I was woken by rough hands, the air full of screams. Just five more minutes, my head seemed to say, somehow unaware of the situation. When I didn’t move the hands lifted me. I opened my eyes to find myself in a fireman’s lift over a brutish man’s soldier. He walked with a steady stomp, and with every step my head did a little jig.

My tired eyes managed to focus long enough to realise the screams were coming from the scantily-clad women being ushered to four vans. This was where I was headed. I immediately started to pound on the man’s back, my groin clenching at the memory of what happened in the last dark van. The man smacked me hard on the backside and I stopped. I wasn’t going to provoke any man.

I was thrown into the back of one of the vans and the doors slammed shut. The darkness was inhumane.

“What’s happening?” I whispered.
“They’ve been found out,” an Eastern European voice whispered back. “We’re moving.”
“How long will it be?”
“Heaven knows. We might die here.”