Mena is happy with her lifestyle in Orlando, Florida since leaving home after high school graduation. She shares an apartment with a friend, Weija, whom she met on answering her advertisement for a roommate. They seem to get along very well. Mena works for a convenience store and gas station chain. Weija works for a sports bar franchise, plus bartending and food catering jobs parttime. Mena turned twenty-one this year.

Weija is older but they both like a lot of the same things. On Friday night’s they go out to their favorite club, Parades, where they enjoy line dancing. It’s where Mena met her boyfriend, Madez Perez, within the first six months out of high school and has been with him ever since. Sitting in her car Friday night, she dreams of Madez and his henchmen carrying out an attack on a gang of pill-pushers in his territory and she is frightened. In the pass, she’d told him she had a dream about him attacking one of his men, and he got angry and beat her. He’d threatened to kill her if she told anyone.

Mena lives with Weija during the week—Monday through Thursday—and weekends—Friday through Sunday—she stays with her boyfriend, Madez. He, is more than twice her age. He takes her out for dinner on occasion and out of the country. She believes he helps her live a better life. In time, she discovers he is a drug boss in the underbelly of society, but she thinks he’s good to her, when she stays on his good side and does what he says.

Mena tells Weija about her latest dinner date with Madez on Sunday and she decides to have her boyfriend, Cecil, take her to see what’s going on at the Eatonville supper club.

On Sunday evening, Mena goes with Madez for dinner at his regular eat-out place in Eatonville. He hasn’t said what’s special about the occasion, but he is very attentive to her. She loves him deeply and is mesmerized by his attention inside the club. When she senses someone rush up behind her, before she can see what is happening, she’s attacked…

Ozzie Jacobs

Voz