She spent her day thinking about the game, the interactions she had made with the players, and for the first time she wondered why she wasn’t allowed to have a phone. She didn’t express her discomfort outwardly as she knew her owner could be very violent when anyone showed disagreement with his opinions.

Night came and she was called to the room after some hours of dancing, she went up to her room nervous, wondering if Malik had kept his promise. She open the door and found Malik waiting on the bed, she was overjoyed.

She closed the door and Malik without question let her play on his phone again. This cycle repeated itself as Malik introduced more games to her, along the way she got to know Malik a bit more.

He was a journalist for a human rights organization. She didn’t know the meaning of a lot of the things he spoke to her about, but when she asked what they were, Malik always patiently explained.

The more Malik told her about, the more she wanted to know, she learned that she was a sex slave owned by a very rich and influential business tycoon known as Abhad Ismael “My aim for coming here is to find incriminating evidence against him so that me and my group can stop his criminal activities, sadly taking pictures isn’t enough for this kind of crime, I need witness testimonies that state that you and your colleagues weren’t given a choice when you were made into prostitutes.

Although most of you are too afraid of him and too ignorant of the outside world to commit to a cause like mine, so now I’ve half given up, I just want to see people like you happy even if I can’t give you freedom” He said in a tired tone when she asked what someone like him was doing here.

Samira felt sad for him, she also wanted to be free now that she knew about how interesting the outside world was, the more time she spent with Malik the more she felt like she was in a cage. He got to leave her room and enter a very large and diverse world while she stayed here waiting for the next night to come.

She sometimes wished she could switch positions with him, she wished she wasn’t born into a poor and dysfunctional family that sold her for money under the guise of child marriage; she cursed her luck for being born into a poor family. She wanted to help Malik achieve his goals.

She asked Malik what she could do to help; he told her that he needed more people to be ready to testify against Abhad, her word alone was not going to work.

The organization he worked for didn’t have enough political power to free them with only little allegations against Abhad, they needed to make an article about the girl that were here to draw attention from international organizations and bring Abhad to an international court as he could bribe his way through a Nigerian court.

Samira told her friends about the things he had told her, about how they could find jobs and live their own lives under their own control if Abhad would just let them go. The word spread, the idea of independence was very appealing to Samira’s immediate friends.

As she worked with Malik she quickly developed a huge crush on him, she found herself unable to stop thinking about him, she tried to get him interested in her but she was unsuccessful, regardless she continued to spread the word.

What she didn’t account for was that there were people under Abhad that were being treated worse than she was. These people would have sex with a lot of low paying customers, people that worked for Abhad or would be subjected to all kinds of horrible treatment from customers who paid a lot to satisfy weird fetishes.

They weren’t taken care of like Samira and her friends, they didn’t eat good food, they didn’t have free time; if they weren’t having sex they were doing menial labor; their life was hell, and they were the majority. To them Samira’s life was the dream; freedom was an unnecessary luxury to them.

When they were told about the scheme many of them sneakily reported to their superiors in order to gain favor. When Abhad heard about what was planned, he made an investigation and caught everyone that was involved including the journalists that were posing as customers.

One day Samira was heading to her room anticipating her time with Malik, although she had many loyal customers, the only regular she looked forward to was him.

She entered the room and Malik wasn’t there, it was Abhad he sat on the bed smiling, the guards that were in the room closed the door. Abhad began to speak “You think you are a smart girl right? You thought that you could live happily ever after, after fucking me over?” fear filled Samira, she knelt down faced the floor and began pleading for mercy saying “Oga Please forgive us”. (Oga = Boss)

Abhad smiled and said “Ok, I won’t kill you, you are a good girl, I will forgive you. But you need to be punished” when he was done speaking he signaled and the guards took her to a part of the compound she had never been to.

It was an underground section of the building of the low class brothel, it was dirty and dark. She was taken to a big room, when the door was opened she saw all of her friends as well as Malik and his colleagues which she had never met, there were also some low and mid class prostitutes in the room along with her immediate friends.

The room had poor lighting and there were many torture tools, chairs with restraints were also in the room, Malik and his colleagues were sitting on the chairs, they were already bleeding in some places, which showed that they were already being tortured before.

Samira began to cry, she hadn’t expected Malik to be here, she wanted this to just be a nightmare. Abhad signaled and the guards took their places; about 5 guards to each of the journalists and about 18 guards surrounded her and a similar number surrounded the other prostitutes, everyone apart from the guards and Abhad were crying. Abhad signaled the guards and left the room.

Then it began; the guards around Samira pushed her down and made her face the place where Malik was as he was tortured, they tore her clothes and began to violently rape her. Sex was not strange to her but seeing the man she loved being tortured to death while she was being treated like a sex doll really unhinged her.

It was like her only purpose was to please sexual desires and nothing more. She wasn’t allowed to dream, she wasn’t allowed to love, and she wasn’t allowed to hope.

3 hours of constant rape and torture passed, some of the girls had died from the excessive rape, the journalists were dead… Samira survived. She slowly watched as Malik was drained of his life, the pain in his eyes, the sadness and discomfort of the treatment, all the things he experience was etched into her mind. Yet with all his suffering Malik never showed regret.

Abhad laughed at the pathetic state of the girls that had tried to expose him as he re-entered the room, he said to them “You are only useful for sex, you don’t have a brain, you don’t have money, and you don’t have anything. Just fuck who I tell you to fuck that is the reason you live” he spat on the floor and left.

Samira went back to her room feeling hopeless. Malik was dead; her chance was destroyed, all because of some selfish losers who were currently reaping the rewards. She wanted revenge but couldn’t get it, she wanted freedom but couldn’t get it, she wanted love but couldn’t get it,...

She looked and the razor blade in her drawer, she wanted to end her life, death would surely have to be better than this, but she remembered the things that Malik told her about, she remembered that there were things that normal people enjoyed that she hadn’t had access to ever, she wanted those things, even more than she wanted Malik who was gone, even more than she hated her own suffering.

She wanted to speak to the people he had told her about, she wanted to watch the shows he could only describe to her, she wanted to live, she still had a dream and she still had hope.

Malik had said “I’m not the only good person in world, there are many good and even great people, you just haven’t met them” when she praised him as the only good person in the world. Malik never regretted his decision this she clearly knew, she couldn’t waste the effort he put into her.