Stealing Grace Read Free

eyes and whimpered.
    Elena could feel them stop, then heard the beeping noise of a truck backing up. When they arrived at wherever they were, the doors opened to a bright room. A loading dock of some kind and the spotlights were bright on them as they were pushed out the door and down some rickety stairs.
    One of the men came forward and inspected them. He nodded and moved on down the line. When he did that, that girl was taken away into the building. He stopped a couple times and shook his head, hooking his thumb over his shoulder. That girl was taken to a van and put in the back instead.
    He got to one of the girls and cursed loudly. He called a man over and asked him why the girl was even there.
    “She’s too old. Get rid of her,” he spat and moved on to the next girl.
    The man led the girl away crying and screaming, as they all had heard what he said. Elena felt tears streaming down her face. It was the first time she’d been glad about something the whole time she’d been in this mess. Her crying at least meant that she still had her humanity. It made her nauseas to watch him go down the line and judge them, based solely on nothing but face and body and age.
    Elena was a couple down from the last. He pushed the hair of the girl next her back from her face and murmured a ‘Very nice’.
    When he finally got to Elena he grabbed her chin and moved her face side to side. He grabbed her arms and saw the cigarette burns. They really just looked like a couple of chicken pock marks but to someone who inflicted pain themselves he seemed to know what they were. Then he turned her arm over and saw the long scar running from her upper under arm to her elbow; a gift from her drunken father and a drive around the neighborhood when she was twelve, ending into the side of a Toyota.
    “She is damaged,” he said in a heavy Spanish accent.
    “What do you want me to do with her, sir?” an English man asked.
    Elena gasped and held her breath. Oh no, they weren’t going to use her which meant they were going to kill her. She didn’t know which one was worse.
    The man looked at her thoughtfully.
    “She’s ok. Her face will make up for it. She’s the last, move.”
    The girls at the end of the line whimpered as they were grabbed and dragged to the van. The rest of them had been brought inside the building and were shoved down a long hallway. They reached a big room with steel double doors and entered.
    All the girls were lined up on the wall and she was shoved over in the corner with them. They threw a white powder on their skin that burned. They instructed the girls to rub it into their skin and hair. Once they had done that they sprayed them all down with water hoses.
    The water was freezing and made the burning powder run into their eyes and mouth as they gasped from the cold. Some of the girls were crying loudly. Some whimpering. Some quiet and numb. Elena wasn’t sure what category she wanted to fit into but she stayed quiet.
    They pulled them to the next room through a connected door and told them to stand in front of three industrial size fans. They turned them on and blasted freezing cold air on the already cold girls to dry them quickly.
    The men slapped at them and pushed them apart when the girls tried to huddle for warmth. It mostly dried their bodies and hair but their underwear were still wet.
    They marched them to the other end of the warehouse. Past rooms with tool and lace curtains, some were just plain white sheets tacked to the doorways. They heard the noises. Some were agonizing screams, some deep moans and grunts, some yelling and cursing, some were all of them blended together as the girls passed the rooms. So many rooms. There were so many rooms with drawn curtains and awful noises coming from them.
    Some of the girls were standing outside their rooms, waiting, wearing torn negligees and robes. Their makeup was way over the top and smeared. Some looked beaten, some looked scared. Most of them were American