"JUDAS KISS" - Three- Ruby ☸ ☸ ☸

... , but she did not have to. Soundlessly she moved back to bed without going to bathroom. Roger came back to the room. Her

back was to him. She could hear that he was getting dressed. Then she heard that he left. He did his dressing up and all the others in the dark. She had seen that he had taken a gun and some money out of the safe. She had seen the combination of the safe. It was her birthday, 10/ 18/ 42. It was 10 right, 18 left, and 42 right again. How easy and how difficult!

The same day, only a month before her eighteen birthday, Helen used that combination to fill up her small, black bag that she had used to run away from Chicago with the money she could not count, some jewelry and her birth certificate, her school documents that Roger had taken away from her. Her act of opening the mirror which was actually a door, opening the safe, taking the money and jewelry, and stuffing her little black bag with them was all captured in all the cameras and videos of the house which had a central location and Mark was the person who was in charge of watching the activity of everybody at home in that room. But at this point she was miles and miles away.

Opening the mirror was hard. It took her a while to figure out how it worked. It was actually a latch in one of the drawers, where she kept her under garments. She touched it accidentally, when she was packing her underwear. She was planning to run that day with or without money. She was about to give up to open the mirror when it opened almost by itself. For a second she thought that she was caught; but then she sighed of relief of her good luck that day. No body showed up, nothing happened. Opening the safe was very easy if only her tremor would stop. What she did not know, was that Mark in the control room was watching everything she was doing.

She heard a foot step. It was Mark, the guard, the good, kind, big Mark, Roger's guard, her only friend. He was a man about her father's age with wife and children. Helen knew that he perhaps had seen everything. He stopped inside the bedroom door. Helen was standing next to bed, stuffing her little, black bag with what ever she could. Mark stood there without moving a muscle. They looked at each other. He put his index finger at his lips and then turned around and went down the stairs. Helen Zipped her bag; and followed him down the steps. He was already in the yard, feeding the three, wild and dangerous dogs, when she opened the heavy gate of the house. She turned around and looked at Mark. He moved his hand in a way to tell her: "Just go, don't hesitate!"

She just walked out of the home casually while her heart heaving. She could not believe that Mark helped her to go while endangered his own life...

To Be Continued

"JUDAS KISS" - Three- Ruby ☪ ☪ ☪

But Helen knew where the money was. Roger kept them all with many of the jewelery he had given her as a gift , and

his collections of guns in a safe behind the mirror of her dressing room. No one could see that there was a safe. The mirrors were installed in a way that no one could had guesses that they could open one of them like a door and behind that door, it was a safe! She had seen it one early morning accidentally. If she could only get her hand on her money, or what she had earned by selling her body and dancing, she would run again. She assumed that he had the money of the other dancers there, too, so they would not leave him.

There were ear and eyes everywhere in the house; The beautiful house they lived in from the rod iron fence and gate, tennis court, Olympic size pool, jacuzzi, spa, seven bedrooms and baths, three living rooms and dining rooms, and the three German Shepherd dogs. Her dressing room alone was about the size of a small apartment. Helen did not care for any of these. She hated the house. She hated Joyce, who spied on her and would come at five every afternoon to fix her up! She were not allowed to pick up what she wanted to wear, what kind of jewelry she wanted to use, how she wanted her hair done, up or down; no, those were all Joyce's decision. She told Mark, her only friend, one day when they were in the car and going for shopping:

"I feel I am like a slave. I can't even choose what to wear!"

Mark put his index finger on his lips. They were in the car. Helen knew what that gesture meant, "Hush". They were in the car. Later when they were eating sandwiches in a local mall, Mark told her:

"You must be very careful. There is camera and microphone everywhere even in all the cars. You don't even have privacy in the bathroom!"

Helen knew about cameras; but she never thought even in the bathrooms she did not have any privacy. That afternoon at home, in the bathroom, she searched for the camera. There was nothing she could find. It was hidden so well that no one could guess. But her eyes suddenly fixed on a painting that was hanging there right in front of the toilet. It was an original cubist painting of a woman with an eyes which was on her cheek. she kept string at the eyes. Then got close to it, and looked into the eyes of the painting. Deep inside the red eye of the painting, she saw the camera. Back in her room, she cut a piece of cardboard paper, colored it red. The piece she had cut was very small, almost unnoticeable. She glued that piece to the eye of the painting. No body either noticed or they never said anything to her about it. But at least now she could go to bathroom to get rid of her bodily fluid without somebody watching her!

She yearned a normal life. She used to be a good and smart student. Her dream was that one day she could go back to school, to get her diploma, to get her college degree, to become a teacher, to marry a nice man, whom she truly loved, to have her own family; but none was possible at the current situation.

One day early in the morning she woke up. She had heard something. First she thought it was a dream, but she noticed that Roger was not in bed. She had the urge to go to the bathroom; but she heard a very low noise, almost unnoticable, from her dressing room. She got up from the bed and walked barefoot towards the dressing room. The door was wide open. There was a dim light that kept moving up and down coming from there; so she assumed it was a light of flash light. She peeped in. The first mirror, the closest to the bedroom was open like a door. She thought: "So this is the time he opens the safe!" His back was to her. She stood in the middle of the open door between bedroom and her dressing room. Her heart heaved, her knees shook, her breath was laboured, and her mouth was dry. If she could be caught, Roger perhaps would kill her. He had bragged about killing people that did not cooperate with him in front of her before. But he was so careless this morning. He was opening the safe. Helen looked in the dim light. She tried to remember! What was the code? She wished she had a pen to and paper to write it down; but she did not have to...

To Be Continued

"JUDAS KISS" - Three- Ruby ☯ ☯ ☯

In the next one and half year that Helen Lived with

Roger, she was

treated like a princess. She had everything she wanted, from clothes to jewelry; however she felt like slave to Roger, his money, his beautiful home, and his caprice and whim. She had left the simple life of minimum pay, working at grocery store, sleeping in the shelter, and her good, poor friend, Jacob for this life of slavery and bondage, but glamorous. She made a lot of money. But the money went to Roger. She never saw it; and if she asked for it, Roger would say: "What do you need? Anything you need, tell Mark to take you to the mall and buy it for you!"

Her customers were mostly older, rich men. They even gave her tip which she tried to hide it from Roger, but he always searched her and did not allow her to keep even the tip for herself. Once that Mark was the one, who saw her first after a night of party, she put the tip in Mark's hand and closed his fist and put her finger on her lips, so mark would be silent about it. During this time, she was able to give some of the tips to Mark since she knew that he had family and young children.

Roger named her Ruby. Helen did not like it, but he said that Helen was an old- fashioned name and she needed a stage name; so she became Ruby. The only one, who still called her Helen was Mark. Once Roger got so angry at Mark that Helen thought he was about to kill him. Mark was always very careful to call her Ruby in front of Roger, but he knew better not to make a mistake in front of the boss, that was how Mark called Roger.

Roger had prohibited her to go anywhere by herself; that was how her friendship with Mark began. He was the guard, Roger's personal valet, and slowly became Helen's best friend in that dreadful house. He drove her anywhere she wanted. Some days, they spent all day out. He took her to different restaurants for lunch. He showed her the city of Dallas. Helen was very curious to learn everywhere just in case if she could run away one day, but she even was afraid to tell Mark about her intention. She had to be home not later than five in the afternoon. That was the time this woman, Joyce, who was her personal assistant, a white woman about forty years old, with artificial blond hair that you could always see the dark hair at the top of her head, always wearing very short and tight clothes, always showing her cleavage, and always flirted with Roger, would come to get Helen ready for the evening and the night. Helen knew that she had to be very careful with Joyce, since she already found out and Mark had warned her that she was a snitch and a spy. She would tell any thing that Helen told her to Roger. She would insist that Helen tell her about her day with Mark. As young as Helen was, she learned quickly to avoid this woman. Her answers to the bombardment of questions of these women was always the same: " Oh, we didn't do anything particular; just went shopping." "I don't see anything that you bought!" She quizzed Helen. " You know me, I am hard to please, I didn't like anything!" Helen learned very quickly that she could not trust anyone in that big house of horror.

At the beginning, in fact the very first day when Mark drove her with the limousine to that house and took her to her room, she was all alone for many hours before Roger came home; and when she finally saw Roger, she said:

Where have you been? I didn't know what to do!"

Roger frowned and gave her a look that frightened her:

Don't you question me again? Do you understand?" And then he continued with a little calmer manner:

"You're going to work for me; but I keep your money so you can't leave me. That will break my heart sweet heart! But I give you spending money."

Helen questioned him about this arrangement:

"Where does the money come from? What kind of work am I supposed to do? What do you mean by my money?" She asked many other questions. She had no idea what she had herself into!

" Don't tell me that you don't know what I expect from you? You already know. That is why you came with me! But because I like you personally, you'll be my personal girlfriend. Everywhere I go, I take you with me. So you need to learn to act and dress in a certain way. Joyce will be your personal assistant. You meet her tomorrow and she'll teach you everything. She help you how to dress, how to act, ...! I normally don't choose my girls as girlfriend, so you're very lucky that you have that privilege." It was that night that he told her about her new name. He slept with her that night and any night that she was not with a customer.

Almost immediately Helen found out what all these things were about. He was doing to her what her father had done for years, except now she would get paid, but she was not supposed to see the money. Roger would keep the money so the thought of running away would never come to her mind.

She also danced in this place that Roger owned. She never learned where the place was. Its customers were almost all men. Roger had had all furnished bedrooms which were beautifully decorated on the second and third floor of the establishment. The place even did not have a name. From outside, it looked like a regular house. There were many other girls, who danced and went with the customers upstairs; but none of those girls lived in Roger's house. So Helen assumed that she was Roger's special girl.

To Be Continued

Judas Kiss- Three- Ruby ✭ ✭ ✭

Their next major stop was Memphis, Tennessee. They had heard a lot about Memphis, the house of the

king of Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley. The driver of the bus stopped for dinner in a parking lot of a restaurant. Again Jacob and Helen knew the deal the driver had With he owner of the restaurant. He even announced before he stopped the bus that the restaurant is a very good place for dinner and the prices were reasonable. They had no breakfast and a very small lunch, not enough to hold them down until they would get to their final destination. Now they knew it would be Dallas, Texas. Jacob said:

"Let's go and eat something!"

Helen's answer was no again even though her growling stomach said a different thing. They bought two burgers with french fries. They ate it sitting in the bus. They both seemed much happier, more alert with full stomach; however both were thinking the same thing: "What are we going to do?"

Helen pondered over that she had no feeling for Jacob. The only reason he was her boyfriend was because of his willingness to runaway with her and because he was generally a very decent young man. A few times he had tried to kiss her, but she had stopped her. He listened to her and obeyed everything she said or asked of him. She hated herself for this! She was giving a false hope to a boy, who had had a miserable life; but on the other hand, she thought: "I didn't force him to come with me!"

When they were finally in Dallas, they left the bus station with their two small bags. They felt lost in a big city with no aim, no money, no friend, or relative. The weather was so different than Chicago that they took their sweaters off and stuffed it into their bags. Jacob had a tee shirt on under his sweater and Helen had a blouse on. They began walking in the warm morning of Dallas to nowhere. They did not know where they were going, or what their plan was! As they were walking aimlessly to nowhere on the warm Tuesday morning of the early spring, they passed a Safeway grocery store.

"I think I saw a sign of Help Wanted on the door!" Jacob held Helen's hand and brought her to stop.

"Oh, let's go inside and find out!" She said joyfully.

They both got a job that morning. Jacob would work in the storage room so when the trucks came , he and couple of other young men would load and unload the goods from trucks, and then would open the boxes to distribute the merchandises to the right place. Helen would work inside the store as some one to put the merchandises on the shelves and put the prices on them with a hand machine. The manager of the store liked Helen's look right away and thought that in a few months she would work in the front. He told himself: "What a beautiful girl!"

But when it came to filling up the application and information about places of their birth, where they lived, and .... They both were horrified. They had no references, no addresses, no guardian, or parents that they would want to mention! The manger listened to their stories. He saw the stub of their bus thickets that they just had arrived from Chicago. He saw their small bags of clothing. For some reason, unknown to them, he believed their stories of running away from evil parents. He truly felt sorry for them.

"There is a shelter not very far from here. A church runs it. Go after work there. They feed you. They let you to use their facilities and shower. I don't know about sleeping arrangement. I guess you can sleep in the church.

☖ ☖ ☖

To Be Continued

Judas Kiss- Three- Ruby ✑ ✑ ✑

Without uttering a word, without moving a muscle, without waking up her sleeping limps, Helen

frowned deeply; lamenting, meditating; ominous menace was her expression; the dazzle of studious doubtfulness she had when was making decision of running away and getting ready for it suddenly faded swiftly into a vacant thoughtlessness! She remembered how she had stolen the twenty dollar bill form the kitchen table, where her father left it for her mother. In fact he had done this as long as she recalled. It used to be ten dollars and then fifteen, and now was twenty dollars. Mother complained that the money was not enough to buy grocery for four people. So she had finally gotten a raise; twenty dollars a day for everything she needed to by for that day!

All evening before her running away from home, father and mother fought over the money. Mother said that he had never left it for her; then she softened a bit and said that he perhaps had forgotten to leave it. Father said that he did; in fact he insisted that he had left the money while raising his voice and banging on the table. Then they got their children involved. When Charlotte said that she had no idea what they were talking about, Helen knew that she was telling the truth! When her turn came and they began questioning her, she said loud:

"Now you're telling me that I am a thief!"

She denied and swore that she did not know what this all was about, while the twenty dollar bill was tucked in inside her bra all day. Mother searched their room top to bottom; father searched the rest of the house. Meanwhile Helen was all shaken up in case they searched their bodies; but that never happened.

After everything calmed down and house was quiet, she packed her little black bag with only a few sweater she had; no over coat, no undergarment, just a pair of jeans and three sweater, a few books and some pictures. She did all these in the bathroom with the door locked from inside. Since she had begun talking about what her friends were telling her about her father's act and even once had threatened to call the police, father had not come to their room. Charlotte was not speaking to her. She blamed her older sister for taking father's love away from her!

She came back to the room, did not put the light on; pushed the bag under her bed and lay down on her bed with her clothes on. Her sleep that night was wakefulness.

To Be Continued

"Judas KISS" - Three- Ruby ✍ ✍

Jacob thought about running away many times, when he was older; but being a responsible young boy and worried for her sister and mother had always stopped him.

When Helen and he became friends, and only a month before they ran away, his sister ran off with her boyfriend; actually it was not running off for her, but it was leaving home for college and living with her ten years older boyfriend. She was already eighteen. When he heard Helen's story and her mentioning that she was thinking about running away, he also made up his mind to do so. He talked to his mother about his intention and begged her to divorce this monster; but his mother told him that she did not care if he left and she did not have the intention of divorcing the evil. He guessed that some people have so low self- esteem like her mother, that they would live in misery since they would not think they can do better. He even told her mother right on her face:

"You just don't like yourself and like to be miserable! You have no respect for yourself!"

Jacob knew besides drinking, they both did drugs. He had seen it even though they tried to hide it. The evil man had hooked his mother to drugs and alcohol, so she would never leave him.

In Springfield, Illinois, bus had an hour of stop for lunch. Jacob had only hundred dollars. This was the money he had saved up from his weekend and some evenings jobs as a grocery sacker. People from their bus all went to this cafeteria that the bus driver had parked in front of it. He had most likely had a deal with the owner of the cafeteria to bring his passengers there for lunch or dinner and perhaps get a free meal himself.

Jacob, being a real nice young teenager, wanted to take Helen there, too; but she said with her dry mouth and empty stomach:

"No, let's find somewhere cheap. We must watch how to spend our money!"

She, herself, had only twenty dollars. They walked in the open air. At the turn of the street, they found a convenient store. They went inside. They had sandwiches, soda pops, and juices. They just bought two salami sandwiches and walked outside. They leaned on the wall of the store, where there was a little sun shinning through the cloudy sky and ate their cold food. They went back inside to use the restroom and drink water from the sink.

Back in the bus, they had no idea where the final destination of the bus was. They had not even looked at the tickets. Fear of getting caught were in their minds the whole time. They decided to go all the way, where the bus would stop completely. They just sat on their seats and slowly fell asleep.

This road was a road that went on for miles, stretching without any end ahead, like their lives, like their dreams.

In her dream, Helen saw birds, lots of them. She was sitting on a bench in a big square. There were benches all around. Many people were there to watch the birds and to feed them. They were throwing bread towards them! The birds would fly down to where the breads were and so expertly grabbed them and flew back up to the sky. But there were many bird gathered around Helen. She was eating her cold, salami sandwich that Jacob had bought her. The birds attacking her to get her food from her hand. She was trying to hide her sandwich inside her fists; but the birds' beaks were hurting her hands and she finally opened her fists and lost her sandwich to the hungry mouths of the birds. She woke up from her horrid dream and found herself next to Jacob in the bus. Was this dream telling her something she already did not know? She was not sure!!

To Be Continued