Page 2 of Skin Trade

Chapter Two

On the edges of the main room, were four doors. One was the door she had been brought in through by the man with the tattoos. Another had a green lit-up sign signalling where to go in case of emergency. There was an exit. Not lit-up or signed, just a door with a lock. The outside world was on the other side. Such a strange place to Payton now. Somewhere that only existed in her mind. Was it still broken? Grey? Still filled with the terrors and screams of all those nights she wanted to forget?

Creven had never let her go outside, not out into the world at least, and if she had to go somewhere, he’d bundled her into the back of his dark car and made her keep her head down. She’d tried to peek once. Curiosity had been too much, and she had tried to snatch a glance out of the gap between the door and the edge. Her wrist ached at the memory of it, at where he had been forced to break her bones to teach her. “For your own good,” he’d said, and she’d agreed.

The door she headed to was for the start of the cleansing process. One could not be taken to a new abode with the stench and trimmings of the last one. It just wasn’t done. From the stories she’d been told, the Nazi’s had nothing on these cleaning rooms. She’d seen the Nazi cleaning rooms in old black and white films, but the films were often too grainy to understand. Creven had let her fill her mind with it, though. To learn and wonder.

He’d even taken her to visit one once. It was never clear how she got there—plane, boat, something else, but that didn’t matter. When she’d first heard the stories, she’d been obsessed with them, devoured them in anything he would let her read. The most chilling part perhaps was he had walked her around the place and spoke of it like he had lived there … like he had been part of it.

She'd touched signatures and the old uniforms. She’d wanted to bow at the box of ashes at the entrance and send them her thoughts, but Creven had told her that was lunacy. “Only old hags speak to the dead.”

Two women walked with her. One at either side. They didn’t touch her. Very few people touched others now. Everyone was so afraid of infection, or sickness, or contamination to the world’s food supply.

“I’ll take it from here,” a voice said, and Payton jumped for a heart-stopping moment. The man behind them was the one who had bought her. He towered above them.

“We are to clean her for you,” the woman to Payton’s right said. “You cannot …”

“I cannot?” He arched a brow at the woman, and she recoiled.

“I meant no disrespect. She has not been cleansed yet.”

“I will do it. Leave us.”

The woman who had spoken frowned and eyed the other woman, but neither of them addressed Payton. They were vampires too, weaker ones. Creatures at the bottom of the food chain. They couldn't even hide their fangs when they spoke.

“I asked you to leave us.”

He stared at Payton again. Stared in the same way he had done when she stood on the rotating table.

“Shall we?” he said, and he pushed the door open and stepped back so she could go inside.

The chain made Payton’s hands ache from the weight of it. It was becoming heavier as each second passed. It clinked when she bowed to him, but instead of going in first like his stance seemed to suggest, she bowed and stepped back so he could enter the room. It was how it was done now — a show of respect.

“No. You enter. Stand by the bathtub. I will return.”

He didn’t enter with her. He held the door long enough for her to move into the room and stand where he instructed. When she turned around, he was still standing, eyes on her. He walked like a man, which was an odd thought she supposed, but it was the only way she could think to describe him. There was power in his stride, and purpose, like his legs, held part of the confidence that poured from him.

The clinical smell of the room made Payton’s nose itch. It smelt like bleach and the cleaning solution everyone got doused in after being outside. It was vile stuff. It made Payton’s skin ache with a fire she couldn’t put out. It made her want things she’d normally not want. It even made her throb between her legs, ready for one touch to send her over the edge. But Creven didn’t like to touch her. She was too old for his liking.

As she stood in the room alone, time ticking by, a deep ache inched its way into her shoulders. She tried to roll them back, to ease some of the burdens the chain put on her slender frame. It was a good job she had no plans to run away. She'd not get far with this thing weighing her down. Where had her buyer gone? So much as she didn't want him to come back, she needed him to. He'd take the chain off her.

Footsteps echoed from the hallway. A second later, the door opened, and the man came in. He put the bolt across the door, keeping anyone who would come in, out. Not that they would. It was forbidden to wash in the same place as someone else. Water carried germs, and germs spread.

“You may drop your chain now,” he said, and he placed a towel onto the chair next to the bath.

She put the chain down by her feet, not wanting to drop it or let the heavy metal links fall on her toes. It would be her luck she’d break her foot and then this man would take her outside and have her shot like a lame horse no longer useful.

“Put your hands by your side.”

She did and followed it up with an accidental roll of her eyes. Poker face was the best expression these days. Yet time and time again, Payton forgot. But unlike Creven, with his punishment at the ready, this man smiled at her. A soft curve at the edges of his lips.

“Your thoughts?”

She pressed her hands to her sides and flattened out her palms against the tops of her thighs. “I apologise. I …”

“What did you think just then?”

A pause. It was wrong to speak unless spoken to, but it was also wrong to not speak when asked. Either one of them could get her a lashing if he so wished. But then, she was never afraid of that. Mostly, it made her mad.

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