Esha Ex: Chapter Three

The next instalment of Esha Ex, a novel-length work of new fiction, updated daily. For more details click here.

Matriya opened the far door and there were guards standing behind it. Not the weaponised military guards like the knuckleheads who hung around the outer villages on training missions, spending their free time shaking down shack owners for payoffs, gambling and eating and drinking the place bare. These were just tall, wide, heavy, silent males in suits. They didn’t look at me, only at Matriya.

“You must be hungry,” she said to me.

            She opened the mini fridge and inside in clear plastic bowls covered with plastic saucers were cooked lentils, charred corn on the cob, fish and potato cakes, dates and fat little thumblike bananas. I lunged towards the fridge which Matriya shut before I could get there.

“Later. That’s your payment.”

            My inner voice told me not to eat or drink anything she gave me, and I swallowed dryly and balled up my fists, it was that much of a temptation.

“Won’t you pay me in money?” I said.

“Not until you pay us back. There’s Father Francis’s time and trouble. There’s petrol money. There’s room and board to pay for. Nobody gives a bed and towel for nothing.”

            The noise of the unseen people had intensified to a thick buzz. The bouncers entered the room, surrounded me and pushed me out of the far door through a sweaty velvet curtain and onto a tiny, dirty stage with white lights shining into my eyes.

I stood there, blinded, trying to work out where I was. I saw the edge of a stage in a dingy function room, with a makeshift bar at the back. The room was full of people. They were hunched around round tables covered  with red paper tablecloths. They were holding tumblers of drink. They seemed half riled, half bored.

            Matriya strode onto the stage holding a microphone:

“Sorry for the wait, my friends, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, hostesses and guests, patrons and companions. We have something very special for you. Let’s call her Toya – or shall we call her Dolly?” The crowd laughed with a sudden rough sound. “Look her over and tell us what you think. There are request slips on your table. If you need a pen just ask one of our lovely waitresses – do ask her name, too, there’s no rule against being friendly. Just pick up a pen and put in your bid. And remember, if you don’t get your chance to make friends tonight there’ll be many many many many other nights.”

            I felt the crowd’s eyes on me as strongly as physical touches. At the side of the stage the bouncers were crammed hugely into the shadows, blocking my way. There was a squeal of feedback and tinny, rhythmic music played over the speakers. Matriya turned towards me and in the stage lights her eyes were enormous, yellow, dry, and her smile seemed like that of a clown, stretching all the way across her face.

“Now dance,” hissed Matriya to me, just me.

            The music grew louder and the crowd clapped in time. They roared, too, until I couldn’t hear anything at all. I felt Matriya’s fingers in my back once more. I shuffled in time to the music, barely lifting my feet off the floor. The crowd jeered, but there was a strange keenness in it, it was almost encouraging, as if they were geeing on an animal. I began counting in my head, one hundred, two hundred. Finally the music stopped and all I could hear when the curtains closed was the thick, exultant laughter of the people.

I put my arms around myself, it was so horrible, while Matriya pushed me back to the changing room, where the fridge was open and on the make-up table was a garish yellow plastic mat. Everything was laid out, with plastic knives and forks and children’s plastic cups. The guards and Matriya stood and watched me. I knew the food would taste like ashes whether it was drugged or not.

“No, thank you,” I said weakly.        

            Matriya’s eyes turned hard.

“Not even a bite? It won’t be there tomorrow, or the next day.”

“No. Thank you.”

“Not one sip?”

            I shook my head, and the bouncers shifted their weight and looked at each other.

“Well that’s just more expense you’ll have to make up for,” scowled Matriya.

            I yawned hugely, falsely. If I could get even five minutes to myself, I would know how to escape. Matriya and the guards exchanged smirks.

“It’s not time for bedtime yet! There’s the party we told you about. You need to get changed. Here.” She rummaged in the playpen of girls’ dresses, grabbed one and threw it at me. I snatched it and held it in my fist. I didn’t even look at it.

“Where’s the party going to be?” I asked.

“In your room.”

“No.”

“You eat the meal or you go to your room.”

“That’s no choice.”

“Fine. You don’t want to eat, you don’t have to eat. Let’s go.”

The bouncers swept forward and picked up me up, their large hands pinching under my underarms. They dragged me, heels kicking, still holding the dress, down the stairs and back to the tiny room.

“Don’t watch me change,” I pled.

“Five minutes,” shouted Matriya, a last minute mercy.

The guards threw me in and slammed the door, standing so close against it on the other side that their feet blocked out the light between the floor and the bottom of the door. I stalked the room, trembling, staring. I opened my hand to reveal the tweezers I’d stolen within the first twenty seconds of being in the dressing room.

I went to the window and tried prying the wire mesh away from the glass. It was too stiff to move. Studded along the edge were tiny screws fastening it to the frame.

            I broke the tweezers apart and used a slanted end to work into the rusted grooves. A guard thumped on the door and shouted something at me. I broke out in a sweat. The mesh was beginning to come away. It was weak stuff, thin metal. Once the corner was away I tore the rest off. Metal splinters scored my skin, but it didn’t matter. Behind it the frosted glass was thick but old.

            More hammering on the door. The handle began to turn. I grabbed at one of the cot beds, pulling it away from the wall – I was lucky they weren’t fastened to the floor, as at the orphanage – and dragging it to block the door. The room wasn’t wide enough and the bed got stuck halfway across, cutting the room into triangles with me on the window side. I lifted it up so that two legs were on top of the mattress of the other bed, creating a high but rickety barricade.

The sight of a handprint on the wall, hidden by one of the beds, made me freeze. The hand was smaller than mine – a child’s hand. I unfroze when the door opened and all the men tried to squeeze in at once. When they saw what I’d done to the beds they reeled back and a sizzle of outrage, of gall, passed from each man to the next, and the atmosphere in the room grew charged.

            I leapt back to the window, tore the last part of the mesh off and butted the window pane with my shoulder. It wouldn’t move. I tried punching through the glass, using the dress to cushion my knuckles, but it was too thick even to crack. There were five men in the room. They didn’t bother to push the beds aside, they just moved forwards against them. The beds began to scrape towards me, then jammed. The men climbed over the beds, throwing the two bedside tables at me. One of them struck me hard in the shoulder as I cowered against the far wall. The other hit the window and broke it.

            I pushed out the rest of the glass with the heel of my hand and threw myself headfirst through the tiny gap, making myself like a spear. I could hear the men roaring after me, pushing each other to get to the window. There was a shock of grimy, hot air and I fell out onto a thin metal balcony. I was halfway up a black brick building whose outside was criss-crossed with ventilation chutes and fire stairs. The back of the building looked onto an alleyway, with the back of another, taller building facing us. The alley was a tunnel of filthy, hot, rotten air carrying shreds of litter.

A head thrust through the window, screaming, and I reeled away. The head was Matriya’s:

“Go then! There’s thousands of trash like you in Miriadh - hundreds of thousands! Good luck trying to survive on the street! You don’t even know where you are! What’re you good for? Nothing! Life’s going to gobble you up and shit you out like a tramp. They’ll find you dead in pieces in twenty four hours! They’ll put you out in a rubbish bag, in an old suitcase!”

I was immobilised by the look in her eyes, which fixed me like two lasers, and the abuse that was coming out of her mouth. I couldn’t move until she finished talking. She spat at me and missed. She withdrew and there was arguing inside the room, but I was already picking my way down and away, stomach churning.

I didn’t believe that I was in the city of Binar. That was just what they told me, to get me to go with them. It was too silent – not even a siren. Not even traffic. The building I’d escaped was an ordinary apartment block. Those people didn’t work for the Family. The Family didn’t know I existed.

I got to the bottom, feet splashing into the street grime. I needed to get to the main square, a street, a junction, a station, a temple. Anywhere there were people. I ran out and found myself between four apartment blocks. Most of the windows were dark but I still felt watched. I skirted the shadows and came to a car park, its booth unmanned and its barrier up. On the other side was a main road, leading off a roundabout. Large, brightly coloured signs and hoardings around me advertised furniture warehouses and clothing manufacturers.

It was an industrial estate, built so recently that it still smelled of setting cement, tar and asphalt. I wandered onto the empty main road. In the distance there was traffic on a flyover, but it didn’t turn in towards the estate.

            I couldn’t stop thinking about food. All the warehouses would be triple-triggered with alarms. I needed to find a neighbourhood. I walked by the side of  the road until I reached a bus shelter. The map behind the glass gave a list of local stops I had never heard of. I waited for a while, hoping to beg the driver into giving me a ride, but no bus came. Thick trees blocked the industrial estate from sight on one side, but on the other I spotted the low, brown-roofed houses of a suburban development. I went towards it but there, too, there was a weird sense of emptiness and abandonment. Nobody stopped me or drove me away.

There was a short parade of shops – a lady’s salon, a men’s barber, a meat shop, a grocery place, a cobbler, a key-maker and convenience shop, a tea shop, a spice and pickles shop, a dairy, an electronic shop, a bakery, a tailor. The shop doors were all unlocked and hanging open, but nothing inside had been stolen. It was all still there, the shelves fully loaded. I drew close to the meat shop, where long joints squirmed with white maggots and black flies. The fruits and vegetables were all rotten. I could smell the dairy’s cheese from twenty paces away.

            I went into the American-style convenience store. It was a tiny place with only four aisles. I opened as many tins as I could, raking things off the shelves, taking cartons of sugary juice and drinking one after the other. When I was done, I sat on the floor, leaning against the shelves. I would take as much food as I could. I’d take what lasted the longest, and remember to get water, too. I felt my eyes grow heavy. The strength drained out of my body and I couldn’t move, even if I wanted to. I was bone tired, tired as a dog. I nodded off. 

            I woke up surrounded by a gang.