The Guard To My Sanctuary - Chapter 2: Chapter 2

I sat in my room the night after receiving one hundred dollars from London in a state of restrained optimism. No matter how lucky I felt I couldn't imagine lady Lakshmi bestowing mee with too much luck. I had opportunities to escape before but they were never good enough for me to take them. As a child when I was first kidnapped they left me alone on a boat to ship me away but I couldn't swim so there was no point in jumping off of the side of the boat just to drown myself or be pulled back on board and be beaten within an inch of my life. Or so I thought at the time. If I knew then what I knew now I would have taken my chances in the Pacific Ocean with the sharks and the bone-chilling waters. Hypothermia wouldn't have been too bad of a way to get sent into the afterlife.
I had my money spread out on my bed in an unorganized heap of copper, silver and green. I pulled together my quarters and stacked them in dollar towers and had one hundred stacks in front of me. I counted it then double counted it then double checked my double check once again. I had to make sure that my count was as accurate as possible. After I got done I made sure I jotted down the number then I put the warm metal tokens into the reticule that I had specifically for quarters. I then moved onto dimes which made up seventy dollars evenly which I had painstakingly accounted for. Then I moved onto my nickels that came up to ninety dollars with an even stack. Any extra coins that wouldn't make a full dollar I ushered to the side then wrote the amount of money on a sheet of paper with a crayon I saved from a trip to McDonald's I had made years ago. I had a dollar in pennies and then I reached under my bed for a package strapped to the bed and pulled out my dollars out and organized them into a thick stack of cash that I had accumulated over five years in hopes of an escape. I counted it all starting with the one dollar bills, then the five and finally the tens and added them up to be two hundred and eighty-eight dollars. With the coins and the leftovers, I had a total of $549.64.
"I've been pimped out for ten years and half of that time I've only managed to make what some people working at Mcdonalds make in a single pay period," I fought back tears and hid my money under the bed then made my way to the bathroom with the piece of paper in my hand and flushed it down the toilet. When I got done I looked in the mirror. There I was in another oversized sweater looking lost and beaten down. I tried to smile but knew that it would make me hate myself and that was something I wasn't going to let myself do.
'I am worthy of humanity'
'you are strong'
'I become more beautiful to myself every day'
'I will feel clean again'
I looked at my reflection in the mirror and tried to wholeheartedly believe those words but couldn't. There was more damage done to me that I could repair all by myself and I was only fooling myself into believing I could. Who could be strong enough to deal with the type of depravity that I had gone through and still consider themselves as a person? I heard the door click as the locking mechanism was unleashed. He had locked me in for the day since I had no clients and he wanted to limit his whore's interactions. He was always in a constant state of worry that we would revolt and he would have to retrain a new generation of sex-slaves. I felt my body tense at him ready to enter the room and I rushed to my bed crossing my legs and waiting for London to enter into the room with what would have been a seductive smile if I was aroused by the situation, which I wasn't.
"Hey Ma you ready for daddy," He said already pulling his shirt off revealing his tattooed body. His shirt landed on the floor and I found myself focusing on it for a brief second before I remembered to focus only on him before I received a lip splitting slap to my face.
"Get naked for Daddy," he necessitated and stood still his eyes focusing on every move that I made.
'God just take me away from this life'
I stood up in a manner that was not too fast neither slow and started with my shirt pulling it off while exaggerating every movement I made. I learned the hard way not to rush London's sexual experience. He wanted everything to be slow and sensual as if we were really in love. So that's what I did for him: I flexed when the parts of my body with actual definition were the point of his focus.
"That right Ma, let me see them panties you wearing," he said in his thick Jersey accent that made me want to hurl. I wiggled my bottoms off revealing a pair of pink lace boy shorts that made London dig his hands into his pants and start stroking himself. I could hear some deep breathing coming from his mouth as he palmed himself. He walked over to me and ran his hand down the side of my body and I had to fight with myself not to flinch from his touch. He then kissed me along my neck before he pulled his pants down revealing his length that was soon going to smash inside of me. I felt his hands push my face down towards it and immediately began to fuck my face. I knew my throat would be sore tomorrow from the damage he was doing. I had to step into my 'happy place' where I would be in a state of semiconsciousness so I wouldn't be completely focused on what was going on around me. I imagined being held in my mother's arms as she died from cancer at the age of six. It was an odd memory to go to when I was in a panic-inducing situation. I just remember that time being so comforting and quiet.
I felt him push inside of me with tremendous force and stifled what would have been a blood-curdling scream. I tried my best to focus on the memory of the hospital, my mother's chest rising and falling shallowly while she held me and my two older brothers to the side of her. Her hair was still long and silky since she caught the diagnosis too late in its progression and decided to not go through with the body degrading process that chemotherapy entailed. The memory of her jasmine scented lotion and the feel of her hair on my skin kept me from fighting back. The harder he pounded into me the deeper into the memory I went. When I finally came to I was in the bed alone and the sun was setting over the horizon. The covers were thrown everything and the room smelled of sex mixed in with the sickly sweet scent of cotton candy in the air that caused me to gag. I leaned up and felt a searing pain in my lower back and knew that he went all out. I ran my hand between my buttcheeks and brought them back up as I saw that my digits were tinged red. He acted liked he cared about me but at the end of the day he saw me as nothing more than property and the day I got too old or he got bored with me he'd turn me into one of his drug runners or gun traders. I reached down to my sore hole once again and pushed out feeling relief knowing that he didn't release inside of me. I couldn't bear the thought of carrying another one of his Antichrist. The thought was too much for me to bare, walking around for months and my body stretching out just to produce a child that I knew I would hate due to who its father was and what he had done to me since I was ten years old was too much to bear.
I eased my sore body off of the bed and tried my best not to cry from the pain as a sharp throbbing sensation radiated throughout my body. I limped and moaned my way to the bathroom feeling like a hot iron had been shoved inside of me. I pulled my socks off and hopped in the shower letting the cold water wake me up and let the almost uncomfortable hot water wash away the sweat and grime from the rape I had just experienced. This was not an uncommon occurrence and if anything the shower after a rape was a ritual for me. I looked down and saw the water running to the drain was reddish in color and looked up at the water raining down on my body and just started to cry like a child. Huge tears rolled down my cheeks and I could taste the salty liquid rolling into my mouth. I had always tried to convince myself I was strong but I wasn't half as strong as I wanted to pretend that I was. Deep down in my soul, I was still that ten-year-old boy who had gotten snatched in the Publix on Mandarin Oaks. I got out of the shower and dried off before putting on a t-shirt and cotton joggers to sleep in. I grabbed my money and recounted it then held it to my chest for a while and started going over the plan. The tears rolled off the side of my face the whole while like a waterfall, they were powerful and as unstoppable as the flow of the Nile into the Mediterranean.
I knew a ticket to San Jose where I was from was around four hundred dollars pm average from when snuck and used a "johns" phone to look for ticket prices whenever I could get my hands on one. I had enough money to buy a ticket and I'd just have to wait for the train and find a phone to hopefully get in touch with my dad or brothers if the numbers I had memorized were still in service. I always wondered if my family waited for me or searched since I had been gone. I knew that they were worried but I was sure that they had given up by now. It had been years since I had been gone and I had no way of telling what had occurred right after my disappearance. I wasn't allowed to watch television till a few years ago and the news was still banned on so I only read books. The one time I bought a magazine London beat me with the buckle of his belt until my face was covered in blood. I turned my head to the side and looked at the wall hoping for my wounds would be healed enough to get away from the shit show that I called my life. Even if they weren't I would power through the pain and save myself from the pain that I had been subjugated to daily. I knew that whatever happened with the escape would determine if I lived or died. I knew that I was really close to killing myself which was something that I told myself I wouldn't do in the beginning. Yet that promise had been pushed to the point of no longer being realistic.
"One more night in this room with this stupid cotton candy scent. One more night of this hell I either die tomorrow or find a way to freedom."