Dirty Girls

by Rodzil LaBraun

  DIRTY

  GIRLS

  Rodzil LaBraun

  © 2020 Rodzil LaBraun

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, names and locations are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real people is purely coincidental. Any references to real people or locations is used fictitiously.

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  PROLOGUE:

  I sat quietly as I studied the unbelievably attractive women seated around the table. Each were so remarkably different, and stunning in their own way. I found it difficult to believe my luck.

  From long flowing hair to tight little curls. There were buxom beauties as well as sexy slender waifs. Mesmerizing eyes, seductively soft lips, and a recognizable appreciation for having a man in their midst.

  Dirty girls, all of them. But that was for a reason. Their survival depended on it.

  I was starting to like them dirty. Because that was their condition when they were under my control. And I was really growing fond of having them follow my orders.

  CHAPTER ONE:

  I stood in front of the mysterious portal. It was surprisingly unimpressive. Stones, in no particular order or shape, surrounded a blackness. They told me that there would be nothing to see, but still, I expected more than this.

  The inactive teleportation entryway was less like a dark cave, as they had described it to me, and more like a vertical stagnant surface of a nasty bayou pond. The slight shimmer challenged that description, too. It could just as well be a solid obsidian surface with a nice wax job.

  "Put your hand through it," a male voice from behind encouraged me.

  "Through what?" I asked in jest. I was told that the ebony section in question was actually an entrance to another world. The two suited representatives of the project that came to me went to great lengths to convince me of such. Otherwise, I wouldn't be here. Or maybe I would. My couldn’t-care-less attitude, completely self-diagnosed, didn't really limit what exactly I was willing to do.

  "It is not solid," the female scientist told me, as if reading my mind. Her addition to the team was doubtlessly meant to persuade me. That was plausibly the real reason why I was actually here. I had been honeypotted. Though I had no idea what her petite body looked like below her bulky work clothes and white jacket, I imagined a wiry stripper's body. But there was nothing so far to justify that assumption. She was pretty, nonetheless. Very much so. In a smart and nerdy, chess club kind of way.

  That wasn't my particular taste in women. In prison, though, you couldn't be too choosy. Hell, any person that swayed their hips like a woman was attractive to many of my cellmates. When Doctor Zhang entered my visitation room, she was the sweetest thing that I had seen in person in quite some time. That was, I deduced, the main reason that she was added to the team. She was originally listed as seventh on the hierarchy of scientists working this wormhole type of project. But my attention helped her leap over some of her associates to the top three.

  I was at the point where it didn't really matter. A cute face. Maybe a glimpse of a skinny ankle. An inadvertent wink. That was the best that I could hope for on death row. At least until I realized that they needed something from me.

  Need was maybe too strong of a term. Want was probably more accurate. I couldn't possibly be their only option. It was the legality of the situation that limited their choices.

  We were underground, inside a huge cave in New Mexico. I was transported to the location by helicopter, bound and blindfolded. Most people were not very good at keeping secrets. My unseen companions, though, were fairly tight-lipped. The location of Corona was the only useful information that I could gleam. It was about an hour from Roswell. That there was a town name that everyone knew. Aliens. The home of the UFO freaks and scams.

  The crew of this crazy project must have been set up in the cavern for quite some time. Surfaces had been flattened to accommodate their needs. More than a dozen gray tables were in position, with plenty of chairs provided to match. A shitload of electrical cables were strapped together to slither out the only entrance, connecting all shapes and sizes of equipment whose functions I could only guess.

  People of varied backgrounds showed up to see me off. Well, they didn't really give a shit about me. It was all about the portal. Military uniforms. High ranking officers at that. A bunch of lab coats, too. Then at least a dozen that were in expensive suits. No one was smiling, though. Any jokes that I decided to crack were purely for my own entertainment. Very few people even made eye contact with me. I had expected a better send off. This didn't make me feel any better than being led to the gas chamber.

  My orange jumper had been swapped for a nice pair of khaki cargo shorts and a plain buttoned-down-shirt to match. A brown tactical vest went over that, with many pocketed tools and attachments. The backpack reportedly had two days-worth of food and water, and a fresh shirt. But not much else. At least they weren't sending me through completely empty handed. I wasn't entirely sure if the equipment they supplied me was meant to comfort me or keep me alive.

  I debated still whether or not they really believed this shit that they were feeding me. If there was something to literally step through, I expected it to lead directly to my death. Maybe this was their new way of dealing with those sentenced to die. My lawyer claimed otherwise. Of course, he was in the position of taking people's money and offering them very little in return. I wouldn't put it past that guy to straight up lie to me.

  The forms that I signed looked legitimate. With not much else to do I read them word for word. They spelled out in lengthy legal terms the same thing that the suits described. A portal to the unknown. Instant death a possibility. A few minutes of horror before releasing my last breath was just as feasible. Best case scenario was to survive a couple days before dying of thirst. Being eaten by an alien was even listed in the fine text as a possibility.

  I pushed my fingertip into the blackness before me. There was no resistance. No ripple, either. My finger simply disappeared. I pulled it back to find it still attached, unstained and still dry. That was good, but weird.

  Next, I pushed my brand-new leather, weatherproof hiking boot through. I watched as it vanished up to the top of my tan ankle socks before yanking it back into my reality. Nothing so far suggested that what they told me was not true.

  Exactly what did they tell me? They said that on the other side of that blackness was another planet, possibly far away from our solar system. That was still hard to believe, though. Any evidence the back up their claim was not presented. A vertical puddle surface with unique qualities was not quite enough to convince me.

  They said that I would
be the fifth person to enter the portal. The previous four never returned. That information seemed to suggest that they were being totally upfront with me. The signals from their bracelet beacons and analytical equipment have yet to reach the Earth. Perhaps they never would. I could simply be the next unwanted human to be tossed into the galaxy's trash can.

  Everything that I suggested in my interview they claimed to have already tried. A rope around my waist to pull me right back. A boomerang. Their version was much more scientific, but still failed. Anything that went entirely through could not immediately return.

  I was already facing the death sentence. This particular option didn't look much better as far as my final demise. But at least I could possibly get a little excitement out of this. And a few more glimpses of Doctor Zhang. Requests for nude photos of the young Asian woman were immediately denied. As was my plea for a lap dance.

  Any camera that had been plunged through the portal on the end of a pole yielded no images. Just blackness. I heard rumors that probes launched were never heard from again. Of course, the galaxy was huge. If I believed this bullshit that a planet from another star system lay on the other side of that blackness, it was reasonable to assume that it was many light years away. Any signals would take a while to return to Earth.

  I didn't really pay as much attention to the briefings as I should have. It was just difficult to believe any of this malarchy. I figured that tossing me into this darkness was cheaper for the state than going through with my scheduled execution by lethal injection. Standing directly in front of it, testing it, I had all kinds of questions that may have been answered by my thick packet of ignored information. I should have requested them to toss it into my backpack. Give me some reading material for wherever the hell I was going.

  I glanced back at the lovely doctor one more time. She was not entirely oblivious. Another scientist beside her tapped her elbow to get her attention. The smile and timid wave that she sent my way wreaked of discomfort. She was not happy about being put in this position. Entertaining a mass murderer that volunteered for the project was not what she signed up for. I almost felt for her. But compassion was not easy to come by in my situation. What I had left after my joke of a trial dwindled away staring at the walls of my cell.

  I placed one hand on the rocky edges of the blackness and thrust my head through. Nothing. Just complete darkness. I stuck out my tongue, but it did not appear just inches below as it should have. Maybe it was nighttime over on planet Z. That was what I chose to call it. The room full of people had a technical name for it. Something Greek or Latin probably. I didn't give a shit. If I was the one going there, I could call it whatever I wanted. I chose to name it after the good, though reluctant doctor. Z for Zhang. They refused to tell me her first name. Maybe they thought there was a slim chance that I might escape and look her up online, show up at her house with a large knife. What dumb fucks.

  Refused tell me her first name. Didn’t even try to pass off a fake one on me. Really? Dozens of people were there in that cavern, and I was still as lonely as any man could ever be. Her name would have made a difference to me. But no. I had to come up with my own guess, then convince myself that it was her real one.

  Asia. That's the name that I settled on. It would help me remember her face, I figured.

  When I pulled back from the portal, my head was still attached. And there were no cheers of delight to find me still in one piece. I was not even congratulated. They evidently had seen it many times before. If someone or something stayed attached to this side, there would be nothing to see. It was only speculation that there was anything at all on the other side beyond that.

  The lack of appreciation was still somehow pissing me off. I didn't want to die that way. I spent the last three months preparing my brain for death. I was ready. Whatever would happen after my spirit leaves my body, assuming that also wasn't bullshit, had to be better than remaining here. I was dirt to these people. A specimen to document, then move on.

  Someone was talking to me after that. But I blocked them out. I was too busy psyching myself up. They were still yacking away from a safe distance as I stepped into the blackness. My foot landed on something solid. I then shifted my weight forward, sending my entire body into the nothingness, ready for the next step. I was still blind to my surroundings at that point.

  My other foot hit ground, too. But not firmly. It was a slope with loose rocks. Without use of my vision, I wasn't sure. My momentum sent me continuing forward as my boots lost grip with the ground. My arms flailed at the void in vain. I was falling. The sensation was undeniable, like being in a dark elevator when the supporting cable snapped. My stomach lurched, my last meal threatening to revolt.

  A bright green sky then appeared out of nowhere. And trees, too. A shitload of huge trees. And the weightlessness continued, which seemed weird. Then, I remembered that I was falling. My unprepared ass hit a rocky cliff wall. My hands instinctively went to it as well as I slid and bumped painfully in my descent. At least thirty feet I dropped before I busted through the branches of a brittle yellow tree, then landed on the ground.

  Pain resonated through my joints, my back, and my ass bone. "Fuck!" I screamed out. Then I started laughing at my own choice of first word uttered in this strange place. They didn't provide a script, of course. It wasn't like I was on national TV. But everything was supposedly being recorded and transmitted. I wondered if the scientists would laugh too when they finally receive my signal. Then I resigned that the moment would likely be lost of them. They would classify it as a predictable response considering the situation, not the least bit noteworthy.

  My humor came to an abrupt end when I finally spotted the human body beside me. It was a rotting corpse dressed exactly like me. The side of his head was resting on his shoulder, neck apparently broken from the fall.

  I was lucky to be alive. Despite my unspoken hopes, the portal did not lead to any place on Earth. I had fantasized about this project unknowingly being my means of escape. That would have been freaking awesome. But, no. There was no mistaking that planet Z was a completely different world.

  CHAPTER TWO:

  A few months earlier I was very pissed. That extreme emotion was due to a poker game that did not go my way, helped along by the owners of the establishment. Perhaps I should back up a little to set the stage.

  I grew up in an urban community in Charlotte North Carolina known as Hidden Valley. When I was still little, my dad was a banker and we lived in a decent single-family home. Nothing too extravagant, but comfortable. We had nice furniture and televisions, took vacations in the islands, and had two sweet rides. My father did quite well financially, providing for the family until I was seven years old. It all went quickly downhill from there.

  Reportedly, he was an accomplice to some wrongdoing and lost his job at the bank. He didn't have do any time in prison, so word on the street was that he ratted out the real criminals. Not only did that make things hard for him, his three children were forced to suffer difficult childhoods, labelled as untrustworthy, like it was somehow in our blood.

  There were a couple years when things were very unpredictable. He traded in the cars for cheaper ones, sold the time share, and moved us into a three-bedroom apartment. My father dabbled with some underground jobs after that, but it was rumored that he really sucked at it. His reputation likely made it challenging for him to get a fair shake. Eventually, he settled into a labor position at a distribution center. He went from handling high profile bank accounts to slinging five thousand boxes a day into trailers.

  As the oldest, I tried to help out as best that I could. My stay-at-home mom had already taken a position at the local convenience store as a clerk, later working her way up to Assistant Manager. With my persuasive tongue I was able to get a part time gig selling shoes when I was just sixteen. It didn't pay shit, though. It wasn't until I made some questionable friends in the neighborhood that I was able to roll some decent paper.

  I did armed rob
bery a few times. A dozen or so drug runs as a hired gun. I took up computer programming in school, so I was able to figure out how do some cyber hacking. I tossed some cash to my Mom on the down low, and she kept it a secret from my father. Some of the rest went into casual drug use. But I managed to regularly blow most of my money on gambling.

  There were a bunch of casinos in my hometown and I tried a variety of games. Nothing but poker really did it for me. Once I learned how to handle explosives, I was able to reel in some big bucks. That got me into some high-stakes poker rooms. Unfortunately, several casinos took offense to my manner of talking and barred me from their premises. Unpaid markers may have been an issue as well. It became harder and harder to find a good game.

  Ten grand was the minimum to participate at my first underground table. I lost it all, too. I went back after the next bomb job and played again. That time I won five thousand. I couldn't control my excitement. You would have thought by my mouth that I had just won the freaking super bowl. But I never won there again. The faces across the table got less friendly each time that I sat down.

  I took a break from that scene for a few months and managed to stack some real paper. Forty-five grand in hand, I finally went back to that basement of the dry cleaners to try my luck again. Somehow, I never managed to win a single hand. They were stacking the deck against me. I kept playing, thinking that I could figure it out. Every time I thought I did, I was wrong. I lost the whole wad. Over seven thousand bucks on the last hand alone.