THIS LITTLE PIGGY CRIED
by Jonette Stabbert
The girl lay there like a broken doll, blood seeping from her body and ruining the mattress. That would have to go, too. Sergei grunted in disgust. Scratch one investment. The men had all paid for the privilege of breaking her in, and that had given him a tidy sum, but she wasn’t meant to die, goddamnit! He had expected the little bitch to become a good earner. Although she was thirteen, she had the body and face of a much younger girl. His pedophile customers tonight had believed her to be only eight years old. He looked down at her undeveloped breasts and shaved pubic area. With the right clothing and vaginal application of alum to replicate virginity, he could have sold her ‘first time’ over and over to men who liked children. With no shortage of girls, she’d soon be replaced, but Sergei was still pissed off. He spit on her as a final goodbye gesture, then wrapped the small body in a trash bag, threw in some bricks and tied the bag with string. He carried the bag down the stairs and out the door, the ninety pounds no strain on his muscular arms. At 2 am, the streets were deserted, the light rain causing the cobblestones to gleam in the sparse light from the streetlamp. Did it ever not rain in Holland? Around the corner, a double row of trash bags stood at the edge of the canal, waiting for the morning garbage collection. Sergei got down on his knees and lowered his bag over the side. It slid silently into the water and sank out of sight.
From the seedy apartment where he worked the girls, he phoned his home and woke up his wife. She’d have to drive over and clean up the mess.
It only took Natasha about twenty minutes to get to the Old West section of Amsterdam from their luxury apartment in the posh Museum Quarter. She didn’t like getting her hands dirty, but she didn’t complain. In place of her usual designer clothes, she had on jeans, one of Sergei’s work shirts, and rain boots.
“It’s the new one they call ‘Dragana’, isn’t it,” she asked.
She took Sergei’s grunt as a sign that he agreed. He seldom bothered to learn their names.
“I hope her sister doesn’t make too much of a fuss. It’s easier when you don’t separate sisters.”
“Which one is her sister?” Sergei asked.
“Irena. The special one…remember?”
Yes, he knew who Irena was. Every once in awhile, they got in a girl who stood out from the crowd, a girl Natasha could groom to be a high-paid escort rather than a common whore. Irena was exceptionally pretty and had a great body.
“She’s more than beautiful; she’s educated,” Natasha said. “She doesn’t only speak Serbo-Croatian. She also speaks English, German and French. I’m having her privately tutored in Dutch. She’s still a diamond in the rough, but with the right clothing and makeup, she’ll be stunning.”
She looked down at the blood and pieces of clothing, pitiful remains of Irena’s little sister. “Who knows? Maybe this girl would have also become beautiful.” Even as she said it, she knew that it would have been impractical to wait several years to see how the girl developed. Time was money.
They bought the girls from white slavers throughout Eastern Europe, and occasionally from Dutch pimps. Irena and her sister were part of a cargo from Albania. Besides the initial cost of the girls, there was their maintenance. It was an expensive investment, but one that paid off royally. Prostitution was legal in the Netherlands, but only for women 18 and older. Natasha preferred starting with girls as young as 12; the younger they were, the more malleable they were.
While Sergei disposed of the mattress, his wife donned rubber gloves and set to work scrubbing away all evidence of the violent death that was an occupational hazard in their business. It was a good thing that the girl didn’t hemorrhage and die until about a half-hour after the last man left. Sergei could have phoned next door and gotten Maria or Petra to help, but this way, no one was the wiser. When Sergei and Natasha were satisfied that the room was clean, they turned off the lights, locked the door, and went downstairs, where they got into their individual cars and drove home.
Next door, the girls all slept. No one thought it odd that a girl was missing. When Sergei took girls with him, sometimes they didn’t come back for several days and sometimes, like this time, they never returned.
The luxury apartment that Sergei and Natasha owned in Amsterdam was a far cry from their humble beginnings. They’d met in Amsterdam, both having fled Russia for the economic opportunities in the west. They were an unlikely looking couple. Sergei was a tall, good-looking thug. Natasha was small and fat with the features of a peasant. Her usually kind expression belied a merciless spirit. She was the brain behind the business and Sergei was the muscle. Their marriage was symbiotic and there wasn’t much of a sexual relationship – at least, not a conventional one. Sergei could have all the sex he needed with his whores.
Sergei loved Natasha because she was like the reincarnation of his departed mother. She looked and acted like Mama. It didn’t matter that Mama had been cruel and sadistic; she had been his mama. Natasha didn’t love anyone; she loved money and the luxuries it bought. Together, they were a successful team. Besides their string of brothels, (some legal, most illegal like this one), Natasha ran a perfectly legitimate and successful import-export business. The couple had money up the kazoo, but having started out poor and desperate, they never felt they had enough.
Nearly every day, Irena asked Maria about Dragana. At twenty, Maria was four years older and already a successful call girl. She and Petra were Irena’s mentors, but Irena liked her best. Maria also had a soft spot for this new girl who came from a nearby Yugoslav village.
Maria had no idea what had happened to Dragana. She had probably been sold. But Maria, not wanting to cause Irena further anxiety, finally said, “I have news for you. Your sister is very lucky. She has been sent to be trained as a maid, but I don’t know where. She’s too young to work in this business, so they had to find other work for her.”
Irena hoped with all her heart that it was true. If so, Dragana was far better off than she was. Would she ever see her little sister again? They’d been through so much together.
They had been kidnapped in broad daylight. She’d been walking Dragana home from school when the men drove up in a truck and dragged them inside. Their long and terrifying journey took them by truck and car from their small town in the Yugoslav province of Pristina, to the infamous smuggling port of Vlora in Albania, then by boat to Italy, where, along with many other girls from Eastern Europe, they’d been auctioned off like slaves to various bidding pimps. Natasha had picked them both and brought them to Amsterdam.
Natasha and Maria often told Irena, “You’re a very special girl.” Natasha looked at her like she was buying a steak. Maria looked at her with genuine affection. Maria was teaching her to improve her looks.
“This is how you pluck your eyebrows. Be certain to shave your legs. This color of lipstick suits you.” Maria taught her to walk like a model, to toss her long blonde hair away from her face, to wet her lips with the tip of her tongue.
“You’re a very special girl,” Sergei told her. The abuse she suffered from him made her wish she wasn’t special. Sergei kept her for himself. Natasha wasn’t that pleased.
“You said yourself, dear, that she’s not to become a common whore,” he said to Natasha. “I’ll train her myself.”
Talking with the other girls, Irena realized she’d never be able to return home. Even if she were to be set free tomorrow, she could never disgrace her family. She would either have to stay here in Holland, or commit a hero’s suicide.
Nevertheless, she fantasized often about escape. All the girls did. That’s why Sergei had to keep them afraid. He discovered that one of them, a Russian girl named Ivana, had been flirting with a Dutch boy across the way. He caught them waving to each other from their windows. Sergei smiled at the boy and signaled to him to come over and moved quickly to get Ivana ready for his arrival.
As soon as the unsuspecting boy rang the doorbell, Sergei dragged him inside. Ivana was tied to a chair in the middle of a small room. Her feet were bare and her eyes were wild. The boy had never seen such fright. The other terrified girls huddled in the corner. “Did you touch her?” Sergei bellowed at him. “Did you touch her?”
“N...no,” the boy said. He’d never even spoken to her. “Did you fuck her?” Of course, Sergei knew this was impossible, but he asked it anyway, his shouts making an abomination of each word.
“NO!” the boy protested.
“And you never will,” Sergei said. “Natasha,” he called. Natasha, who had been waiting in the next room, entered carrying an iron. Steam was pouring from the top.
The boy passed out even before the iron was pressed against the sole of Ivana’s right foot. The smell of burning flesh filled the room. Ivana’s screaming didn’t deter Natasha, who then moved on to the left foot. The house was soundproofed.
“Now she won’t be able to run away,” she said, and her eyes met Sergei’s. He smiled his approval and could feel himself getting hard. It was just the kind of punishment his mother would have meted out.
For a long time following the incident, none of the girls fantasized about escape.