Shiny Gift for An Ogre

a tale of escape and redemption

        America was a good place to come back to after two and a half decades. The unremembered English language was readily dredged up in her mind with catchy clichés and vivid images from before her seventh birthday. Forced to live in Brazil and to speak the Portuguese after so much time, Amelia’s newfound freedom from her husband of seventeen years was emotionally liberating with a newfound ability to leave the palatial villa that she was enslaved in for almost as long as she could remember. The plane ride to Little Rock short and uneventful, just the blink of an eye compared to the years of living under the thumb of a Brazilian landowner who could be a complete lunatic sometimes, and normally was. Stepping onto to American soil and declaring nothing to border agents, Amelia rendered up her Brazilian passport; it was a task to acquire it without Enrique’s knowledge.

A white woman of thirty two years, five foot six and weighing about a hundred twenty five pounds, Amelia had wide blue eyes and long brown hair that draped down onto her pressed suit. With full lips and high cheekbones, her sharp jaw gave her face erotic beauty above her voluptuous figure.  Her smile beaming her joy of being home, Amelia strolled to the front entrance of the Little Rock airport and she hailed a cab. An hour later she was on a bus, the last leg of a long journey to her hometown of El Dorado in southern Arkansas. It took an eternity to save the forty-two one-hundred dollar bills, waiting for the right time and circumstances to escape the grip of her husband, his cruel family, and of the corrupt Brazilian government. The plane fare was paid for in Brazilian reals under an assumed name, and once paid for Amelia had to endure, waiting for the exact flight that would fly from Rio de Janero to Little Rock on a very obscure airline that did not immediately list passenger manifests online, and that only happened once every six weeks. Enrique was older and not as sexually demanding as he was when he’d first forced himself on Amelia just before they were married. Remarkably, he decided he wanted her the night before his illustrious, annual business trip to Mexico City, raping her unresponsive body for the very last time. He drove away in his BMW and she took a cab to the airport where it was a harrowing three hour wait until boarding the aged 707 and leaving Brazil forever.

        Amelia and Enrique had two daughters. Maria and Isabel were attending the same parochial school that Amelia was thrust into after being taken against her will from her home in America. Maria was a precocious eight and a half years old, spoiled rotten to the core by her doting father, and very demanding of her light skinned mother. Isabel was a young beauty, a budding debutante of thirteen whom had been selected for marriage to the son of a local burocrat. She loved them both, but Amelia’s life of forced servitude by Enrique and the entire South American environment was not going to continue, no; not any more. Maria could hem and haw, huff and puff her indignation with her ‘gringo nanna’ the rest of her detestable little life for all Amelia could care. Maria had been forced onto Amelia as forcefully as the Portuguese language and her new Christian name of Anna, and after her birth every tiny little flaw in Maria’s body and character were incessantly blamed on Amelia’s ‘mongrel’ blood. Isabel was Amelia’s little angel, a constant companion in the horrendous years of Amelia’s teen years and early twenties. Isabel was affectionate, considerate, and she had the nose, cheeks, and the warm continence of Amelia’s father, at least she liked to think so. Amelia would miss Isabel the rest of her life, but there was absolutely nothing she could do to help her teenage daughter, and Amelia had a mother of her own that she intended to see once again.

The Arkansas countryside passed by in front of her eyes; it was virgin snow. All the paved roads and new buildings and bustling schools and malls were a big contradiction to the rustic, ruddy clapboards and adobes of Brazil. Behind the modern, well kept scenery of the Arkansas highway was a hidden face long forgotten in Amelia’s mind. Her mother’s name was once Michelle. Amelia remembered her having blue eyes, long brown hair like her own, and a loving embrace for a little girl that might once have been Amelia. And she had a last name that became a taunting idea just on the tip of the tongue, constrained from cognizance of articulation. It was a word, a conception stopped short from emerging by the back of her throat, her sinuses, and the foggy volumes of her memory. Still the word, the name itself screeched from the back of Amelia’s brain like a little girl who’s been tied and gagged, locked in a closet from the prying eyes of the civilized world. The bus continued down the highway, driving through towns and past rest stops and gas stations where pudgy women had clinging children swirling around them and old men in short pants, tennis shoes, and aloha shirts walked mangy little dogs. In the boredom Amelia started to read street signs to amuse herself and distract herself from all of the American boys, girls, men and women that she herself had been denied from becoming. And then she saw it, that street sign that freed the incessant word itching to be released from the back of Amelia’s mind.

Bullock Street.

        That was it! Bullock! Her mother’s last name was Bullock! Michelle Bullock from El Dorado, Arkansas! The realization of her mom’s last name drew an intense anticipation from deep inside Amelia’s craw and the monotony of the bus ride amplified her impatience. She had to calm herself with a trip to the bus’s bathroom. After crying a tear or two, and washing her hands with the ruddy water in the bathroom sink, Amelia sat back in her seat. She contained herself by focusing on finally returning home and old memories of her mom.

        Instead of finally arriving at her hometown she had to change buses in Texarkana. It would be after an hour and a half wait. As Amelia waited in a chair in the terminal, a very large, fat woman waddled into the bus station. A black woman with enormous breasts that bore up most of her gluttonous figure, the way she walked sparked another bottled up idea itching from the back of Amelia's mind, especially when the black woman opened the deep maw of her mouth and started to speak.

        “Hey ‘day’ere, what?” It was another exclamation that tugged at Amelia’s mind, a memory that pulled on Amelia’s hair and threw her seven year old body up against a wall within the recesses of her memory. “What chu’ do? Hey ‘day’ere, what?” The fat old ogre of a woman was addressing a little boy that she dragged by his outstretched hand. He appeared to be about the age of four, his head barely standing above the huge woman’s knees.

        “I sorry, mama!” the child replied in a weak, squeaky voice. He had the same dark, dank colored skin as the flesh of the huge black woman’s b***s whose cleavage protruded from the fabric of her low cut dress. “I sorry mama! Can I have a chocolate now, mama? Can I have a chocolate??”

        The big black woman let go of the child’s hand and backhanded him across the face. As he began to screech in pain she took his hand and resumed dragging the blubbering boy through the bus station. As Amelia stood up and watched the black woman approach the counter, a flood of images entered her mind, recollections of this same huge, black ogre whom had once cared for Amelia in a similar way. Waves of recognized terror resonated through Amelia’s body as comprehension acknowledged the horrific personage of one of her captors that changed her life decades before. The black ogre’s hair was now striped and patched with white and pinned up on top of her enormous head, but there was no mistaking her oppressive figure and distinctive voice as she approached the bus station counter with the weeping child.

        “Hey ‘day’ere, what?” the huge, lipsticked mouth bellowed, addressing the ill-fated woman behind the counter. “What chu’ do ‘day’ere, bub?”

        “How may I help you, ma’am?” The thin woman in a white uniform shirt replied politely, her skin a similar dark hue as the ugly, gluttonous apparition before her, but her eyes were kind and her forced smile seemed genuine. The female ogre’s response clearly announced her Caribbean origins.

        “Oh, I be needing transport to me home in Maag'noleeyah' without being cheated by you skinny lil’ designs, woman.” The young boy was tugging at her hand and whining. The large, black hand that bound the child released his wrist and turned to slap him brutally. Without missing a syllable the ogre recaptured the boy’s hand and continued. “Now I half dees’ eevil’ chile’ with me who’ll sit on me lap the whole vay,’ so I doesn’t pay any more than fifteen dollar.”

        The young woman behind the counter typed the destination into her database, presented a patient, forced smile, and her eyes met Amelia’s as Amelia carefully moved to stand behind the enormous woman in line.

        “One way from Texarkana to Magnolia for one is seven dollars and fifty six cents, ma’am.”

        The horrid hand released the child once again, raised above the counter, and a large black fist slammed down. “Hey ‘day’ere, what? I eell’ not PAY!” The ogre roared so loudly the poor clerk visibly stepped back. “I give you five dollar, evil lil’ ‘gul!”

The thin woman brought her hand up to her face and patted her hair, then stepped forward.

        “Madame you’ll pay seventeen fifty six or you will not ride.” She spoke calmly, clearly, in even tones. “And you’ll keep your voice down or I will call the police.”

        The black ogre reached for the purse hanging on her right shoulder, and leaning down she opened it, withdrawing a leather wallet. In the same motion she recaptured the wayward little boy whom screeched as if in pain from another of the merciless blows to his face by his malignant mother. She pulled the child up into her arms and took a twenty dollar bill from the wallet, slamming the bill to the counter.

        “Hey ‘day’ere, what?” She repeated the exclamation that literally sent chills down Amelia’s spine. “What chu’ do ‘day’ere? You make the proper chay’ange’ ‘day’ere, evil lil’ ‘gul.”

        With a look of relief in her eyes the thin black woman counted out exactly two dollars and forty four cents, slipping the ticket onto the counter in front of the enormous, scowling ogre whom snatched the ticket up and walked away with the little boy trailing behind her, begging for chocolate and saying how sorry he was. The ogre dragged her son to a line of chairs and plopped him down into one of the seats, handing him a chocolate bar to shut him up. Then she sat down and glared around the room in accusation to all around for her aggravating troubles.

        Stepping up to the counter, Amelia asked the clerk when the bus to El Dorado was leaving, unable to hide her thick Portuguese accent. The clerk looked at her and smiled, happy to be speaking with a rational person again. She answered that it would be the same bus as the woman with the child, in exit number three in about forty five minutes. Amelia asked how far El Dorado was as opposed to Magnolia, and the clerk answered that Magnolia was about twenty miles away and that El Dorado was about sixty. Amelia thanked the pretty black lady and sat down in a chair on the other side of the terminal, facing the fat black woman and studying her face.

        Memories, long forgotten and repressed, began to surface of an enormous black woman with huge breasts who was one of the first of many people that were so horrid to Amelia when she was a child, when the nightmare of what her life had become only started. She saw images of the huge person with black pillars for legs and an accented voice that was the only break of light and life in an otherwise desolate reality of darkness lasting hours and hours. And the huge ogre always announced itself with the same ridiculous expression of stupid ignorance and complete control.

        “Hey thay’ere, what? What chu’ do ‘day’ere, bub?”

The enormous woman, whose huge bust line that would be a welcome pillow of affection from any other woman to a frightened child, was the same merciless jail-keeper that picked Amelia’s tiny, tied up, seven year old body and tossed her around like she was a sack of flour. There was never any word of comfort from any of her abductors, never any assuredness that Amelia would be okay at all, save the forced cold shower finally given just before her husband’s family took possession of the terrified child, least of all from this horrid, black ogre of a woman. Amelia’s joyous anticipation became tainted, overwhelmed with intense hatred and fear and humiliation. Watching the ogre sit in her chair and bullying her little boy in the seat next to her, Amelia’s emotions were getting the better of her.

Amelia needed to get away from this horrid personage the way she was unable to as a child, tied up and gagged in some closet or basement or symbolic wooden box where the ogre had locked her inside and hid the key between her great big b***s. Standing up, she walked out of the front entrance of the bus station. Once outside her feet carried her away from the ogre’s presence, breaking almost all at once into a sprint. She ran and ran until a red light and crossing traffic forced her stop. Standing there, panting and crying, a renewed sense of anticipation bloomed from up inside of her. She wanted to run away, to get as far away from the ogre and from Enrique and her cruel younger daughter as possible. Still panting, she turned away from the cars and pickups and motorcycles that were driving in front of the corner she was standing, and Amelia found herself looking into the window of a pawn shop, at the shiny barrel of a .45 automatic pistol. According to its tag it only cost four hundred dollars.

 Her husband had a pistol very much like this one. He’d shot it to show off for his drunken friends sometimes, and Amelia remembered that she would’ve loved to shoot the weapon just once. Of course she never dared to while surrounded by his brothers and his employees. Just the same she imagined putting a hole between his cruel, brown eyes time and again. Now, years and years later and back home in God - ever loving - Arkansas, she didn’t have Enrique, or his God damned family, breathing down her neck. She walked into the pawn shop and asked the old man behind the desk if she could buy the .45 and if bullets came with it. First of all she wasn’t ready to wait the three days required by law, but she also was reluctant to give her name, address, and social security number for the required background check. The balding Hispanic man at the pawn shop could read people pretty well, and he could see that this pretty little woman with a foreign accent was feeling a little insecure. He couldn’t sell her a gun but he could surely sell her a nice knife, of which the little shop had an extensive selection.

Ten minutes later Amelia was walking back toward the bus station much less upset and in possession of four switchblades that the man at the pawn shop said weren’t exactly legal but that could be had for the right price. All it took was three of the hundred dollar bills to buy all four of them, no questions asked. They were sleek, very functional with strong springs, and razor sharp. The blades could cut rope, they could pry open locks, and they could sever skin. For the first time in her life Amelia did not have the unending fear of being bound and gagged where she was completely helpless. She could get to and open the blades instantaneously. A new concept invaded her otherwise joyous soul; revenge.

Years and years of systematic, physical and mental abuse that Amelia carried with her every step and her every word slipped away as she walked toward the bus station. Her conditioning from the time of her childhood was that of servitude and compliance. Repressed memories of being beaten, raped, even being given over for a night with some of Enrique’s ‘friends’ for disgusting sexual favors came to mind. As she finally made her way back to the bus station she was in tears but they stopped abruptly when she saw the big, black ogre woman still sitting in her chair alongside her son. The heated desire to see the faded image of her mom was put on hold as Amelia sat back down in the same chair on the other side of the bus terminal.

El Dorado could wait. There was a house in Magnolia that Amelia was going to visit, that Amelia was going to exercise her new friends of sharpened steel within. Her life was taken from her decades ago. She had no say in her life, nor any say whatsoever in her future until she took her life into her own hands and snuck away. Now all she had was the burning memory of the beginning of the cruelty and servitude. The difference was that now it would be Amelia who would be dealing the blows and applying the pain, tying the knots and closing the locks with key in hand. She had a good idea that the ogre was still in the kidnapping and kidwashing business for those who would purchase a seven year old girl, fly her to Mexico City to be sold like livestock, and driven all the way down to Brazil with her hands and feet tied in the back of a pickup truck. And she was going to find out for herself.

When the next bus finally loaded up Amelia made sure that the ogre got on in front of her and seated herself and her little boy up front where Amelia could keep an eye on her.

       

SR Urie

 

Reviews

[Nicole]

very well written

[deeps]

Oh! My! I like this alot, There is alot suspense in this and action really. This is wonderful. Vivid imagery and wonderful detail. I like this alot.