​Sleaze Land – Chapter 10 (The Clock) Part 1

Sleaze Land – Chapter 10 (The Clock) Part 1



     “You are what you do, not what you say you'll do.” Carl Gustav Jung



“We’re not going to hurt you.”

Marla didn’t believe the man sitting next to her in the backseat of the dark sedan she’d just been pulled into.  Didn’t believe him one little second.

“We’re actually here to help save your kids,” the dark-haired and dark-complexioned man with the nervous grin said.

Marla’s eyes went wide at that, as she thought about her two young babies, and how much she’d already done to keep them safe.  

As safe as any homeless single mother could.

“The woman you left your children with is attempting to sell them, right now.  We have her and your children under surveillance, but if you don’t interrupt the transaction now, they’ll be forever lost beyond our reach.”

“But…” Marla began, as the flood of tears ran freely down her face.  “Bella would never do that.  Not to me.  Not after everything… not after…”

But if Marla knew anything, it was that humans were terrible, awful people.  

So, of course Bella would – because Bella had been broken into too many pieces to really be considered human anymore, and therefore she really had no way to regard anyone else as important either… because she simply had no frame of reference anymore.

But still.  These were her kids.

“Where?  How?” Marla began, with the most important questions.

“She’s taken them to The Reagents, the theater has shut down because of the pandemic, but the owners still use it for their real business.”

The man’s eyes were soft, and yielding, yet held a bit of fire to them that gave Marla a bit of strength that she desperately needed just then.  Desperately needed to not fall into a million pieces.

“Their real business?” Marla asked, after she wiped her eyes with the tissue the man had offered her.

“Child trafficking, and pornography.  We’ve been working for months to close it down, and we’re very, very close.  But we need your kids out of the picture before we can move in.  Because if and any of us showed up unannounced, well… let’s just say, it would trip too many alarms.”

It was then that Marla took notice of the two other people in the vehicle with them.  The tall blonde who was driving, as well as the shorter Latin looking man, who seemed to be working on a laptop.

“I don’t understand,” she said, as she thought the driver looked too much like Brad Pitt to be believed.

“If we go in, they’re gonna know something’s up.  And we can’t afford that.  We need you to go in and get your kids before they are taken from there to the nearest extraction point.”

“Extraction point,” the young mother of two repeated, because this was so far removed from anything her brain had ever had to process before.

“Once they’re on a plane tracking them will be impossible.  Do you understand?  Once we get to the drop point, you’re to walk the rest of the way to the theater.  Go in and get your babies.  Tell them that Sadler told you were to find them and that if they don’t give them to you, you’ll tell the police about the ATM camera in the parking lot.”

“The ATM camera in the parking lot?” the young woman repeated, though internally she was taking down every single thing being said, like a computer.

“You have ten minutes I’m told.  Go.  Now.  As fast as you can.”

“But… which way?” Marla demanded, as the man literally shoved her from the car, out into the busy street.

But Marla never got her answer, because before she’d even had it all of the way out, the car was speeding away.

However, it didn’t take long to spot the old theater, half-way down the block.  And so, she hiked up her too-large pants and ran.  Ran for her life.  Ran for her kids.  Ran for all she was worth.

Because nothing and nobody was ever going to hurt her kids again.

​


     "It's a violent world we live in. I don't agree with trying to hide that or cover it up."  Brad Pitt




© Raena Exe 2021
 
 
*Inspired by life.
*All characters, places, and events are completely fictional.
*All rights reserved.

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