Chapter Seventeen

Cheryl’s New Home

Cheryl was awake when Turk abandoned her at the Marlymore Shopping Center in East Baltimore. Her head was fuzzy and she was cramped. She had sensed the box being offloaded from the van and wheeled a short distance. She did not hear the light tap on the box that Turk made due to the box’s construction. After all, it was designed to suppress noise. She was uncomfortable indeed. She had a gag almost down her throat, stuffing her mouth. Her arms were bound tightly behind her and she was crouched down in an agonizing position. “Where was he taking her?” she thought. “What was happening to her?”

Now that the drug was wearing off, Cheryl’s senses had come alive. Waves of misery swept over her. Confined closely in her small, black prison, she began to sob uncontrollably. She wailed behind the gag, a long, aching wail. She could hear in her head her own sounds, but not in her ears. The long, fat, penis shaped gag suppressed almost all noise. She struggled to raise her head, to free her hands, to move her legs, but all to no avail. Her back and knees ached from the strain, as did the muscles on the back of her legs. Her breasts were crushed against her thighs.

She remembered her last few moments of consciousness. She remembered the struggle with the Turk, their embrace and her surrender of all resistance to him. Something had shifted in her at that moment, something Cheryl was not sure about. This stranger, who had abused, tormented and displayed her so wantonly had kissed her with a passion she had never before experienced. She had felt it too. Against all logic and against everything she held true, she had felt the man’s lust and returned it. But what had he done? Why was she trussed up and packaged so severely? She remembered the hypodermic and her loss of all volitional function. She had meekly allowed the Turk to adorn her body with the cruel bindings that now held her in place. She remembered the tube pushed down her throat, the sensation of gagging as it went down.

As Cheryl was musing her future, another gray van moved into the parking lot. A small, lithe man, shadowy in appearance and demeanor, stepped out from behind the wheel and proceeded to collect Cheryl and her box. He quickly rolled the box up a small ramp to the back of the van, slammed the door shut and drove away. It was driven a short distance to a freight yard and there transferred again to the back of a truck headed for delivery down at the harbor. An hour later, it was being lifted over the side of a freighter bound for Liberia. The ship sailed four hours later.

Cheryl felt the various bumps and movements of her container. She was in a kind of daze, partly due to the aftereffects of the drug, but also from being overwhelmed emotionally and physically by her predicament. Her muscles were now numb from their constriction. Cheryl’s mind was struggling with the unreality of what was happening to her. A few hours ago she was stepping into her apartment, looking forward to a pleasant and maybe adventurous evening with her friends. Now she was no more than a packaged commodity, a caged prisoner, subject to the whims of who knows who.

Cheryl had no idea how long she had been in the box. She knew she had been driven quite a distance. And she knew that she was still in transit to somewhere. As she pieced together the night’s events, Cheryl ran through the possibilities of what they meant. The sexual assaults by the Turk she could understand. Women were raped in New York everyday, even in their own apartments. But the rest, the little display in front of the computer camera, her cruel and painful packaging, for that she had little context for understanding.

A flicker of insight began to torment her. She was definitely being kidnapped. Her naked body, her forced invitations to sexual exploitation, could there really be any other explanation? Had she been auctioned off into slavery? Was she being transported to a person who had bought her over the Internet? Could such a thing be possible? Cheryl’s mind literally reeled at the thought. A new wave of despair and terror swept over her. She resumed her futile struggle against her bonds.

But Cheryl’s struggles could not be detected from outside of her container. She was well packed. Only the most violent scream could permeate the sound-proofed interior, and they would emerge only as faint murmurs. But gagged as she was, Cheryl’s moans and wails were as quiet, as muted and muffled as if they were not occurring at all.

After the box was lifted over the side of the freighter, its custody was immediately transferred to the ship’s First Mate. Had Cheryl been able to see him, she would have recoiled in fright. His scarred face bespoke his ragged, violent disposition. His frame was well muscled, but bent forwards as if the cruelties which he had suffered and inflicted throughout his life had all taken a piece of his humanity, leaving behind a motley, golem-like creature. As he rolled Cheryl across the deck, all who saw him stepped aside.

The crew, mostly Filipinos and other third worlders, knew enough to remain oblivious to the machinations of the officers of the ship. They knew nothing, they saw nothing. The sea was a large and lonely place and many a troublemaker had found himself drifting along the North Atlantic’s waves, waiting for death. The crew busied itself with the ship’s preparations for sea.