Elena woke up to a foul smell. It was thick and suffocating. It smelled like garbage and rotten flesh.
For a moment, she couldn't move. Her limbs felt heavy and sluggish.
Her head throbbed and when her vision finally steadied, she realized she wasn't alone.
Two other girls sat a few feet away from her on the roughly cemented floor. One hugged her knees to her chest and the other just stared blankly at the wall like a soulless being.
"What….?" Elena's voice came out hoarse. "Where are we?"
The girl hugging her knees looked at her slowly and gave a shake of her head.
"No need asking questions," she muttered. "We don't know what's happening either."
Elena's heart began to pound and she immediately forced herself to think.
Work.
She remembered she had just gotten home from work.
Her former job. She remembered being fired that afternoon and coming back home with the motivation that she would start job hunting first thing in the morning.
Then there had been a knock on the door.
Everything after that was black.
Before she could even try to adjust to the sudden situation she found herself in, the sound of metal scraping against metal cut through the air making her flinch.
The door opened and harsh light flooded the room, blinding them. Elena immediately shielded her eyes with her hands, squinting at the harshness.
"Up," a male voice barked and they were herded violently out of the foul-smelling room and into a long corridor before they could even protest.
Elena realized there was more girls. Some were crying, some trembling, and some were eerily silent, almost as if they had accepted the situation. She realized she'd been stripped down to just her bra, and the shorts she'd been wearing the previous night. And her mode of dressing looked similar to what other girls also had on.
They were all half naked.
Elena's stomach twisted as they were lined up into a single line and they began fastening number tags to their wrists.
She stared down at hers.
17.
They began to move slowly, until they neared the corridor where the door opened into a large enclosed hall.
It looked like a stage.
The light were bright, almost blinding.
The line moved forward and she began to hear the voices. Numbers were being called. The voices, all men, overlapped each other, as if they were fighting over gold.
Just when it was about only two girls before her, she started hearing the voices clearly.
"Twenty thousand." A voice rang out.
Another voice followed immediately.
"Thirty."
Laughter filled the room.
"Forty-five."
"Forty-five! Going once! Twice! Sold!"
A bell rung slowly and the girl was dragged off the stage, screaming.
Elena's blood turned to ice, realizing she was in an auction.
She was still in the middle of her crisis when her number was called.
Seventeen.
She stood glued to the spot as the person called her number again, looking towards her.
A whip struck her back and she cried out as the pain exploded through her body. Her legs nearly gave out as she was shoved forward into the blinding light.
Voices rose instantly. And she began hearing the number, prices again.
"Thirty."
"Seventy."
"One hundred!"
The numbers climbed like it was a game.
Like she was livestock.
The realization settled in her bones with a cold, suffocating weight.
She was going to be sold.
The lights were blinding, hot against her skin. She could barely see them, the men bidding on her as if she was some animal, she could only see silhouettes seated in the darkness.
The smell of cigars and alcohol was pungent in the air.
"One twenty!"
A whistle came from somewhere in the crowd.
"She's got legs " One of the men drawled. "Turn around."
Her stomach dropped.
And before she could even refuse, a hand gripped her shoulder from behind and forced her to rotate slowly beneath the lights.
Laughter rippled through the room and tears sprung to her eyes at the humiliation she was feeling.
"Look at that waist." One of them barked.
"I'll go one fifty."
The embarrassment and humiliation she felt at that moment was so sharp it felt like a blade under her skin.
"I'll make it one seventy."
The auctioneer grinned like the cheesier cat. "One hundred and fifty thousand. Do I hear more?"
From the front row, shielded from Elena's sight by the bright light. A man leaned forward, his thinning gray hair slicked back, gold rings glinting on every finger. His eyes dragged over her body slowly, deliberately.
"I'll give you two hundred thousand," he said, licking his lips. "And I want her untouched."
The room erupted in laughter.
Elena's chest tightened, she couldn't see the man speaking, but she could tell by the voice, that it was a man old enough to be her father.
Her pulse roared in her ears. The thoughts of what whoever got her would do to her nearly made her pass out.
"Two hundred thousand," the auctioneer repeated. "Going once!"
The man paused, as if he was waiting for someone to bid higher.
"Going twice!"
The older man was already smiling in triumph.
"And sol-"
"Two million."
The room fell into immediate silence.
Even the auctioneer froze.
Elena's heart skipped at the prize. Two million?
Elena didn't understand why the air suddenly felt heavier.
Why the men who had been laughing moments ago now stayed quiet.
Why even the auctioneer avoided looking directly toward the dark.
She didn't know who he was.
She didn't know that the man who had just claimed her owned half the city.
Behind the blinding light's, the older man who had claimed her earlier straightened abruptly. "What the hell-"
"Do we have a problem Kowalski?," the voice asked calmly from somewhere deep in the shadows that Elena couldn't pinpoint.
The old man laughed nervously. "Of course not Volkov. She's all yours."
Elena squinted past the lights, trying to see. But she saw nothing clearly.
Only the faint outline of a man seated comfortably.
The auctioneer swallowed. "Two million. Any counter offers?"The
No one spoke. As if anyone could dare to.
"Sold!"
The bell rang, and Elena's knees nearly gave out.
As she was being led off the stage to somewhere she didn't know, throught swarmed in her head.
But the most alarming of them all.
With the way all the men back there succumbed to the voice of that one man. Who was he?
Had she just been sold to the Devil?