I set it on the floor as I cross my legs underneath me, then lean forward to give the package a sniff. Frozen bones never do smell like much and when hidden under layers of plastic wrapping, are well versed in keeping their secrets hidden.
Grunting, I lean down further, giving the slowly thawing package a poke.
Nothing moves, nothing rattles, nothing to remind me of what’s inside.
Splaying my hands on either side of the well-kept secret, I rest my chin on the floor so I can be eye level with it.
Ding!
My eyes quickly turn up toward the screen and I let out a quick laugh. It seems my audience has been here and watching by the numbers slowly rising in the corner and only now did one want to let me know of their presence.
Most of my customers like to watch and nothing more, but this one happens to be my favorite because he likes to let me know when he’s ready for the show to begin. While I do my best to entertain them all, he’s the one that I work the hardest for.
Wicked little girls do the devil’s work and Satan is here for the show, I think as I make a show of spreading my knees further apart against the hard wooden floor, lifting my ass higher in the air.
A smile creeps across my lips as I turn my head to the right and stare directly into the camera. He’s ready for me and now we’ll get to find out what’s in my package together.
Ding!
He wants to play and he’s done waiting.
I push myself up to my knees and scoot back on my ass, my legs wide apart as I reach forward and grab tonight’s prop.
I use my fingernails to begin picking at the wrapping, hoping that it will give way soon because I can feel myself falling on the inside. The world is becoming less black and white, and grayer with each passing second and I know that soon the show will begin.
Whether I’m ready to start with it or not.
Ding! Ding! Ding!
He’s growing impatient with each passing second but I’m no closer to finding out what’s inside of the package than I was when I initially began picking at the wrapping.
I throw the package against the floor in frustration, get to my feet, and walk over to the camera, turning it off as tears run down my face. There will be no show tonight because I can’t perform without my props and I know this will not sit well with him or anyone else that came on to watch me play.
I’ve failed them tonight and only blood can cleanse me of this sin. I’ll have to leave the walls of my home to find someone—anyone—whose life is as worthless as mine.
We’ll help each other and then the vicious cycle can start all over again.
Chapter Three
The night air is cool but I purposely didn’t bring a jacket. If I’m going to bleed or bleed another for my sin, I have to be as bare as I can.
The only way to ensnare Heaven is to entice Hell and I need the penance as quickly as it can be afforded to me.
Someone will take pity on me—they always do. They’ll see nothing more than a seemingly disheveled, lost young woman, not knowing that the Beast resides deeper in my heart than God ever will.
I’m the beast they all made me into. The world was never good to me. I had been shoved around from home to home when I was younger until I finally landed on the steps at the convent of Our Lady of Heavenly Hope.
No amount of praying away the voices in my head has helped so far. If anything, I feel like they’ve amplified them, but I’ve become quite intimate with my demons, and they help me perform when I need them to.
I push my hair out of my face as I continue walking. I don’t like where I’ve stopped so far and no one will bother if they see me so close to the convent still. They’ll try to take me back—tell the Bitch Mother that I need food or shelter for the night, and she’ll reprimand me for leaving without her say so.
She’ll cane me as she’s so fond of doing when I’ve gone against her wishes, and while my customers don’t seem to mind the bruises, it’s hard to sit with welts on my ass. It’ll make performing harder than it should be.
I take in a shuddering breath and stop walking again. Glancing up at the street sign above my head, I smile slightly. A few more steps until I reach the end of this path should be sufficient.
I’ll find someone who’ll want to get to know me on the corner of this avenue since it’s where the lonely and desperate convene.
Mother warned us to stay away from this part of town. “It’s full of sin, degenerates, and miscreants. There is no salvation for the people that dwell there.”
That’s how I know I’ve found the perfect place and it amazes me that I hadn’t found it sooner.
Not that I thought I would have the need to leave the convent tonight, but I want to feel alive again and I need to feel the rush of blood.
Be it mine or someone else’s—I need it now more than ever.
I can’t be the girl I once was unless I’m cleansed.
Mother has always told us that we can confess anything to her, that she’ll see us through any troubles we have, but that courtesy never extended to me.
Not after I found my first prop and decided to become a star on camera. She says that by sparing the rod when it came to me, she spoiled the child, but I’ll show her one day.
I wasn’t born a monster.
She fucking made me this way.
Chapter Four
I’ve been staring at my hands as second and minutes of time slip by. The blood has long since dried and I still can’t remember how they got that way.
I slip my thumb into my mouth and begin to suckle away as much of the dried blood as I can while I begin to scan the street rapidly.
No one has approached me yet.
No one wants to help me.
Should I give up? Stay on my own? Try to figure things out? I want to go back and resume my show because I don’t want my customers to feel cheated, but in a way, I feel the most cheated of all.
I let myself down by letting my thoughts take hold of me and forcing me to stop. Not being able to peel back the wrapping on the package frustrated me to the point of feeling like I’d never get the show started and I gave up far too easily.
I’ll make it up to them somehow, I reason to myself as the taste of chipped copper fills my mouth.
“Are you okay?”
I close my eyes for a moment and take a deep breath into my lungs as I feel my lips slip into a smile.
Finally.
Turning my face toward the sound of his voice, I open my eyes again and continue to suck on my thumb. The man that’s watching me with cautious, light brown eyes is beautiful. I take him in quickly and before I turn my eyes away from him for the slightest of moments, I’ve already become enthralled.
He’s taller than me by half a foot, a severe look to his ruggedly handsome face, and has hair the color of what I know my soul must look like, but the difference is the gray starting to sprout.
He has light in him and on him, whereas I have none.
“I’m lost,” I say, my voice barely above a whisper. I’m sure the fact that I’m speaking with my thumb still in my mouth won’t help the situation, but I’m not comfortable enough to stop just yet.
He raises an eyebrow as he carefully reaches for my hand and pries it away from my mouth.
“What was that?” he asks gently.
I let out a short laugh as I repeat my words, “I’m lost.”
He looks me up and down for a moment, his eyes resting on the design of my habit. I can tell he’s not entirely sure if he believes me or if he even wants to continue our conversation, but I like the way he looks, so he won’t have a choice.
“Okay, well,” he begins thoughtfully, unable to tear his eyes away from the design, “which direction did you come from?”
I turn my body completely to face away from him. It’s the only way I know how to answer the question and keep my wits about me. I don’t like the way he’s staring at my habit but I don’t want him to leave either.
“Then let’s go
that way,” he says gently as he takes a step forward and ends up beside me.
“Okay,” I agree quietly as we begin to walk in silence.
Before this night is over, I’ll have what I want and he’ll give me what he’ll no longer need.
Blood.
Chapter Five
Once we reached the convent, my unnamed friend stopped short.
“Do you belong in there?” he asks me uncertainly. I steal a glance in his direction and I nod quickly.
“I live here.”
“You’re a nun?”
I nod again.
“Then what’s with the getup?”
I shrug as I begin to lead him up the path toward the front door. We won’t go in through this way—hell, we won’t even go in through the side. The Bitch Mother has eyes everywhere and she’ll see us before I have a chance to take him down below.
“Well, you have a good night then.”
I stop walking and turn around. He hasn’t made a single move to follow me and probably thinks he’s some kind of fucking hero for walking me back to a place where I know I don’t belong.
I run my hands back through my hair and chew my lower lip thoughtfully for a moment.
“Don’t you want to come inside?” I ask in confusion.
“No,” he replies with a good-natured chuckle. “As long as you’re found now instead of lost, I think I’ll head home. You have a nice evening, okay?”
“What’s your name?” I ask as I begin to walk toward him.
“What’s yours?” he shoots back with a smirk curling up half of his mouth.
“Paloma. You can call me Pally; that’s what my very best friends do,” I answer, a grin of my own appearing as I come to a stop three inches away from him.
I have to make him want to come inside and men are usually simple enough to seduce.
“Your full name,” he presses.
I’m confused at first.
I don’t know what he wants me to say until he glances down at my habit and I have to do my best not to snap at him for staring at it so much.
“Sister Paloma Grace,” I tell him as I dip down into a curtsy. I glance up at him as I tilt my head to the right and look him directly in his eyes. “At your service.”
He laughs as he shakes his head, then turns his eyes away from me for a moment. The longer we stand here trading pleasantries, the more of a risk we run being caught by the Bitch Mother and her spies.
I have to get him inside.
As I stand back up to my full height, I grip the hem of the habit and roll it up high enough to expose my cunt to him.
“Any service you please.”
Chapter Six
The name of my new friend is Reade.
He told me after I flashed my pussy at him and then he agreed to come inside for “only a little while.”
Men as beautiful as him tend to be the lonely, sinful type that Mother warned us about; so I did the one thing I knew would get him to let his guard down, and it worked.
I turn to face Reade and put a finger to my lips to remind him to be as quiet as he can when we approach a small hole in the back of the convent.
I beat the wall out myself one night in a fit of anger. Mother had caned me for not being in the common room for a meeting she had called for us.
After she verbally abused me, she bent me over the table and laid so many whacks across my bare ass that I couldn’t sit for days.
I used that to make my own little escape hatch. I took the heaviest candelabra I could find from her collection of holy relics and slammed it against the wall over and over until it gave way.
She still hasn’t found my hole, or figured out what became of her piece of metal. I think she suspects, but she knows better than to accuse me at this point.
For the most part, she leaves me be since I rarely come out from beneath the convent. When I do, it’s to gather food and drinks from the weekly food drives she organizes.
No one needs these simple things like we do and yet she gives it all away like we mean nothing to her.
“Any reason we couldn’t have gone through the front door?” he asks me in a loud whisper after I’ve climbed in through the entrance.
“Men aren’t allowed here,” I reply before I hush him up again and walk further into the darkness. “Mother doesn’t like visitors, but I like you and wanted to thank you properly for helping me find my way back.”
Reade chuckles quietly but continues to follow me. My home may not be what he assumes it to be, but it’s mine and Mother can’t take it from me.
I drew myself away from the light a long time ago to ensure the only person I would ever hurt would be myself. When it comes to the pleasure of others, I crawl out of the back wall to gather my props, then come back and store them properly.
Except for one, I think as I shake my head.
“We’re almost there,” I promise him.
“Doesn’t look this big from the outside,” he remarks. I reach a hand back and swat at him when I hear footsteps echoing through the catacombs.
“Go away,” I snap into the darkness, my voice echoing against the walls.
“Maybe I should go, Pally,” he says gently, but I won’t let him.
I need him.
He’s mine.
I blindly reach down and grab one of his hands, push open a door on the left and pull him into the room.
We can get to my room from here, but I had hoped to be able to go straight there without interruption.
“Paloma Grace!”
I cringe as the door slams closed behind us.
“Stay here,” I tell Reade as I let his hand go and pull my hair back into a ponytail. I loop strands of my own hair around it to keep it in place. “Don’t leave me, okay? I promise it’ll be worth it.”
Reade looks absolutely startled and before he has a chance to respond, I push the door open again, and step out into the hallway.
Chapter Seven
“What?” I bark into the darkness.
“Where have you been?”
“I was lost,” I say, placing my hands on my hips.
“And now you’re okay?”
“Yes. A nice man found me, I’m fine.”
“What does he get for being nice to you?”
“I haven’t decided yet,” I reply, my shoulders slumping slightly. “But I’ll be good to him.”
“Promise?”
“I promise, okay?” I shout, my angry tenor bouncing off the concrete walls. “Just leave me alone. I have to make sure that he still trusts me.”
“Why wouldn’t he?”
“Because you’re here,” I snarl through grit teeth. “Go away; he needs to cleanse me. I’ve been a bad girl; an unholy, disgusting thing and he’s the only one that can help me.”
“But—”
I don’t listen anymore.
I open the door to the room I left Reade in and then close it firmly behind me, turning the lock so we can’t be followed.
“Is everything okay?”
I blink a few times before I force a smile onto my face.
“It is now that you’re here with me,” I tell him as brightly as I can before I extend a hand toward him.
He lowers his eyes down and I’m half expecting him to rebuff my gesture, but instead he shakes his head, a rueful smile on his face as he slips his hand into mine.
“Then lead the way.”
We continue through door after door until we reach the room I want. The one where I host my customers—the room where this pretty girl does ugly things, and I finally let go of his hand.
“Are you hungry?” I ask, tapping my foot against the floor. I can’t start the stream again until he cleanses me. They deserve better than the failure I presented. Fuck, I hope someone still cares enough to watch.
“Not for food, no.”
I turn around and face him, arching an eyebrow dangerously at his suddenly brazen approach with me.
“For what, then?” So eager to play, so
unwilling to see the monster in front of your very own eyes.
“Well, I’m pretty sure you already showed me,” he replies thoughtfully, a smile starting to creep across his lips. “Can’t go around flashing pussy unless you plan on ponying up when the time comes, little girl.”
A breath escapes me.
It sounds something between a strangled gasp and an exhalation of relief.
He’s going to help me after all.
My mind becomes muddled almost as quickly as the breath that left my body. I need props ready because once I’ve given him what he wants, I’ll have to be ready to resume the show.
“Wait here,” I command him quietly.
“Where are you going?” Reade asks curiously.
I smile at him for a moment as I wrap my arms around my body and fight the urge that’s building far too quickly. The one that wants to be cleansed more than anything in the world.
“I have to get some toys.”
Chapter Eight
The cool air that seeps from the freezer is embracing me while I stand and stare at my options. There’s only one that I’m afraid to use because of the size, but I think it’s the one that will impress him the most.
If I want Reade to do a good job, then I’ll have to do one for him as well.
I reach for the largest package in the freezer and drop it into the bag in front of my feet. Cleansing is never about self-doubt, it’s about being able to start over again, and if this is what I need, then it has to be done.
I pull out a few smaller packages, smiling at each dull thump of them landing against each other until I feel like I have enough.
My eyes drift down toward the bag’s contents as I close the freezer door.
For being so patient with me, my customers will get to see a cleansing live as it happens for the first, and hopefully last, time.
Bad Habits: A Dark Anthology Page 28