Once she’s fully mummified in the glistening plastic shroud, her body reduced to nothing but a sealed, leaking package, he turns toward me.
The plastic touches my skin like the cold kiss of a corpse before it wraps around my ankles. Each layer pulls harsher than the last, a vacuum-sealing me like discarded meat destined for storage.
It crushes my calves together, then climbs to my thighs. Then my torso is next, the plastic compressing my ribs, flattening my breasts, pinning my arms uselessly to my sides.
Finally, my head and face is smothered, the material sticking to my tear-streaked cheeks and bloodied stitched mouth.
Everything disappears beneath the relentless, claustrophobic sheets. Everything except the filthy plastic straw protruding from the tiny gap in my sewn lips—my only lifeline to oxygen.
The world starts to shrink. But then, without warning, a sharp jab pierces the plastic and sinks deep into the side of my neck again.
My body spasms, muscles straining, and everything spins around me.
The edges of my vision bleed inward, black spreading through murky water before, finally, darkness swallows me whole.
Ihear the rain first, and it’s hammering against metal somewhere above me.
Cold seeps into my skin, piercing and invasive, and I realise I’m moving.
No, drifting.
My body is rising and falling as if I’m caught in the pull of a black, angry sea.
Then everything tilts and my trapped body slides across the slick floor, hitting something solid to my right with a jolt that crashes through me.
I groan as my body crumbles against it, the sound low in my throat before forcing my tired eyes open.
There’s only plastic and darkness in front of me, but I can hear the soft and muffled sobs of women. Distressed women, and the sound threads through the dark like a deadly smog.
Before I can even think to panic once again, I feel hands on my stomach, and they start ripping at the plastic, unravelling it with frantic tears.
As soon as my hands are able to, I desperately start helping by removing it from my face.
When I’m freed, I pull the filthy straw out of my sore stitched lips and suck in a huge lug of air through my nose.
“Are you okay?” A woman’s soft voice asks beside me.
But I can’t answer, clearly.
My jittery fingers lightly skim over my stiched lips, the thread pulled too tight, and I wince from the pain that shoots through my face.
My blurry gaze sweeps around the… room? And at the far end, the cracks in the door reveal a glow of light seeping in.
“We’re on a cargo ship,” the woman beside me reveals and my wide eyes flash toward her shadow.
Fuck. We’re being trafficked.
My trembling hands find my dirty, soaked hair, and I clutch it tight, yanking at my scalp.
My head drops forward as a weak whimper breaks loose, my body shaking so hard it feels like it’s trying to shake itself apart.
I can't take this anymore.
“Hey… you’ll be fine. I’m here for you.”
Her whisper beside me is fragile and almost kind.
I seem to know that voice—it feels familiar. But I can’t focus right now. Everything’s twisting and spiralling, my mind dying for a grip it can’t seem to find anymore.