by D'Urso, J.
She escorted him to the door and embraced him, but he had trouble departing from her company—not out of loneliness or attachment, but because of the three hulking figures that stood in the doorway, blocking his exit. Kyrond tried to pass between them, but they simply glared judgmentally, their eyes being their only visible feature, as they covered their faces with triangular masks that left their breathing hoarse. Lucia had warned her of the possibility of their arrival at the brothel’s door. These were the men who threatened Sargon, and whom Lucia urged her employees to be on the watch for. Looking to the kitchen, Sudika cried out for her madam, and, smelling her fear, the masked men stepped into the bordello with nothing but ill intent.
••
LUCIA
Lucia had just finished stirring pickled capers into her puttanesca when she heard Sudika’s startled shouts through the open doorway. With one quick glance, her suspicions were unfortunately confirmed: the Shatarins had come, inevitably, as they always did to all ends of the galaxy like a swarm of zealous locusts. She commanded them to address her and not a helpless employee, as she was in no mood to subject Sudika to their savagery, or to step away from her bubbling pot of red sauce that she planned to have finished by noontime.
“This is my house, and you’ll answer to me,” she stated firmly. “And just know that I’m not about to tolerate the kind of trouble your people too often bring.”
They demanded that she surrender one of her best employees to be shared by the three of them, and their leader eyed Sudika with a perverted hunger, insinuating that she looked well-suited for group sex with interested clients who wouldn’t take no for an answer. Lucia wasn’t about to humor their unreasonable request, and cut them off immediately.
“Group sex is a violation of my brothel’s policies,” she warned, motioning for Sudika to go off to her room in safety, though the girl seemed too curious to obey. “You’d best leave now. I will not allow one of my girls to go from providing a necessary service to allowing men to make her into an object for their use and disposal.”
Without warning the first of the three barbarians lunged at Sudika, who didn’t even have a chance to react. Before she could scream out in horror Lucia reacted with lightning speed: she snatched her kitchen knife off the counter and flung it across the room, landing it like an arrow deep in the Shatarin monster’s chest. He slumped to the floor, blood and globs of fat bursting from between his ribs, and the walls shook from the sheer weight of his bloated corpse. Lucia withdrew two stilettos from the bustier that constricted her massive breasts, each of which found a new home in the remaining Shatarins’ foreheads. Nonchalantly, she poured herself a glass of Chianti and went back to gently stirring her puttanesca. She’d have someone clean up the mess. But first, lunch would be served, and it would have the sweet taste of retribution.
••
SUDIKA
In less than an hour the brazen speaker for the Sexual Labor Union of Talpretta arrived at their door once again, unannounced but expected. He looked down at the bodies that the whores had yet to dispose of, or report to the police, and glared at the madam who was putting the finishing touches on the puttanesca she’d slaved over all morning. Carefully stepping over one of them with a grimace of disgust, he entered the kitchen and took off his mirrored glasses.
“I heard about the attack,” he began, glancing back regretfully at the pile of corpses.
“Funny,” Sudika quipped, “given that the authorities haven’t even been informed yet.”
“Word of bigotry travels fast among the tolerant and sensible,” Trygassi said with a shrug.
Lucia stepped down from armoring a window and pointed a manicured finger his way. “I’m on to you, cazzo,” she growled. “I know a false flag operation when I see one.”
The union representative feigned ignorance of her accusations. “What can I say?” he sighed, reaching out to dip his greasy sausage finger into the puttanesca to get a taste. Sudika watched as Lucia slapped his hand away; he recoiled with a scowl. “If your brothel was a part of the Sexual Labor Union of Talpretta, you would have the protection you need, and an unfortunate incident like this would have never had to happen. Perhaps this will change your minds?”
Sudika couldn’t keep quiet. “You sound more like a mafia,” she noted disdainfully, “but there’s not much of a difference between organized crime syndicates and labor unions, is there?”
When the fat cat union representative realized that she and Lucia had absolutely no intention of unionizing, he resorted to ad hominem attacks all too typical of a collectivist, terrorist sympathizer. He drew attention to the bodies, and more specifically, the masks that marked them as foreign demographic combatants, and screamed, “They were Shatarins, you ignorant whores! How could you have defended yourselves against them with a clean conscience? After all, it is an important facet of their belief system that they have an innate right to end your lives as nonbelievers, because your mere existence is deeply offensive to them!” Flecks of spittle hit Sudika in the face as his words grew more frenzied and emphatic. “Clearly, you’re all working in a bottomless pit of ignorance, bigotry and backwardness! If you continue to refuse to unionize, I will have no choice but to approach the proper authorities and expose your shameless racism, which will not be taken lightly by the government!”
Sudika was dumbfounded—how could anyone be so delusional as to rationalize his enemies’ right to exterminate him? She thought of the stack of Talents she had tucked away in her room, and the offer letter she kept neatly folded in an envelope as a reminder of the bright future ahead of her. More than ever, she understood why Lucia was so persistent in her hope of opening a window of opportunity for her that led straight to Acadica. There, she wouldn’t be threatened by lecherous militants or coerced into obedience by the labor unions whose influence had arisen unexpectedly on Talpretta in recent months. She wiped the bloated man’s vile saliva from her brow and flicked it off her hand, splattering his oiled shoes. If it weren’t for the expensive tile floors, she would have spat at his feet.
“Let me get this straight,” Lucia began, angrily tossing her wooden spoon into the sink and cutting the flow of gas to her stovetop. “First, you try to get us to join your farcical labor union, which would force me to take hours away from hard-working employees for the sake of hiring lazy, dead-fish girls who couldn’t even whore themselves out to a dog in heat—” She didn’t even use pot holders when she picked up the scalding hot saucepan and dumped the whole of her puttanesca down the drain. “—Then, when we use our right to freedom of choice and reject your nonsensical demands, you send your Shatarin friends to pay us an unwelcome visit, as part of a ploy to coerce us into your union as a protection racket, all while insisting that your union is necessary.” She smacked the switch alongside the sink and the garbage disposal let out a rumbling roar, and in a split second all her hard work was consumed by the sewers. “And then you attempt to blackmail us for defending ourselves when your second attempt at forcing our unionization proved to be a complete and utter failure.
“And lastly,” she concluded with hellfire in her eyes, gripping the edges of the stone countertop with painted nails on the verge of shattering. The smell of burnt tomato sauce and a woman’s scorn filled the air and stung Sudika’s nostrils; she cowered in fear on behalf of the union speaker, who clearly had no idea what he was in for. “Because of you, my puttanesca is ruined—and this is the most unforgiveable offense of all. You will suffer my wrath, Mr. Trygassi, as will your gutter-sucking associates. And when I’m through with you, I’ll toss your tiny, severed minchia into a pot and feed you a meat sauce seasoned with my most merciless revenge.”
••
LUCIA
Lucia arose at dawn and applied her makeup like war paint, readying herself for the long day ahead. She coiffed her hair into luxurious curls that gave her the look of a classic pinup beauty, complemented by the contrast of her crimson lipstick and her light, crystalline eyes. With a fur shawl wr
apped around her shoulders and a slender silver box fully stocked with imported cigarettes, she donned a pair of Padanian sunglasses and slipped several diamond-crusted rings on her meticulously polished fingers. Sudika was waiting outside, dressed just as elegantly, holding a handmade leather clutch from Mediolanum that she’d treated herself to with the tip money she saved up over the past two weeks. Inside the clutch was a list of brothels that they were set to visit that day, for the sake of saving the whores of Talpretta from the sinister clutches of pimps that called themselves union officials.
It was only a matter of time before they stepped foot in an establishment that had succumbed to the Sexual Labor Union of Talpretta’s empty promises. Outside the door stood a throng of once successful working girls, loitering out in the road until they were permitted to work one briefer, more financially insufficient shift: their management, under pressure from the S.L.U.T., slashed their hours to provide an “equal opportunity” for their less productive and less desirable whores. It didn’t matter that they refused to offer their services to clients who lacked the strong figure of a classical god, though they themselves were bloated, lazy and unkempt; it was irrelevant that they preferred to simply lie slumped on the bed, forcing the paying customers to do all the work. They were the underprivileged, the disadvantaged and the oppressed, and they, more than anyone, were deserving of a life devoid of competition, as competition was demoralizing, and led only to the ambitious unfairly surpassing the mediocre—and this was an unacceptable travesty, one that a civilized, progressive society could never allow.
Lucia caught sight of a bruise on one broken-spirited girl’s cheek; she reached out and warmly touched her, asking, “What have they been doing to you?”
The harlot accepted a cigarette from Lucia and held it to her lips, taking a deep pull, and explained in a shaky voice muffled with smoke and sadness, “A lot of us have gone back to street walking to make up for the income we lost. This is the price you pay for achievement these days, I suppose.” Another girl stepped forward and pulled down the neck of her blouse, revealing a deep gash that was healing poorly; two others presented forearms that were once broken and had never been properly set, leaving them strangely twisted. Lucia objected to the dangerous measures they took to make a living, but they admitted that they saw few alternatives.
“What can we do?” sighed a prostitute with disheveled hair and a chipped front tooth. “We’d all love to work in a secure, regulated brothel again, but it was stolen from us when we were tricked into signing the union’s rosters. We’re unionized now, and unfortunately, unions are afraid of girls like us.”
“I used to make more tips in a week than minimum wage would pay in a month,” lamented a pretty but sullen brunette, “and not because my clients were rich, but because I earned my pay by working hard and always learning more about how to fully satisfy a man.”
The girl with the broken smile continued: “But ever since we had to give up our hours to accommodate the girls who should have been fired months ago, and who can’t be fired now because of the union’s defense of failure, we can’t make enough money to live the lifestyles we’d become accustomed to. Now this is what we’ve been reduced to.”
The brunette grasped Lucia’s hand as a desperate plea and cried, “This is the life I swore to abandon forever when you came to Talpretta and changed everything for the better. But now, even with all the good you’ve done, these collectivist bastards are trying to throw us back out into the streets, demeaning us, beating us, and shaming us, all while still seeking our services. Clients used to come to us for more than just sex. Now, we do business in the dark with men who don’t value us for anything but our bodies, and even those aren’t of much value to them. When they can’t even see our faces in the shadows of a back alley, aren’t we all interchangeable?”
“But that’s just what they want, isn’t it?” Lucia said, handing a silk handkerchief to a girl who’d begun to cry. “They don’t want us to stand out above the rest; they don’t want us to excel, or succeed, or overshadow anyone else, even when such an ambitious eclipse is deserved. They say we are all equal in value, but in forcing equality, they have devalued us all. This city has given up its freedom to earn an honest living in a misguided attempt to support those who we are told are the disadvantaged and marginalized, but who are, in fact, just a mob of lazy, unproductive parasites. The people of Talpretta have lost their way. But I intend to lead them back to the righteous path for the second time, and I will be damned before I see them go astray once again.”
••
SUDIKA
Passing cautiously through the slums near the dingy wharf wasn’t a shortcut, as it added another twenty minutes to Sudika and Lucia’s walk back to the Bordello della Libertà. There were no red-tinted lamps casting an eerie, hellish glow over the alleyways, as appropriate as they might have been; in their place flickered old streetlights on rusted poles that once held flags, but nowadays only sported the silken banners of spider webs and dirty shoes dangling by their laces. Behind every dumpster hid a streetwalker, hiding from the footsteps that grew louder, as they couldn’t discern Lucia’s towering heels from a police officer’s boots. Lucia did not approach them, but only looked upon them with pity, and passed by them just as quickly. Their eyes reflected a broken soul; the bruises and burns on their dulling skin were proof of a broken body. Lucia, however, refused to allow her convictions to be broken.
When they reached their brothel, they found their doors and windows broken.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Sudika snapped when she saw the shapeless blob that was Mr. Trygassi’s repulsive figure. He’d arrogantly pinned a circular badge bearing the tasteless seal of the Sexual Labor Union of Talpretta: a stylized vulva bound in chains, surrounded by the collectivist Tetragrammaton, S.L.U.T., in a ring of scarlet letters. A useless white road block on stilts stretched across the sidewalk before the Bordello della Libertà, bound in yellow caution tape. A bold sign declaring “Sensitivity Zone” stood at the front gate, flanked by two armed officers clutching heavy assault rifles against their shoulders. Sudika couldn’t explain or rationalize their presence, and she felt an unpleasant mix of protective fury and deep terror. Her madam Lucia was running a legitimate, legal operation, holding all the necessary permits and taking every precaution to ensure the safety and health of both her employees and her clients. What could the union, and apparently the government, be thinking?
The union representative chuckled and wiped a glob of sugary saliva from his swollen bottom lip. “I’m proud to say our union lobbyists have talked sense into our political leadership, all in a single night. How persuasive true, altruistic logic can be!” he boasted, clasping his hands together like a prayer of thanksgiving offered to some nameless, invisible deity, known only by the title of “greater good.”
“Tell me: What is altruistic about bringing guns to a peaceful and legal place of business?” Sudika sneered. “And who let your people inside without a warrant?”
“Oh! You mean the unfairly destitute that have taken up residence in your little bordello? They’re not law enforcement,” Trygassi asserted. “As such, no warrants are necessary—only need. Their needs are above the law, you uneducated whores! Their need entitles them to your property, your prosperity and your success, because it is an indisputable fact that those who triumph over others could not have possibly done so by honest, fair means. Check your privilege, you spoiled one-percenters, because needs have more value than frivolous social entitlements bestowed upon you for your selfishness.”
“I think you’ve mistaken that they are the ones receiving ‘frivolous entitlements,’” Lucia quipped, pointing through a broken window, to an unruly horde of masked Shatarins who were groping and pinning down other clients to lick at their necks with a subhuman hunger. Among them scurried exotic pygmies who chirped unintelligibly, screeching like vultures over those whom the Shatarins had disarmed and violated; Sudika only caught one word: “Xaztec
hua!” Their men barely stood taller than four-foot six, and their women, heavily pregnant and waddling about with their fat rolls spilling over their girdles, scoured the kitchens, the bathrooms and the bedrooms for anything of even the slightest value that they could plunder. Trygassi stepped aside to block the grotesque scene from view and chastised Lucia and Sudika for their prejudice.
“You are hereby prohibited from passing beyond the boundary of this Sensitivity Zone. Any trespassing would be a violation of these oppressed individuals’ cultures: the Shatarins’ right to enslave, murder, rape, exterminate and cannibalize your employees and loved ones, and the Xaztechuans’ right to use your wrongfully acquired property to make their lives more comfortable. Your bigoted speech is offensive—your very presence is offensive, and we, as collectivists, have a solemn obligation to protect these innocent people from exposure to your lies, which will most certainly trigger their anxieties and insecurities and throw them into the pit of post-traumatic stress disorder!”
“And if we do step over your useless fence?” Sudika asked.
“Then you will be arrested on the spot.”
Lucia swung her fist into Trygassi’s gaping mouth, and with a tortured squeal he dropped to the ground, cracking the sidewalk under his titanic thighs, unleashing a deafening thunderclap from the jiggling tsunamis of blubber beneath his skin. She pulled a handgun from the confines of her lace panties and put it in Sudika’s hand. “Only pull the trigger in self-defense,” she instructed her sternly. “This time, don’t follow my lead. I’ll paint the walls a lovely crimson with these maggots’ blood, in defense of us all, my beloved Bordello, and my heavenly puttanesca. Tonight, we’ll dine in the spirit of victory. A Romaean vendetta is always the best appetizer.”
••