Requested Story #2 – Just One Ride In A Donkey Cart

I can honestly say this story took more than I thought it would, in many ways. I won’t say anything other than: Please read on…

~~REQUEST

Good stuff (wo)meng! Here’s a challenge for you; Come up with a piece that starts off with someone (male or female, doesn’t matter) tied to a chair and having no memory of how they got there. As their grogginess clears, a vaguely familiar man/ woman standing by with a pair of pliers asks them if they are ready. Additionally, somewhere in the story the person bound to the chair must ride a donkey cart. This action must be somehow pivotal to the plot.

~~

~Just One Ride In A Donkey Cart~

1

Awareness is sudden. Strictly sensory. Like being born.

Consciousness seeps in more slowly, nudging the knowledge of self as separate from everything. Pain accelerates the process. Then I am me, fully sentient and alert. Training so ingrained that even now, with agony cloaking my skin, I do not let my eyes fly open or my breathing change more than I’m sure it already has with my awakening. I calm my mind so that my other senses can feed me information clearly. Simultaneous messages swarm in: The smell of blood, metallic and strong and mingled with my own sweat; pain in my upper left shoulder where something is lodged, sharp and splintering, probably wood; my body position is cause for concern – I’m tied to a chair, my torso strapped to the backrest, my arms stretched behind my back and bound at the wrists, my legs tied together at the ankles, and my thighs strapped to the seat of the chair– which feels like wood. My body weight sags forward pulling the cloth around my torso tight, but it hasn’t started chafing my skin, and my muscles are sore but not cramped, so I haven’t been sitting here like this for very long either. I’m dusty. I’m thirsty. I smell shit – not of the human variety. I can smell the probable makers of the shit as well- chickens, pigs, and… maybe horses. But I don’t hear them. The air is thick and sound is muffled, the slight pressure on my ears telling me I’m in an enclosed space. No light filters through my eyelids.

And overlaying all this sensory processing there is a familiar urgency; an internal panic – FIND HER! FIND HER! FIND HER! – an instinct so primal, so part of my consciousness that it registered not in those words nor fully formed thoughts but a focus of self fused into my cells and firing my guts. It’s been taking too long. The longer it takes the more fucked this will be. The more likely that… My brain whimpers.

I hear my own breathing.

And then, less than two feet away, someone else’s.

Despite the pain, I’m only partially injured, so I remain calm. In this moment, it doesn’t matter that I don’t know where I am or how I got here. It doesn’t matter who this person is- person, singular- standing there, breathing softly as they watch me. It doesn’t matter that I’m slightly woozy. I am alive. And I know who I am. I open my eyes.

2

I do it slowly, blinking more than I need to, feigning that I have only just become conscious. Light slithers into my eyes, faint and grey from various slits in the wooden shack that I can identify as an animal shed, seemingly abandoned. I lift my head as if it is weighed down by a wet fishing net. The face is familiar but I can’t place the name. I know that I know it though. And I know that I should. And I know that that face should not be a threat. But right now that face is attached to a hand holding a pair of pliers ready and waiting.

“Are you ready?”

Just a whisper from the dimness, but for the first time I feel a pang of alarm and in a split second my brain floods with mental screams –

NOOOO. I know I was so close. SO CLOSE. I can’t be caught. I can’t be stopped. I can’t stop. I won’t stop. I’ll kill again if I have to. I’ll rip the throat off this fucker coming at me with my own teeth if I need to. I have to find her. I WILL find her.

– before I can steady my mind again.

My brain decides after that long second that the tone and the intonation do not indicate a threat.

“Are you ready?” comes the whisper again.

This time there is a subtle tremor there, slight nervousness mingled with pity, all lacquered with resolve and caution. And an accent. Venezuelan. Caracas maybe.

My answer is, following suit, a command spoken just as softly, “Wait.”

I lean back slowly and sit straight, taking a deep breath, all superfluous actions that allow me to flex and position my muscles for maximum leverage without detection… and give me time to think.

Relief comes with recognition. How could I forget that face, that voice? Working beside me for days now. The investigator. The only person who was helping me.

Helping me find her…

I remember the end of our last conversation. I need to get the fucking splinter out my shoulder so we could move on. We were so close. We need to hurry. All the time I had been unconscious was time away from searching, from getting back on track, from finding her, from rescuing my daughter… before…

“I’m ready.” I whisper viciously, “Get this fucking thing out. I’ve wasted enough time.”

“Only an hour,” the answer comes.

A pause. A hesitant step forward. A hand braces itself against my bunched muscles. Another pause.

“This is going to hurt.”

“No fucking shit?!” my sarcasm grates out. “Get it the-fuck out, for fuck’s sake. We’re wasting time.”

Another pause.

I grit my teeth against the impatience spewing out of my soul. I breathe deeply and make a move to control the situation.

“Why did you tie me up?” I ask innocently.

“Because you told me to!” Voice defensive.

“Did I?” I croon in a soft threat.

“Yes!” Panic creeping in now. “Yes you did. You said you might pass out and that I should drag you in here, tear up your shirt and tie you up so you wouldn’t attack me if you woke up in pain while I… uh… while I took this out.”

“And you did.” I say.

“Yes! I did everything you said! Everything you told me!” the end of every sentence pitched high in accusation and fear.

I look up and lock eyes steadily with her and enunciate each word carefully. “Then. Do. What. The. Fuck. I’m. Telling. You. To. Do. Now.”

She does.

3

I sag on the edge of my bed, hands fisted, yearning for my daughter to run into my room and throw a dirty sock at my head.

She’s been missing for two days.

The police are ‘investigating’- code for holding press conferences, a pappyshow to pretend they are treating the daughter of a soldier the same as they would treat any other citizen… and they are – they’re scratching their collective fucking asses. I don’t expect anything else, of course, I was born and raised here. I know how the shithole works.

I’ve been discharged for a month. They know me well enough to know nothing will matter to me until I find her.

I’ve just come home to pack. I now know that she’s been taken to Venezuela on a boat with four other girls her age, five prostitutes -two from Columbia and three from Morvant- and two seven-year-old boys from ‘some bush part of Trinidad’. The man who had told me had been sure that was the correct information. He should have been. He was the local contact. The fucking supplier he called himself. He was most unwilling to talk to me, of course.

 I have always been admired, however, for my skills of persuasion.

I am not sorry or concerned to hear on the radio now that a local businessman is missing. Strange, this sudden succession of missing people. The news-houses must be making mas. They will never have a close to this story though. He will not be found. His remains have been thoroughly disposed of. I can see, in memory, my hand extended, scattering ashes, and I smirk as I realise that it can honestly be said that the fucker has vanished into thin air.

4

It’s been an hour and twenty-one minutes. My shoulder is still stiff. My face is stone. But I’m moving again and that’s all that’s necessary. The part of me that’s heard too many of these fucking stories says it’s been too long. Four days and fifteen hours. And an hour and twenty-one minutes out of that had just been fucking wasted, just fucking lost, and for shit. And being who and what I am, I know how that kind of time can change everything. How five minutes could be the longest and most important time you ever had. A soldier knows the value of every second in a fight, on a mission, in a war. To me, that hour and twenty-one minutes, a period that for most people isn’t even half a movie, could mean the difference between my life and my soullessness. The riptide of frustration, despair and rage laps and sucks at my concentration and shaking it off is like flaying my skin.

But I’m on their property now and it’s not going to be much longer.

The investigator might not be used to violence but she’s good at what she does. From her I know they have an eight-acre layout here, lots of trees and bush surrounding a medium-sized holding-house with one road leading in and out. I’m heading in through the bush from the opposite direction – much less accessible and much less used. I’m getting closer. The meagre trail is getting more and more obvious. In some places there are even slight footprints on the dry dirt. But the light infiltration into this jungle of vegetation has not changed in the past half-hour as I had expected. I begin to wonder just how much clearing could be left around the building. Of course the less clearing there is, the easier it is for me to get close unnoticed, but it also means the harder it is for me to see anyone who may be running guard duty – just too many places for concealment. But a gun in hand tends to make some people arrogant and in this business, in this place, arrogance is the norm. It’s likely I’m the only one who is even considering concealment. That doesn’t mean these assholes don’t have little traps and triggers, maybe even cameras about, and I’m being as careful as I’m being quick. The investigator managed to salvage a few of my little toys that got thrown in the melee and in my pocket is a beautiful work of scientific art – a controller made to interrupt electronics. You just can’t beat the Chinese.

There’s a sudden spike in my system and all the hair on my body stands up, my scalp and all prickling. I stop and crouch in swift silence, eyes and ears alert.  A minute and then two and then five go by and still I don’t see, hear or smell anything new. My panic-driven impatience starts a siren’s song in my brain but I’ve been hunting for too many years. You learn, sometimes the hard way, that instinct is a sense all its own and sometimes the most reliable. My recent reminder of how true this is is a fresh frustration.

I wait.

And finally my other senses catch up. One pair of soft-soled boots is tramping the earth coming from south-west of my position. A brisk pace, heavy steps but well spaced – a big, tall person then, with somewhere to go but not panicking to get there. My eyes confirm this as the sound’s source appears, walking in a line parallel to me about ten feet to my right. The requisite gun sleeps at the hip. He’s muttering to himself and his louder words spear the distance ¡Qué maricón de mierda! ¡Maldito pato! Something about a fucking faggot. He’s walking with purpose as I had assumed, which posed both an opportunity and a possible problem. He’d be distracted – always a good quality in your prey – but his absence would be noticed if he was on an errand at someone else’s command. I almost growl at my own momentary indecision. And then I feel a tiny smile in my eyes. The fucker is turning to a tree and unzipping his pants. His only commander at the moment is his bladder. I wait till the noise of his piss hitting the dry bark can cover my approach. I sprint on my toes towards his back and before the yellow stream has time to fizzle out, his neck and spine are no longer aligned. If I’m on my own and going in silent I always avoid bloody kills. I move with studied swiftness now, pulling a pre-knotted rope out of my rucksack; looping it around the asshole’s body, groin to opposite shoulder; swinging the other end over a strong, thick branch at a good enough height; pulling the deadweight carcass until it flops over the branch; manoeuvring the rope back off it; keeping calm when it snags on the bark; catching a cigarette lighter as it falls from a pocket; manoeuvring the rope more; and then swiftly re-wrapping the rope and putting it back into the rucksack.

Then I crouch, ignoring the twinge in my muscles, and wait for five more minutes before the silence of both instinct and environment free me to continue.

5

I’m standing on foreign ground, dressed as a civilian. My Spanish is a choonks above basic and that’s enough to get me what I want – an investigator with a reputation and a tongue for both my language and the local variety of Spanish. I’m on the side of a crowded street, a bustling market scene right out of a Caribbean painting is behind me and if it weren’t for the language difference, I would have thought I was still in Trinidad. Those colourful pictures never reference the colourful smells though, and while such torture is a mere irritation,  what bothers me is having one of my senses rendered utterly useless in a place I am unfamiliar with. The only benefit to this place is that my dark skin is inconspicuous; it seems every African ever dragged to Venezuela decided to breed in this city alone.

Just as my limited patience threatens to desert me, I see a figure across the street looking at me questioningly. I don’t bother to waste time with cautious prevarication. What I see fits the description I was given and I stride across. I watch her try to hide the fear in her face at my approach. Civilian clothing is as good as a sheep’s skin right now. Nothing can hide my lasered rage at this moment, but I try to put her at ease as quickly as possible.

“Tengo la mitad de su dinero en mi mochila. ¿Habla ingles? ¿Si?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I was told you’re the best investigator in the city for this kind of thing. I hope this is the truth, especially at your price.”

“Yes”

“Let’s go then,” I say, appreciating her brevity.

She walks and I follow, a path clearing easily as people see me and move aside. Within seven minutes we turn a corner and it’s as if someone switched off a radio full of static that I wouldn’t have noticed was on if I hadn’t been deliberately picking out snatches of conversations to get a feel of the local accent and dialect… and also just in case someone just happened to say something… anything that sounded relevant.

In the sudden sound bubble the whisper of our footsteps is crisp.

“You are… not what I was expecting from the message that reached me,” she says softly, her accent clipping her words over her shoulder.

She doesn’t wait for a response as she rounds another corner and quickens her steps. The ground now is just dry dirt, evidence of the season. I keep a foot behind her as she explains softly why they told me to go straight to her, “street name” – ElInvestigador. Ironic, but I suppose it works for her. I hear the information only as a means to confirm she knows what she’s talking about and that she can deliver the services I need at the pace necessary. There’s a car at the end of this track that she says is hers and I speed-walk toward it. She gets the message and jogs to keep up. Three minutes later we’re bumping along a dirt road leading out of the city and toward the trail the fuckers who have my daughter have left behind.

 

6

A dark green two storey warehouse sits innocuously ten feet from my crouching form bathing in the afternoon sunlight as if it isn’t the be all and end all of my existence. In the seven minutes I’ve been watching, no guards have come into view or hearing. With the size of the building that means the one watch dog is taking a permanent nap on a tree limb in the bush behind me. My muscles are itching to move but this arrangement is just too suspicious. There should have been, at the very least, one other guard securing their immediate perimeter. I strain again to pick up any sounds from inside but it’s useless with my bare ears and I feel a fresh pulse of anger surge through me over my lost equipment. It’s quickly squelched as my brain moves back into planning, which for me consists of selecting from a menu of suitable pre-determined tactical combinations. My body moves into action upon selection.

I move through the trees in a running crouch for a final perimeter check. There is no change. There is no one outside. There is no sound coming from the trees or from the one service road leading to the one visible entrance – that entrance being a large sliding door that can accommodate a transport truck and probably does on a regular basis by the looks of the tyre marks. There are no windows, only slim ventilation blocks near the roof. Right now, those blocks are my aim. I need to see what’s inside; I need to know what I’m up against. The blocks are about eighteen feet up. With my height it’s a manageable reach. I slip my rucksack off against one of the side walls and get my shit out and ready, grateful that this, at least, survived.  I shave two seconds off my sixteen-second best assembly time for this model and, with my back to the wall to maximise my field of vision, I send the snake-cam up swiftly and hold my breath for the five seconds it takes to reach the right spot. And as I adjust the angle I get a bird’s eye view of everything I wish I didn’t have to see.

There are twenty-five cages set neatly into five rows. Most have no people in it. There is activity in one of them. I scan the open floor plan for any other movement but there is none… not even in the other occupied cages. So I swing back to the action and zoom in and it takes my brain a sickened second to process an image that explains the words of the now-dead guard. And possibly also his choice to leave his partner alone while he went a distance away to take his piss. From my overhead view the side profile of a seven-year-old boy, one cheek pressed to the ground, the visible cheek a bruised and swollen water bag, peeps out expressionlessly from beneath the thrusting body of what I know to be the second guard. One hand palms the little boy’s head, fingers twining into his afro. The other hand is out of my sight, probably braced against the dirt-packed floor to support his large muscled body. For just a moment I picture myself sending a silenced bullet into his spine then I scan the room again, my palms sweaty as I search for her face among the other prisoners who are all curled up as if bracing against the action in the little boy’s cell.

And then, there, in one cage, I see my daughter’s arm extended. Her palm, the back tattooed with my initials in a heart, is wrapped around one of the bars locking her in. I get a mental flash of her shaking it in outrage and I feel a shudder of pain and an electric rage of my own. I swing back to the muddafucking shithole who will be dead soon. His thrusting has increased pace and it ends suddenly, almost as if I had actually shot him in the back. I watch as he catches his breath and stands. I watch as he zips his pants. I watch as he walks out of the cage and locks it. I watch as he takes the time to say something to the little boy who has moved only to curl into himself. I can see the sneer in the tilt of the asshole’s fucking head. I take the moment to swing back to my daughter’s cell. She has barely moved and I look away quickly before my focus is broken and my body starts to shake again. I swing back to the asshole but the fucker is done taunting. He’s all business now as he walks to the back wall of the warehouse. He lifts a container and proceeds to empty the clear liquid inside onto the floor. By the time he starts cutting into one of the aisles between the cages, I’m retracting the snake cam and stuffing it ad hoc into the rucksack.

I break another record as I assemble my gun.

I run to the front door and pound on it, using my deepest voice to imitate the dead guard. From this close I can hear the asshole’s muffled voice asking why I’m not using the pass code. I yell that something’s wrong and tell him to hurry the fuck up, asking how long it takes to fuck one tiny boy. I hear him say something to the effect that he lasts longer with one boy than I could with five whores and my anger pulses through me as I crouch, waiting for his approaching footsteps to reach the door. My finger is already on the trigger as I hear the electric beeping of the pass code being entered. He swings the door open, eyes focused where his partner’s would be and before he has time to blink there’s a bullet lodged neatly in his skull. I don’t even take time to be disappointed that I couldn’t torture the muddafucker first. I lodge the boot of his fallen body in the doorway and push it in behind me before I race to my daughter’s cage, the smell of the gasoline feathering up my nostrils. My heart pounds, pushing my relief and fear and pain alongside my adrenaline. I reach to her cage and her name whispers past my lips. I break the lock and push open the cell.

Her hand remains locked around the bar.

I know then that I am too late but for once my soldier’s brain is superseded by a parent’s hope. I drop beside her, her name tripping off my tongue like a mantra. I reach out and put my fingers to her throat, insanely hoping for a pulse while I look at her fingers frozen tight around a metal bar. Her throat is still soft, as are her arms and legs and torso which bears the hole which killed her. But her eyelids squeezed shut, are as stiff in rigor as her fingers frozen tight around the metal bar. I stop touching her as my body slumps, my knees an inch from my daughter’s body lying beaten and shot on a dirt floor. I stare at my baby, her body curled in death as it had once rested safely in my womb. I stare at my baby. Dead. Her hand frozen around a metal bar. Her hand, tattooed with her mother’s initials. Her hand with some muddafucker’s skin under her nails.  I stare at my baby as my brain sluggishly accepts not only her death but the fact that, as the degree of rigor tells me, that death came only a little over an hour ago. I stare at my baby. Dead. With semen dried on the skin beneath her soft linen skirt. And as my grief wells, as my rage threatens to burst my skin, I wonder why the earth does not shake beneath my feet. Why there is no thunder booming in fury. Why the air is not swirling with my wrath. Why the world is not stopping in outrage and mourning. Why my lungs are still slurping air into themselves. Why I am not dead beside her.

My brain registers, just barely, the sound of the little boy whimpering a question somewhere beyond this death cell. But I do not care. Not really. I stare at my baby. Dead. Dead knowing her mother had failed her. I stand, not daring to touch her anymore- not worthy to touch her anymore. I turn and walk away. I walk like a lead machine through the aisles, my soldier’s brain back in charge because there is nothing else there. The smell of gasoline permeating the air makes sense as I feel the dead guard’s lighter in my pocket. It makes sense as I walk around the few cages with the dead bodies left behind to be torched along with this holding house which somehow they know has been exposed. Bodies with semen on their thighs – discarded merchandise serving one last use before disposal. Merchandise deemed unfit – too weak after their shipping or – as I consider the skin beneath my daughter’s nails – too untameable. I hear the little boy whimpering to me. But he is alive and I cannot bear to look at him, even as I open his cage and use my phone to relay new instructions to the investigator. He stands before me, this seven-year-old, not knowing what to do with his freedom. I turn my back to him and go to my daughter’s cell to sit and wait beside her body. Beside my daughter who was alive just an hour or so ago. I stare at my baby as this little boy, still alive, sits next to me quivering. I stare at her with the knowledge that even though I will kill these fuckers, it will not matter, because she is gone. The little boy, still alive, says nothing as he shakes beside me, his fingers, with someone’s skin under his nails, gripping his upper arms as he holds himself. I turn to him and behind his eyes there is a faint confusion when I laugh and blurt out the most absurd thing I never thought I would say if ever I sat next to my daughter’s dead body.

“I don’t think I like donkeys anymore.”

7

I’m getting impatient. The car is out of sight behind us now. We’re heading toward a track the investigator says is only accessible by foot and donkey cart. We’ll be taking a donkey cart because that is what most locals do on that track. We’re dressed as locals to this area, my rucksack hidden inside a battered crocus bag. The very thought of using the cart galls me. I’d be faster on foot. But she says that until we pass a certain point, going on foot will raise eyebrows, which of course will negate any advantage in time. So I temper my irritation and take a mild comfort in the fact that at least I’ve made good time thus far and that the plan is clearly mapped from here.

My impatience is building again prodded by a sudden panicked flash of intuition that says to forget this fucking donkey cart shit and just run the rest of the way. We’re trying to manoeuvre around another cart coming from where we’re heading. The driver is some fucking ass who keeps trying to push us further to the edge of the track. His amigos find this very amusing. It’s not a cliff but it would be enough of a tumble to fuck up this old pile of wood I’m in and while the investigator is trying to negotiate reasonably I focus on controlling the urge to blast their faces off. Finally she tells them, in not too polite Spanish, to move their fucking cart because we’re in a hurry and it’s important. Apparently this is also amusing. I turn my head and fix my gaze on a rundown little shack about thirty feet off in the bush just so I will stop visualising my fist reshaping this fool’s face. And then he makes a fatal mistake.

I see these pitiful fools jump out of their cart one by one, the leader asking the investigator something like “What right does a whore have to talk to him that way, and if she’s in a hurry she can get a quick hard fuck…”. I tell her to drive the cart forward and ignore them but she whispers back at me, anxiety creeping into her voice, that the donkey now refuses to move. The men surround our cart taunting us, attempting intimidation, looking at two women in a cart and seeing only available flesh to sink their pricks into. The one closest to the investigator reaches for her hand to pull her off the cart. His wrist is broken in my palm before his sentence is finished and his nose bridge is deconstructed before that first scream of pain trails off. I push the investigator down as I jump off the cart to put the other two idiots out of commission. The last man, the quietest friend, tries to brawl and as I land my final blow, his body jerks back and slams into our donkey. And everything goes to shit.

Our donkey, agitated with the commotion, fights to be released as the investigator fights for control. I see its misstep coming and shout to her.

“Jump down now!”

She does. 

And unlike me she’s on the safe side. The donkey’s hooves slip and although I duck out the way, I’m not fast enough to evade the fucking cart which slams into me and sends me tumbling with it on top of me. There’s a burst of pain in my shoulder and another in my head and as my body gets sandwiched under the fucking cart I hear the wood splitting. I hear my flesh tearing, I hear my equipment breaking, I hear the investigator screaming. But most loudly I hear precious time flying by with the blood singing in my ears.

As I push the cart off, I see the investigator running down toward me. She’s swimming in my gaze. I assess the damage to my body and I know that in five minutes I’m going to black out. She reaches me as I stagger to my feet.

“Get my bag.” I say as I move forward into the bush.

I hear her pick it up and run back to me.

“Listen to me carefully.” I say, my voice scratching an escape from my throat.

I tell her as fast as I can what she needs to do. And then my knees buckle.

“Drag me if you need to, we’re not too far from it.”

“Yes… Okay” I hear the fear lacing her words.

I try to say something else, relay some other instruction, but my tongue is heavy now and my brain processes only that time is moving by, wasted. The pain slicing my muscles and pounding through my skull is nothing to the torture my spirit feels at this moment as I sway forward on my knees seeing the earth come up to slap my face with the knowledge that with this – for this trivial fucking shit – the most important part of my life may cease to be. 

THE END

Copyright © 2013 Reina Rodriguez-Cupid. All Rights Reserved.