Penance_An Imp World Novel Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Epilogue

  Penance

  Debra Dunbar

  Copyright © 2018 by Debra Dunbar

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Epilogue

  Also by Debra Dunbar

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Awakening was like the reverse of a white light at the end of a tunnel. I was moving into the darkness instead of away from it. Everything felt heavy and thick. I was suddenly solid, slow, dim. And something smelled really, really bad.

  “Looks like she’s breathing after all. I’m glad she’s not dead.” A voice swam into my mind—a woman’s voice, tobacco-raw and full of sarcasm.

  There was a soft laugh in response. “Me too. I wasn’t looking forward to being locked in with a ripening corpse.”

  I forced my eyes open, wondering if someone had glued them shut as I’d slept. A blurred form came into focus inches from my face—wavy black hair coming loose from a messy pony tail, and exotic, dark eyes in a brown angular face. For a brief second I saw beyond her skin to a soul that was battered and tired, but bright with an inner glow of strength. Then the glow fell away and all I saw was a young woman—little more than a girl—with worried eyes far older than the face they adorned.

  “Smells like she’s dead.”

  It was me that stank? Although as I inhaled, I realized I wasn’t the only one with significant body odor.

  “Gah. Damn, did they find her sleeping in the sewer? Neck deep in animal carcasses? How the hell can someone smell that bad and still be alive?”

  The voice came from my right—the sarcastic smoker voice. I tried to turn my head to see the speaker, but couldn’t. My neck was making alarming popping noises with the effort, as if I’d lain in this position for weeks and everything had locked tight.

  “Knock it off, Sugar,” the woman in front of me said. “We all stink. And we’ll probably stink a whole lot worse before we get out of here.”

  Where was ‘here’? My head was killing me. My mouth tasted like someone had filled it with salt and cotton balls. My limbs were beginning to twitch with a life of their own. I wasn’t sure if that was preferable to the frozen sensation I’d had a few moments ago or not. My sense of smell came fully on-line and I immediately wished it hadn’t. The air reeked of unwashed, sweaty bodies and diarrhea. And yes, I was one of those unwashed, sweaty bodies. When was the last time I’d bathed?

  “She’s a junkie,” another voice said. “Scoring the next fix takes priority over personal hygiene, and it’s not like flophouses have running water and hotel-sized bottles of shampoo.”

  Junkie? Flophouse? That didn’t sound right, or maybe it did. Blurred memories surfaced briefly then vanished—a favorite childhood movie, a book read a few months back, the rich sweetness of Boston cream pie, the warmth of a soft blanket. I frowned and tried to think of something more specific about my junkie-self, but came up with only these shadows. Was I a junkie? I couldn’t seem to remember. In fact, the last thing I remembered was…

  Nothing.

  Panic shot through my chest as I struggled to sit. I had nothing but vague emotions and fleeting impressions, not what I’d done the day before or the week before. Not the details of my childhood. Not my parents. Not anything about where I lived, the car I drove, or even what I looked like. Who was I? And where was I?

  “Easy, easy.” Warm hands grabbed my arms, steadying me as the woman with the exotic dark eyes peered at me with concern. “You’re safe. No one here is going to hurt you.”

  “Except for the guys. They’ll probably hurt you,” Sugar added.

  Who? Hurt me? Something in my midsection twisted and I tasted bile.

  “If you’ve got to puke, do it in the corner. And try to do it quietly. I don’t wanna hear that shit.”

  Sugar again. I was beginning to sense the irony of her name, and couldn’t help feeling a twinge of amusement. But I did have to puke. Somehow through my gagging I was dragged into a corner where I dry heaved over a pile of very wet excrement. How long had we been in here that everyone had taken to relieving themselves in a corner? Had I been peeing in my pants, or had I arrived here after the rest of them? And where exactly were we?

  Gentle hands held my hair, and the woman who’d helped me whispered reassurances in a soft voice. She’d help me. She’d keep me safe. The woman was just as dirty and smelly as the rest of us, but I appreciated that she’d assumed the role of my protector. I was so weak, so sick, confused and out of place in this body that felt like it was trying to turn itself inside out.

  When I was finished throwing up, at least for the moment, I scooted away from the poop pile and propped my back against the wall. That’s when I started to shake.

  “It’s gonna be rough for a while,” the dark-eyed woman warned me. “It’s cold-turkey, hon. Ain’t gonna be easy, but I’ll do what I can to help you.”

  I reached out to grip her hand, holding tight as if she were my lifeline, my guardian angel. The feel of her skin against mine, the pressure of her fingers, the way her nails with their chipped polish dug into my palm…it grounded me.

  “I changed my mind. Think I’d rather be locked in with a corpse than a junkie,” Sugar muttered.

  “Shut it, Sugar,” my savior shot back. “I seem to remember doin’ the same for you a few times.”

  “I was hung over, not coming down off a years-long heroin bender,” Sugar retorted.

  Heroin. I looked down at my trembling arms, seeing the tell-tale track marks. No wonder I felt so sick. I might not know where I was or who I was, but clearly I was a heroin user, which meant the headache and dry heaves were going to be the least of my problems during the next few days.

  “You’ll feel worse. Gets real bad around day three or four, but it’ll be better after that. Just hang in there.” I felt the woman’s other hand smooth my hair and leaned against her, my teeth chattering so hard I feared they might break apart.

  “This is going to suck,” Sugar complained. “If they were going to grab a junkie, they should have brought some drugs as well—for us if not for her.”

  “Well, they didn’t and I doubt they’re going to pull over t
o juice her up.” The dark-eyed woman commented. “Poor thing.”

  Pull over? For the first time I recognized the swaying, the frequent jolt of what I’d assumed was a very small windowless room. We were in a vehicle in motion—one with very poor shocks. There were ventilation slats up near the top that let in a tiny bit of light, and an even tinier bit of fresh air judging by the hot, close stench of our surroundings. The rear of the truck trailer had a roll-up door that looked to be tightly locked down, and up front on the side away from the poop pile, was a much smaller access door—no doubt equally locked down.

  The door seemed to swell from the middle, like the metal had suddenly become a balloon. I stared hard at it, convinced that if I focused I could break it open and set us all free—or at the very least get some much-needed fresh air in here.

  “Crap, she’s burning up.” I felt a hand on my forehead. “She shouldn’t be running a fever this soon.”

  We don’t have any medication for her. No cold towels, or even water.

  Was that the dark-eyed woman’s thoughts I had heard? She was concerned I might die, worried that she couldn’t protect me as she’d promised. She had to help me. I was weak. She’d been weak once too, and there’d been people who helped her. Pay it back. And hope that in her time of need, someone would be there once again to protect her.

  Heaven above, I must be running a heck of a fever if I was hallucinating and imagining myself reading other people’s minds.

  “She’s gonna die, you know. I say we strangle her and do us all a favor.” Sugar crossed her arms, her gaze unemotional as it swept me. “Probably do her a favor too.”

  The chorus of voices berating Sugar were drowned out by my resumed retching. I crawled back toward the poop pile, not sure if it was motion sickness, the odor of human waste and unwashed bodies, or the lack of drugs in my system causing my stomach to revolt in this fashion. It was all I could do to remain on my knees and to keep from falling into the wet excrement. No matter how horrible I felt, I knew my agony would be worse if I face-planted into the toilet space.

  “Water,” I croaked between dry heaves.

  “Hon, if we had any water, I’d give you some.”

  The woman’s voice was so kind that I couldn’t help crying. Now I was puking acid out of the depths of my digestive system, and bawling my eyes out. Every inch of me hurt, and I couldn’t stop trembling. When I’d finally stopped vomiting bile, arms held me tight and rocked me as I shook and muttered half-coherent words in a strange language.

  “What the hell is she saying?” Sugar’s voice seemed closer than it had been before. “Thought she was American. Don’t tell me we’ve got another foreigner here who don’t speak English.”

  “It’s just the fever.” The woman’s hand was cool on my forehead and cheeks. “You sleep now, hon. Just sleep it all off. I’ll be here, right by your side, okay?”

  I replied and it came out that weird language, as if I were speaking in tongues. Then I fell silent, and slept, dreaming of a world where I flew on wings of crimson and gold, a world filled with anger and sorrow and grief, a world I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to return to.

  I’d been awakened by the truck coming to a stop. We’d sat, listening for something, anything to tell us what was going on. Sugar and the dark-eyed woman exchanged a silent, tense glance, then scooted closer to the side door while the other girls huddled together near the back of the truck. Doors slammed. There was a muffled, deep-voiced conversation, then a laugh that faded as if the drivers were walking away.

  “Pit stop,” a girl in the back with spiky blue hair whispered.

  Why didn’t we scream for help? Try to get the attention of someone parked nearby? I opened my mouth, only to snap it shut as the dark-eyed woman shot me a warning look. “Don’t. They park us way out away from the other cars, and if we make noise, we don’t get food or water.”

  “And they hit us,” an accented voice added. It was dark in the truck, but I could see the girl who spoke was holding her arm at an odd angle. I was pretty sure the dark marks on her face were not just from dirt, either. “Last time…last time I scream and they take me out of truck to woods and hit me. And…what is the word?” The girl said something in a foreign language. Russian? It sounded Slavic, but I couldn’t recognize it.

  Something buzzed in the back of my head. There was a time when I knew this language. There was a time when I knew a great many languages, but that knowledge was locked behind some wall, as inaccessible as all the memories of my past.

  “They fucked you, and not with their dicks either,” Sugar said coarsely. “Probably got splinters all up in that thing.”

  I winced. The girl really didn’t look well. She needed a doctor. That arm. The bruises. The way she sat angled against another girl up on one hip. She needed a doctor. Did these men not care if we lived or died? Did they not care that this poor girl was in obvious pain?

  “Shhh.” The dark-eyed woman put a finger to her lips and inclined her head toward the side of the truck. Once more we heard muffled conversation, then the clank of something metal.

  A few seconds later, we were blinded by daylight as the access door opened and a man tossed in a plastic jug of murky water and a loaf of white sandwich bread. The jug thudded to its side, the bread narrowly missing our bathroom pile. Everyone sat as if they were frozen as the man peeked in at us, obviously counting. The moment he closed the door, everyone sprang forward, frantically trying to be first to the bottle of water.

  “Share,” the dark-eyed woman commanded. “Little sips, everyone. Pass it around and make sure everyone gets some. Tasha, too.”

  I looked over at the girl with the broken arm, still huddled safely away from the others where she wouldn’t be jostled. The girl with the blue spiky hair took a swig from the bottle, then brought it over to Tasha, helping her to drink, handing it to me afterwards.

  I sipped from the half-empty bottle. The liquid soothed my chapped lips, as I dribbled it into my mouth and down my parched throat. The water smelled like sulfur and iron, but nothing had ever tasted so sweet. I felt more stable than I had earlier, my stomach quiet in spite of the gnawing emptiness.

  “Here.” The dark-eyed woman handed me a few slices of crushed, dirt-smudged bread. The other girls were cramming pieces into their mouths, unconcerned about the lack of any sort of hygiene. I stared down at the soft bread and frowned. Hungry people didn’t care about dirt. Starving people didn’t think about bacteria or disease. Food and water. The bottom slab of the hierarchy of human needs. For some reason it all felt foreign, as if these needs didn’t really apply to me.

  “You gonna eat that?” A girl with a softly rounded face and a Spanish accent asked me, eyeing the bread.

  I wasn’t hungry, but I knew this body needed food. Still, I handed her one of the slices, forcing myself to take a bite of the other. It was artificially soft with preservatives, becoming a mushy glutinous lump on contact with my saliva. Something inside me rebelled at the thought of eating this bread. I ignored it and took another bite, wondering if I’d be puking this all up in another hour or so.

  “You’re detoxing really fast. Guess you weren’t as much of a junkie as I thought.” It was grudging praise from Sugar. And it gave me some hope that the bread and water I’d just consumed wouldn’t be coming back up.

  Her words made me realize that I did feel better than I had earlier. I sipped the water, taking little bites of the soft tasteless bread and closed my eyes, feeling something bright deep down that seared through my flesh, easing the desperate cravings and the horrible flu-like symptoms. I still radiated heat, but it was as if the drugs and addiction were being burned from my body rather than sickness. Cleansed by fire. Only in my case it was more like cleansed by fever.

  By the time I’d finished with the bread, my shaking had subsided and I felt less like I was going to vomit my insides out. Straightening my legs, I looked around and wondered how long we’d be parked here before the men started up the truck again. It mus
t have been close to noon and sunny out, because the light coming through the slats was stronger than it had been earlier. The space we were in seemed to be the back of a box truck by the size and shape. There was nothing inside except the eight other women. No straps, seats, mattresses—only the smelly pile in the left corner and the faint light that filtered through the open slats near the roof. I wondered not only how long we’d been rattling along in this truck, but why we were in here at all.

  What had I been doing before I got here? I searched my memory and came up empty. No, not quite empty. There was a very clear knowledge of things like what music I liked, how warm pavement smelled after a rain, that real bread tasted far superior to this mushy stuff they’d given us. But beyond that, I only remembered vague shadowy impressions of what my life had been before today. I closed my eyes briefly and tried to concentrate and got only guilt. I’d done something wrong. No—I’d not done something I should have done. I’d been weak and others had suffered because of it. And now I needed to suffer as well.

  Great. I was a woman with a martyr complex, with no idea who I was, or the circumstances that led me to be locked in a truck with eight unkempt women. The likely scenario was that I’d been shooting up and passed out somewhere when they grabbed me and put me in with these others. But why? If this was a drug intervention, it was definitely not like the sort I’d ever seen on TV.

  “Where……where are we?” I asked.

  I was a bit embarrassed about my strange amnesia, but it was time to swallow whatever pride I had and figure out what was going on. Remembering the marks on the inside of my arms, I figured whatever pride I’d once made claim to was long gone anyway.