After the Escape

The door was flung open, crashing loudly against wall and jolting Yulia awake. Despite the tiredness in her limbs and deep ache in her body from lack of sleep and rough treatment for too many nights to count, she forced herself upright to be ready for whatever fresh hell was coming now. “Time to go, bitch.” Timon barked, in his usual tone of sadistic glee at being able to have control over his charges. He was a lean, tall, man with dark hair and small, beady eyes. His face was held in his customary sneer which make him look like he was permanently disgusted with everything. Yulia knew from experience that he liked to humiliate and brutalise others whenever he felt they were not obeying him quickly enough, although he was sycophantically obedient to those higher up the food chain. She didn’t bother asking where she was being taken; wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of being able to taunt her with it. Surely there were no more clients to service this afternoon? She usually got to rest until the evening, and last night had been particularly taxing, as her bruised eye and cheek could attest to. “Get dressed!” he yelled, even though she had already started reaching for her clothes. He leered at her as she got dressed, trying to make her uncomfortable even though any shame at being unclothed had long been beaten out of her. She quickly pulled on a sweatshirt, knowing that where ever she was being taken there was no guarantee that it would be warm or comfortable, and her captors wouldn’t care either way if she was cold. Once she was dressed she followed Timon down the corridor to where the other men typically hang out, hearing their rough voices cursing and laughing long before they got there. Yulia felt the first stirrings of fear start in her belly, hating how despite all that had been done to her she was still frightened of being brutalized further. Timon gripped her upper arm as they got to the room in order to shove her through the door, putting on a show of dominance in front of his peers. She was surprised to see one of the big bosses, Mihai, was also there today. “There you are Timon, time to go.” He said briskly, picking up one of the many handguns off the table and tucking it into his waistband like something out of an American gangster movie. He grabbed a couple of cable ties and without acknowledging her, tossed them to Timon. “Secure her wrists, and meet me in the van.” He walked past them out of the door leaving silence in his wake. Wherever she was being taken it wasn’t going to be anywhere she wanted to be judging by the fact that Mihai was present and she needed to be bound. Timon wrapped the cable ties round her wrists, tugging the ends so that they tightened painfully. The petty cruelty rankled, but she was almost numb to such things now, or at least that’s what she told herself. Timon loaded her into the back of one of the vans that was parked just in the entrance of the warehouse that they operated out of, shoving her roughly to make her bark her shins on the plywood bench in the back that constituted a seat. She heard his low chuckle as he slammed the door and plunged her into darkness, leaving her to seethe with hatred for him whilst her shin bones burned. The engine started and the van pulled away, her hatred eventually giving way to fear. Where were they taking her? She had been taken to various different locations to entertain different groups of men, but never alone and they hadn’t bothered to tie her wrists for a very long time. Which meant that they thought she was going to fight whatever they were going to do she concluded. Which meant that it was something they hadn’t already done, and the idea of them wanting something even more depraved than what they had already subjected her to was unbearable. She found herself starting to panic, the slight tremor of her limbs the only outward sign of her terror. She had ceased crying when she realised how futile it was, and how sometimes it made things worse as some of her clients liked it. She didn’t know how long the journey took, seeming to be interminable whilst she was in the humming, jolting darkness with nothing to distract her from her horrific imaginings.   Finally, they reached her destination, and the van slowed to a stop. She heard the doors at the front open, and shouts of greeting between men. Listening hard, she couldn’t make out what was being said, but could hear the hum of distant machinery, so it was likely she was in another industrial setting.   It took another few minutes of tense anticipation until the back doors were wrenched open, and Timon’s smirking face came into view. “Out!” he ordered, gesturing for her to get out of the van. Keeping a wary distance from him as she didn’t trust him not to trip or shove her again, she stepped down from the back of the truck, trying to work out where she was. The crisp smell of the sea and towering sides of stacked metal containers told her she was at some docks somewhere, the sights and smells reminiscent of how she had come to this country in the first place. She had been 20 when she realised that she was not going to be able to achieve what she wanted to in her hometown in Romania. She was working in one of the orphanages, taking care of the disabled residents who were likely to never leave care. It broke her heart every day to watch these children struggle, knowing that in other countries the staff would have more resources and training to make these children’s lives more bearable. It was after some European tourists came to visit the orphanage and talked about the systems they had in their countries that she realised that she actually could go to another country to be trained. She then set about researching where she wanted to go, and what country would be the best to study in, deciding that the UK would be her ideal option. She applied for a work visa in order to travel there but it was denied as she was not classed as a “skilled worker” and therefore did not qualify for one. However, it was not unheard of for people from Romania to be smuggled into Europe illegally, and once there could build a life for themselves, eventually becoming a legal citizen. Would it be worth it? She wondered. She had deliberated for months over whether this was the right thing to do, but when one of her favourite children died of a simple infection that should have been easily treated, she realised that she had to do something. So she had made inquiries through her cousin, who wasn’t always on the right side of the law, and he found a group of traffickers who routinely took people over to the UK. Their primary cargo was drugs, but according to her cousin they were her best hope to get there without a visa. Their price was ridiculous, far more than she could afford, but her family all pitched in to help wanting her to better herself and have a brighter future. How that recollection hurt her now! She could picture her family’s faces as they waved her off the morning she left, looking so proud and happy for her. She could only pray that they didn’t know what had become of her, and the things that she had done to survive since then. She looked over to where Mihai was talking to a huge bull of a man, who had a shaved head and a scar running down the side of his face. She had seen his type before; rough, violent men that enjoyed holding dominion over others. The type of person that the vicious weasel’s of the world, like Timon, aspired to be. “That’s your new owner,” hissed Timon into her ear, holding her upper arm in a bruising grip. “Midas doesn’t take any s**t from his whores, so you had better watch your step.” He gloated, like she wasn’t already following their every order.   Yulia had no doubt that what Timon said was true; this Midas character was obviously a more powerful criminal that Mihai seeing how they were all deferring to him, and she could see several other men lounging around in the shadows of the containers, likely armed lackeys. This was bad, she thought. It was likely that she was going to be taken out of the UK, seeing as they had brought her to the docks, and who knew where she would end up. At least here there was hope for escape; human trafficking and prostitution was illegal, so there was always hope that they would be careless and get caught out. In other parts of the world it was much more acceptable, and sometimes even though it was illegal the police were so corrupt that they turned a blind eye, or even were part of the operation. She was brought in front of Midas, who looked her up and down. “Why’s she bruised?” he demanded of Mihai, who hadn’t actually seen her for a week so likely wouldn’t know the reason. “Rough customer,” he said smoothly. “Got carried away…” Yulia felt bile rise in her throat as he said it so casually. The casual dismissal of the huge man who had tossed her around like a rag doll the night before, whilst she was wondering if his hand around her throat was going to tighten enough to put an end to her this time, drove home her complete insignificance to these people. She really was just a commodity to them; not a sentient being. “She’ll do,” he said finally. “Put her in the container.” Timon marched her over to a container, into the dimly lit interior and back to a partitioned area where four other women sat. Two small Asians, and two other Europeans were huddled together. Three of the women had the look about them which suggested that they had been kept in a situation like this for a while; they kept their eyes downcast and sat unnaturally still so as not to draw any attention to themselves. The fourth however, was obviously new. Her face was newly bruised, and her wrists bloodied like she had been fighting her restraints. She looked boldly up at Yulia, big green eyes contrasting against her bright auburn hair. No wonder they had taken her, thought Yulia, she was striking looking. Although if she continued to openly defy the men who had them she may not stay looking like that for long. Yulia gave her a warning look against speaking whilst Timon was there. He would take great joy in having another person to subdue, especially if he got a chance to look like a “big man” in front of the others. Yulia sat down next to the others, her mind working rapidly to try and find a way out of this predicament. Throughout the whole of her imprisonment with these men she had felt compelled to survive; she held a little spark of hope that hadn’t been extinguished despite each cruel pinch or slap against her flesh. But this was something else; maybe survival wasn’t the be all and end all? Maybe she should try to escape before those container doors were shut and locked, even if it did mean getting shot… She was mustering her courage to make a break for it when there was a commotion outside, the men scrambling around and a blue flash of light. The other girl, the red haired one, suddenly leapt to her feet and shrieking, ran towards the doors. She was tackled by the two men there, one hitting her again and again to shut her up, but then everything descended into utter chaos. Yulia threw herself down onto the floor as she heard an explosion of gunshots outside, pressing her arms against her head to lessen the noise. She could feel the other women in the compartment sinking down next to her, and their laboured, terrified breaths. Yulia lifted her head slightly to try and see what was happening, and saw that two of the traffickers were in the doorway, one of them aiming his gun at whoever was outside. “Get down!” bellowed a voice, so strident and loud that Yulia couldn’t even think of disobeying. She saw one of the traffickers fall and the other one reach for his gun, then there was the sharp report of a shot which echoed around the metal walls of the container painfully loudly. When the sound ebbed and she managed to open her eyes again, it was to see the second trafficker gasping and shuddering whilst blood poured from a wound in his torso. The red-haired girl scrabbled away from him in disgust, and two men in police uniforms appeared in the doorway of the container. One secured the first trafficker, who was still on the ground, with handcuffs whilst the other officer walked further in to check the second one. Yulia was fairly certain that if he wasn’t dead already then he would be soon, and the police officer obviously deemed him as no longer a threat as he quickly moved past him towards the red-haired girl who was huddled on the floor. He then looked back towards her and the other women, who were now weeping softly, pulling a flashlight from his belt so that he could see them properly. “Found them!” he yelled, presumably to his colleagues outside. Did this mean that they had actually been looking for her and the other women? Had someone tipped them off? The red-haired girl had staggered to her feet and was moving towards the exit, drawing the police officers attention away from them and back to her. “Just stay there,” he said. “Help is on the way.” “I thought you were help!” she retorted acidly, making Yulia want to smile even as she was on the verge of hyperventilating in shock at the events that had just unfolded. The red-haired girl and police officer disappeared out of the container door, leaving Yulia and the other women to sit in the dark with the body of the shot trafficker to wait for further instruction. This was not the sort of rescue that she had been imagining ever since she had been taken, but it was a rescue nevertheless.