“Why don’t we take a break?” he asked when he finished counting. Shawna smiled halfheartedly, and he took her hand and led her back to her room in the lot motel. She left her shoes at the door, the threadbare carpet sticky beneath her bare feet—she had no idea what was on the floor, but it tended to turn her soles black. The room was little more than a bed, an old tube TV on a dresser, and a small table in the corner next to the wall-mounted air conditioner. There was a time she would have sooner slept under the stars than in a roach-infested hovel like this.
But now all she could think about was the burning wetness between her legs, the emptiness that had to be filled. She stripped, throwing her clothes onto the filthy ground and climbing onto the bed, stretching her backside up towards Merk, wagging herself invitingly. He moved into her with a frenzied sense of need that sent her eyes rolling into the back of her head, and the next few minutes blurred away.
She arched her head back, her lips hot on Merk’s cheek as he pressed down on her from above, stronger and more diligent than Jack had ever been, and a shudder of release ran through her body, leaving her trembling when Merk pulled away. She rolled her eyes and grimaced at the heat pooling on the small of her back, but she collapsed in exhaustion, satisfied for at least a moment. She closed her eyes for just a moment, and the throbbing returned in seconds, just as urgent as ever.
“I need to get back to work,” Shawna said. She sat up and reached for her clothes. “These johns aren’t going to take care of themselves.”
“Hold up,” Merk said, holding up a small pipe. “Take a hit,” he said, holding a lighter under the bowl. “You’ve earned it.”
“What is that?” Shawna asked, eyeing the pipe skeptically.
Merk glared at her. “You want it or not, bitch?” Merk’s favor could be lost just as readily as it had been won, and to be honest, after days of pleasuring truckers—longer if you counted her time with Jack—Shawna was past caring about what she put into her body. She reached for the pipe and gingerly pinched its glass neck. Merk nodded his approval as she pressed the opening to her lips and took a deep breath.
She didn’t know what to expect, but it hit her all at once, every cell in her brain expanding just shy of its breaking point in a single instant. She nearly dropped the pipe when her arms fell limply to her sides, her eyes wide and alert, the fire between her legs roaring up across her entire body, banishing the icy blackness the demon had left behind. For the first time since it had left her, she actually felt real again.
She blinked, and the faint beginnings of the blackness began to creep back inside her.
“You okay?” Merk asked, and Shawna pulled the pipe back to her lips, taking an even deeper hit. This time, she collapsed limply back onto the bed, her eyes staring blankly up at the ceiling, a smile tugging faintly at her lips.
***
Shawna’s hands gripped tightly around a pair of handles built into the sleeper cab of her john’s rig, letting her body hang limp while he pushed into her again and again, sending waves of what felt like electricity pulsating through her body. She muttered a few odd dirty words from time to time to egg him on, his efforts becoming so enthusiastic that her oversized breasts struck her chin at one point. She didn’t particularly care about any of that—she didn’t particularly care about anything when she was iced up. It was the only thing she found that could fill the hole the demon left in her, sometimes for hours at a time.
The john collapsed on top of her, still wearing a flannel shirt that smelled of sour sweat. His weight pressed down on Shawna, and she smiled. Sex had always helped her feel just a little more whole in the demon’s absence—sex on crystal made her feel like a goddess. “Dammit,” the john muttered. He pulled free of her, his seed spilling out behind him. “You’re on the pill, right?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Shawna said, enjoying the warmth inside her. Jack had gotten her used to this feeling, and when she was high it transcended anything she’d ever felt before. It no longer seemed like a mess to be cleaned up, but like her johns were leaving a piece of their souls inside her, slowly replacing what the demon had taken. Peg had warned her about “raw riding”, as the working girls called it. Shawna knew the risks. She just didn’t care. After everything she’d done, this was the best life she could hope for, warming a trucker’s bed after a booty bump of ice. Her children were dead because of her, all but Brooke, and there wasn’t even anything she could do about that. She would take what came her way. It was all she deserved.
“I need another bump,” Shawna said, sidling up to Merk in the safe truck a few hours later, her skirt and tube-top loose and wrinkled from having been pulled on and off repeatedly. The sweat from a dozen or more truckers had mingled with hers, their tobacco-resin scent lingering on her, marking her as something unclean. On the inside, she felt the void opening up again, a fist-sized mass of ice deep within her stomach.
“I bet,” Merk grumbled, eyeing the mass of crumbled dollars that Shawna pulled out of her bra and set on his worktable, some of them noticeably wet. She reached back in, her fingers digging around her cleavage until she found a wrinkled twenty that had gotten lodged deep beneath her left breast.
“That’s a good haul,” Merk said, looking her up and down. There was a mirror on the opposite wall of the truck where the girls sometimes checked their makeup. Merk’s head jerked in its direction. Shawna turned to examine herself, and it wasn’t a pretty sight. Her hair had become frazzled, and she thought she saw a hint of gray near her temple. Her skin was brown and cracking from days walking the asphalt beneath a burning sun, and her breasts sagged limply down against her abdomen. She’d never looked her age before, but she didn’t have enough vanity left to despair at the sight of the old woman before her.
“Can I get the bump?” Shawna asked. “I met my quota.”
“And then some,” Merk agreed. “Today was supposed to be your day off.”
“I don’t need a day off,” Shawna said, irritation creeping into her voice as the emptiness slowly unfurled inside her. “I need a hit.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Merk said, holding up a little plastic pouch with a small bit of crystal inside. It was perfectly transparent, its edges sharp and angular—the highest-grade ice Merk had ever given her. She grabbed it away from him, greedily crushing it with her fist and dipping her fingers into the bag to collect the dust. She didn’t bother going anywhere private to slide her fingers down into her skirt, tucking them inside herself to deposit the wonderful substance. Smoking was fine when the quality was low, but she’d found this was the best way to take in the good stuff.
“You been here what, ten days?” Merk asked. Shawna continued to rub herself, making sure every last molecule of crystal was accounted for.
“I guess,” Shawna said, finally pulling her hand back out. She licked her fingers one after the other. “Why?”
“Made me a lot of money in those ten days,” he said, shaking his head. He seemed disappointed, but right now, with the warmth between her legs slowly spreading through her pelvis, Shawna didn’t even know what that word meant.
“I should get back out there,” Shawna said, eager to fan the flames burning up inside her. “Unless you want to do me?”
“Just hold up a minute,” Merk said, grabbing her arm and pulling her towards him. Shawna giggled, his fingers sending waves of pleasure across her skin.
“Ooh, you want it rough?” she asked, a deep chuckle in her throat. “Come on then, let me work the jerk, baby.”
“You think I want a washed-up ho like you?” Merk said, pulling back. Peg had been right about not calling him a jerk to his face, apparently. “You’ve aged ten years in ten days. Johns ain’t gonna keep paying you them premium rates the way you’re looking now. At this rate you’ll be toothless in a month.”
“Teeth just get in the way, boss,” Shawna said, leaning back towards him, reaching for his belt buckle. “Let me show you.”
“Where were you headed?” Merk asked, batting her aw
ay roughly. “Before you and Jack got into it?”
Shawna froze, remembering for the first time in days. She’d had a purpose, a plan—not a good one perhaps, but something to keep one foot in front of the other. No, she still had that. She needed crystal. As long as she could keep burying the scars the demon had left her with, nothing else mattered. That was enough.
“Huh?” Merk pressed.
“Uh, daughter,” Shawna said, the words sticking to the roof of her mouth. “I had a daughter.”
“Where is she?” Merk asked. Shawna had heard some of the other girls talk about pimps threatening their families. Maybe Merk thought he could hold that over her. Maybe he even thought he could grab Brooke and turn her out just like her mom. That would be a sight to see, once Brooke gave him that smoke-filled glare.
“I don’t know,” Shawna said. She liked Merk, mostly. He was nicer to her than Jack had been—nicer than Ed had been too, if she was really being honest. “She got taken.”
“You were trying to catch up to her,” Merk said, nodding. There was something in his eyes Shawna had never seen there before. “Look, bitch—er, lady. My cousin runs a lot up in Lee’s Summit. Why don’t you take a couple days, get yourself cleaned up, and you can hitch a ride up that way.”
“You… don’t want me working anymore?” Shawna asked, somehow feeling strangely offended. “I made you a lot of money.”
“You’re running yourself into the ground when you should be out looking for your kid,” Merk said. “The guys are saying you don’t even let them use protection. You know how crazy that is?”
“I’ll take my chances,” Shawna said, dipping her fingers back into the bag of ice.
“Just take it easy,” Merk said, grabbing the bag away from her. “You can still turn a few tricks to get by, but you’ve got to slow it down or you’ll be just like all the other lizards on the lot. Ain’t no going back from that.”
“Fine,” Shawna said, feeling cast out, like she wasn’t good enough to be among the company of the crack whores and needle-marked junkies that made up the rest of Merk’s workforce. “I’ll go. But give me back my ice.”
She retreated back to her ratty motel room with her stash, stopping at the convenience store across the street for a ham sandwich, a soda, and a large bottle of gin. She opened the gin while she was standing in the checkout line, taking a deep swig before she pulled a wrinkled twenty out of her bra and pressed it against the counter. The clerk was just a kid, a gangly boy with acne on his face, and he gave her a dirty look.
“What are you doing tonight, hun?” Shawna asked, leaning over the counter, her breasts swaying under the boy’s gaze as she gave into the familiar throbbing in her loin. It was always this same boy behind the counter, or sometimes an older woman that Shawna thought might be his mom. As young as he was, he was probably a virgin, and for some reason that thought summoned a noticeable dampness to Stacy’s stolen panties.
His face went blank, and his mother emerged from the back office, a lumpy blonde about Shawna’s age. “He’s fifteen, skank,” she said, crossing her hands over her chest.
“Old enough to know what he wants,” Shawna said, taking another shot of gin and heading toward the door.
“Get your pedophile lot lizard ass out of my store,” the shopkeeper growled.
Shawna pressed her lips together and blew the boy a kiss, and his gaze suddenly shot down to the floor.
A few hours later, she lay naked on the dirty, worn carpet of her room, her back blackened by whatever foul substance coated the floor. The gin bottle was at her side, empty, the bag of ice turned inside out, licked thoroughly clean. The ham sandwich sat on the nightstand, a single bite taken from it. The soda stood next to it, unopened.
Shawna closed her eyes, her entire body shaking with emotions she couldn’t name, and she dreamed she was the demon, looking out through her own eyes at Blair’s broken body.
***
Kentucky
Shawna rolled out of bed, her legs throbbing after spending the previous day walking the lot. She’d thought about what Merk had said, and part of her knew she needed to get back on the demon’s trail. But she didn’t know how she could ever face Brooke again after everything that had happened, and so she’d taken a circuitous route from Kansas City to Omaha, Omaha to Des Moines, Des Moines to Peoria, Peoria to St. Louis, staying a few days at every truck stop, turning just enough tricks to keep her crystal bag full before picking a john to spirit her a few counties over. She’d made it all the way down to Memphis before she’d headed back north, taking Interstate 40 to Nashville with a trucker young enough to be her son, then riding Interstate 65 up to Louisville with a bearded operator old enough to be her father.
She knew the way the demon planned to go, and she fell asleep watching the news nearly every night. It had only been three weeks since the demon killed her family, but the story had already faded from the headlines. She’d been waiting for stories of bloodshed along the interstate as the demon headed west, but if it was leaving a trail of bodies in its rearview mirror, the media wasn’t giving it any coverage. That just didn’t make sense to her. She’d seen its intentions so clearly, had wanted to partake in them so badly. Keeping a low profile wasn’t part of the plan.
It was going to be a rough day, that much she could already tell. She’d given the lot boss a freebie yesterday to get her crystal in advance, but she needed to pay that bill before she hitched a ride to the next town. She had begrudgingly begun to ask her johns to use condoms, but too late to avoid developing a bad reputation on the circuit. Operators that hadn’t heard of her still paid premium prices—although a far cry from what she’d been accustomed to in Tulsa—but mostly she was making less per trick than the average working girl. By her estimation, she’d have to have a record-setting day just to break even and move on. Her mind raced while she ran through the figures again and again.
That’s just the way things were now, she reminded herself. It wasn’t like she deserved any better. She pulled on a pair of cut-off jean shorts that left half her ample bottom peeking out from behind, and a black fishnet halter top that left her entire midriff exposed. She’d bought the ratty old thing off a scrawny girl back in Peoria, and it strained against Shawna’s considerably larger breasts. She looked at them in the mirror, adjusting them until they appeared as sizeable as she could make them. These were the billboards of her trade, the best form of advertising available.
The face staring back at her looked older than she liked, but she didn’t bother with makeup. She just wanted to get out and earn enough money to pay back the lot boss and get another hit to help her sleep through the night. The emptiness had already reopened inside her soul, a yawning blackness that the cheap crystal she’d been using lately could barely put a dent in. And when it wore off, the void was worse than ever, so deep that Shawna wanted to surrender to it, to be consumed entirely so the torment could finally end.
She stumbled out of her room, gulping at a fifth of gin as she emerged into the lot. She was immediately faced with a wall of tractor trailers, their idling engines rumbling to keep their occupants well-shielded from the summer heat. Shawna felt a tightness between her thighs that was as relentless as the engines around her, but she wasn’t ready to get to work just yet. She was starving.
The diner was on the opposite end of the lot, near the fueling station, and Shawna did earn twenty bucks by letting a gap-toothed trucker grope her breasts along the way, but it was so hot that she was already sweating by the time the door chimed to announce her entrance to the small eatery. It was breakfast time, so the place was packed, not that it took much of a crowd to fill the place. The tables were lined down the middle of the narrow dining hall, with a row of booths pressed up against the windows and bar seating at the counter. Her eyes darted around, looking for anyone willing to buy her some hash browns and coffee. She had her newly-earned twenty stuffed in her bra, but she needed that money for things more important than food.
There we
re a few empty seats at the bar, but that would put her in full view of the staff, who treated the working girls like garbage. Even if she found a potential customer there, the mean-faced, coffee-pot-wielding waitress behind the counter would sabotage her efforts. The tables in the middle were all occupied by groups of three or four. Usually she liked approaching groups, because she could kill three birds with one stone, but lately there always seemed to be one who knew her reputation. She would have a higher chance of success if she found a loner.
Unfortunately, there seemed to be only one man that seemed like a suitable target—a priest in a black shirt and white collar. He sat in a corner booth, absently reading a newspaper while a cup of tea cooled on the table in front of him. What the hell, Shawna thought. She shrugged and made her way to the traveling priest. Maybe he’d take pity on a wayward sinner. Or maybe Shawna had herself a paying customer.
“Buy a lady breakfast?” she asked, plopping herself down in the seat across from him. Her mostly exposed breasts were covered with a gleam of sweat, and she leaned forward on her elbows and scrunched her shoulders together.
The priest folded the paper and set it on the table beside his tea. He raised a hand to flag down a passing waitress, barely glancing at Shawna.
“This… lady botherin’ you, padre?” the apron-clad blonde asked, smacking her gum.
“No, ma’am,” the priest said quietly. He was old, but probably not much older than Shawna, his once-black hair now mostly gray. He was in good shape for his age, his shirt fitting trimly against a lean frame. “My friend was just about to order.”
Demi Mondaine: Volume One Page 19