Pt. 1

She’s a few years older than everyone else of her profession; twenty-five, with a degree from a fucking university to boot, a family she won’t speak to, whose photographs nonetheless litter her house. She’s considered throwing them out, just like they threw her out after it happened, but she won’t. She has some honor left, after all.

The streets are colder in September, when you were next to nothing; the first couple of years, every part of her body shook in some effort to warm herself, her hands wrapped firmly around her shoulders. The other girls, so tiny compared to her, told her that doing that made it harder to advertise, advice she had no choice but to take. She quite liked them, anyhow, the only part of her new occupation she did enjoy, the others, even if some were practically ten years younger than her. Anyway, they were instrumental, spreading word along that she liked the rough stuff, that she was a torture porn fanatic’s wet dream in the making, that she had all the tools at her place. Sometimes they stared at her, checking over her body for bruises, for cuts, asking her how she dealt with it all, how she did it, why she did it.

Penance. Such a simple, two-syllable word, something that she always felt they would understand, even if they didn’t fully realize the whole story.

“Mal, I really hope you know what the fuck you’re doing. You’re mid-twenties, you know? It ain’t right for you to get beaten around like this. Mal. Mal, listen, okay?”

She turned, smiling at that statement, the expression not quite reaching her eyes as she put a gloved hand on the other girl’s shoulder. “Just keep telling them. Keep telling them that all the stuff in horror films, you can get it here. It’s a money-maker, and... I think we all deserve a little pain here an there.”

“You know... Jade, you know Jade, down a few blocks from here, right, she tried the same schtick, sorta ‘s-and-m’ kinda stuff. Ended up with her jaw broke and half her teeth missing. All I’m saying is, unless you really wanna end up like that, you have to stop this, right? I’m only telling you cuz, I dunno...”

“Kiera, please, I can handle it. Just keep saying. Anyway. Better me than you, girl.” Another half-hearted smile graced her lips, this one reaching her eyes, if only for a fraction of a second.

“Whatever you’ve done, Mal... it can’t be bad enough to deserve what you’re doing to yourself.” Kiera left with that, running a hand through her artificially straight hair; she could tell Mal was never going to tell her, and anyway... she had her own problems to worry about, rather than some fellow-whore who got it in her head that pain sold.

***

He’s the first in a while, relayed to her by Cheyenne; he’s what she typically expects from experience, Caucasian, mid-twenties, dark-haired, clean-shaven, rich. Bastard. He has the cocky look in his eye that they all have, that look of arrogant assurance that, whatever they do, daddy’s cheque can pay for it.

“You this ‘Mal’, then?” He can’t even get his voice to sound guttural and menacing, low, mobster-ish. She wishes she could laugh, giggle at his posing as some dangerous serial killer, that only made him seem even more like a stupid college student, but that would drive him away - plenty of time for self-gratification later, practically twenty minutes after all.

“Yes. You?”

“Not important.” Jesus Christ, he’s more full of clichés than they usually are.

“I’ll take you to the... place, then.” She can see his face light up at that, see how fucking excited he is by that. “It’s not far, we can walk there.”

She starts to walk, her pace almost a sprint, almost too fast for the customer to keep up; she knows they enjoy that, the brief exhilaration, quickening their heartbeat, believing it’ll only get faster as they begin the session. It was only a few blocks to the edge of town, barely ten minutes walking, to a small house, practically falling apart, the white outer paint peeling away into disrepair. Her fingers wrap around the door handle, pushing in the key to her domain, turning each in succession, pushing open the entryway, letting him step in first.

“Where...”

“It’s in the basement. Just go down the hall, there’s some stairs that’ll go down there.” She follows him as he steps toward the entrance to the basement- the dungeon, for fuck’s sake, call it what they think of it as, dammit.

Mal stays at the top of the stairway for a while, staring as he eagerly walks down, like a little boy running downstairs on Christmas. He can’t hear her come down with a bit of space between them, leaving him the assumption that she was still at the top of the stairs, that she was reluctant to engage in his fantasies, of having her tied to the bed, raped, cut, blood running down her back and into her sheets, and... if he can get away with it... having that beautiful head cut clean off, so he can do whatever he wants with that, his trophy. He can see it in his mind’s eye, holding her by the hair, having her plead as he prepares to hack away at her neck with a kitchen knife, whatever he can lay his hands on. He pauses at the very last step, turning to see the crowbar as it collided with his face, all her force behind that blow as he crumpled to the ground, as she slammed a foot to the guts for good measure.

“Time to get to work.”