The bar fell silent the when they entered.

Hardly subtle; one second there was a roomful of people laughing, joking, bitching about the heat and asking the old, half blind bartender when he thought the AC would be fixed.

Then the door swung open, bringing with it an inexplicable air of dread, and in stepped the pair. A man dressed in all black, short and wiry, with what appeared to be a gas mask on underneath a black hood, and a face painted blonde whose tits were dangerously close to bursting out of her skin tight T-Shirt and whose shorts made bible lessons seem subtle. She carried a blood-stained aluminum baseball bat with her, and pointed the end of it at a drunk man eyeing her up.

The only sounds in the bar were their footsteps. They stopped at a small circular table near the counter and the woman lifted up her bat once more. It didn't take any more explaining than that; the three men who previously patronized the table bolted out the door as fast their legs could carry them. Shaking his head, the man took one of the newly open seats and motioned for his companion to take the one across from him.

He cleared his throat and waved over the bartender.

The older gentleman caught the cue right away. Placing the glass he was wiping down on the counter, he shuffled over to the table and hunched over next to the hooded man. The whole room waited on baited breath for what was going to happen next, expecting it to be some huge spectacle.

What they got was a question.

"Hector, quien es?"

Hector, the bartender, looked around the bar squinting, before finally pointing right at me. The lone gringo in the back. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what the man in the hood was going to do next so I walked over to their table and took the last empty seat, inbetween the pair of psychos.

I opened my mouth to speak, but the woman reached over and pressed a finger against my lips. Not that I particularly minded, considering her doing so not only gave me a perfect view of those struggling sweater puppies, but a perfectly valid excuse to stare. They were, after all, literally the only thing I could see. She caught on after a couple of second and grabbed my chin, forcing me to look straight ahead.


The man sounded pleasantly surprised by that.

It was then that I realized I was holding tightly to the seat of my chair, to the point of digging my nails into the wood. I took a deep breath and loosened my grip, forcing out a nervous chuckle partially masked by a couple awkward coughs.


If I wasn't aware of what these two were capable of, I'd almost be put at ease by that. Out the corner of my eye, I saw the woman shoot a questioning glance at him and then turn to me with a sick grin on her face that made my skin crawl.

"What's your stake in all this?"

Before I could think of any words at all, the man cleared his throat and interrupted.


The woman shook her head and glared right through me.

"No," she interrupted, smirking at me while she moved her hand further and further up my leg.

"I think he gets off on it."

It was as if she coordinated this. No sooner than she said those words, her hand closed around the crotch of my pants.

"Ain't that right?"

My eyes darted back and forth between the pair as I tried to formulate some kind of reasonable response. I cleared my throat and let my eyes settle straight ahead of me.

The bartender made his way back to our table and placed a shot of tequila in front of me. The man nodded at him and then at me, as I shakily reached out and took the glass, before downing it. I recoiled at the taste. Never really liked it to be honest.

As I tried to wash out my mouth with spit, I thought back to what the man had said and tried to ignore the woman's groping.


It was sheer luck that the man stopped me where he did. Even at the rate my mind was running, I'd probably be thinking of the right word for another twenty minutes, if they let it go that long and even then it probably would've pissed one of them off.



The man pushed his chair out and stood up, an action the woman mirrored. It took a couple seconds of awkward glares for me to realize that I was supposed to follow. Reluctantly, I did and they led me out of the bar.

I swear, I heard a collective sigh of relief the second we left.

As I stepped out the door, I felt a hand clamp down on both of my arms. A quick glance in both directions told me they were holding one each. My heart began to race, slamming against the walls of my chest cavity as hard as it could. The dread began to set in that they were dragging me to my death. That I'd been a fool to trust these two psychopaths would actually help anyone aside from themselves. I closed my eyes, prepared to make peace with God, when we stopped. Completely.

I opened my eyes once again to find myself facing the back doors of a rusting white panel van that had to be older than me. The man's free gloved hand pulled one door open while the woman opened the other. Then they let go of me.





The man laughed.


He had a point, I guess. This was Ciudad Juarez, after all.

The man began to grow impatient. He gestured for me to get in the back of van once again, and when I didn't immediately comply he whistled. I did a quick pivot on my feet to face the woman, but she beat me to the punch, cracking a couple of my ribs with her fucking baseball bat. I doubled over and fell to the ground, to which the pair responded by hoisting me up, throwing me in the back, and closing the doors behind me before getting into the cars themselves.

A couple minutes later I laid, sprawled out across the van's floor, wincing with each breath to the tune of a bouncy Latin song as the car navigated its way through the streets of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.


"Don't worry Lilith. I'm sure he'll much more cooperative from here on out. Won't you?"

He chuckled. I sucked in enough air to make me feel like my lungs where going to impale themselves on my broken ribs and coughed out a most appropriate answer.


My eyelids began to feel heavy and suddenly the cold floor became the most comfortable thing in the world.

I don't think I should've accepted that drink.