I felt ridiculous. I was sure I looked great—I had goddam better!—but I felt ridiculous. And, judging from the glances I was getting and the way some of the people made a note of leaning in to whisper something to their neighbors, I had to guess that they thought I was ridiculous, as well.

I’d gone above and beyond for T-Built. I’d gotten exactly the sort of dress I imagined he’d want me in, and, in doing so, wound up spending nearly all of the two-thou he’d given me. Whoever heard of an eighteen-hundred dollar dress, anyway? Damn thing showed more than it covered! But it was red and sparkly; plunging neckline that let my bellybutton peek out like a snickering stowaway and a slip that rode so far up one leg I was certain anybody who watched me walking would be able to see a labia wave “hello” on my way by. Then, after buying the dress, I remembered T-Built’s words—“… wearing gowns and jewelry priced at no less than the contents of those envelopes,” he’d said—and realized it’d be in my best interest to have something shiny to hang between all the cleavage I’d be showing. And, of course, the only necklace that even remotely worked wore a taunting price tag of four-hundred dollars. After all that—after emptying the envelope he’d given me and throwing another two-hundred dollars that I really didn’t have to spend down for the gaudy, stupid costume—I’d then decided to take the extra step in leaving early. This, however, wasn’t so much my own decision as it was something Candy and I decided would be wise in the long run. Neither of us had been to this part of town, and so neither of us really had any idea of where we were going or if we’d have trouble finding the place. We’d caught the seven-fifteen bus—getting all sorts of awed and stunned looks from the otherwise casually dressed riders as we stepped on—and rolled in just before eight. Over an hour early; we were confident that we could get our flashy asses lost ten times over and still get there on time. We overestimated. The place—the place we were uncertain about; the place we thought we’d have trouble finding—might as well have had a spotlight shining down from the heavens with a big, bold sign written in starlight: “HOOKERS, COME HERE!”

So it was that Candy and I arrived at the party—overdressed and overwhelmed—over an hour early.

And T-Built, heinous asshole that he was, wasn’t anywhere to be found.

“Figures,” Candy muttered when she’d made the same observation. “We give an A-plus effort and teacher’s not even here to hand out gold stars. I’m gonna go see if I can find a high-payer who’d be willing to buy me a drink if I let him slap me with his balls.”

Then I was alone, wandering around on my own. There’d be no reading—no escaping into fantasy worlds via the neutral glow of my cell’s ereader app—and no dimly-lit and rushed jobs for me tonight. Only ten minutes on the floor and I got the look from a man with a scarred face and an Eastern European accent. Two minutes later I was in a stuffy, leather-scented library on the second floor with a cock that, from my guess, was frequently bathed in cologne barreling with relentless fury down my throat. It was, once I got past the part where I was basically being strangled and choked at the same time, sort of nice; it certainly took a lot of the usually neck-straining work out of the equation to just be able to kneel there and basically let the guy masturbate with my face. After three minutes of holding my breath and stifling my gag reflex, the James Bond villain grunted some word I didn’t understand, buried himself to the hilt, and began a series of pants that sounded like a dying animal. I felt the tip of the condom begin to bulge inside my throat, only a few inches above my sternum, and it occurred to me with some distant and morbid intrigue that, had he not been wearing the condom, I wouldn’t even have had a chance to taste his cum.

From source-to-stomach, I’d thought, almost driven to laughter by it but too busy coughing and heaving once the blockage had been removed from my windpipe.

He’d said something else in the foreign language then, gave a satisfied sigh and an approving nod in my direction. Then, seeming to treat the next series of actions as a compliment—judging from his “you’re welcome”-smile all throughout—he reached into his pocket, retrieved two twenties and a ten from an expensive-looking wallet, and dropped the money between the two of us, letting it divide and flutter to my knees. Then, still wearing that smile, he tucked his wallet back into his pocket, pulled off the condom, and dropped that, too, between us, letting it splat atop one of the twenties. Nodding once more, he said something that sounded like “thank you” but had a bit too much “D”-sound in it, tucked his withering cock back into his dress pants, and left me there to sort through the payment.

I’d made it to the bathroom in time to vomit, like a true class act, in the toilet. I distantly thought that T-Built would be proud of me for not getting anything “offensive” on the dress or the necklace, but then I remembered this was T-Built I was thinking of and he’d likely slap me around just for upchucking after the five-round boxing match the back of my throat had just endured. Nevermind the fact that I’d even (somehow) managed to keep my makeup perfect throughout that whole ordeal. All the same, I touched up my lipstick a little, realizing that the latex had claimed a good deal of it in its pistoning fury. Sighing, I threw the condom away in the bathroom’s trash, curious what somebody might think if they spotted it there atop the small hill of wadded-up paper towels.

And—rapturous joy!—I’d only been there seventeen minutes!

The forty minutes that followed weren’t much different. I’d saunter around the massive ballroom, selling with my eyes and pursed lips just the way Candy had taught me, and wait to get the look. Then I’d be escorted to some private office or library—or, in one case, a pristine bathroom with a sculpted copper handle on the toilet—and either hike up the eighteen-hundred dollar dress or guard the four-hundred dollar necklace against traces of spittle and “work.” Some were rough, others weren’t; all were indifferent, though—not worrying about whether I cringed or flinched. At one point, a John who insisted on fucking me atop a desk that probably cost more than my college tuition seemed to be offended that I looked bored. Realizing this was a deal-breaker to him, I threw myself into an Academy-level performance that—go me!—had him finishing less than a minute later. Ironically enough, he actually wound up giving me an extra twenty bucks for the performance. I slipped this into my purse, deciding I was going to try to earn more to balance out what I’d had to throw down for the necklace, and then smoothed out the dress to get back to the party.

It was, despite the change in scenery and the nature of the Johns, just like any other night. And this fact, more than any other, is what threw me. There was nothing about the fancy setting or the formal attire that separated this from that. I was still who I’d been every other night, playing at the same game with the same goals, but taking it to a different, larger field. The thought came back to me:

Why the expensive dress? Why the jewelry?

Everyone there clearly knew what I was; I had a growing stack of bills that proved that much. And not a single one of them had stopped to say “nice dress” or “lovely necklace.” I’d spent two-thousand dollars of Carrion Crew money and two-hundred of my own for nothing. I might as well have been walking around under a flashing neon sign that read “OBVIOUS HOOKER IN ABSURDLY OVERPRICED DRESS!” Worse yet, I could almost hear, in those gossipy whispers, the men who had every intention of using me agreeing that it’d be better if I’d just been “in uniform.”

Then, nearing the end of the first hour, I actually heard one man say, “Who you trying to fool dressed like that? Like we don’t know what you’re really here to do?”

Like I said before: I felt ridiculous!

T-Built had a list of rules that were basically a given at all times. The silence was one of them; we were “allowed” to talk to one another, and we were “permitted” to address the Johns if it was to answer a direct question or statement that invited a response; the only real exception to this being the “Upgrade Clause,” which T-Built explained entitled us to the right to speak freely if it was for the purposes of enticing a buyer to do something that cost more. Candy affectionately referred to this rule as the “Pink-to-Stink”-speech, but neither of us ever made such an offer and so it didn’t matter anyway. While T-Built seemed set that hooking was no different than slinging burgers—“Would you like to upgrade your Happy Pussy Meal to an Anal Avalanche Special for only fifty bucks more?”—the reality was that Johns knew what they wanted, which was a nice way of saying that Johns asked for what they could afford. More than likely they shouldn’t have been spending money on whores in the first place, but when they scratched up fifty for this or a hundred for that they weren’t in the market to negotiate. Nobody wanted to include paying for sex acts in their monthly budget, but when they did pay for sex acts they didn’t want to wake up the next morning and come to the realization that the few extra bills we’d managed to talk them out of by convincing them that pussy beat tongue any day of the week was a few extra bills that’d keep them from being able to afford their kid’s root canal. Cum had a funny way of fogging up a man’s mind, and, sure, we might be able to talk them into this-or-that by knowing how to navigate that fog better than them, but once they busted that nut the fog cleared and there was bound to be a moment of reconciliation of they didn’t agree with the manipulation we’d executed in their hindered state.

And so it was that the “Upgrade Clause” represented an exception that was never really touched upon. T-Built didn’t know this, however. The records we kept said that we got analized—and, oh-boy, did we ever—and the money we handed in reflected that fact. Didn’t matter to T-Built if the money came from an “upgrade” or not, and since the money was green and the records matched the income he accepted that we were doing the job we were meant to do and looked no further. Other rules, however, weren’t so easy to duck and weave around. There was the weight rule, which stated we weren’t allowed to “pack on” more than five pounds from what we’d been “clocked in” at when we’d first been dragged into servitude—an easy rule to follow since we barely got enough money to eat at all (especially since I’d just gone and blown an entire month’s grocery budget on half of a stupid necklace). In that case, there was really no cheating the scale—no way to bribe a weighing machine with a free blowjob or a few unpaid candid shots of our assholes. Which was another of T-Built’s unwavering rules: no filming or photography. If a John showed up wanting to take some pictures or capture some video of me or Candy in lewd poses or even in the act of servicing them, their buddies, or, an ongoing offer, each other we were expressly forbidden to allow it—a difficult process since we weren’t allowed to argue with potential buyers or otherwise say “no” to anything. It was a lot like balancing on razor wire, trying to keep the Johns happy and willing to come back and trying to adhere to a “no pornography”-rule in a day-and-age when any asshole with a newish cell phone considered themselves the next Hugh Hefner. But it wasn’t like the rule didn’t make its own sort of sense. We were meant to make money for T-Built and the Carrion Crew, and if video of our “exploits” and pictures of our orifices were being sold on the internet by every dick, Dick, and Richard who graced our alley then it represented lost funds. This, of course, wasn’t to say that Candy and I or any other of the Carrion’s prostitutes weren’t “internet famous” in some way or another. Let it never be thought that the Crew weren’t modern or progressive enough to turn a profit in the digital world. It wasn’t entirely uncommon for us to be informed that we’d been scheduled for a “photoshoot” or a “video,” and, on those occasions, we’d show up, stick whatever was presented wherever it was wanted all while bright lights and camera lenses gawked and captured it all.

Had I personally seen myself on the internet? No. While it might come as a shock to nobody, I wasn’t exactly scampering home with eager giddiness to go online and look for pictures or videos of what I’d been getting crammed down my throat—literally!—after a hard night’s work. I didn’t need a search engine or perverted intentions to see dick, and I’d be lying if I said that my vagina and anus weren’t quite frequently not happy with my line of work—using the internet to look at genitals at play was, quite frankly, the last thing on my mind at any point in the day.

After a few months of tasting nothing but latex and ramen noodles, however, I was close developing a fetish for food. By this I mean that the sight of a cheeseburger or five-scoop hot fudge sundae or—Dear God, save me!—a beautiful slab of freshly grilled filet mignon was now enough to get my mouth watering so badly that other parts of me got wet. It was not to say that the idea of the inclusion of food in a sex act intrigued me—that was just weird if you asked me—because, honestly, the moment the food made an appearance I’d likely forget there was even a guy in the room.

God, I was hungry!

Another of T-Built’s rules, the one that had me pontificating on the subject and was of increasing annoyance to me at that moment, was “no underwear.” Like the other rules, there were (sort of) exceptions—like if we decided that standing around in our bras and panties would bring in more customers, for example; too bad it’d also bring in the cops for indecent exposure—but it was otherwise just as concrete and unquestionable. Given the nature of our usual “attire,” however, this was never really a problem. The tight, “titty-popping” tops, crazy-short shorts, “fuck me” boots, and stockings all had a funny way of making things like underwear seem obsolete. Half the time, the inclusion of a bra seemed redundant given the amount of lift and hold the other stuff provided. Moreover, with how frequently we were shifting or outright removing our bottoms and with how aggressive some Johns got, panties not only represented an uncomfortable hindrance but an outright health risk—things like friction burn and chafing being a pretty big occupational hazard. What this rule represented now, however—as I continued to make my rounds through the party-goers—was an opportunity for all the stuffed-shirts and bigwigs to “test the goods.” Between the slip in the leg and the plunge of the neck in the dress, it was a simple enough process for anybody within an arm’s reach to squeeze a breast, cup a bare butt cheek, or, on more than a few occasions, actually grab at my pussy. And, as an added stipulation to this most charming of T-Built’s rules, we were not only obligated to let such a thing happen, we were actually required to encourage it. This meant that, when a man in his sixties who bared an uncomfortable likeness to the Monopoly guy decided to reach under my dress and slip a bony finger far enough inside me to reach his second arthritic knuckle, I not only couldn’t haul off and smash in his leering, liver-spot riddled face, I had to actually bend over, lean into it, and bat my eyelashes at him.

I was in the middle of asking myself why I was going through with this—why I didn’t just step out of his reach and, without making a scene, get as far away from the awful, probing effort as I could—when the question was answered.

“Having fun?” T-Built’s voice rang uncomfortably close to my ear.

Though I didn’t dare move away from the ongoing “investigation,” my vaginal walls must have involuntarily clenched—I know the rest of me certainly tensed at the sound of that voice—because Mister Monopoly pulled free as though something had tried to bite him down there.

I more felt than saw T-Built, who was close enough behind me now to make the hairs on the back of my neck itch with his very presence, as he gave the old man a questioning glance. I could imagine him giving him a “was something about this whore not to your liking?”-look, and my suspicions were confirmed when the old man offered a half-smile and a satisfied nod.

Seeming appeased by this, T-Built took my arm and started to escort me to a (somewhat) vacant corner.

“Where is she?” he demanded once we were, for the most part, out of the earshot of others. The venomous aggression in his hushed, hissing words was enough to make a half-full glass of something slosh within its confines and threaten to spill.

I blinked, startled by his tone and the broad nature of the question. “Wh-who…?” I began, then decided there was only one person he could mean and said, “Candy? I… I don’t know? We got here almost an hour ago and went straight to work.”

T-Built considered this for a moment, seeming almost—almost—satisfied by what he heard, and swiveled his head around for a moment as though Candy would suddenly and miraculously come to occupy his field of sight. “You’ve found buyers then?” he asked, still looking around.

I nodded and moved to retrieve my purse obediently, preparing to hand over what I’d earned so far. “Yeah,” I said, not sure if he’d seen the nod or not. “Quite a few, actually.”

“Not here!” he scolded, catching me with his eyes when I was only halfway through unzipping my purse. “Nobody here wants to see a whore passing over money! Put that away!”

I did.

“So where do you think she is then?” he asked once he was satisfied that I wouldn’t be embarrassing him.

It was my turn to futilely look around. I felt foolish for it even while I was doing it, but the reflex was too strong to resist. Not seeing her, I shrugged. “Not sure,” I admitted, afraid that it would be enough to get me slapped. I hoped that T-Built’s desire to avoid an embarrassing display in this place carried over to acts of pimp-on-whore violence. It did, apparently. Relieved when the sharp sting of one of his patented slaps didn’t come crashing down on my jaw, I added, “Most of the Johns have been taking me into the private rooms on the second floor. If she’s doing as well as I’ve been doing I wouldn’t be surprised if she was in one of them now.”

“Most of the Johns?” T-Built asked, ignoring the entire chunk of my statement that indicated how good business was and honing instantly on the part that could arouse any sort of suspicion.

I blushed and nodded. “O-one of them took me to the bathroom,” I explained, stammering a little—nervous—and not really sure why.

T-Built sneered at this, scanned my body from head-to-toe and back again. He seemed to be looking for any sort of imperfection, and he actually looked disappointed when he couldn’t find any.

“He took you there, you say? You sure it wasn’t the other way around?” he probed, and I made myself sick with the realization that I preferred Mister Monopoly’s “examination” over this one.

“You think I’d choose the bathroom if it was up to me?” I asked back, surprising both of us with the bite that rode along the words.

T-Built looked angry at the words, but between his new sense of control in this place and the reality behind my words there was little else he could do beside glare. Finally he nodded and issued another series of scanning glances around the room. When this, too, came up without any sign of Candy, he leaned in close.

“Just remember, Chobavitch,” it was the first time I’d actually heard him refer to me by my last name, which he typically reserved for moments when he was referring to my brother. Even still, he said it with the same acidic tone that he always used when referring directly to me—“whore”—“this is about more than just money. Anything with a pussy can make money selling it, understand? Your loyalty—your obedience—is what matters most here. The money you bring in is a rain drop in the bucket compared to the ocean you’re in this to repay. And while you brother might think that his incarceration represents some sort of freedom from our reach—some sort of easy out from paying his debts—I want it known that we, and by that I really mean I, am extending a mountain of generosity towards your family in giving you this opportunity. If I feel for even one instant that I’ve made a mistake in giving you this chance, then I will not hesitate to retract the offer and follow my baser instincts in this matter. Do you know what I mean by that?”

I whimpered, shivering, and nodded quickly.

“What do I mean by that?” he asked, grinning at his own question.

“Th-that you’ll k-k-ill me?” I said, inflecting it as a question but already knowing the answer.

Then T-Built surprised me by shaking his head and tisking at me—“Tsk tsk tsk…”—like a disappointed grandparent scolding a little child caught elbow-deep in the cookie jar. “No, whore,” he said, returning to the tried and true. Still smiling that awful smile, he guided his half-finished mystery drink into my hand, forcing me to hold it for him as he began to explain:

“I can kill you whenever I want. And without much loss to show for it, I might add. No, what I meant by that is that, should I feel that your loyalty or your earnings are not up to my satisfaction, I will have it arranged that your brother will be killed. Then I’ll see to it that your family is killed, your friends, neighbors, and anyone that might have at any time meant a thing to you. I’ll even see to it that all of their pets are killed, as well. I will create a mountain of death in your name, whore, until I feel I’ve paid the debt that you’re here to pay in pounds of meat. And then—and only then, whore!—will I finally kill you; when the weight of what you brought upon everyone in your life is, on its own, enough to make you want to kill yourself.” The words hung there, ugly and heavy and awful, and then he gave me a big smile. “So just don’t make me regret it. Make sure that your effort and your loyalty are never brought into question, alright?” He paused then, letting his eyes wander to my exposed cleavage. Then, a moment later, he let his hand follow his gaze, first cupping my left breast over the thin material of the dress, then actually slipping past it to fill his palm with my flesh. He squeezed three times, hard—earning a flinch from me with each one—and then, without any hesitation, pulled the material aside to expose the breast to any in the room who cared to look.

I gasped at the sudden exposure, but otherwise made no move to cover up or protest. I knew better.

He smiled at that, nodding even. It was one of the first acts of approval I’d seen from him. He left my breast out in the open for what felt like an eternity. I clenched my eyes shut, fighting back tears and trying to hide the rest of the world from my sight, wanting to believe that it might actually hide me from them. Then I felt three sharp impacts—“love taps,” he might call them—just over my nipple, and a second later the material of my dress was slipped back into place.

“That’a girl,” he cooed, starting to walk away from me.

And then I was alone, shivering and on the verge of tears. By some miracle, however, I had not spilled the drink that T-Built had left me holding.