Hunted

“Lana!” Anna shouted into my ear excitedly. I looked in her direction, annoyed.

“You know I am not deaf and was that necessary?” I asked, frowning at her.

“Lana, I am just sooooo happy.” I sighed. There were only two things that made Anna so excited: sex and good grades. Anna and I became friends without my noticing. I always tried to keep people far away from me, but with Anna, it was impossible. She was cheerful and almost always in a good mood. She started to work at this “BDSM” strip club just because she needed money for her medical studies. She wanted to be an anesthesiologist. Her family helped her financially, but since they have five other kids, they couldn’t support her fully. That is how she ended up here.

I ran away from home when I was fifteen. I lived on the streets, ate leftovers from the trashcan, and avoided police officers. I did not want to end up in those foster homes I heard about from my stepfather when I told him once that I would report him.

Luckily, I was found by a nice-looking, elderly gentleman named Jeremy. He had a gray-afro and a kind look in his dark brown eyes. His left leg was missing. He told me that it was during an invasion of Panama. He owned a small dancing club in an unfinished, old nuclear power plant. The radioactive material had never arrived, so it was safe.

He allowed me to stay in the club and call it my new home. I got to know kids in similar positions as I was, so I stopped feeling lonely. Unfortunately, Jeremy died, and his son sold the club. The new owner kept the club, but we could no longer live there.

That was when I found my new position as a waitress in this strip club. I was sixteen, and owner Richard was happy for “fresh blood” that helped him attract new customers. Thank God that no one could ask for sex, but you could easily find those who did not understand the rule “Just look, lightly touch, but nothing else!”

“Okay, what happened?” I asked with a small smile.

“I did it! I got to this full extra course!” she exclaimed to the whole dressing room. I chuckled. “Congratulation, hun,” I said genuinely. She couldn’t stop talking for the past two weeks about how the university server shut down when she signed up for the class she wanted and accepted students from different specializations instead of students who needed that class.

“So... when are you going to finish school?” she asked. The mood in the room, where it was just two of us, immediately darkened. I sighed and felt pity for my life. Living in an old flat with eight people, sharing a space of eight square meters with another girl, and food had its costs. I had some savings, but it was hardly enough for a month, and I needed it for a whole year.

I shook my head. “Not as close I would like to be. Sometimes I think about just giving up.”

She gave me a scolding look. “Never think about giving up!” she frowned. “I believe in you. You are strong enough to get out of this situation. Something is going to happen! There is no way you would have such bad luck and never turn it around. Just start to believe in yourself. You should start to dance with us and make more money.”

“You know I don’t want to pole dance because of these regular customers for the past three years,” I said back to her. It was her turn to sigh.

I started to take off my regular clothes and put on my work clothes - sexy policewoman with high latex platform boots, the skirt only halfway down my butt, black nipple stickers with tassels, and a cop cap. It didn’t make me happy, but it made money, and I needed that to survive.

“Thank you, Anna. I will keep on fighting.”

“Promise?”

“Yes, promise.” I nod. She smiled at me lightly. “Everything is gonna be alright.” I nodded again, and we went to the club. I took the tray and started taking orders and serving people.

The club used to be a theater that closed back in the 40s. Black curtains hid the stage that was the only original thing left. Everything else was, as Dick says, renovated, but in my opinion, they destroyed its character.

I had goosebumps anytime I was close to regulars, and not in a good way. I was happy that I lived so close to the club, so I had a good apology for not letting them escort me home.

Our regulars were men over forty-five, hard-working, lonely, or who didn’t see the value in their wives.

This evening was different. In the “VIP” section, there were five men in discussion with Richard. When I passed the VIP section, Richard waved at me and waited until I came closer. “Two whiskeys with ice for these gentlemen and shots of tequila for all of us with orange and cinnamon, maybe two for me,” he pondered, then nodded. I didn’t look at his guests and headed directly back to the bar to order their drinks. While the barman was preparing the drinks for the VIPs, I cleared empty glasses from a nearby table and placed them on the bar. Then I put their order on a tray and headed back to them. I could finally examine their features properly. Three of them looked almost like gorillas. They had black sunglasses and kept looking around, probably for a possible threat. The remaining two were talking with Richard. When I walked up to them and bent down to put the first glass on the table, I saw that there were papers that looked like contracts. They removed the documents from the table so I could put the glasses down. “Two whiskeys and seven tequilas with oranges and cinnamon.” Richard checked his order, and when he saw that everything was correct, said “Be at disposal for this table.”

I nodded and looked one more time at VIPs trying to figure out their purpose here. My eyes met with one of the men. He had dark brown eyes, darker skin, and black hair, a combination that totally charmed me. My eyes widened a little, and it felt like time had stopped. “He looks exactly like Adonis,” I thought and blinked a few times to recover. I turned around and left. I had to take a deep breath and exhale.

I saw Anna go to the VIPs table to dance for them exactly how Richard liked. “She might catch the purpose of this meeting.” I thought, then shook my head and decided to continue my work. Richard called me over five times to fill the VIPs’ drinks during the evening. He would probably have called more since his usual tactic was getting his business partners drunk, but these men gave him refusal looks that gave me space for the imagination of their discussion. I was curious since they didn’t look like the typical men interested in such a low society, so I highly doubted they might be future investors.