If I’d lived a normal life, I wouldn’t approve either, but that wasn’t the hand dealt me. Either you adjust and move on or silently agree to be a victim for the rest of your life. Fuck that shit. I’m no victim. My Gran used to tell me, some people were born with a stubborn streak stronger than anything meant to break them down. She said I was born with the hard-headed determination of a donkey that dreamed of being a thoroughbred some day. By her thinking, that’d been a compliment.
I missed that chain-smoking locomotive of a woman. Maybe if she hadn’t died when I was six, life would’ve turned out different but playing the ‘What If?’ game was too hard on the heart to play for long.
Madame Moirai, a woman whose identity no one knew, contacted me a few weeks ago via her emissary, the thin, impeccably dressed man who’d left me stranded. As if selling yourself wasn’t degrading enough, being tossed out like trash for someone else to deal with was the cherry on top.
The transaction itself had been dry and to the point. If the emissary had any personal feelings about the subject, he buried it so deep not even an eyelid twitch gave him away.
The even moderate tone of his voice still echoed in my head, reminding me that there was no going back.
“All buyers are thoroughly vetted with extensive background checks. Your safety — overall — is of the highest importance…”
Selling sex of any kind was still illegal in most states, including liberal-leaning New York. I could go to jail for agreeing to this arrangement.
I was trying to escape a prison, not get locked up in one with different walls.
“However, you may leave the experience with bruises. Some of our patrons, in their exuberance, leave marks. Nothing permanent, I assure you.”
The potential for pain loomed in my immediate future. Pain didn’t scare me. I’d been beaten enough times in my life to know how to survive a punch. I liked to know what to prepare for. The trick was to be someone else, be somewhere else in your head. Anywhere but in the leaky basement, the smell of mildew and sadness following every swing while your mother worked out her demons on your young skin. Yeah, I had skills for handling pain. I was probably a walking endorsement for future therapy but that was a problem for another day.
“Do you have questions?”
Questions. So many. None mattered. The current would take the boat wherever it wished. I was just along for the ride.
And the payday.
“Do not hope for more than one night with your patron. Attachments are forbidden and will be harshly discouraged. Do you understand?”
Why would anyone want to spend more than one night with these perverts? In my version of a fairytale romance, Prince Charming wasn’t a sex-trafficking asshole with a thing for young girls but hey, each to his own, right?
It would be one night of my life. I could handle this.
When you grow up with a shitty parent, you mature real quick. I wasn’t squeamish about sex. I wasn’t a virgin because I’d been afraid of a dick.
After all the pieces of shit my mom dragged home, I’d seen too much to seek out that drama. Between the thugs who used my mom as a punching bag to the fuckers who leered at me through half-slitted eyes, I had enough to remind me that men were trouble. I also didn’t want to deal with unwanted pregnancy or the threat of STDs, because condoms left a margin of error. I wasn’t about to take any chances.
Abstinence had seemed easier.
To avoid a dick all this time only to accept the sordid offer from Madame Moirai was irony at its best.
Calm the feminine rage on my behalf. I knew I was more than just a walking vagina but let’s be real; we lived in a patriarchal society and women were bought and sold all the time.
Sometimes it’s prettied up and called marriage other times…it’s just a business transaction.
This kind of thing has been happening since the dawn of time, which was why I was, sort of, pragmatic about it.
How much money was on the table?
According to Mr. Personality, it varied. Depended on the auction crowd. Depended on the product.
But as he so eloquently and bluntly put it, “Any sum of money would be more than you would get from the fumbling attentions of a boy your age, wouldn’t you say?”
Hard to argue that point.
A text from a burner phone detailed my instructions. So many rules.
Fresh pineapple daily
No dairy
No refined sugar
No sexual relations of any sort
And the list went on and on.
Any deviation or failure to adhere to the list would be considered a breach of contract. I didn’t want to think about what happened to girls who broke the rules. Even though everything to this point had been black and white and to the point, there’d been an inherent air of danger drifting around the confines of the car like a fine layer of smoke that you couldn’t exactly see but you could smell.
Madame Moirai wasn’t fucking around. This wasn’t a game. The stakes were high and the threat real if I failed to uphold my end of the bargain. I wanted to reassure the man I wouldn’t bail but my lips had gone numb.
I was making the worst mistake of my life or I was buying my ticket to freedom.
Time would tell.
In the meantime…I had to act like nothing had changed — which meant dealing with my fucking mother.
2
I made it home just in time for my mother to wake up from her vodka stupor, which was always a treat. Today must’ve been her day off. Lucky me.
“What are you doing, whore?” she slurred and for a minute I froze. Did she know? How could she? Oh, wait, calling me a whore was her go-to when she couldn’t pull my name from her alcohol-soaked brain. I ignored her and kept moving. Maybe I’d make it to my room before she could stop me.
“I’ve been calling you for hours. Where the fuck you been?” Ahh, fake parental concern. How touching. “I’m almost out of smokes. You gotta make a run for me.” And, there’s the real reason she was hot to get me on the phone.
I muttered a quick lie, “My phone died,” and pushed open my door. I didn’t bother shutting it behind me. The thin particleboard was no match for my mother when she was dead set on getting in and I didn’t want to replace another door when she busted it down. “I have homework,” I told her, bouncing on my bed and grabbing my backpack.
“Homework. Fuck that. Like you’re going anywhere.” Her frizzy auburn hair stood on end like she’d stuck her tongue in an electrical outlet. Pictures hidden in a drawer told me Carla had once been beautiful but now, she was a scary caricature of a woman teetering on the edge of her own humanity. Broken dreams and the constant bitterness of disillusionment had a way of chipping away at a person’s soul. At this point, my mother was nothing but booze and arthritis bound up in a meat suit. Her hands shook as she tried to light her cigarette. “I know you’re lying to me. You fuckin’ around?”
I didn’t bother answering. Instead, I tried to focus on what I could, even though my heart was pounding in my ears.
“You must think I’m fuckin’ stupid or somethin’. I know what you’re up to. When are you going to get it through your thick skull that you ain’t nothing special? You think you’re going off to college like the rest of them girls? You’re a fuckin’ dumbass. Can’t even get good enough grades to do nothing more than wait tables, you uppity bitch.”