Part 3: Commodity

Simon finds himself being traded...

I was stumbling.
Pushed, dragged out of that dark little hole that was the violently rumbling cabin, now stained with my sea-water vomit as well as the blood that splattered the matress and the walls. Only the bag over my head was more of the same, claustrophobic dark.
I remember stairs. Uneven, but strangely flat ground. Voice's blurred - I had tried at least to sleep through the violent shudders and the screeching violent sounds. Now I was regretting it. My stomach felt cut to ribbons. My head was throbbing. I could barely stand straight. Not that my captors appeared to care. They kept pushing, I kept falling. They kept hauling me up, ad nauseum.
The air began to fill with voices. Shouting, muttering. A bark of laughter stung the air abruptly in front of me.

'And what is this? A rat you found in the underpipes?'
I was surprised to hear such a normal voice - although my surprise was replaced with mute horror a moment later.
'He's survived the sea, the beach and managed to get inland.' The girl behind me replied. 'He was climbing a rack when we found him. He's bound to be useful to someone.'
She was the one who had talked to me in the cabin...wherever that was. Any idea that I had a friend here died in the instant I heard her voice as I stood there dazed, standing in almost total dark.
'I doubt that...' Suddenly, strong fingers caught my bandaged hands in a grip of iron. I gasped out in pain, perhaps a little too loud as his hands squeeze the jagged cuts.
'And this?'
'Patched up. Cleaned.' She said.
I was thrown to the ground. The metal had already felt unbearably hot underfoot - now it began to cook my hands as I pushed myself upward onto my knees.
'Zoo could always use him in the arena if needs be.' He said, in such a way that told me he was looking at me like a hobo he had just dragged into the warm. 'We can paint the walls with him.'
'For gods sake.' She muttered as he began to laugh.
I was dragged to my feet. 'What's your price?' He rumbled.
She hesitated for a few mere seconds.
'Multi wires.'
'Number?'
'Four.'
He laughed again. I felt his strong hand ruffling my hair, and tried to draw away. Instead, I fell backward.
I landed in soft arms. Against soft b***s. I jerked away, knowing it was her.

'You are pulling something awful, woman.' He snapped. 'I give you three and thats being generous. I just had thirty or so just like this one, so you had best be lowering your lines.'
'Three then.' She muttered, hesitant.
'Dearie...you don't get it do you? I'll give you two for him.' He cackled, his fingers tightening around my hands. This time I was quiet, even as a grating pain ripped up my arms.
She was quiet.
For some reason I chose that moment to laugh. It's a ragged thing - my throat is parched, and I'm probably muffled by the bag. But sometimes thats what I do when I'm being hurt. It rarely helps. Pain is like a comedian I've found - laugh and you will get more.

A hand closed around my throat. But it wasnt his. They were her lithe fingers, softly closing around my airway.
'Shut, up...' She whispered. 'If, you want, to live, then shut, up...'
She was angry, and I wouldn't have cared. But behind that voice was also something else. Something that made her breath quicker, a hysterical hiss gather beneath her whisper.
Her fingers left my throat, and I breathed a long breath.
Then something hard hit me in the face. My nose cracked. One of my eyes jolted with searing pain, and I cried out.
'Well that ain't going to be helping your plight woman.' He chuckled. 'That's jus damaging your own goods...'
I was wrenched back upright - just then, the floor had seemed nice. I could hear the bustle, although it had quietened. I wondered if it was because of the two fighting over me. Bartering...
'Lets  sort this then...' He said. 'It's two. This aint no islander. I could barely make it worth my while, let alone yours.'
'Three wires.' She said again. 'Now take it, or leave it.'
The bustle was loud again. Laughter rang away, muffled but still palpable through the bag. I waited, swaying from side to side. Again I lost my balance. I fell to a knee, and heard him mutter at me under his breath.
'Sod's sake...fine. I'll find some use for him, death or kicks, something or other...'
I was dragged away. For all I knew, she vanished into the bustle.

-----------------------------

Now the sun burns.
The courtyard is made of rusted metal, and I am chained to a thick nail protruding from the ground. The cuff is bound around my hand, tight enough to hold me there just like the others chained near me and all around the enclosure which was simply a paddock with swaying fence. The metal beneath me burns my arms. The sun above me is scorching the back of my neck. I imagine the red rawness that is probably now the skin there.

No-one talks to me, not that I care. I sip at a plastic bowl of water, ignoring the rank smell - ignoring the off taste. Trying to conserve the precious liquid.
Others shout at a small group walking a path through the enclosure, out of reach of the prisoners they observed. 'Please, let me go! I have money! I-'
The bang is unmistakable. So are the screams and the yelps of horror. I pin myself to the ground, and Im sure thirty other people have done the same. We had just had our warning.
After they die away, a shout rings across the air. A voice I recognize. It's him. The man who brought me for wires.
'Money! Who else wants to offer me money!' His screaming rings in my ears. 'Your money means jack s**t! You hear me?'
No-one answers.
Then newcomers, visitors to the paddock begin to look around the people chained to the ground. Led by my new owner.
He wears a beaming smile, but his teeth may as well have been sharpened fangs as he looked around at the flys in his spiders web. He is topless, his pack of muscles glistening with sweat, and his jeans are shredded at the knees, tiny holes punched in the lower shins. He see's me and smiles. Then he pulls a finger across his throat, before brushing a hand through the hair that grows from almost every part of his face.
A tall woman follows behind, her hair a thin fur around her head. She is wearing a black bikini and her skin is bronzed like caramel chocolate. But I am afraid to watch her. We all just got warned.

'Have you got any totty for the arena?' She says. She glances vaguely in my direction, and I close my eyes, hoping I don't stand out.
'Are you wanting to redecorate?'
'No...not today...'
As I opened my eyes, she looks again in my direction from far across the enclosure and winks at me, grinning in a way that isn't flirtatious.
'Next time, Jerrick. We'll paint the town...'
My heart shrivels as Jerrick, he who had brought me with wires, laughs heartily.
Another follows her. Another woman. She looks younger, her three pony tails a rosy red, but her eyes like hawks wander and analyse the chainees as she follows a few yards in the wake of the taller, sparsely clad woman. her black top paired with black or dark blue jeans.
'Be that, lets see some of the more gunned ones, righty? We put em over here...'
Jerrick leads the woman away.

Am I ashamed of crying? Here, no. Not when it doesn't matter. Not where noone I know or loved could see me.
I do cry. Others are too, and had been for some time. One more wasn't going to make a difference. I am not thinking about these people, who they were or why they were here. I only think about my death, as tears roll down my face. I imagine a machete hacking my limbs off, or a bomb blowing my torso away. Now death seems like not only the one doorway left, but also the one that im a matter of feet, days, weeks, whatever away from opening. And then I think of my friends and what I have left to do and Matt and how he wasnt so bad, in fact he was pretty good and how he would cry, people would get upset-

As my tears drip onto the rusty deck and my face contorts in misery, a gun is pressed to the back of my neck.
My head is forced into the metal. My nose explodes with pain as it touches the rust. My fingers curl into fists as I bite my lip, trying to hold the pain.
The would-be murderer leans on my back. I can feel their elbow through a tear in my shirt. I can feel long hair settle on my ear, and I feel tears begin to stream down my cheeks.
'Grow a sack, ladybug.' She hissed. 'And get out of here...'
Black top girl was pinning me down.
'I...I cant...' I mumble.
'Then you will die.' She mutters in my ear. 'Find a way!'
A soaking rag falls across me, covering my back, covering my head. The heat is extinguished as if it were never there.
Then everything goes black.
Again.

-------------------------------

The light is dimming.
I gather consciousness and am wide awake as the sun sets. I have a horrible lump on the back of my head - for the second time in a day I've been knocked out. It's not likely to be good for me.
I can hear people talking. These people around me are from the plane. It is what he meant when he said he had thirty or so just like me...was that what he said?
In the cool of that simple rag I begin to truely, properly think, for the first time since...since when? I don't remember...everything is a blur...but I begin to think none-the-less.
Is this a pirate camp? Is this some base to launch ship from and steal oil from tankers and such things. Were these people from the plane hostages, being ransomed to the highest bidder?

Either way...
I know what I can do, and immediatly upon looking at the hand cuff chaining me here, I wonder.
Maybe there was a way afterall.
'Boy...'
I look away from the hand cuff over to a bedraggled man lying a few feet away. His short hair was patchy, burned in places. I see his face, which is punctured with wounds. His shirt and trousers are covered with burningI tell myself that the shuddering is because of the gathering cold.
 Water...'
Hes looking at my bowl of water, which still has a little left. I shake my head, pushing my bowl behind me.
He lunges at me, fingers scraping across the rust and trying to grab my leg which I curl away. I crunch myself into a little ball, out of his reach. I see into the whites of his eyes, bloodshot things. I see his parched lips and his whitening tongue, his wide open mouth, as if he were trying to suck water from the air.
He stares back at me with desperate eyes. His fingers stretch toward the chain which binds me by the wrist. I have the crazed idea that he wants to bury his teeth in my skin and suck the blood out of my veins.
But he cant stretch far enough. For one insane moment, Im thankful we are all chained down.
His fingers retreat. His eyes continue to stare, and my heart continues to threaten to break out of my chest.
His fingers curl. He gasps for a breath of air...and then he just lies there, watching me.
Everything seems to quieten. I curl up beneath the rag and watch him. Goosebumps are spreading up my spine as he continues to watch me.

Below, the noise heightens. Cheering, talk, laughter, anger. It sounds like there is a night life going on below this rusty deck, below the paddock. I look out of the lace fence and notice for the first time that all I can see lying down is the horizon through the interlinked fence - where am I now?
Even with my mind in some good shape, I think back to the rumbling, violently loud, bloodstained cabin, and then to the rivers, and then the hills of scrap cars which dominate this place seemingly like skyscrapers dominate downtown New York. Now I think of this place, and I think of the world. Iraq, Africa, Mexico, Brazil, Somalia...I think of those places which I am afraid of , and yet our boat was nowhere near any of them.
I look again at the man who wanted water.
He's still staring at me. In fact he was still staring at the same place. It's like he had gone to sleep with his eyes open.
I suddenly realise what my apparently working brain shouldve told me, and my mouth drops open.
You see, it is a horrible thing to realise that the man who asked you for water is dead.
Almost instinctively, I take my bowl and gulp what remains down, watching those lifeless eyes, staring into space.