Broken to be Sold

Broken

     The door opens and I'm thrown back into the room, I reach my hands out, trying to bolster myself but as soon as I hit the floor, I shatter. Deep, gut wrenching sobs flow from my mouth and tears spill down my face as I lay my sore body on the ground. I think about the way his hands had moved on my body and the way his mouth had given me bruising kisses on my lips and leaving the skin on my throat damaged. I was tainted.
     My hands formed to claws as I began to scratch roughly at my skin. I needed to burn his touch from my body, I needed the marks to disappear. This couldn't have happened to me. I haven't done anything to deserve this! Sure, I never got great grades in school and I could've helped out more with my parents, but what had I done that warranted rape?
     I couldn't stop the tears from clouding my eyes and dripping like waterfalls, forming little wells into the dirt below me. I felt myself scream as I cried, but I couldn't feel my throat become raw and I could no longer taste my hot, salty tears slipping into my mouth, leaving a bitter film. I couldn't hear my traffickers footsteps furiously stomping down the stairs and I didn't feel it when they ploughed their fists into every available inch of my body.

     The next morning, I didn't move. I layed on the floor, staring blankly at the wall in front of me with my swollen red eyes and the skin on my cheeks felt tight. They brought me food earlier, but I couldn't bring myself to get up and eat, despite my growling stomach. The bruises from the men that had beat me the night before were deep aches in my abdomen and all along my back. The marks from Aiden were still burning into my skin like brands and I couldn't shake the feeling, even as hard as I tried.
      Days pass and soon they take me out for another job. The screaming begins again that night and I'm beat again, even more harshly than before. This time one of them has removed their belts and he whips me in between Parker's punches.
     Weeks and months and eventually, it turns into a year.
     I share my room with another girl now. Naomi's been here for three months now and she still goes through the shock of being raped much like I did when I first started doing this. When she screams, I have to hold her little body and shush her so they don't come down and beat her but a lot of the time it doesn't work and I have to muffle her noises with my hand. She's only twelve, but with her tall stature and hourglass figure, she already looks seventeen. When I first met her, she had a fire inside of her. She was so convinced we'd escape and that her father would find us. She would scheme up plans, drawing her dreams into the dirt just to be scuffed away the next night when they drag us to our next appointment. Now she's just as broken as me and we try to comfort each other the best we can.
I've learned to block out most of the jobs they take me out to do. I turn off my brain and let them do whatever to the dead corpse that is now my body. I started getting panic attacks and night terrors late at night about the first time I was raped but with the added effects of my brother's dead body and my parents forgetting who I am. I used to scream through them but now I choke on them and allow them to suffocate me. Naomi doesn't know much about these since I try to hide them from her as much as possible, but she's caught me fighting off my demons in my sleep on a few occasions, and when she does, I wake up curled into her body, her thin brown arms encasing me in a limp hug.
     Today is no different from any other day. Reese comes into the room, her auburn hair pulled into a long french braid revealing the scar on her cheekbone, she strides over and jerks us both up from the ground. I stumble after her and Naomi looks fearfully over to me but I just nod to her. I've been trying to teach her how to turn off her brain, but she's too in tune with her emotions and she can't jump the mental hurdle of having someone control her body without her knowledge. She wants to know what's happening even though it just ends up hurting her more later.
     We walk up to the living room and are out the front door and in our usual routine: drive to the Happy Days, float past the front desk, go to the seventh floor and down to room seven hundred and forty two. I can get there with my eyes closed and every single day, there's a new person awaiting us. The same lustful looks traveling over my body and the same empty, broken feeling at the end of each night.