His hair is shorn, his eyes are hard and a small graze on a cheekbone hints at ruby-red blood. He has the corrupted beauty of a handsome man who’s too fond of danger. I wonder if he’s a dealer or a pimp. He jerks my arm, urging me to stand.
“Thank you,” I reply, and I know I have him: my victim, my prince.
I leave my pedestal and cash in a locker at the train station and, as the light fades, we walk through town. I pat my sweat dry but don’t bother changing. I’ve loosened my hair and it tumbles past my shoulders in crazy pink tails. I hook the drapes of my toga over one arm and walk barefoot. My soles are as tough as old boots, a legacy from my hippie days, and I shun shoes whenever I can. I look like a cerise Medusa and beside me is David, worthy of Michelangelo, eating a burger from a polystyrene tray.
“There are more lucrative ways to earn money on the streets,” he says through a mouthful of food. “I could show you where to start. Pretty girl like you is wasted as a statue. Plenty of men who’d appreciate your charms. Trust me, you could make a fortune.”
“Are you trying to make me your sex slave?” I ask hopefully.
David laughs, throws his burger box into a bin and wipes the back of his hand across his mouth. A chunky wristwatch peeps from the sleeve of his suit. He’s very flash.
“Because I’d like that,” I continue. “I’d like to be your whore.” Saying the words is easier than I’d anticipated. I’ve kept my desires to myself for so long that voicing them is a leap of faith, but once I’ve started, the words simply flow. “You could do whatever you want to me,” I say. “Let other men use me, as well. But I’ve never been a whore before. I might need some practice.”
“Nah, it’s a doddle,” says David. “All you have to do is open your legs.”
I don’t think he’s quite understood. “I think you should give me a test run,” I reply. “Make sure I’m good enough. And I think I should know what it’s like to meet a punter who wants to do terrible things to me.”
“Uh-huh? What sort of terrible things?”
“Call me names,” I say. “And, um, maybe I need to know how it is to go with a guy who gets off on kidnapping women, someone who wants to tie me up and gag me, who wants to use me as his plaything. A guy who won’t take any notice of my screams. A guy—”
David swings to face me, grabs me around the arms, then bundles me backward into an alley. A few people glance our way, but nobody intervenes. Given that I’m chalk-white in a toga and David’s in a suit, they probably think we’re performance artists or actors. He slams me up against the wall, a hand clamped to my mouth. He glares at me, eyes full of glee.
“Dirty little bitch,” he says, and he shoves a hand between my legs, bunching up the folds of my toga. “Gagging for it, aren’t you?” He rubs the cotton hard against my cunt. “Aren’t you, slut?”
And I moan that I am, while thinking how times have changed since the sixties.
“Come on,” he says. “I’ll give you a test run.” He grabs a fistful of my hair and frog-marches me deeper into the alley. He turns left, and I stumble ahead of him into a wider backstreet bordered by higgledy-piggledy buildings with narrow fire escapes zigzagging up their brickwork. Small, grimy windows cast smudges of light into the dusk of evening, steam plumes from vents, and clanging saucepans and barked orders punctuate the seedy calm of this hidden street. We are behind a stretch of restaurants and cheap hotels, stumbling through the grubby reality that feeds and fuels the tourist trade.
It’s quieter here. David seems to know where he’s going and that makes me nervous. I start to wonder if this is what I really want. Oh, I know I’ll win, I always do, but as David shoves me into a recess, I have to ask myself: At what cost? I’ll escape with my life—if you can call it that—but what might this do to my mind?
In the recess is a fire door partially blocked by a stack of wooden pallets, and the lilac of a UV insect zapper glows from a small, wire-mesh window. David presses me against a narrow wall, his forearm across my neck, pushing my chin high. He’s breathing fast, his eyes are wild, and that faint scab on his cheekbone gleams in the purplish half-light.
“Test run, eh?” He covers my breast with his free hand, pummeling through my toga. “You like that?” he asks. “You like it when guys touch you there?”
“Yes,” I whisper.
David grins and I note he has excellent teeth. “Well, listen up,” he says. “It’s not about what you want. You’re a whore, see? Just a cheap little whore, so no one gives a fuck whether you like it or not.” His eyes are fixed on mine and he fluffs up the skirts of my gown, pinning the folds back with a thigh until he can reach between my legs. “Okay?”
I nod. David rubs briskly at my underwear, fingers sawing before he pushes the fabric deeper into my wet split, separating me there. His forearm leans harder against my neck and he moves his face closer to mine as if to better gauge my response. I feel weak in every limb, so aroused I might melt to the floor. After all those hours on my pedestal, a remote and frozen beauty, untouchable and on display, it’s wonderful to know the hot press of desire in a dingy backstreet. It feels like the closest thing to life—life in all its murky, messy, furtive glory—that I’ve known for such a long time.
Sweat prickles under my arms and I hope I don’t turn too pink too soon. When I groan my pleasure, David slips two thick fingers past my underwear. “You’re not meant to be enjoying this,” he says, and he hooks his fingers inside me, rubbing so perfectly I can’t help but groan again. “Hot little slut,” he says approvingly.
He steps back, releasing me with his hands but not his eyes. He whips off his tie, his gaze never once leaving mine. Sneering, he cracks the strip of cloth in the air, clearly relishing his own brutal purpose. I can see strength flex in his torso beneath his shirt and his sweat smells good and manly.
“Turn around,” he says. His voice is scarily tender. For decades I’ve wanted someone to talk to me like that.
“No,” I whisper.
In the small silence that follows, I wonder if I’ve gone too far. If I had a living heart, it would be thumping in fear and excitement right now. Anger darkens his brow and I know I said the right thing because he doesn’t tell me again. Instead, he spins me around, hissing that it wasn’t a fucking question, it was an order. He twists my arm, pushing me face forward over the stack of pallets. His thighs press against mine, holding me still as he clasps my wrists behind my back. I wriggle and kick, knowing it’s futile.
“Get off me!” I say as I feel his looped tie tightening on my wrists. He tugs, binds and knots, deftly trapping my hands. Grabbing a bunch of my hair, he arches my neck backward.
“It wasn’t a fucking question,” he says again, and I hear the rasp of him unzipping. With one hand, he pushes my toga up, then yanks my underwear down, exposing my cunt and cheeks. The tip of his cock is stout at my entrance, then he surges in, packing my wetness with his solidity. His thrusts are ruthless. “Not. A fucking. Question,” he snarls, pumping away at me.
I protest and he immediately makes a gag of my hair, ramming pink snaky lengths across my mouth. He pulls as if my hair’s a bridle and I splutter and cry, hating the texture and the taste.
“Shut up,” he hisses. “No one’s gonna take any notice of your screams.”
And I come so hard, my clit nudging at a hump of fabric as decades of wanting shiver and clutch. I’m left feeling as limp as a rag doll, and all I want to do is take it as he rams on and on into my soft swollen hole. I let him come—I think it’s only fair—then I do what I always do: kill.
Or at least, that’s my intention. As my strength swells, I break free of my bondage and whirl around, attacking so fast he barely sees it. I slam him against the wall, my toga unraveling, and latch on to his neck. It’s bristly with stubble and when I puncture his skin, that familiar coppery warmth floods my mouth.