Illusions of Soul

There is a girl sitting in the corner. She can’t be more than sixteen. Her eyes are closed. When the other women look at her, they probably see sleep. But she isn’t sleeping. There is no sense of calm to indicate that.

She’s different than the rest of them. I sense it as surely as I hear her heartbeat. It speeds up and slows down intermittently, as if she doesn’t know whether to be terrified or at peace with this decision.

She got out before she was touched, escaped with her innocence, but now she has sold that gift to the vile, tattooed man for her passage, in the hope that it will be the only time she’ll ever have to.

And it begins.

By ship.

By night.

I hear the crew working above us to put us to sea. A long journey over the murky depths of the Pacific. And me, waiting down here in the hull with a dozen women who seem to be just like me. So much for appearances.

Like them, I have made a deal with one of the crewmen for my transport. He is huge, tattooed, cocky and vile. He’ll be dead within a day or two. I have no intention of making good on our agreement, or letting the frightened faces I can barely distinguish from the shadows make good on theirs. What they run from, the lives they have been sold into, circle them like spirits. Why do they believe it will be so different across the water, when it is starting out so much the same?