Pieces of Autumn (2 page)

It was a ridiculous question to ask, even in my own head.

Of course they would. Once somebody walked through these doors, they were never seen again.

We walked down many hallways, past many doors, and I tried not to think about what I was walking into. I tried very hard not to think about the food, but my stomach growled angrily, and I felt lightheaded.

When the man finally stopped, pushing open a massive wooden door, I took a deep breath and followed him in.

There was a massive boardroom table, spanning almost the entire length of the room. Several men, none of them particularly memorable in appearance, sat around it. One of the empty seats as already set with a plate full of roasted chicken, mashed potatoes, slender green beans and a dollop of cranberry sauce. Two glasses, one with ice water and one with rich red wine, completed the meal.

My mouth watered uncontrollably.
 

"Hello, dear," said one of the men, rising from his seat. "I'm Mr. Charles. Please, sit down."

He didn't need to ask twice. I plunked down in the chair without hesitation, reaching for the fork, but the driver's hand snatched it away before I could reach. I looked up at him pleadingly.

"The contract." He tapped the sheaf of paper sitting next to the plate. "You have to sign first."

Those fuckers.

Taking a deep breath, I picked up the paper and made a valiant attempt to read it. But with the smell of the food so close, the tempting array of delicacies I hadn't tasted in years, I couldn't even begin to comprehend it. The words went on for pages and pages, and I made a show of reading them, but my head was swimming. The sentences were so long, so legalistic, impossible to understand without diagramming. My hands shook as the driver held out a pen.

Not much use being free, if you're just going to starve to death.

I grabbed it from him, and scrawled something like my name.

"Excellent!" Mr. Charles clapped.

I hardly heard him. I'd picked up the fork, and I was shoving in mouthfuls faster than I could swallow. I could feel his eyes on me, and I didn't particularly like it. But some of the weakness, the haziness of many days of hunger, was already starting to fade.

"I'm sure you've heard all kinds of things about us," Mr. Charles said. "Whispered rumors, horror stories...the truth of the matter is, we provide an important service. We connect people. The men who use our agency, they are, at worst, slightly...peculiar. Eccentric, sometimes, you might say. They have difficulty forming attachments in the typical way.

"So why not just hire professionals?" he went on, anticipating my question - or what my question would have been, if my face weren't stuffed with roasted chicken. "Many of them do. Many of them have been, for years. But it's a dangerous, uncertain world out there for a john. You never know when you'll stumble into a situation that will land you in jail, or on a sex offender's list, or worse. It's very hard to form any kind of true intimacy or long-term attachment with those women. They're forever changing their names, moving from agency to agency, making themselves hard to track. It's self-preservation. But it makes for an unsatisfying experience.

"What we offer is something unique. A happy medium between a girlfriend, and a call-girl. Every man's fantasy. For a single flat fee, one of our women will live with you, for a pre-determined period of time."

Owned
.

That word kept echoing in my head, even as Mr. Charles danced around it.
 

"It's a popular misconception that our girls don't retain any of their agency," he said. "Any of their free will. It's not true. They are absolutely free to do as they choose, within the structures of their agreement. However, most of them find that their lives are more...
comfortable
, shall we say, if they remain amenable to our clients."
 

He blinked in a sort of innocent, grandfatherly way. My plate was empty, and I was almost finished chewing. I looked down, then back up at his face.

"So what happens next?" I asked.

Mr. Charles smiled. "Straight to the point," he said. "I like that. Well, after a quick medical exam and physical workup, the first thing we'll want to do is take some photographs for our catalog. Once you're in the database, it's a waiting game. But something tells me you won't be waiting long."

Goosebumps were rising, all over my skin.

Suddenly, one of the silent men cleared his throat. It was the one at Mr. Charles's left elbow. He made a slight gesture, and two men put their heads together, murmuring back and forth. Thanks to the incredible width of the table, I couldn't distinguish a single word. Once or twice, the silent man scribbled something on his notepad and pointed to it. Mr. Charles seemed irritated.

"I'm sorry, dear," he said, looking back at me. "I'm afraid we have some urgent matters to discuss. You'll have to excuse us for a little while. Joshua, will you see if the doctor's available for her exam?"

The driver gave a single, quick nod. He pulled a bulky phone out of his pocket and tapped a few buttons. I stared at it curiously, realizing I hadn't seen such a device in years. Not since all the services went dead and they quickly became useless toys, especially when electricity was so hard to come by. But the one Joshua carried was different, with a long antenna and a massive battery pack. It must have been running on a satellite network. I'd heard rumors that a few powerful men still controlled those few that remained; apparently, it was true.

"Come," he said, a moment later, rising to his feet. He crooked his finger at me, as if there could be any doubt who he was talking to.

I followed him down more interminable hallways, through unmarked double doors, to a huge tiled room that was mostly empty except for the small exam area in the center.
 

There were all kinds of equipment hanging on the walls, and tucked away in the drawers, no doubt. I spent a moment gawking at all the modern medical conveniences that I hadn't seen since I was a kid. Was
this
how the other half lived?
 

The only thing that seemed incongruous was a huge fireplace on one end of the room, with an array of pokers next to it. One of them was sitting in the fire, handle resting on the bricks. But when the door swung open, my attention was quickly turned away.

"Oh, hello," said the doctor, when he walked in. He was a smiling old man with tufts of hair in his ears. I swore he'd done some of my checkups when I was a little girl. A different time, a different life. There was absolutely nothing sinister about him. And that made it so much worse.

While he took my blood pressure and palpated either side of my throat, Joshua took a brief phone call in the corner. I focused on his face while the cold speculum slipped inside me, trying to think about anything except what was actually happening to me.

"Good news," the doctor said, pulling his gloves off with a snap. "You're healthy as a horse, young lady."

I smiled, wanly.

Suddenly, Joshua's hands closed around my shoulders. He was lifting me up to my feet, holding my arms behind my back, steering me forward. My body froze, but he kept just propelling, and I had no choice but to shuffle my feet along with him.

He was leading me to the fireplace.

"This will hurt," he murmured in my ear, as we got close. He almost sounded
regretful
. I wanted to scream, to pull away from his grip and run, but I couldn't. I knew I couldn't. I knew it would only make things worse.

The doctor was coming towards us, patting the pockets of his white coat absentmindedly.
 

"Sorry about this, dear," he said. "But it's very important that we don't lose you, now we have you."

His smile chilled me. I stared at the flames, licking up the poker whose purpose I now understood. My heart was pounding so hard I thought for sure it would give out - prayed that it would, before they had a chance to strip the last of my dignity. My humanity.

The doctor picked up the poker, and I didn't recognize the feral howling echoing through the room, but I knew it had to be me. I closed my eyes the moment before the brand hit my skin, before the pain seared through my awareness, sharp and bright and all-consuming. I screamed and screamed until my throat was raw, until blackness licked at the edges of my vision, and only then did I realize that my eyes were open again - but I couldn't process anything I was seeing.

I was dimly aware that I was being dragged, and I had to blink tears out of my eyes to see what was hanging over me. A glistening shower head. The stream of cool water brought some tiny measure of relief on my burn, my brand, but it was also soaking through my dress. Such as it was. At the moment, I couldn't bring myself to care.

I was shivering when they pulled me away. From shock, from the water, or from some combination of both, I couldn't tell. The burn immediately started to throb again, lighting up pain signals across my whole chest, feeling like so much more than just a skin wound.

They sat me down on the edge of the exam table again, seemingly waiting for me to recover. Even though every inch of my body hurt, I still felt numb.
 

All my worst fears about Stoker were true. They weren't even trying to hide it anymore. I was their property, to abuse and barter and sell as they pleased. All I could hope for was that my eventual owner would be merciful. But what were the odds of that?

What kind of man would
buy
a woman?

Joshua and the doctor were talking quietly amongst themselves. Joshua kept reaching into his pocket and checking his phone. I was desperately curious, and desperately afraid, watching a nightmare unfold with disturbing clarity.

"Come on." Joshua snapped his fingers. "It's time for your close-up."
 

CHAPTER TWO

Picture Day

Feeling like livestock already, for so many reasons, I followed him out into the hall. I tried to remember where we were going, how many turns, how many doors, in case the information ever came in handy. But my mental map was getting scrambled. This place was like a maze, and the throbbing of my burn kept tugging my attention away.

He led me into another elevator, even faster than the first, bringing on another wave of nausea that almost competed with the pain. When he led me out, I was struck by how different this floor looked. We'd gone down, down, so far down that we might be underground. It wouldn't have surprised me. Although every surface was still clean and gleaming white, the lights glowing soft, it felt more like a hospital or an institution than a fancy hotel.

I didn't know what to expect when we rounded the corner, but it certainly wasn't this.

There were about twenty girls lined up, against the wall, subdued and silent. Their eyes darted in my direction, then back to the floor. Joshua indicated I should stand behind the last of them, joining the wait.
 

Apparently, we were all headed towards a folding chair in the middle of the room. Behind it, there was a large off-white backdrop emblazoned with the Stoker sigil. As if my brand wasn't enough. Each girl sat, straight-backed and unsmiling, and the man behind the camera would tut softly and fiddle with her hair for a moment before retreating behind the lens. He didn't seem particularly happy with the outcome, but there was a larger, sterner man behind him, ordering the girls to move on.

I'd imagined I would be dressed in something alluring, posed on a fancy piece of furniture, or something like that. But apparently, Stoker's catalog was more pragmatic than that. It didn't even seem like a full-body shot. I supposed that was what the measurements were for.

The whole thing was like some kind of demented school picture day, and I felt a hysterical laugh threatening at the base of my throat. But I didn't dare. The room was too silent and forbidding, just the soft sound of shutter clicks and the shuffling footsteps of all the other desperate women.

I wanted to talk to the one in front of me, just to try and make a connection with another human being. But I had a feeling there was a reason for the silence. If I tried to open my mouth, the stern guard behind the photographer would probably have a thing or two to say to me.

Before I knew it, my turn was almost up. The girl in front of me was quivering as she stepped forward.

"Next," the guard barked, a few moments later. I swallowed hard, and began to walk.

The chair was even more uncomfortable than it looked, digging into my ass and forcing me into unnaturally perfect posture. I didn't have time to decide what expression I'd wear, before the camera went off and the guard was waving me on.

I must have looked like hell. These men like their women downtrodden, is that it?

So many girls. My head was swimming. These days, there were only a few currencies that still mattered - food, medicine, and drugs. And there weren't many people who had enough of those things to trade. How did Stoker stay in business? How many girls could one powerful man buy?

As many as he wants.

Were there men out there keeping harems? Or worse...using and disposing us, in unmarked graves?

Joshua was leading me down another endless hallway. I felt numb, placing one foot in front of the other with Herculean effort. I just wanted to give up. Slump over on the floor and refuse to move, let them do whatever they wanted to. I'd go catatonic, and I wouldn't feel anything anymore.

No.

Something inside me was snarling.

Don't you dare. This isn't over. Not after everything you've lived through.

Awareness throbbed to life in my chest, along with the pain of my brand. Tears stung in my eyes. I didn't want to wake up and face it all. My own foolishness, my fatal mistake.

We were back in an elevator now, going down many more floors. This time I was sure we must be far below ground level, somewhere under the streets and the sewers. Joshua led me down a hallway lined with numbered doors, so long I could hardly see the end of it. He finally stopped at one of the doors and pressed his thumb on a little black box next to it, until a tiny light flashed green, and the door clicked open.