Song: Gringo - Shatta Wale

They say shock could kill people. If it was so, why wasn't I dead already? For most of the ride, I hadn't come to terms with what had happened.

I guess some part of my mind refused to believe that I was kidnapped from the palace and that I was being shipped – or should I say driven – to some unknown location with some unknown people.

Perhaps the unceremonious push into realisation was brought about the dream. Nightmare, to be precise.

I'd been in a garden, clothed in white. The environment was ethereally artificial, so even in that subconscious state, I knew I was dreaming. I was having my very first lucid dream.

I didn't know what to do there, so I just sat still, waiting for whatever was going to unfold.

I closed my dream eyes and imagined something, but my mind drew up blank. All I could see was the blackness that you should see when you close your eyes.

When my eyes were opened again, everything was black, just like my mind. It was a void, empty. I got to my feet and shouted. I heard echoes, bouncing around with no direction.

"Hello!" I yelled. I didn't expect any response, and I loved the echoes. I smiled, feeling at home in the dark loneliness.

I wondered what kind of sane human would ever feel at home surrounded by nothing and no one.

Then, I realised that when I was surrounded by nothing and no one, I didn't feel any anxiety. I didn't feel the pressure to make them like me, like I had always felt when surrounded by other people.

Sometimes, I'd made people like me without trying, but then those were people whose approval I didn't really need.

I laughed, I laughed till there were tears streaming down my cheeks. There was nothing particularly funny, but I felt like I could do anything and everything, now that there was no one around to judge me.

For once I felt free, free from the world. If this was hell, then hell wasn't so bad after all.

It took time, for the despair and loneliness to set in. There must be a reason why we always seek out human companionship even if all they do is to hurt us.

There was no one to talk to and this time, my 'hellos' sought responses. I began running, heading straight, I needed to see and or speak with someone.

The loneliness clutched at my chest and snatched all the air from my lungs. I felt a tightening in my chest, like my organs were squeezing and twisting. "Hello!" I called out frantically again.

I tripped over something invisible and fell over, hitting the ground hard. I wasn't able to use my palms to break my fall, so my nose took the brunt force.

I heard something snap, then I felt pain I had never experienced before. I felt the warm trickle as it made its way down my face, and the drip, drip, drip as the drops fell to the floor.

The air was overrun by the pungent, metallic smell of blood. I touched my finger to my nose. It still felt normal, but the pain was a different story.

I realised too late that I was no longer in control of my dream, someone else had taken hold of the reins. I should've stayed in the garden.

Still, I felt suffocated by the sheer loneliness of the place. My chest was still as tight as ever. I groaned, and felt the phantom pain snake up my spine and crawl its way throughout my body. I closed my eyes and tried again, trying to envision someone and again, my mind came up blank.

With a horrified gasp, I realised that I didn't know anyone. No one came to mind. I was completely devoid of memories.

I tried again realising that I had no memories at all. What was my name? How old was I? Was I male or female? I finally understood what the void was all about.

It was me – whoever I was – without memories. Without all the people who loved and hated me – if there were any.

It was the most horrible feeling. It was much better, having to fake to make people like me, than being all alone like this.

I wondered how I had remembered that I hated the company of others, hated how they made me be someone I was not, but I couldn't remember who those people were.

I opened my mouth, screaming until my throat burned. Then I frantically began scratching the floor, finding quite unfortunately that it was made of a marble like substance which made it impossible to dig through.

I began screaming again, and the strain of keeping my mouth open caused something very painful to happen. I heard a reverberating pop which must have been my nasal bone.

The pain was so excruciating that it felt real. I touched my nose, yet still, it was perfect. There were no signs of broken bones or any indication as to where the pain was coming from, but there was still the revolting smell and the steady drip of blood.

I ignored the pain – which was agonising on its own – and ran, I ran and ran and just when I thought that I could take it no longer, I tripped and fell again.

I felt my nasal bone push its way back into my head, but before it could rip my brains out through the back of my head, I woke up with wide eyes, panting like I had just run for miles.

I was sweating profusely; my heart was pounding much faster than it was supposed to and I couldn't focus on anything.

Everything was mostly blurry and that would've been better still if my eyeballs weren't rolling about in their sockets. They darted in every direction, it was like my body's desperate attempt to grasp that that was all a dream, that reality was safe and that I wasn't about to die a messy death.

"Are you okay?" A voice asked, the sound dancing around in my head. It was when I looked at her, that everything stopped.

My eyes stopped their frantic movements to focus on her. She was a white woman, one of the blonde ones. She had ocean blue eyes, honey blonde hair, skin so tan she looked like one of the mixed girls.

Her lips were plump and unnaturally pink, her teeth, snow white and perfectly set. She was quite slim not model slim though, she had a beach body. Like the blonde woman in Baywatch. Yes, that was the perfect comparison.

I snatched my arm away from her. I didn't want her touching me, not after that the rude way they had pretty much told me not to talk to them.

I tried to tell her that I was just peachy, but I couldn't find my voice. My chest tightened as I felt a sharp pain in my nose.

I quickly touched a finger to that long bone in my nose to assure myself that it was just a phantom pain, perhaps brought about by the fact that my body was still recovering from the shock of that horrible, horrible nightmare.

"It's okay. It was just a nightmare," the woman said.

"Let me guess, your name is just as pretentious as your hair, right? Barbie?" My voice had come back, and I didn't know why but I was filled with anger.

"Barbara, I don't like to go by Barbie. Everyone calls me Barbs instead." She said, ignoring my rudeness.

I cocked a brow at her. "What do you want?" I asked her.

"I just want to know if you're okay. We're almost there," she nodded at the window.

I twisted around to look. Up ahead, a huge building was looming. It was a mansion, a beautiful mansion with bright lights and an Olympic sized pool. For a mansion, the gates were surprisingly unimpressive. They were short, perhaps only six feet tall. It would be laughably easily to scale those walls, well that is if you avoided the sharp pointy ends of the slender rods that made up the gate. I had been trapped in the nightmare, so I didn't see where we had passed to get to this place.

"Where are we?" I asked Barbie.

"I have no idea. When we were leaving the city, something happened to the van's windows. Suddenly, they were opaque."

"That doesn't even make sense," I sneered at her. She was clearly an airhead.

"Ask anyone," she gestured to the other women in the van, who were staring at us bewilderedly as if us talking was a grave taboo. "Go ahead."

One look at them and I decided against it. Their eyes darted in every direction except ours when she suggested that I speak to them.

"Were we forbidden to talk to each other?" I asked the blonde airhead.

"Yes. In a way. We were told that we could only speak with the women of our colour and ignore the rest."

"Why? Where's the sense in that?"

"I don't know."

"What do you know?"

"That you're shivering, and that it might not be hot, but it isn't cold enough for you to shiver."

"Not all of us grew up in temperate zones," I rolled my eyes at her. I pulled the sleeves of my blouse so that they covered my shaking hands. I was still recovering from that horrid dream, and the fact that I'd quite recently been kidnapped.

"What are you talking about?" She laughed. "I was born and raised right here in Ghana. I don't think I could've gotten this tan in the American sun."

I rolled my eyes. I wanted to slap her. "What's this place?"

"Oh look, there's something that I do know," she laughed like there was something funny.

I patiently waited for her to finish, because I'm that nice.

"Wait, why are you on this van if you don't know where we're going?" She asked.

"Just get to the point, Barbie."

"Barbs," she corrected. "See, we're all prostitutes."

The way she said that, so straightforward and with no shame, I recoiled, wincing like I had sucked on a lemon.

"Aren't you one too?" She asked, surprised by my reaction.

"No. I'm the farthest thing from a prostitute."

"And that is?"

"A virgin."

"Oh dear. I don't recommend losing your virginity to a stranger. They tend to be quite rough."

"I am not going to be a prostitute!" I was whispering, but it was so harsh that all the women in the van looked at me.

"Then what are you doing here?" Barbie asked me.

"I don't know! A certain idiot kidnapped me and next thing I knew I found myself in this... thing!"

"Calm down. You can just leave." Barbie laughed.

"No, she can't," someone said. Both Barbie and I followed the direction of the voice. It was the red–haired mixed girl. When I looked closely, I saw that she had freckles. Beautiful little dots gathered beneath her eyes and ending just above her cheeks.

"What do you mean I can't?"

"You've already seen this place, you're here." She said. Just as she said that, the gates opened and the van drove through. "Now you're well and truly trapped. You can never escape." She said with a sadistic grin.

"Nonsense. We aren't being held here against our will. I very well remember signing up for this."

The red haired smirked. "We want to be here, but since she doesn't and she won't be allowed to leave, she is."

The blonde airhead thought about it for a while, then she nodded. "Right," she paused. "Wait, why won't she be allowed to leave?"

"When we signed up for this, they did tell us that once we stepped here, we wouldn't ever be able to leave again, didn't they? And that we had to be very sure that we wanted to come, didn't they Blondie?"

"I remember something like that, Ginger." It seemed her patience was only endless with me.

"There you have it," her eyes were focused on me. "So, from now on, this is your life."

"Bull..." I stopped myself before I could curse. I wouldn't let my circumstances change who I am. I've always disliked foul words, but I guess being kidnapped and forced into prostitution did something like that to you – change you.

Wolfgang, that idiot! They would adore me where he was taking me. Of course, people who profited off women selling their bodies would adore anything with two legs and a hole between them.

"Swear all you like. It isn't going to change a thing. Perhaps the boss will do something about your problem."

"What problem?" Barbie asked.

"Her virginity," Ginger smirked again.

Barbie looked at me, her eyes fearful. "I'm terribly sorry."

"I'm not," Ginger laughed like a witch. "Should've stayed away."

"I don't even know how I got here." I glared at her.

She shrugged. Her eyes, along with all the other women – who were pretending like they weren't listening on our conversation – were focused on the astonishing mansion.

I squeezed my eyes shut, as if when I opened them, it would disappear and I'd be left staring at Michael's palace. I'd rush inside and throw my arms around his neck and kiss the living daylights out of him.

I'd move up our wedding date, marry him then drag him back to his bedroom and let him make love to me until I was seeing stars.

But when I opened my eyes, this beautiful yet intimidating mansion was still staring back at me. My throat itched with the overwhelming urge to cry but I breathed in through my nose and out through my mouth.

I did that about five times before those treacherous tears were safely tucked back to wherever they stayed when they weren't running down my cheeks.

Someone had pulled the van's sliding door back, and the women began descending. I was frozen to my seat, deciding whether to start fighting back there and then. Then again, I was scared.

I didn't know these people, perhaps they had a tendency for violence. They could kill me. If they were people associated with that horrid Wolfgang, they must be terrible people.

"Hey," it was Barbie. "C'mon."

I was frozen looking at her. I couldn't move even if I wanted to. My limbs had deserted me. She took my hand, I gulped and she dragged me out of the van. Everyone was gaping at the mansion and I forgot my predicament for a second, as the sheer animosity of the place slapped me.

A man was heading for us. He walked with a swagger in his step, the two top buttons of his shirt were undone. His hair was filled with curls, bouncing on his head. His comely face was expressionless, his lips pink and moist. He wore an assortment of rings on his fingers and a pair of expensive leather shoes.

I cowered back a bit. I didn't want to be anywhere near him, or anyone here. I wanted to be back at the palace, safe in Michael's arms.

"What are you waiting for? Get in." Was all he said. The women scrambled to the large oak doors but Barbie didn't let go of my hand.

I thanked God for her, though she was annoying and an airhead. Once we were in, the doors closed behind us and I had a nagging feeling that they wouldn't be opening anytime soon.

The man was right behind us. I jumped when I heard his voice, wondering when he had followed us in. He looked at me strangely for a second but soon decided that there was nothing interesting to see.

"Get upstairs," he ordered. Again, they scrambled to obey. I felt a twinge of disobedience. He was just ordering us about – rudely too – with no explanation as to why, but Barbie dragged me away before I could do or say anything stupid.

The mansion had a fleet of stairs that headed to the left and one that headed to the right.

Most of us paused at the base, uncertain where to go and I looked back at him questioningly. He looked right back at me with those cold dark green eyes. I averted my eyes quickly, unable to hold that icy stare.

The woman leading the us – Ginger, no surprise there – headed right. We all followed her. He followed behind us and that led me to believe that Ginger had chosen the right fleet. I rolled my eyes.

That girl was perfect. She stopped at the top though, uncertain where to head.

"I assume you all know why you're here," the man said. The first time he had spoken without ordering around, I noted quite unhelpfully. Most of the women turned to look at me. I guess they weren't bothered to pretend like they hadn't been eavesdropping.

The man looked at me too, his expression didn't change. "Go ahead, down the hallway. White women go into the rooms with white doors, mixed women in the rooms with beige doors, black women in the rooms with brown doors. One woman, one room. Move along." He commanded.

I didn't want to leave Barbie. Right now – even though I unreasonably detested her – she was the only one squeezing my hand. I didn't want my only confidante to leave me. She looked at me, like she was thinking the same thing.

Feet began to shuffle, doors opened and shut but I remained put. So did that blonde airhead. Ginger was the first one to enter a room with a beige door.

"You!" The man called over the noise. Everyone stopped moving at once. Some of the women who were already inside opened the doors and poked their heads out. Before I knew what was happening, everyone was looking at me. I realised that the man had his eyes trained on me too. "Follow me." He said, turning around.

I looked at Barbie. Her eyes were apologetic. "You should go."

"I don't want to. I don't feel safe."

"He can't hurt you," she said. She decided to rephrase. "He won't hurt you. He has no reason to do so. You're an asset to him."

I opened my mouth to argue, but the man was right in front of me. I gasped in shock, involuntarily taking cautious steps back and inevitably letting go of Barbie's hand.

"What are you waiting for? Follow me," he commanded, in a tone that left no room for argument. I decided not to look at Blondie, I followed right behind him, so close that when he stopped, I walked smack right into him.

I tore my face away from his muscled back, blinking away the shock. He was in front of a door, but he wasn't opening it. He was just standing there. He turned around, so sharply that I jumped back. He stepped forward and I stepped back. This continued until my back was aflush with the wall behind me.

"What am I even supposed to do with you?" He asked.

"How about you let me go home?" I spat. I was talking like I had the least bit of confidence, but I was more scared than a rabbit caught in between the jaws of a lion.

If he was surprised, it didn't show. "Are you a virgin?"

"What?"

"Are you a virgin? Or hard of hearing?"

"N-no. Neither." It was a half–truth. I was a virgin but I could hear perfectly well.

"Liar." He said.

I dared to look at him. He was looking at me emotionlessly. "I do reckon one of those idiots might want to be with a virgin."

I cringed.

"Or maybe not. And if you're of no use to me, you're better off dead."

My eyes were trained on the floor. I shuddered, the cold fear spreading through me like an infection. "Just let me go back home, I promise I won't say a thing."

"Trust me, you're not leaving this place. Your first mistake was coming here."

"I didn't choose to come here. I was kidnapped."

"I know that," he nearly rolled his eyes. "Wolfgang, that idiot."

"You know him?"

He ignored that question, seeing that it was foolish and didn't require an answer. He looked me up and down. "He does have taste though I'll give him that."

"I want to go home," I whispered.

"You are home. The sooner you accept that, the better. Seeing that your arrival was unexpected, a room wasn't prepared for you."

I didn't know what to say to that. "S-so I can sleep with any of the other women?"

"You'll be sleeping with me."

* * *

Hello!

Okay so I have a lot of time on my hands now – thanks to the quarantine – be expecting regular updates!

P.S This is the shortest chapter in this book.

Remember to wash your hands and stay away from people!