The Red-Light Area

Easy

The diminishing rays of the setting sun went pass the mirror and fell on her exhausted face, lingering on her forehead for a while and brightening her puffy-red eyes as a sharp whimper slipped through her lips, followed by a deep scoff.

The handcuffs were sharp as a blade, almost pierced into her soft skin; considering, it wasn't entirely a fault either that it wasn't made for the delicate skin of a woman of the age, twenty-three; and that it was handcrafted for a captive who has committed some heinous crime and was waiting for the capital punishment imposed upon him by the LAW of the city. A LAW made by him.

She wiggled in the back seat of the car that was crossing the speed limit, headless to any rule or warning embedded on the boards placed alongside the highway, to somehow get rid of it, only to end up feeling all the more irritated and restless. She peeped out of the black tint glasses of the car, only to come face to face with large land surrounded by desert. The vast pool of sand, it was the only sight in her view.

The sand was flying with the wind, enjoying the leisure for ages; as if mocking her, giggling at her misery and enjoying her sorrows. It was free of anxiety, uncertainty and fear. A blessing, she had lost with time. A blessing, she had before she had met him.

Oh, how she cursed that moment when his eyes had fallen upon her! If only it was in her hands, she would have erased that minute from her life, from his life. If only she could.

She turned her head in the opposite direction, unable to withstand the imaginary mockery of the sand anymore. She wanted to scream, to cry, and to yell at the universe to let it know how vulnerable and helpless she was feeling being tied up and getting kidnapped by some strangers. She wanted to lose consciousness in the back seat of that black SUV, so she hadn't had to endure that humiliation any further, but she couldn't. However, it didn't matter how clever and cunning she might be, it had total irrelevancy for the time being that she was a black-belt in taekwondo and had won the state-level championship of fencing a couple of times.

For then, she was just an ordinary girl from Central-Asia, pursuing Masters in Arts in Archaeology who had visited this 'hell' in a student exchange program of cultural literacy organized by the embassies of both the countries, only to fall in a trap, his trap. She was scared for her life, dignity and future. It was uncertain, a word she despised the most out of all the things.

OH, how much she loathed him for doing this to her! If only she hadn't taken part in this program, if only she hadn't taken the rumours of rituals of the land too lightly, if only she had simply denied taking part in that stupid exam, if only she hadn't mocked him for enacting this sort of rules...nothing sort-of that had happened. She would have never fallen into this trap 'they' had set up to keep their power in check and to maintain dominance over the people of the land.