Shaking, I was carried upstairs, by now utterly exhausted. On the third or fourth stair I felt myself lose conciousness, only to reawaken when my head again hit a solid floor. I raised my head before blacking out for a second time.
I woke to see four faces staring at me, and this re-occurred as I lost and regained conciousness continually for a few minutes. I finally managed to sustain conciousness and began to panic once again. "Jack! Jack you bastard I love you. Where the fuck are you? I'm pissed Jack I'm telling you, Jack? Jack?" I screamed, my throat already raw from crying, I collapsed into a heap on the floor as someone began stroking my hair. Delusional, I thought it might be Jack, and I was really at home in my bed and not in some strange mansion where people shoot other people. None of this could possibly be real, right? God my head hurt. So did my throat. Everything did actually. The person stroking my head was not Jack but one of the four girls I'd seen above me earlier, she gently sat me up and passed me a drink of water from the table in the corner of the room. "Right, I'm going to explain all this to you, and it will come as a shock but you need to co-operate or it will be so much worse okay? Promise me you'll listen?" I nod slowly, afraid that if I spoke I'd either pass out again or vomit.
"My name's Jasmine and I've been here the longest, this is Ruby, Crystal and Lily." I take this all in, nothing too shocking so far.
"But why are y-?"
"Bitch, she said shut up and listen, you a fucking retard?" Pipes up a voice from the corner, the one introduced to me as Crystal.
"Crystal, I remember you cried like a baby for weeks when you first came here so you can shut up right now, or maybe you want Boss to cut your tongue out like he did to Brandon, I mean you remember that right? I mean after all it was your fault, oh but wait - Boss doesn't actually know that does he...?" Jasmine sneers. This shuts Crystal up and Jasmine continues - "Now, you're not gonna wanna hear this hun, but you now work in a brothel. You've met Boss, he's good to us and pays for us to stay here while we work for him, it's a comfortable life and it beats living on the street. Which area of London did he pick you up from?"
I hesitate, I feel like I came here under different circumstances than these girls. I explain the events leading up to me being here and Crystal leans over: "Oh sweetheart, your boyfriend must owe Boss money. He has one golden rule, if you don't pay up fast, you pay up big, and clearly the Boss liked you..." She cackles loudly and one of the other girls gives her a playful slap on the thigh.
"Oh Crystal you're so mean, give the girl a break why don't you?" says one of them, but her tone is snide and I fear that there's more bad news to come.
"Babe, Boss deals in two things: girls and drugs. And seeing as you've never been brought here before, your sweetie of a boyfriend must have been sniffing something not so legal to land you in here." I shake my head vigourously, one thing Jack never dabbled in was drugs, that I knew.
There was a knock at the door and something was thrown in, and one of the girls handed it to me. "For you," she said, handing me what looked like underwear on a hanger. It was underwear. "Fuck, no." I protested but the four other girls cornered me and looked stern. Now that I noticed it none of them were exactly fully clothed, and they continued staring until I nodded. "Isn't there a bathroom or something, I just can't-"
"There," one of them said, pointing to the far side of the dank room. The bathroom was no better than the rest of the room, it smelt of damp and everything was filthy, which seemed strange in such a huge and wealthy house. I knew I didn't have long so I scanned the room and found a small window above the bath, I was slim and thought I could just about squeeze through, but I had no idea how high up we were. Still, a broken leg was better than the life I would be leading after what I just heard, so I put one foot on the side of the bathtub and reached up, gripping onto the handle and managing to open the window. I put my other foot on the bath and was ready to climb out when my foot slipped on some of the gunk of the window sill and I fell face first into the filthy bath. I cried out of frustration as the girls burst in and lifted me up, roughly stripping off my clothes and forcing me to wear the disgusting lingerie set out for me.
"It's for your own good, you'd only get beaten otherwise." They finish their work and leave me, throwing some makeup onto the floor and telling me to clean myself up. I spend the next 5 minutes destroying the bathroom, I rip down the shower curtain that hangs, festering, above the bath and grit my teeth as I punch the mirror, watching it split into hundreds of pieces and enjoying the feeling of the broken glass on my feet. I'm so angry, I don't care what happens to me anymore, if I die so be it, anything but this. But, as with all emotions the anger subsides and I know I will be in huge trouble already for the state of the bathroom, I may as well do as I am told. I reach for the makeup and examine it, it is good quality and strangely I am thankful for it, it makes me look less like me, maybe I can pretend this is happening to someone else.
I emerge from the bathroom, and the girls smile up at me. They must have heard me in the bathroom, why are they acting so normally? "Your new name is Garnet. You remember that and answer to nothing else okay?" Crystal smiles. Again, easier to forget that this is happening to me.
There's a knock on the door and Ruby looks at me - "you ready?"
