La Petite Mort

‘How much did he pay this time?’

Clotho jumped and asked me. I was still laying on the bed, my shirt half done and my legs still moist. It was a beautiful summer morning, I could not stop watching the birds pass by. But I knew that Clotho had no patience so I turned to her.

I told her that he paid £450.

She looked at me with anger and shock.

‘Why on earth would you let him pay you that much? We charge £500 for two hours, why did you go so low?’

She was right, it was lower than what we expected, however I did not even think that £500 was even worth it. If it was £1k then I would have said ‘Fair’, maybe. When you look at it from the outside it may seem like an easy job, you open your legs up and then they thrust themselves in you. But we all know it is not like that.

They usually have the ugliest faces around the world, they are married or have partners, children, they feel entitled to every part of you, they take pleasure in seeing you squirm, to see you in pain. As you go through my clients the more you feel like a slaughterhouse, as if it is like a curse, the more men touches you the more you lose a bit of yourself. People think that I am saying this because I am ashamed, I am not. You lose yourself because you know that these men with no manners, respect or simple humanity obtain such wealth and use you like a toy, I do not think we should be the ones ashamed of ourselves but them.

‘What are you thinking? Are you not going to shower?’

She was playing with her black hair, I never knew if it was her true colour. She always played with it like a piece of yarn. I met with Clotho through one of these men. They took us outside, introduced us to each other and at the end forced themselves on us. We were both looking at each other’s eyes, face to face, almost mirroring the same exhaustion and counting the minutes. They wanted us to kiss, to lick each other, they even made the ‘Eiffel Tower’ pose, it was quite lame.

I was lucky that day, compared to Clotho, who had to entertain the man’s friend afterwards too. When she came home, she had bruises all over her and her mascara was smudged, all the way down to her neck.

She was a year older than me, her parents kicked her out when she was young and she knew that her looks would save her, if we can call this saving.

To find clients easier, she found a website and then taught me about it too. She was very clever even though she did not go further than year 11. She had such a sharp face, almost like a painting. She loved herself, when time allowed and hated herself when she gave herself away.

I was a master’s student, studying Publishing, I got suspended when I could not afford to pay my last instalment, and never went back due to lack of money. That is when I got into this business. They always said that I had an innocent face, maybe that is why Clotho and I complimented each other, two opposites brought together by vampires.

That is what we referred to them as ‘vampires’, they sucked our soul one by one, murderers disguised under their lust. Before we ended up in this situation, we thought men were not that bad and as soon as we stepped in our toes to this swamp, we understood that men were worse than what we thought.

We shared this house with 2 other girls, 4 bedrooms and 4 sex toys. That is what they called us and we let them, if you argued with them they would get violent and try to belittle you with their money.

There was Lachesis, who was known to be like our ‘mother’. She was 6 years older than us and was the one who made sure that we were safe, she was fearless. When a man did something wrong, she would report them to the police, or scare them off with that threat. She would take photographs of them and find their relatives, wives and what not, in case they did something to us or tried to threaten us, which happened regularly.

Lachesis had copper curls on her head, thin top lip and big bottom lip, she was very pale and her black eyes scared people off, which is what she wanted. She was quite tall, thin and moved like a ghost.

The other was Atropos, she took care of our finances, made sure that we had everything and regularly got us tested. We thought that Lachesis and Atropos were together, they slept together and whenever they were together, they never let go of each other’s eye.

Atropos had golden hair, down to her waist, she had long curves that resembled a wobbly thread or a ballet dancer’s ribbon. Her eyebrows were thick and shadowed her blue eyes. She got lots of clients, she reminded most men of their daughters.

I got up to shower and took of my clothes, they had his smell, I always wondered why they always smelled the same way, one cologne spread through all of these disgusting men like a virus. I chucked them to the laundry basket and let the sun kiss my skin. I let the water get warmer, even though it was 36 degrees, I still needed the boiling water on my skin, to get rid of the dirt. I washed myself three times after the clients and brushed my teeth five times. It did not matter how many times I washed my inside or outside, it still took a few days for the feeling to pass.

Clotho wanted to go out to shop, one thing that we could do was, live well. We could afford expensive stuff, received gifts endlessly in exchange of something precious. We sneaked in men when it was either too late or too early, we were always careful. We let them get drunk so they would never remember the address, if they wanted to come back again, they would simply have to call us, Lachesis took care of that.

Clotho always dated with eligible guys, all rich in some sort of way, they did not know the ugly side of her and I do not think they needed to. What we were doing was out of necessity, not out of pleasure. We tried to find jobs for 8 months, went through our savings and realised we will have to keep looking and at the same time do this job. In some other places, they called it ‘Student Services’.

Atropos and Lachesis only saw each other, no one else existed. When they slept with men, they would use lube as they could not get wet, and we did not blame them for it.

I, on the other hand, I had sex only. Outside of our clients, I only saw men that I liked or desired in discreet places. I would go to their places mainly and leave after an hour or two, it was my way of reminding myself that I had a choice and say in what I let in. Three of them was shocked by this act. The men I was seeing usually wanted something more, a relationship, a date, I could not do it.

I did not know why but I did not want a man, I liked sex and I loved lusting after men, that was it. I could not trust them, I knew that they were all animals inside. I met with some nice guys, that was it. They were at the end all ruled by their libido. Maybe I met with the wrong crowd, but when that crowd entails more than 30 people, it becomes a statistic.

When I came downstairs Atropos cooked us breakfast. We had olives, beef sausages, eggs, toasted bread, tomatoes covered in olive oil, basil and some other bits. I told them that breakfast was the most important meal of the day, so they adapted to this role. We had freshly squeezed orange or grapefruit juice most days, I preferred pomegranate most days. Clotho told us that she was going out with her beau. We thought they were getting serious, he even came to our house and greeted us, asked us questions and we acted like her bestest friends. We hoped that he would propose, take her out of this place, we wanted her to be saved and we knew that this was her biggest dream, to not worry about money and how to survive.

They wanted me to date, to settle with someone, I was only 22 and I only dreamed about going back to university to finish my dissertation. I secured an internship at a publisher 2 weeks ago, I was only working 2 days but if I was successful, they were going to offer me a full time job, so I worked as much as I could. I adored our team and they adored me back, like their daughter.

My bosses were all men and they all lived in different places. The other week when I went to a stockist to pitch our publishing house as the sales person, the owner’s family member was running the show and he was a bit touchy. I thought it was a culture difference and did not say much, he told me to come back on Sunday and that he will introduce me to the owner. When I went back, he became more touchy, he proposed to go for drinks, dinner and kept squeezing my arm, putting his head to my head. When I told this to St, he told me to not go back there.Yesterday when I went to meet with Sh, he told me that St told him about what happened to me and he was furious about the guy, told me to never go back there and that he would be sending an email to the owner, calling them out on their behaviour. I felt safe with them, and they were men.

I thought I was really bad at my job so far, I did not make a single sale for our books. I made connections, I got feedback, noted whatever the stockists said but the publishing world moved slower than a turtle. However I enjoyed challenging myself, I was taking in men that would have been imprisoned if it wasn’t for their money, compared to that the publishing world was a new born baby to me.

Whatever income fell on my hand, I spent on myself. I took myself out to restaurants and bought ‘luxuries’ as one would call it. Perfumes, clothes, products for my skin and what not. I was not holding money for the rainy day because my days were already sunken deep. I had nothing to lose except money, so I spent it.

After a while my job stopped giving me ‘sales’ jobs, they wanted me to manage projects, to give them ideas, so I did. Another form of relationship found, that was built on trust and respect.

When I finished my shift, I met with Clotho, Atropos and Lachesis at L’Autre. It was one of our favourite restaurants. I opened the crimson door and Anka saw me straight away.

‘They chose to sit at the garden today, come come…’

She opened the back garden door, I have never been here, no one was really allowed here but Anka said that their customers wanted more outdoor seating area as it was sunny. I kissed them one by one and Atropos pulled out her cigarettes and handed them to us.

There were rich couples around us, the ones with white hair and white pearls. Atropos prepared off-white pearls, Lachesis liked natural pearls (the ones that did not look like a ball), Clotho adored white pearls on the other hand and I prepared pink pearls.

They did not know that the people they were dining next to were whores and they could never tell because we knew that deep down it was just a job. We were covered in linens, silks and cottons, we did not spend money on polyester and what not, we found it as a waste of time and money.

One of the woman leaned down to us and smiled.

‘What are you girls studying? Taking a break from your classes I see.’ And she winked.

Atropos openly said that she is studying Business at LBS, which she was. Clotho said that she was studying Brand Marketing at UAL, which was true. Lachesis said that she studied International Relations at LSE but now she is looking for work, as it was the case. I told them my story and the old couple were shocked. I suppose we did forgot our identities from time to time and we needed people to remind us.

We all laughed together after the woman said that it was really impressive and her husband joined in.

‘Our daughter always wanted to be like you guys, it is good to see her reflection in other’s.’

Then they both smiled at each other, a tear dropped from this woman’s corners and he had to excuse himself to the loo.

We grinned our cigarettes to the ashtray and got up. We surrounded her and asked her if she was okay. Her face was frozen but she broke it free and started to laugh.

‘I am sorry for our behaviour. It is not you guys, nothing to do with you really.’

Then she covered her mouth, Clotho grabbed a napkin and knelt down, tapped the napkin on her wet face.

‘Our daughter have been missing for 2 months, we are still looking for her but there isn’t much to do.’

We all froze. Told Anka to put our tables together and when her husband came back we ordered pierogies, goulash, golonka and bigos & mash. They also ordered two bottles of wine and for them, we drank it, as it was needed.

‘I am Edward by the way and this is my wife Carol. To cut to the chase, we went to Mexico for our daughter’s birthday two months ago and she wanted to go out with her friend, when we woke up in the morning she was still, well, not at the hotel.’

He took a sip and made a gesture to send the fly away.

‘Anyways, we searched for her, called the police, the hotel helped us a lot and there were no signs of her. They tracked her phone location and they found it in Louisiana. We went there with the police, nothing. She has been lost ever since.’

We didn’t know what to say so we just drank the glass of wine that was sitting across us. Then I looked up and asked.

‘What do you think happened? She is not, dead, clearly.’

Then all three had a go at me.

‘How can you ask such an insensitive thing? What is wrong with you?’ And they all echoed each other.

So I put the wine glass down and told them to calm down and apologised if I offended them.

‘No no, it is alright girls. She is not dead, for sure, we think she is alive, so does the police.’

Then they looked more miserable as we understood what was the case.

As I was putting some pierogies to their plates I could not hold myself.

‘Do you think she has been, well, do excuse me, but trafficked?’

Edward teared up and Carol shook her head. They raised their glasses and we all shouted ‘For Maxine’.

After this, we paid for our food. Then as Carol and Edward were leaving Clotho told them to wait for a bit and gathered her courage to ask them the question that has been eating her.

‘Can we have a photo of her? Maybe we can help you guys in some shape or form.’

They couldn’t believe what Clotho asked and Edward straight away pulled out his wallet, gave a photo to us. We couldn’t believe our eyes, she was a teenager, 12 or 14 years old.

We told our farewells and went to a cocktail bar.

We got French 75’s first. Lachesis opened her mouth and shut it.

‘Spit it out!’ Atropos claimed.

‘Do you guys think that our parents ever wonder whatever happened to us?’

We all froze and thought, how we were someone’s kid, someone’s sister and we fell silent.

Clotho looked at me and said ‘Well, she does not have to worry about much, her parents do not know what she does and she sees them every month.’ And laughed.

But I knew them all, how they lost parents, brothers and sisters. Clotho’s parents were rich for example, she went to private schools, so did Atropos. I went home, showered and put my head on the damp pillow.

I wondered if Maxine was getting ready to sleep or if she had a man inside her or well, if she passed out from her rounds. We were lucky compared to her, again, we had some power of what went between our legs.