It Happened On Halloween

I had finished. As I said, I carried a few extra pounds and this was not a low-cal meal. However, I would have eaten three orders if it meant that Tyler would keep talking to me. I began eating, slowly. I rationalized that eating quickly is a sure way to gain weight.

"No, I'm afraid I'm not very good around women..." He then proceeded to prove just how false that was. I've never met such a charming, interesting and funny man or woman in my life. I was hanging on his every word and laughing like a school kid at his smallest jokes. By the time I'd finished eating, I knew I was totally infatuated with the man.

I also felt like a bloated whale. I've never understood women who are bulimic, but I did consider a quick trip to the lady's room. Then I thought about what I'd do if someone heard me. Besides, I needed to get to my editor stat!

I practically ran to my editor's office only to find she'd already talked to Mr. Seton. We had a private meeting with the publisher where we worked out the logistics of the project. I'd always heard about circles of power, but I never expected to see the wheels work. Despite external appearances they work very well indeed.

At the end of the meeting the publisher cleared his throat nervously and said, "I'm not happy with some aspects of this deal. I want to make it very clear that if you have any reason to think that you've been given false information I want you to say so in your article. I'm especially not happy with the dating aspect of it. I certainly don't want you to feel any pressure to go through with it..."

My editor interrupted, "I think that if I'm reading the signs right, Morgan looks at the dating as one of the big incentives. Am I right?"

I tried not to blush as I nodded.

The publisher continued, "Don't let your personal emotions taint the story. Lay out the facts and let the chips fall where they may. Despite my reservations, I want this story. No matter what position you take on legalizing drugs, these prison gangs running the drug trade here are vicious thugs. Since you're new to San Antonio, you might not know the Essa is the worst of the lot. Their name has two meaning one is sort of a shorthand for 'our thing.' The other is a mangled 'SA' to show they're from San Antonio. I can't support a war on prostitution, but if they're forcing women into it, that's just another reason to put an end to them. Forced prostitution is slavery."

He continued, his voice heavy with real passion. "I've been a member of the Boston-based American Anti-Slavery Group for several months. I've been looking for ways to get them more publicity. They have an excellent website, but most people refuse to believe that slavery still exists!"

When I heard that, I tried not to drool. Not only a good story but a topic that's one of the publisher's pet causes? This story could find national legs! We met for another hour, working on ground rules, before I was given a green light. I would continue to be based in the Lifestyle section, but my main focus would be working with the US Attorney's office. I was practically floating as I went home, this was the sort of assignment that a reporter normally didn't get until they'd been working for ten years and I was getting a shot in my second year!

I called Tyler as soon as I got back to my desk. He asked if I was free the next night and I was waiting on the curb for him at six when he picked me up in one of those "unmarked" solid black SUVs with heavily tinted windows.

As we sat in the back seat an agent drove us all over San Antonio, frequently talking to someone in hushed tones over the radio. Frankly, it scared me. I've seen things like that in the movies and always thought they were melodramatic. This wasn't, and no one could miss the tension between Tyler and the driver. Within minutes, I was swiveling my head just like they were. I don't know how long I'd had a death grip on Tyler's arm before I became aware that I was holding it. Strangely, once I became aware that he wasn't pulling away I felt safer. It annoyed me, I've never been the wilting lily type, but it was only with determination that I kept from snuggling into him for comfort. It got better, but the more I learned about the Essa the more I understood that if this was a game, it was a deadly one.

It was full dark when I saw the agent reach up and punch the garage door opener. A few seconds later we pulled into the driveway of a perfectly normal looking house. Without even pausing, we drove right into the garage and the door closed behind us before we came to a full stop.

There was an airport type metal detector at the door between the garage and the house, and as I learned later, all the other entrances were sealed. All this added to the surreal effect of sitting down in a very ordinary den to meet the person I was here to interview.

Her name was Lupe and she looked about fifteen, perhaps sixteen. My Spanish is at the level of "where is the bathroom," so Tyler translated for me. After a few pleasantries I asked her age and was suspicious when she said nineteen.

"Oh yes, my papers said I was fifteen not eighteen when I flew here, but that was to help get me through customs. If I were stopped they would treat me as a juvenile. That meant I'd probably get little of no jail time."

Despite the aura of innocence, I had trouble seeing Lupe as a prostitute, I think it was her eyes. I wondered how she was lured into it. When I asked, she began her tale.

Chapter Two (Lupe's Journey)

I was very nervous when the two gringos arrived. I knew what kind of danger I was in, but I was determined to protect others from what had been done to me.

The woman didn't speak Spanish so Tyler, who had asked me to meet with her, was there to translate. After a few standard questions the lady, Morgan, asked me to tell my story as I wanted. She said she'd ask more questions if she needed to when I was finished.

I looked at Tyler. I trusted him, I was still alive and by this time I could read men. I took a deep breath and tried to remember the innocent girl I'd been when this journey to hell began. I had been so unworldly back then.

"I'm from a small village in Peru. When I finished my school I didn't have anyone I wanted to marry so my girlfriend and I went to Lima to look for work. It didn't take long for one of the drug men to approach us to be mules. The pay was fabulous, two thousand American dollars, enough to buy a nice house back in my village. We weren't hard to convince.

"They sent us by plane, the first one I'd ever been on, to Caracas, Venezuela. Since Caracas is an oil center, there are a lot of people working on temporary assignments at oil company headquarters in Houston. Unaccompanied children flying to Houston to meet parents don't draw as much suspicion from US custom agents as do adults on flights from Peru or Columbia.

"From the time I agreed to smuggle drugs, they had me practice swallowing large grapes and small figs whole. There is a trick to doing that, but once you learn it's not hard, and it's a skill that I needed later. After we landed in Caracas they took us to an apartment were we watched the pellets being prepared for us. They used two condoms to seal each pellet, then dipped them in a sweet sauce that had something in it to give us constipation. The whole process was timed. We were given a marker pellet first and then we waited ten hours before we began swallowing real ones. That was horrible-- for the next twelve hours we drank nothing, ate nothing but pellets. Our stomachs would bloat and one of the men would massage us to help the pellet move into our intestines. I swallowed 114 pellets before I passed my marker, which was the signal I was ready to leave.

"I was cramping when I boarded the plane at 9:00 AM for a flight scheduled to land a little after 1:00 PM in Houston, Texas. I can't tell you how miserable I was. When the airplane started to take off, I was terrified. I swear as I was pushed back in my seat, I could feel every one of those pellets inside me. They hurt like nothing I've felt before or since.

"I knew there were other mules on the plane, but I've never felt so alone or so scared. Because I was supposed to be fifteen, I had a tag announcing that I was to be met at Houston by a relative. I didn't know it, but the stewardess in charge of me worked for the gang. She kept a constant eye on me. She made sure I didn't eat my in-flight meal and only gave me glasses of ice to quiet my hunger. I thought I was just lucky, but I was carrying a cargo worth many thousands of dollars and I was well guarded.

"About an hour before we were due to land, I began to feel the need to go to the bathroom. We had been warned that if that happened we were to use the toothpaste we'd been given to clean the pellet and to re-swallow whatever we passed.

"I was terrified. Each pellet we swallowed had been carefully weighed and counted. We were warned that if we didn't deliver the full weight, not only would we be killed but our families would be killed too.

"When I could stand the pressure no longer, I took my travel bag containing my toothpaste and went to the airplane's bathroom. As I'd been instructed, I kept my panties on as I strained to pass the pellet. When it came out, I washed my waste from it and my panties as I'd been taught in Caracas. It was only when I checked before I started to swallow it that I noticed that the condoms had opened.

"I'd been scared before, but now I couldn't control my water. Although nothing had been said, everyone knew what happened if the condoms broke. The mule would die even if they were rushed to the hospital. I had overheard one of the men making the pellets talking about a mule who died in the United States. The team at the other end had gutted him like a fish to get the heroin then dumped his body in the trash. He hadn't received last rites or even a Christian burial. His soul had gone straight to hell.

I didn't know what to do; I did know that I couldn't just dump the pellet in the airplane toilet. It might be found and US Customs would know to look for me.

"I seriously thought about swallowing it. Even though I knew it would kill me, at least my family would be safe. I've often wished I had, but I was too scared of going to hell. Not only would I die un-shriven, but to swallow it knowing it would kill me would be suicide, a mortal sin.

"I'm not ashamed to say I prayed until the voice of the pilot told me I had to return to my seat. I had taken a vomit bag to the little restroom and I carefully wrapped the pellet and took it back to my seat. I was so scared, but I washed as well as I could. I was so afraid that some of the powder had gotten on me and one of the drug dogs would smell it.

"As soon as I left the plane, I told the stewardess escorting me that I had to go to the bathroom. In the stall I flushed the pellet. When I came out I told the stewardess that I had been a bit sick to my stomach. It was only when she offered me the spray that deadens the nerves in your throat to help swallow, that I knew she'd been watching me.

"I broke down and cried. She was almost as scared as I when she understood that I'd flushed the pellet Part of her job was to make sure I brought all the pellets to my contact. She was also scared because she said if we delayed too much getting to customs it would make them suspicious. She gave me a crushed pill to calm my nerves and watched as I carefully washed my hands and arms to remove any trace of the powder. She did not walk me all the way to customs, but had alerted my contact somehow as I retrieved my luggage.

"I cleared customs without any sort of search and in public my contact looked like the lonely, loving father he was pretending to be. As soon as we reached the motel, he became a monster. He slapped me very hard several time and called me all sorts of names. He made me strip, the first time I'd ever done that in front of a man, and he stuck his finger into me to see if I was trying to hide the pellet.

"Once he was convinced that I wasn't hiding it, he stopped hitting me but he never stopped berating me. However, by that point his words had little effect. I needed to pass the first pellet. I expected to be given a honey pot to pass it into. Instead, the man watching me forced me to squat, naked, in the bathtub. He closed the drain and watched me grunt out pellet after pellet. My waste mingled with my "cargo." He wore a swimmer's nose plug to block the fetid smell of my waste coating each pellet. I was not offered one. When I had passed all I could, I was forced to wash my waste from each pellet, I was not offered plastic gloves. Then, still naked, I went back to the bedroom and lay uncovered on the bed while I watched the pellets being weighed and tallied. As I lay there waiting for the next pellets to pass, the men would leer at me and make comments on my body. I tried to relax so my body would be ready to pass more soon."

I looked over at Morgan and when I saw her expression, I broke down and wept in shame, my head bowed, my hands hiding my face.

Tyler spoke smoothing words, and he said something that made me feel better. "Aren't you glad that after all you've been through you can react like a normal woman and not what they tried to make you?"

I nodded my head and continued telling my story

"The process in the bathtub was repeated over and over for twelve hours until I had passed all of the pellets. Seeing them as they came out, covered in my waste, I could not imagine that sane people would actually snort the cocaine or inject the heroin I had dumped into that bathtub. As great as my fear, I still pitied those so addicted to the white powders.

"When the last pellet had been cleaned and weighed, my real nightmare began. The man who picked me up at the airport announced that I had cost the gang almost fifteen thousand dollars for the pellet I had flushed. I was responsible and if I didn't pay they would kill me and all my family.

"Of course my pay for this run was forfeit, and since I'd proved unreliable, I would not be allowed to be a mule again. I was told that the only way I could earn the money would be by becoming a whore."

Tyler interrupted me. "The pellet that you flushed was probably talc or some other harmless white powder. It's a common trick used on young women to force them into prostitution, or men into virtual slave labor."

I nodded, "Yes, when I heard a man talking about tricking another woman, I decided that I would risk coming to the FBI. I didn't trust the local police, or even the DEA. I had been forced to service too many of them. However, the last FBI agent who used me had a gang tattoo. I thought if they were faking an FBI agent in San Antonio perhaps they could be trusted here.

"I should tell you that we only stayed at one city for a couple of weeks, before moving. That was so we couldn't get close to any of the regulars, and I suppose, also to give the regulars new blood. The FBI arranged to bring my family to this country, and so far they've protected us, but I get ahead of my story."

After Tyler translated our interchange Morgan said she needed to go to the bathroom. While I waited for her to return I thought about the rest of what I needed to tell her. As bad as the trip had been, my hell only began when I'd finished my job as a mule.

"I remembered how cold and empty my belly felt when he said "It's time to start your new life."

"I fought back tears, but I wasn't surprised that I was being told I would have to be a whore. Because, while I was a virgin, I couldn't count the times my mother or some other older person warned that a young girl who made the trip 'up North' always ended up selling her body. It was used like American children hear about the monster under the bed. I heard, but it didn't sound as hard as working in the fields.

"Perhaps because when I pictured myself in that role, I thought of it as wearing fabulous clothes and being a pampered mistress to a series of virile and handsome young men who fought for my favors. Besides, I'd known too many young women who had returned from El Norte and told about making ten or even fifteen dollars an hour cleaning houses or taking care of little children. They all spoke of living in mansions with all their expenses paid by powerful Yankees. They also swore that they returned with their virtue intact.

"The harsh reality was that as I lay naked on a filthy bed, I listened as several phone calls were made offering my virginity and my services as a whore. After one call, I was forced to stand in front of a computer camera. Standing next to the bed where I would start my new profession, my breasts were fondled. I was then forced to bend over and open myself for inspection of my privates by an unseen buyer.

"Many times I'd taken a chicken or a duck to our market to sell for cash. I know how those animals felt as I stood there. I remember telling myself that as the daughter of a farmer I knew that life doesn't always work out as you plan. Sometimes the rains come at the right time and the harvest is good. Sometimes they don't come and the harvest is not good. Worst of all is when they come during the harvest and all is spoiled. I knew my harvest was spoiled and there was nothing I could do about it.

"I was only mildly interested when I heard my virginity sold for two hundred dollars, but I was scared when I first saw the man who would take it. He was very old, probably fifty, and what he lacked in hair on his head, he made up for with the size of his belly. I didn't know then that when the man is fat you should always try to be on top.

"He took my hand and led me to the bed. He had me lie down in the center. He took off his pants, but he left his tee-shirt on. With one hand he began to play with himself, the other went between my legs and began to rub me. I was very dry, so he leaned over and drooled spit on my cunt before he began to rub me again.

"I closed my eyes and I tried to pretend I was someplace else, but I could hear the drug smuggler making comments. My customer, who later became my first whoremonger, laughed at me as he continued to rub me. Once, when his dry finger rubbed my nub very hard, I flinched and closed my legs. His response was to spit on my slit again make me spread my legs wider and raise my knees.

"I'll never forget when I felt that first tingle. I was embarrassed and I felt my face flush. I expected more laughter but for the first time he spoke soothing words. I was grateful and shifted to get more comfortable as he continued to rub my private place. After that, instead of spitting on me, he would occasionally slip a finger inside me to get it wet with my own juice and spread that all over my bottom.

"I remember taking a deep breath when I thought my body was ready for what he wanted to do. I expected him to crawl on top of me, but instead he began to massage my breast. I didn't like it. Even though he was only the second person to put his finger in me, touching my breast seemed more intimate and I didn't want that.

"All I really wanted was for it to be over, so I opened my eyes and looked up at him with what I hoped was a seductive expression. Miraculously, my voice didn't crack as I told him I was ready. He asked me twice if I was sure, and both times I nodded that I was.

"After the second time he moved over me. I remember feeling his belly before I felt his cock. I expected it to hurt when he entered me, but it didn't. It didn't feel good exactly, more like having an itch scratched. He didn't put all his weight on me that time, and after a few minutes of pumping he had me kneel on the bed while he took me from behind. He used his hands on me to make me cum twice for him, but he never came.

"When he'd had enough he just slapped me on the bottom and told me that it was time to go to work. He offered me to the drug man for fifty dollars but that piece of shit didn't want me. I can't tell what it felt like to know that the man who had watched me lose my virginity didn't think I was worth fifty dollars.