On Her Knees

"Breathe. Just breathe, Teryn..."

I chanted that in my mind. Not more than a few feet away, I could hear the wet sucking sounds as the monster drank from the girl beside me. His neck was nestled against her throat, pale white hands holding her still.

The girl whimpered but she did not scream. She knew better than that. She knew it would do her no good.

We had been in the cabin of the boat crammed together like sardines in a can, for what I thought was three days. I was only aware of the passing of time because of the light coming through the cabin's only window that was above my right shoulder.

During moments like these, I would stare out that window and pretend that I was an entire galaxy away. The sounds of the waves lapping against the side of the boat took me away and the cries of the gulls over head always distracted me. But there was nothing to see now; just the empty blackness, cut only by a thin stream of silver moonlight. The waves made no sound. There were no seagulls flying above us. Just the sound of the girl dying next to me.

One feeble hand brushed against my feet and before I could stop myself I turned to look at her. I regretted it immediately. The look in her eyes broke me.

I knew that she had blond hair but I couldn't see it in the darkness. The feeble light only illuminated her dark brown eyes and there was so much fear in them. All I could see of our captor was his pale hands gripping her shoulders and his short, dark hair.

There had been sixteen of us; sixteen girls originally at the bottom of this boat three days ago but the monster, the vampire had an insatiable hunger. He came down here in the middle of the night to feed. The first girl he fed from, Tiffany I believe her name was, with bright red curls, screamed so loudly when he bit her that it woke the rest of us up. He crushed her ribs with a single blow to her chest, collapsing her lungs instantly and she couldn't scream anymore. He drank Lily, the brunette sitting next to Tiffany, dry when he was done with the red head. None of the girls ever screamed again after that. After Tiffany and Lily, he came for another brunette name Clarice and then a raven haired girl name Opal.

Now it was the blond haired girl named Maple.

The look in her eyes said she knew that this was the end for her and she was so frightened of that. The other girls managed to sleep through all this, as they had through the other four girls' attacks but I never could. I couldn't turn a blind eye to their suffering. Doing so would be like forgetting that they even existed and no one deserved to be forgotten.

I reached down and wrapped my fingers around hers. I held her hand and stared into her eyes, watching the emotions flow across her face like a soundless film. First fear, then confusion and finally an odd, peaceful expression. Her skin grew colder and colder as her life was slowly sucked away.

Then the sucking sounds stopped completely. Her fingers no longer clenched around mine. There was nothing in her eyes; the soul that was once there had been wiped away.

She was gone.

I couldn't help thinking that maybe she and the other girls before her were better off; that they were in a better place than where the rest of us were going. I had a sinking feeling that wherever this boat was heading, held worse horrors for us. Maybe a quick death was the best we could hope for.

I let Maple's limp hand fall to floor and closed my eyes; silently praying that the monster would leave and not turn his attention to me. I heard him stand, the shuffling of his boots on the wooden floor and then nothing. When I opened my eyes again, he was kneeling in front of me, his green eyes studying my face.

One pale cold hand clamped over my mouth and for the first time in my short life, I prayed for death.

But death did not come for me.

The monster just stared at me, his cold hand still covering my mouth. He leaned in and skimmed the tip of his nose down the side of my face, sniffing at my skin. He stopped just at the center of my throat, right where my juglar should be and I held my breath, waiting for what I considered at this point, to be the inevitable.

But, he didn't bite down. Instead, he grabbed a handful of my black curls, brought it to his nose and inhaled deeply, closing his eyes as if to memorize my scent.

He pulled away abruptly and was on his feet in the blink of an eye, his movements too fast for me to process at first. Casting a cold grin at me, he turned on his heels and ascended the steps to deck of the boat.

When I could no longer see him, I released the breath that I had been holding. My heart was beating wildly in my chest and if our captor really had amplified hearing, I'm sure he heard it too. Maple's body was still next to mine.

The vampire had a habit of leaving all the girls there when he was done with them until the late morning when the rest of us were awake. I suspected that he wanted us to see what he'd done; he fed on our fear just as much as he fed on their blood.

I brushed my fingers over her eyelids, pulling them down over her empty eyes. The peaceful expression still lingered on her face and I said a silent prayer for her and for myself. The cabin was completely quiet around me. The other girls' breathing was barely audible over the thundering of my own heart.

I pulled my legs up against my chest, fighting back the sobs that threatened to tear me apart at the seams. I wanted desperately to go home to Minnesota. If I'd known that a simple trip to Prague would lead to my kidnapping, I would never have left. I'd swear off traveling for the rest of my life if I could just make it out of this alive.

The tears fell anyway and I rested my head on the top of my knees until, too exhausted from crying, I fell into a dreamless sleep.

-----------------

Someone tapping on my shoulder woke me up the next morning. The chestnut haired girl who usually sat across me on the cabin floor was leaning above me, her grey eyes darting from the steps leading to the deck and then back to my face.

"What's wrong?" I asked, sitting up. I couldn't remember if I had ever asked her name.

"We're here, " she whispered with her anxious eyes. It was difficult to tell with the waves rocking the boat but it didn't seem as though we were moving anymore.

"Where is here?"

"I don't know." I sympathized with the uneasiness in her eyes. It was rather easy to imagine why men would kidnap girls; they were in the business of selling women's bodies. But what vampires would want to do with a group of kidnapped teenage girls had to be so much worse.

Their was no question that vampires didn't exist in my mind prior to three days ago and in some ways, I hadn't been completely proven wrong. The sparkly, brooding bloodsuckers from modern day pop culture, who pledged their undying love to naive human girls were nothing close to what truly existed. Our green eyed captor was a savage. He looked at us as though we were cattle and treated us with equal inconsideration. I refused to delude myself into thinking that who or whatever he was taking us to would be any less cruel to us.

The steps leading to the deck creaked and the girl cowered into my side. The man came down and stood at the landing of the steps. In the daylight, I could actually see his features and I might have called him handsome if I didn't know what a monster he was. There were loose curls in his dark brown hair and his features were sharp and angular: a strong, chiseled jaw and straight nose. A jagged scar ran from the left side of his hairline to the left corner of his mouth. His bright green eyes, the color of freshly cut grass stood out against his smooth alabaster skin. He was dressed completely in black, tapping his boots against the wood floor.

"Up, " he ordered. It was the first time any of us heard him speak. The deep baritone of his voice made the girl jump next to me. The other girls didn't hesitate. They were on their feet in a heartbeat. I wrapped my around the girl's shoulders and pull her to stand with me. She leaned her head against my shoulder as if she was unsure if her legs would keep her upright.

The girl was about five inches shorter than me and I wasn't really a particularly tall person. It was rare to find someone shorter than my 5 foot 5. Her chestnut colored hair brushed against her bare shoulders and she wore a silver cocktail dress with a sweetheart neckline, no doubt the last thing she wore before she was taken. It was now speckled with blood and dirt. Her tiny feet were bare and scraped. I wrapped an arm around her shoulder, awkwardly holding her shaking form. She looked young; too young.

The man walked to the other side of the room, eleven pairs of old rusted shackles clinking in his hands and several feet of rope hung on his shoulder. One girl at a time and with blinding speed, he shackled their feet and tied their hands together in front of their bodies with a complicated looking knot.

I held my breath when he came to the two of us. He turned to the smaller girl first, pulling her sharply out of my hold. He towered over her but he didn't spare her a single glance as he bound her hands and feet; his eyes were all for me. He watched me with those hungry green eyes the entire time and shoved the smaller girl aside when he was done with her.

His cool breath flitted against my face as he leaned into me. Grabbing a handful of my hair, he inhaled and bent to skim his nose down the side of my face and into base of my throat as he had done before. I didn't move and concentrated on slowing my rapid heart rate. What did he want with me?

I gasped when I felt his cold lips press against my skin and stumbled back. He chuckled darkly, the sound rumbling through his chest as he stood upright.

"Come here girl, " he demanded, holding the cuffs out to me.

I stepped forward, wanting to spare myself from his fury and allowed him to bend and place the shackles around my ankles. His movements were lightning fast with the other girls but he took his time with me. He ran his fingertips up the side of my exposed calves and lower thighs as he stood back up.

I wished that I wasn't wearing this dress now; there were only two thin straps holding it onto my shoulders and the skirt flared out about mid-thigh. I could feel the smaller girl watching me as the man stared at my body, gazing at me as if he could see all of me underneath my clothing and tied the rope around my wrists. He turned to the girl across the room with one hand gripping the knot around my wrist and he motioned toward the steps.

"Move, " he commanded. He seemed to like speaking in mono-syllables.

The other girls shuffled after the first, following her up the steps and onto the deck. My tiny friend followed after them hesistantly, glancing back behind her as if she was afraid to leave me alone with him.

"You're with me." His grin was wide and devilish and he said it as though there was a stronger meaning to those words. He followed close behind me, his hand on the small of my back as I made my way up the steps.

The boat was docked near a wooden bridge that ended on the white sands of a beach. Beyond the sand, stood a forest of green trees and thick bushes.

On the deck, the other girls stood in a single filed line, each girl in front of a man with skin just as pale as the man behind me. I was willing to bet that they were all vampires too.

As if on queue, the men stepped forward simultaneously and tied a piece of cloth behind each girls' head, covering their eyes. Their movements looked calculated and practiced and each man had a rather bored look on his face as though they had done this a thousand times before. They bent and wrapped their arms around a girl's thighs and threw her over their shoulders. Each man walked, one behind the other, onto the bridge with their cargo. The first guy was about to step into the tree line when a piece of dark cloth was placed in front of my eyes, obstructing my vision. The green-eyed man stood behind me and fastened the rope. His fingers lingered in my hair and then slowly traveled down my neck and shoulders to grip my waist.

He lifted me off the floor and balanced my torso over one of his forearms like women sometimes did with their designer handbags. He started moving with me.

I listened to his footsteps as we walked across the bridge. Then there was the sound of his boots moving through the loose sand and then... nothing.

It felt like we had stepped into a void.

I expected to hear his boots crunch against fallen tree branches and dead leaves; things you might find in a normal, lush forest but there was nothing. I could still feel his body moving but his feet seemed to glide across air itself. I felt neither heat nor a gentle breeze against my skin. My ear could not pick up on any noises in the background; not the sound of birds in the trees or the scurrying of small animals across the forest floor as they hurried to get out of our path. I couldn't even hear my own breathing for a moment. It was like we had stepped into a vaccuum; a place of utterly, unsettling stillness.

And then, as suddenly as we had stepped into it, we seemed to step out of it. After a second of me realizing how empty our environment was, my ears were assaulted with sounds. It jolted me for a moment.

The silence was replaced by the sound of car engines and horns blaring right in front of us as if we were standing nearly a foot away from a freeway. My captor stopped moving and I heard the squealing of tires as what sounded like a car came to a stop in front of us.

He shifted me in his hold, transferring my torso from one forearm to the other and stepped forward. It sounded as though he opened the car door and stepped inside, sitting me on his lap once he was seated. The door closed softly, blocking out the sounds of traffic.

I reached down and once I felt that leather seat to my right was empty and, I immediately began struggling in his hold. I didn't want to be seated on his lap like this if it weren't necessary.

His grip on my waist tightened a little. "No, " he breathed, his cool breath wafting against my earlobe. The metallic scent of blood lingered on his lips and I shrunk away from him, still trying but failing to put some distance between us.

Choosing not to speak again, he simply pressed his fingers sharply in the flesh at my waist, showing me that he was more than capable of keeping me here. I stopped struggling and the man barked an order in some foreign language, to who I assumed was the driver at the front of the car.

The vehicle began to move and I tried to listened to what was going on around me. If I couldn't see where I was, I would try to pick up on specific sounds that would tell me where I might be and how to get back here. I could clearly hear the tolling of large bell; like in the tower of a church or a clocktower. That was something to note. It seemed close by.

Aside from that, there was just the sound of a busy interstate. No sirens, just the sound of cars zipping by with the occasional sound of a car horn. The radio wasn't even playing in the car. For about 20 or so odd minutes, I became one with the silence, closing my eyes and allowing it center my thoughts again.

There was no way I was going to get out of this on my own. I had taken a self defense class after school hours before I graduated several months back but my abductors were vampires. Their strength out matched my own several hundred times over. I would never manage to sneak up on one of them and even if I did, what part of the body would I hit? Would a stake to the heart be sufficient or was decapitation the safer and more effective choice? Did they fear silver?

There were simply too many unanswered questions for me to even begin formulating an escape plan. There was too much about them that I did not know.

When the car came to a stop, I was sure of two things:

1) I had to stay alive. Monsters like these had probably grown accustomed to be at the top of the food chain with all lesser beings submitting to their will. I refuse to go quietly. Survival was essential.

2) I would keep my virtue. I'm not a whore and I hadn't been 'deflowered' yet- for lack of a better word. I knew that they brought me here to be someone or several men's sexual play-thing but I refused to give up virtue. If I couldn't manage to accomplish the first of my resolutions, then at least I would go out with my dignity.

The vampire exited the car with me in tow and threw me over his forearm, carrying me in the same manner as he had done before. I heard the sound of heavy metal scrapping against the ground and then after a few paces, he set me back on my feet, untying the cloth from around my head.

I had to blink twice to refocus my vision, my eyes adjusting from the total darkness behind the blindfold to the bright blinding light of an overhead lamp in the room. I was standing on what looked like a heavily illuminated stage, complete with black, satin curtains behind me. Beyond the reach of the white light, stood about a dozen black, round tabletops and matching chairs; like the kind you might see in a bar or a strip club.

He had placed me to stand in a line across the length of the stage with the other girls, each of us standing shoulder to shoulder with each other. As luck would have it, I was standing next to the same chestnut haired girl again and for some unknown reason, she leaned into me again. It was like she trusted me; like she felt safer standing near me. I didn't try to pull away; the fear in her grey eyes was too genuine to ignore.

The other girls had wide eyes and very confused expressions but none of them looked nearly as frightened as the girl next to me did. Again I was reminded of how incredibly young she looked and I pitied her. She, more than anyone of us here on this stage, didnt deserve this. She shouldn't be exposed to this. She should be given the chance to grow up and experience life. She would never be able to do that if she was trapped in a place like this.

Looking down at her tiny body, shaking under my arm, I made another promise to myself: I would protect this tiny, fragile girl.

" Alright, " a male voice echoed throughout the room from an invisible P.A. system. "Let's get started."

Then from behind the black curtains, a squat, pale skinned man emerged. He was the shortest of all the vampires thus far: about 5 foot 4 with thin, sandy blonde hair. He looked emaciated, his grey eyes sunken into his skeletal face. There was a red tailor's measuring tape draped across his gaunt shoulders.

The green eyed man who had carried me here followed close behind the smaller hand, holding what look like sack cloth in his arms.

The tiny man walked to the farthest end of the line of frightened teenage girls and began measuring. He darted around the first girl's body, asking her to bend several times so that he could wrap the measuring tape around her bust and hips and run it down the length of her body. He seemed to be recording the measurements in his mind. Then he gestured for the man with the cloth to come forward. The tiny man grabbed a handful of cloth and stretched the separate articles out.

At full length, I could see what they were. They were dresses. Pieces of sack cloth had been stitched together, quite neatly might I add, especially for the material being used. At the front of the dress, a deep 'v' was cut out for the neckline, plunging nearly half way down the length of the garment and holes where strips of leather cord where stringed through, were placed on both sides of the v-shape. From the looks of it, the cords were meant to be tied in a zigzag pattern in the same way that some corsets were tied in the back; probably meant to cinch in the cleavage while exposing as much of it as possible. Like a very inexpensive and degrading version of a Playboy's bunny outfit.

The little man searched through the dresses until he was satisfied that he had found one that met the girl's measurements and then he handed it to her. He continued this with the other girls to my right, working quickly and in complete silence. When he came to the smaller girl standing closer to me, the vampire with the green eyes seized the opportunity to get as close to me as possible. He stood directly behind my body as the short tailor worked on the girl beside me, bending his taller frame over mine and I felt him sniff at the hair at the crown of my head.

When it was my turn to be measured, he stepped back a bit and though it wasn't much, I was grateful for that inch. Having him stand that close to me made me anxious.

As was the case with the tiny girl who was still trying to cling onto me, the pale-skinned tailor didn't need to ask me to bend for him to do his work; he wasn't that much shorter than I was. He wrapped the tape around my hips, his icy fingers making me shiver when they brushed against me even through the dress I was wearing.

His skin was much, much colder than the vampire's. How could that be? What creature's skin could be colder than a man who wasn't truly alive?

He pulled the tape away from my body and scowled at the number he had marked off with his thumb. His scowl deepened when he read the number from the measurement of my bust line.

"This one is too big, " he growled. His voice was low and raspy, like he had a history of respiratory problems or had spent half of his lifetime smoking. Combined with his diminutive stature and his sunken face and beady grey eyes, the term goblin began to take root in my mind as a means to describe him.

"I don't know if the largest dress I have would fit her." He began combing through the last few dresses he had left.

I couldn't totally disagree with him about my size though. I wasn't fat by any standards but I wasn't skinny either. I was that shade of plump that people never really found a word to categorize and that boys rarely gravitated toward- at least not the boys at my previous high school. I was good enough to gawk at but not to date. They liked the tall, thin girls with beautiful, long legs. I was short and not plump, but thick.

My hips were a bit wider than the other girls; my breasts much fuller too and I couldn't help feeling self conscious. I was surrounded by girls who would all pass themselves off as models and this tiny little monster was standing here, pointing out all my flaws and insecurities. Everything the little goblin had in his arms looked like a size six; I was more of a size eight.

"I think she's fine, " the man purred behind me. "I've never liked my girls too thin." His fingers were curling around the ends of a few strands of my hair. "Or too pale."

Reflexively, I glanced down as his skin at his last comment. My skin is olive toned; not the kind of color that people hope to get from bottled, spray tans but the sun kissed glow, courtesy of my birth mother's Middle Eastern heritage. I'd been told that my complexion was pretty from the perspective of certain individuals.

The tiny man kissed his teeth, dismissing the vampire's comment and handed me a dress. "You'll just have to make do with that." I took it from him with my hands that were still bound in front of my body, gave him a little nod of appreciation and watched him wobble away to exit through the heavy metal door at the front of the club where we'd entered.

"This way, " the vampire piped up and I turned around to see him standing near the satin curtains, pulling them aside to reveal the corridor to a very dimly lit room.

I put my hands on the tiny girl with flowing chestnut brown hair, ever mindful of the promise I had made to myself to keep her safe. I pulled her body in front of me, walking close behind her and resting the palms of my bound hands on one of her shoulders as we stepped forward.