The Blessed Damozel - PART1

8:30 pm Saturday. The man Jim saw in the broken mirror in his shack was unshaven; he had unkempt hair and a permanent frown. It was a face that made kids look away, but the face appealed to Jim, it was a man’s face. Apart from that face, Jim owned 2 pairs of jeans, a couple of t-shirts, a knife, a Zippo cigarette lighter, and a year long subscription of Playboy. There was something else he owned from a pretty long time that was put away in some corner in the shack, but it didn’t occur to him now. He still wore the ring that Vicky had slipped into his finger the previous year, or maybe the year before that, he couldn’t remember exactly. The ring did not mean much to him anymore; it didn’t remind him of much either, and it wasn’t important anyway, nothing was.
He didn’t have to make deliveries on Saturdays, so he’d done what he usually did on Saturdays – hang out at the bar. He had come home early from the bar that evening, he was hardly drunk. He was looking into the mirror now and started to run the comb over his hair, today he would spend some cash on the broads, the thought excited him and he grinned exposing his nicotine stained teeth.

10 pm. Jim walked towards the alley, and everything in the neighborhood looked familiar. It was as if the same scene was being played out by a bunch of actors every night. Even the street cat seemed to play its role perfectly for the hundredth time, puffing its fur and looking at Jim from the corner where the overflowing trash cans were. The place even smelled the same. And now the whores were in view, he no longer cared about the scene or the smell, all that mattered was the woman he’d take to his shack. He stopped short of crossing the road, and a car zipped by, Jim cursed loud enough to cause the vagabond sleeping at the street corner to shift sides, nothing else changed. One of the broads seemed to be looking at him from across the street; soon a couple of them had noticed him.

‘Rose’ wasn’t a selling name, but it hid her identity well, just like the makeup that hid the dark circles around her eyes. The name did not make her ashamed of what she was doing. When she went by that name, she felt as if she was looking at the world through someone else’s eyes, sometimes she even heard the thoughts of that person, but the person wasn’t her at all, the person was a hooker called Rose. But then who was she? How had things gotten so crazy? It was precisely at this point that she abruptly ended the stream of thoughts every time.

10:04 pm Rose was with the other girls that Saturday night looking out for customers when she felt a car approaching them. Suddenly her composure changed and she was soon giggling. She felt something being released into her blood on the sensation of that car, soon the instictive crazy feeling followed making her do all the right things that made her a successful broad. Her instincts were great. Today her instinct made her stare at the road for a fraction of a second longer than she usually would and she noticed somebody emerging from the darkness of the alley. The approaching car had now pulled over next to the group of girls and the guy at the wheel was nervously smiling at her tapping his fingers on the steering wheel all the time. It's that high school kid again,Rose told herself. The kid was too young and too rich to haggle with her prices, and he did not spank or hurt her, he wasnt into bondage and fetish like her other rich customers, he was almost certainly her favourite customer. And then she glanced back at the alley, and swallowed hard.

In a flurry of nods and gestures, signalling to the kid and the girls, she sent the kid off with another girl and waited for the man approaching from the alley. Something made her wait, suddenly she wasn’t Rose anymore. Vicky recognized that walk, and she was scared of something she couldn’t tell. Jim had crossed the road and was soon walking towards the girls. For a fraction of a second their eyes met, he quickly turned them away. Jim was deliberately looking at every other girl on the street apart from than Vicky.
Meanwhile Vicky was unable to hear any sound, her legs trembled, and she saw things in little jerks. She watched him as he enquired with the girls, she saw him growing increasingly annoyed trying to make a deal with the girls, Then she saw him throwing an cold stare at her, her fear grew, little droplets of sweat were forming on her brow. Then in a flash she saw Jim approaching her, she heard him curse his job for not paying him enough to afford a decent hooker, and before she could react he was dragging her by her hand, and she wasnt protesting, it was as if she was hypnotized.

To be contd...