The Cage Sessions(13)

For a moment, I even consider running out of here. Do I really need Damien? Maybe I should just keep on fucking Isabella and Jasmine.

No... while that's fun and all, it's not what I really want.

No, I promised I would watch this. So I'll watch it.

I bite a nail.

The credits roll over some working-class mill town. Looks like somewhere up north. Three-decker houses with drooping porches. Lots of Spanish-speaking kids playing in the streets. A hot summer day. A family block party with barbeques. Salsa music. A road sign reads Welcome to Brimford, Massachusetts.

My heart skips a beat.

Brimford?! Massachusetts?

Where that guy Arely Gutierrez-Machado was killed. Where there was another murder this week being investigated by Detective Gomez.

Oh my God, am I in danger?

Shit, what have I gotten myself into?

A whirlwind of thoughts zip around my head. The reporter in me comes alive.

Focus on the movie, Annika! Just watch!

The camera zooms in on an abandoned building. Inside a girl and a boy shoot heroin. Once they're high, they rejoin the block party outside.

One of the opening credits reads:



Screenplay by



Marcellina Montero



Fucking great. She's a writer too. Guess he likes writers.

God, do I need a fucking drink!

The movie focuses on the girl played by Marcellina Montero. Latina. Stunning. Gorgeous. I'm talking Isabella-gorgeous. Big beautiful brown-yellow eyes, with a glow like they're lit from behind. Black hair with blonde highlights. Thick lips. Beautiful light caramel skin. Tiny sexy frame. Big round ass.

Shit, I can't compete with that! She's got me on every count.

The girl in the movie is sexually abused by everyone in her life, starting at six years old. Her older brother feeds her heroin to help ease the pain of daily life in Brimford. While he's temporarily in prison, she responds to an ad to be in a porn movie so she can get $1,000 to buy some more heroin.

She finds out she's good at it and does a series of more films. Moves to L.A.

Then she starts to enjoy it. She becomes empowered, kicking the heroin habit. She forms her own porn company, makes a mint, struggles with a bunch of family issues, and then ends up auditioning for a part in a big Hollywood movie.

The ending is a montage of her new career as a mainstream movie star, crossed with her reuniting with a boy from school who once wrote poetry for her.

The end credits roll.

I'll admit, it's a hauntingly touching movie. Well done. I was unsure about where it was headed when she started doing porn, but the message was one of female empowerment.

The lights come up.

"That was Marcellina Montero four years ago," says Damien over the theater loudspeaker. "Now I'm going to show her to you today."

The lights dim again.

An image flashes onto the screen. Looks like a cellphone video.

I put my hand up to my mouth and gasp.

The video shows a woman in a hospital bed. She is connected to a feeding tube. The right side of her head is misshapen, all swollen up. One eye is puffed out to the point where it's open just enough to see some white. The other is closed. She has a receding hairline.

A female nurse in blue scrubs checks her monitors and IV tubes. A machine beeps.

The camera moves in closer. I start to cry. If Damien hadn't told me it was the same stunning girl who was in the movie, then I wouldn't have recognized her.

But it's her. Definitely.

The screen goes dark. The lights come up.

Damien sits next to me.

My hand is at my mouth. My eyes are full of tears. I look over at him. So are his.

Fuck it, I wrap my arms around him.

We sit like that for a long while, his head on my shoulder.





Chapter 34





"She's been like that for three years," Damien says. We're back in his lounge overlooking the pool, drinks in hand. "Not sure what happened. Nobody knows if it was intentional or not. Could have been a bad batch like the one that killed Philip Seymour Hoffman. She had just picked it up somewhere and was coming back to the house. She pulled into a strip mall parking lot to shoot up. And that was the end."

I'm sitting next to him this time. I turn, reach over, and squeeze his hands.

"I'm so sorry," I say. "Is there any hope for her?"

"They've always said no," he says, "but I never believed them. The first doctor told me she's mostly brain dead. So I flew in a specialist who said she isn't and might wake up someday. But my gut tells me he was just making that up because I paid him so much money. According to the scans, the best she can ever hope for is to function as a three-year old. If she ever wakes up, that is. Which is highly doubtful."

I wipe some more tears away from my face.

"She was here for a year," he says. "This house. Bouncing around here like a ball of light and happiness. Made the place alive. Made me whole. Filled it with joy and warmth. We were unstoppable. We were perfect. Nothing was ever so perfect."