I glanced back and forth between the two pair of eyes and the silence in the space brought attention to the thump, thump, thump in my chest from my rapidly beating heart.

My fingertips grazed the button that held my pants together around my hips. I hesitated, but the ticking clock chimed in my mind, reminding me time wasn't on our side. If I were to get out of the elevator intact, I had to play the game.

Mr. Macho stared at my working fingers as he blindly tightened the bloody satin fabric on his injured hand. "What do I look like allowing a young lady to expose herself to a couple of male strangers? How about I conduct a quick frisk and we call it a night?"

"How about you keep your hands to yourself." I gestured to his injury, astonished that he still hadn't learned his lesson. If he continued putting his hands where they didn't belong, he might end up losing it.

He lifted his arms in defense. "Fair enough."

Their gazes seared my flesh as the damp, urine-soaked fabric peeled from my legs and over my shoes. I had once believed they were courteous to not mention the stench of ammonia or the yellow stain it left on my clothes, but I tossed their perceived courtesy out the window as they watched and waited like slobbering wolves to their prey.

Mr. Macho grunted. "Seb's a lucky man."

I kept a straight face as I pulled the pockets inside out and tossed the pants in the corner with the rest of my belongings. "Seb is a good man with a good heart, trying to navigate this unfair world like the rest of us."

"Tell me about it." Mouse scoffed. "Life isn't fair."

"Life is as fair as you make it," Mr. Macho chimed in. "We choose our path. We choose the life we want. Not some mystical deity."

"Speak for yourself," Mouse argued. "I didn't choose the streets. I never chose the streets."

"Maybe subconsciously you did," the giant went on. "Have you ever stopped to think that your reluctance to get off your lazy ass and work for the life you want is what contributed to your 'bad luck'?" His eyes never left me even though he spoke to the other man.

I tangled the edge of my shirt in my fingers and lifted it over my head in one swoop. Standing in nothing but my matching red lace bra and panties, and the red high heels that protected me from the tainted floor, I shook my shirt out like Mouse had, and toss it in the corner. I strategically separated and draped my many, long braids over my breasts to provide some sense of privacy beyond the lacy fabric.

"Nah uh." Mr. Macho flicked his wrist, instructing me to remove the veil of hair.

I sighed and pulled my hair back, feeling the ends of it graze my lower back. "Satisfied?"

"I'm not sure." Mr. Macho rubbed his chin, taking me in, scrutinizing. "A lady has plenty of nooks and crannies to hide things. How about you give us a spin?"

"I don't have the knife so how about you fuck off?" Immediately I dipped to grab my yellow sundress from my pack and slipped it on.

He chuckled and caused a million pinpricks of goosebumps to scurry along my clammy neck. Laughing next to a bloodied, dead body didn't sit well with me. My gut clinched and a wave of nausea threatened to come over me, but I managed to push it down. I needed water. I needed fresh air. I needed to get out.

Time wasn't on my side, and neither was patience or politeness.

As much as I didn't trust Mouse, I was compelled to defend his argument. "Do you know how close we all are to being on those streets? We're one layoff away, one missed mortgage away, one absent babysitter away. Not everything is about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and getting off your ass."

"Well, look who has something to say." Mr. Macho's lip curled. "Got anything else you want to get off that chest of yours?" His eyes dipped to my cleavage and suddenly my mouth refused to move.

But the elevator did.

An abrupt shift in the cabin nearly knocked me off my feet. The light flickered again, and I questioned the possibly of someone working on the electrical or attempting to fix the jam. "What's going on out there?"

Mouse's eyes went big. "What time is it?"

I grabbed my phone from the pile of clothes. "We have seventeen minutes left."

"Tell us your sin and maybe we can get the hell out of here." Mouse pleaded with his eyes. "We won't judge you. We won't say a peep when we walk out of here. Right?" He turned to me. "Right? Tell him."

"Right." I nodded.

"You know you're giving this wacko too much credit, huh?" Mr. Macho stretched and elongated his back, squirming as if he had an itch to scratch. "All this foolish talk about sacrifices. This is how they get you. This is exactly how they pull you in. Fear mongering. Scare tactics—"

"That seventeen minutes will go by so fast," Mouse went on. "Tell us already. Just say it. You're a cop, huh? You and some of your brothers in blue went out to beat the shit out of some innocent assholes, didn't you?"

"You're wrong." He awkwardly twisted his arm up along his spine, squirming unnaturally to reach the elusive itch on his back.

"You sold human body parts over the dark web."

The big guy chuckled at the ridiculousness of that claim. "Such a joke."

"You cut off some poor asshole's dong when he refused to repay you," Mouse continued with his outlandish guesses.

"Is this guy serious?" He twisted, grunting as he reached for the itch.

"You diddled some underage—"

"Wrong!" Mr. Macho glared. The bass in his voice sent a shockwave followed by silence through the space. "You're wrong and you'll never have the satisfaction of ever being right about who I am."

He crooked his finger to coax Mouse closer. And my thoughts went to the thing we seemed to lose track of.

The knife.

Mouse refused to budge. "We're running out of time."

"If that's the case, why don't you ask your fancy god for more?"

"I just want to get out of here." The man's voice trembled as he pleaded with his eyes. "I just want to see the sun one more time." His Adam's apple jumped as he gulped. "Don't you?"

"Such a silly question." Mr. Macho loomed above the man, looking down at him with revulsion. "Such a silly, silly man."

My knees buckled when the titan stepped toward the cowardly man, backing him into the corner.

"Why don't you tell me about your sin again, hmm?" He stared down at the dirty, dark curls on his head as the man refused to look up. He cowered in the corner like a trapped animal. "You watched a homeless man suffer and took pictures of his agony to offer it to your god, and what did you get in return?"

Mouse shook his head, refusing to answer. "No," he whimpered.

"What did you get in return?" Mr. Macho asked again. The vein in his temple throbbed rapidly to the rhythm of his heart. "Show us the picture?"

I wanted to scream out, "No. I don't want to see it," but only managed to shake my head instead.

"I lost my phone," he murmured, staring at the man's broad chest to avoid his eyes. "I—I left it at the spring as an offering. But if I had a way to print the picture—"

"Silly, silly man." The man's broad chest heaved and the anger in his eyes reminded me of the tattooed eyes on his biceps and the fury embedded in the dragon's red and blue glare.

Mouse must've sensed it too. He put a finger up to appease the giant who behaved more like a territorial troll than a man. "That woman," his finger changed direction to pinpoint Ms. Cardigan, "I know her. I—I've seen her before."

Mr. Macho paused before taking a step back.

My forehead tightened as I lifted my brows. "How do you know her?" I finally spoke.

"I saw her the night the man got hit," he stammered. "The—the night I took the pictures."

"Are you sure?" I glanced back and forth between him and the tall man. "How do you know it was her?"

"I remember her sweater and the unforgettable look in her eyes."

Mr. Macho sneered at him with skeptical eyes. "Why didn't you say anything before?"

"Because before I wasn't sure," he said. "It was a lot going on and hard to think straight with all the screaming and yelling." He scratched his head and gulped before continuing. "It happened just a few blocks from here. Out of nowhere, a huge truck just came out of nowhere and splat the guy on the sidewalk. Then the car drove away and that's when I took my phone out and snapped a few pictures. I saw it as a chance to test the offering. I wanted to see if the rumors were true. And she was there, up the street, filming. So, I ran."

Hot tears streamed down my cheeks, and I tried desperately to bat them away before anyone noticed. I didn't want any more attention on me, not after hearing how awful these people were and finding out what they were capable of, including Ms. Cardigan.

"I don't believe you." Mr. Macho shook his head. "Doesn't this all sound a bit, I don't know, orchestrated to you?" He turned to me. "Convenient? Opportunistic?"

I shrugged and tried to swallow the lump in my throat that would prevent me from speaking properly, and probably give away the cool, calm, and collected demeanor I tried so desperately to hold onto.

The macho man didn't wait for my answer. He turned back to the rat who quickly resorted to his mousy character. "What's your name?"

"I thought we weren't doing names," he said instead of answering. "There's power in a name and such."

"What's your name?" Mr. Macho growled.

"Cesar Soares."

"Well, Cesar Soares. How could you do something so evil? A suffering man. A fellow guy stuck between a rock and a hard place just like you."

Even though I refused to side with a stranger like the giant, this time I had to agree. How could someone do such a thing? My voice quivered as I spoke. "You out of all people should have known the luck that person was hoping for. The luck that you help deprived him of for your own benefit."

"She's right, you know." The tall man cocked his head toward me.

Mouse gasped, taking offense. "She killed a man!"

"It was an accident," I repeated. "Self-defense. And the way he tried to touch me... maybe he deserved it."

Mr. Macho nodded. "I think she's right."

"Who the hell are you to judge?" Mouse exchanged a glare, alternating between the two of us. "We're all in the same boat here."

Mr. Macho shrugged. "Looks like you're the only one without a paddle."

When Mouse tilted his head up to meet the man's gaze, his eyes widened, and his jaw dropped slightly as Mr. Macho pulled the switchblade from the crack of his ass. In a split second, the blade sprung from the protective handle and slid along the mousy man's throat in one quick flick of the wrist. Red spurted from the opening in a pulsating rhythm to coat Mr. Macho's clothes as the mousy man took a few wobbly steps back before collapsing.

The scream that escaped me emerged silently, leaving me stunned with a slack jaw and unblinking eyes. The light above flickered on and off ominously before leaving me in utter darkness.

~~~

What's on your mind?

Where do you think this will lead?