lamp between the bed switches off, leaving the room bathed in partial darkness. It’s still early, just after sundown, but I’m exhausted enough that it feels like it’s two o’clock in the morning.

I cry softly into my pillow for a little while. Thinking about my mom and all of the things Victor forced me to remember.

And I think about Lydia and Mrs. Gregory who lived two trailers over from me; they are really the only family I’ve ever had. And when the uncomfortable position my arms have been put into becomes painful, I roll my body awkwardly onto the opposite side.

I peer through the darkness to see Victor on the other bed lying on his side with his back facing me. He’s still fully clothed. I notice that he did at least take his shoes off, but his feet are covered by thin black dress socks. I wonder if he’s still awake.

“Victor?”

“Go to sleep,” he says without moving a muscle.

“When you take me back to Javier, will you at least give me a gun?”

Silence filters through the space between us.

“Will you?” I ask again, stirring that silence. “It will give me a fighting chance. I’ll either kill Javier myself, or I’ll die knowing that I tried.”

Victor’s shoulder rises and falls slowly as if he’d just taken a deep breath.

“I’ll think about it. Now go to sleep.”