[WP] Wherever you go you must wear a mask. It’s the only way to stay alive, stay unnoticed, and invisible. So they don’t find you.
******
Many have different views of the pandemic.
Some say it brought loneliness, crimes, and many infringements on their rights by causing them to ‘wear masks’ and many other rules. Others said it was a conspiracy theory from some of the higher-ups to do whatever I really had no care for.
To me, it was a different story.
The mask-wearing changed everything.
It allowed me to stay hidden in plain sight; that was good because there was nowhere I could hide from them – none at all. Of course, I could last a day, maybe two… but any long term plans of staying there for a while were impossible.
Not while Silva and his goons were looking for me.
They were crawling all over the place, and despite their best efforts to stay stealthy, I always knew who and where they were. Something about growing up in the streets refines your senses and smarts, or that was what Tobi always said.
Tobi.
It had been long since I last saw or heard from the munchkin –making calls was also not a remote possibility. ‘They’ had their tentacles all over the city, and I knew they were looking for me desperately, so I couldn’t just assume the lines weren’t tapped.
I knew the only way to stay out of their reach was to stay on the move – never spending time at one location for up to four days, not having any sort of routine or habits, keeping my activities random, and randomly selecting my next hideouts. If they saw any pattern, even the slightest hint of repeated activity, they would swoop in.
But the mask was the most important tool.
Wearing the mask in this period made me just another person on the street; they couldn’t tell everyone to take off their masks, so I was safe behind that face mask. It really did save lives in ways even the CDC didn’t postulate.
Either way, I had to leave the city. This game of hide-and-seek was temporary – they were combing the streets and I had no idea how long I could keep it up without being detected. Different prosthetics, a lot of makeup, different wigs – it all was exhausting and it all had to end someday.
Either I got caught, or I left the city.
Silva. There wasn’t any telling what he’d do to me after this… betrayal.
******
We met in Mexico, where I served tables at a rundown diner always packed full with lousy drivers with beer bellies and hands they just couldn’t keep to themselves. I was a feisty one, always have been, so I made sure to give every damn groper a tooth-removing punch or two.
As I said, it was rundown. Esmeralda didn’t care how we treated the bad customers; all she wanted was that we fulfilled our quota, and then we could rip those bastards’ heads off for all she cared.
But at night, that place came alive. A stage was lit, the poles were up, and we would swing and dance with pitiful excuses for clothing for an extra 50 bucks or so. 40% of whatever we got would go to Esmeralda, the rest, we would use to make something out of our worthless, miserable lives.
I had nothing to live for, no, but Gregorio and Maria did. The twins, my siblings… my world. Our father died when I was 14 and they were both 6; my mother ran off to God-Knows-Where. I lived, worked, hustled, whored myself out for them to have a good life. The life I didn’t have,
I had to scold, sometimes beat them, when they erred, like when I found out Gregorio was on the streets trying to sell drugs, or Maria almost got pimped out when she was 16. It pained my heart for them to see the cracks in my façade, for them to know all was not well with us, and for them to have to resort to the evil things they did not know I was doing, so we could have La Buena Vida.
A Good Life.
Did it really exist? I felt so. Some of the men that came in the nights must have had a taste of it, and that was why they could stick hundred-dollar bills into our bras on a whim. So when Silva came by and stuck three hundred-dollar bills, I was enthralled.
He had big words; that was for sure. He never met my family… I never mixed business and family, both he told me he could grant me La Buena Vida if I followed him to America.
America. Just across the border. The land of big dreams and fantasies that could always come to pass, the land flowing with biblical ‘milk and honey’. I was down for it, and I left my siblings in the hands of an aunt, promising to keep sending money and that I would be back when I’d ‘made it big’.
I never made it big.
Life in America was worse than it was in Mexico because Silva was nothing but a dirty pimp and the head of Jade, a mafia that controlled most of New Orleans. I was stuck in a tiny room with one heavily barred window, and I had to service men all day. 70% of what I earned daily went to him – the costs of ‘funding my Visa and other documents and also my transportation’.
Most of the men that came in the day were lousy middle-class men, more often married than not. They were rough, foulmouthed, and worse still, I was brutalized if I ever tried to speak out of place or hit them. I was a prisoner, and I had locked the cuffs myself. Some were kind and understanding, and gave me generous tips which I hid and sent to my siblings each month through Mark, the security guard who was a bit kinder to us.
Of course, for this service, we would have to pay him in kind.
In the nights, I was kept in the VIP lounge with some other girls as a pricey ‘escort’ – Silva said I had a great body for the job, and then high-class members of society would come, ogle and pick any of their choices. I was picked almost every night, and the disgusting things that happened those nights were equal to the beating I would get at Silva’s hands for not being picked.
At least, they gave very generous tips, and when they were drunk, I had chances to steal jewelry and other tiny, costly things from them or from their wives, who sometimes were part of the action. I pawned those things (again, with Mark’s help), and within six months, I had about 3500 dollars.
3500 dollars made from generous tips, stealing, kind clients, and cheating Silva occasionally.
An escape ticket.
Ginger, another trafficked prostitute like myself, was also planning to escape. One day we carried out our plan, seducing Mark before knocking him out with stones. We grabbed his gun and Taser and made a run for it, but we didn’t even reach the gate before shots rang out.
Ginger was hit in the back, and her purse containing all her money fell out of her hands as she fell. I couldn’t save her, not like this, so I grabbed her money and ran on while she faintly called out for me. I shot the lock twice before escaping, knowing that the men had been ordered to stop shooting because Silva didn’t want to lose any of his precious ‘workforce’.
******
5000 dollars.
I had no idea what happened to Ginger, but I was free. Finally. Not to live a good life necessarily, but at least a free one. One that would turn things around for my siblings.
As I headed for my hideout for that night, I felt a bit lively. Exhilarated. There was finally a light at the…
A tap on my shoulder shook me back to reality. Looking back tentatively, I saw a familiar face.
“Found you.”
******
@Leo_kitti @Hanzell sorry I’ve been away, I was really busy for the past two days.
Tobi with a mask sounds familiar @ozzyy