Eleven-year-old Maggie threw up when the man behind the camera demanded that she remove her jeans. “What the fuck,” Vic, the photographer, mumbled as he walked over and pushed her down on the bed in the makeshift studio. Then he ripped her jeans off with so much force that it felt as though a layer of her skin came off with the denim. Vic threw a towel at her. “Now wipe up that slop and take your fucking shirt off,” he ordered.
Maggie was sobbing; she was stricken with an overwhelming sensation she’d never felt before, a feeling that she was going to die. She had no control over her emotions as she tried not to piss off the man with the camera any more than she already had. She removed her T-shirt slowly. “Good,” Vic huffed. “Now lie down on the bed and take your underwear off.”
Maggie shook her head. “I don’t want to do that. Please don’t make me do that, mister.” Her small voice quivered.
“That’s it,” Vic screamed. “John William, get the fuck over here and handle this. I don’t have all day for one kid. We have a fuckin’ business to run, here.”
John William thudded over to the bed where Maggie sat huddled, trying to cover her body, and he backhanded her across the face. Blood dribbled down her split lip and into her mouth, its coppery taste threatening to excite her gag reflex again. Before she could regain her senses, he pulled her panties off. Maggie pulled her knees up to her chin and wrapped her arms tightly around her legs as she sat naked on the bed with the two strange men watching her.
She was alone and terrified. All of her senses were heightened by the evil surrounding her. She didn’t know what they were going to do to her. Her parents had warned that no one should ever touch her private parts. But here, in this crumbling cement room, she had no choice. Maggie had an overwhelming feeling that the two men were going to do things to her that they shouldn’t, and this intensified the vulnerable feeling that gnawed at her gut, jeopardizing her ability to follow their instructions.
Vic looked at Maggie, his face devoid of any kindness. “I’m going to tell you this one time and one time only. I want you to spread your legs apart so I can take some pictures. Just drop your knees to your sides. Do you understand?”
Maggie nodded, not wanting to be hit again. Once Vic was back behind the camera, he looked over at her. “OK, spread your legs like I told you to.”
Maggie dropped her knees to the sides, and he began to snap pictures. “Now, I want you to reach down and touch yourself.”
Maggie froze, not knowing what to do. John William stepped in, grabbed her hand, and placed it roughly between her legs. “That’s it. Put your fingers inside,” Vic coaxed her.
Inside where? Maggie wondered, feeling filthy and ruined. Not knowing what she was supposed to do, she remained motionless. Vic strode over briskly, grabbed her hand, and shoved her fingers inside of her. Fear mixed with adrenaline coursed through her body—she thought they had broken her. She had no idea there was a hole between her legs before that moment. They had just started sex education at school, but nothing could have prepared her for the horrible acts she would be expected to perform to her body.
Vic turned to John William. “The next time you bring a new kid in here, make sure they’re ready for me. You understand?” he demanded.
John William nodded and glared heartlessly at Maggie. The look was so demonic that it was almost blinding. She shrank away from him, and a deeper level of fear ran uncontrollably through her body, seizing her muscles, paralyzing her.
After Vic took several more pictures, he told her to put on her clothes and leave. As Maggie quickly dressed, she wondered if they had gotten what they wanted and would take her back to the mall now. She was certain that her mother was still at the mall, searching for her. Maggie decided that when the two men let her go home, she would never tell anyone about the pictures they’d taken. Maggie feared that she would be in trouble if her parents found out what she had done.
However, ten minutes later, John William pulled Maggie into her cell and pushed her toward a cot. When he reached the doorway, he turned. “You have a lot to learn. I suggest you pay attention and do what we tell you to do. I’m going to cut you a break since it’s your first night, but if you ever embarrass me like that again, I’ll bash your brains in.”
Maggie’s hope of going home quickly vanished as his words bounced inside her head. Since it’s your first night. She instantly understood that they weren’t finished with her yet. Her heart beat faster as she tried desperately to hang on to the hope that they would let her go.
He raised his voice. “You are to obey everything that you are told to do! If you weren’t worth so much money, I’d fuck the shit out of you right now.”
Maggie was shaking. She didn’t know exactly what he was talking about, but she knew enough to understand that John William wanted to do bad things to her, dirty things. She clung to the cold block wall of the cell, unable to wrap her mind around what was happening to her.
“Take off all of your clothes,” John William instructed.
Maggie did as she was told quickly this time.
He looked at her with lust. “Now bring me your clothes.”
She quickly scooped them up and carried them to him. John William grabbed them from her arms.
“For causing such a scene tonight, you can sleep naked. So you can get used to it, you little whore,” John William taunted.
After John William left her and locked the heavy door behind him, Maggie sat on the dirty cot. She wept from the very depth of her soul. The unrelenting fear was suffocating and inescapable. This had been the hardest day of her young life. She had only been missing for twelve hours, but it felt like a year to eleven-year-old Maggie.
She cried herself to sleep that night, thinking of her family, and when she woke the next day, her nightmare continued.