MAIDENHEAD / Matt Wallace
They dial "maidenhead" because they want to drive virgin snow. At their age it's the only taboo left. That, or they're chasing youth, hoping that breath of life on their shriveled cocks will translate. The going rate is a hundred grand, almost any ethnic preference doable, all girls guaranteed between eighteen and twenty-five, all hymens certified unbroken. They open an eBank account, and as soon as the bosses get the PIN, I get text. My gig isn't the girl, it's her honey pot. I'm a human chastity belt. I sit on that cherry like a mother hen until someone pays to hatch it. I bodyguard virtue. It almost makes me feel noble.
Until game day, that is.
Isabeau came from Maryland County in southeastern Liberia, just a kid from a bad part of the world cursed with easy-on-the-eyes. She told me that back there they've got something like twenty cops for a hundred thousand people. She told me her father fixed wagons and built crates on a rubber plantation until warlords torched the whole thing. She told me she never had a boyfriend. I usually don't ask questions like that; I usually don't ask questions. But ever since her exam I've been interested. Our Cuban expatriate house doctor confirmed she was a virgin. He also confirmed she was pregnant.
The bosses stopped listening after the first part.
Me, my hearing isn't that select. As I watched Isabeau shimmy down the sawed-off barrel of a satin dress, the motion sexy because she had no idea what sexy was, the whispering in the back of my brain got louder and louder. I was raised Episcopalian, born again realist, and practicing couldn't-give-a-fuck, but this was some weird shit.
Isabeau's client turned out to be a Kraut who looked like my third grade teacher. His bodyguards were a couple of ex-Spezialkräfte commandos; one of them had the beret badge tattooed on his wrist. The look she gave me from the bedroom as the Kraut closed the door could've lasted from the first time I felt my mother's lips on my tiny bald head to the last worm nipping at my bloated corpse. But it is funny how you measure time in moments like that.
My next decision, for example, took from the tip of an unfiltered Camel to about half-an-inch above the ring.
Wrist Tattoo mimed smoking and gave me the German word for "cigarette." While I leaned in to spark a light for him, I took one measured step behind his heel. Then I dug my shoulder into his back and jammed him against his partner, trapping Commando Two between Tattoo and the wall. The chiv was already in my hand, and I sunk it deep. I had my other hand cupped under Tattoo's chin, mashing his mouth into fish lips. When he brought up all the blood flooding his popped lung, it sprayed Commando Two in his eyes, his mouth, up his nose.
I used the chiv's handle to spin Tattoo away from me. I thought I'd have another second, but Commando Two's reaction time was live. He drew and fired blind. I crouched, spun, and pulled my burner. The first slug must've just grazed his liver, but the second one sent him to meet his Nazi forefathers. I'd been hoping to keep it quiet at first.
When I busted the bedroom door all I saw at first was Isabeau, hugging her knees between the bed and the wall, still mostly dressed. I turned too late, and the Kraut swiped at me with a straight razor, slicing a frown into my side. He wasn't strong, but the blade was sharp. I hammered the butt of my burner down on his nose. He must've been more frail than he looked, because when his head jerked back I heard that piece of spine in his neck snap.
Maybe whoever sold Isabeau to the bosses pimped her out for some of those black market eugenics experiments you read about in Newsweek first. I don't know. But I'm real interested in what pops out of that oven nine months from now.
It's longer than I've ever been able to hold onto that noble feeling, anyway.
I've had stories published in a handful of print, on-line, and podcast magazines. My neo-noir novel The Failed Cities Monologues is currently featured on Podiobooks.com, and I'm in the middle of adapting another story of mine into a screenplay for an Australian production company. You can find me here also, http://matt_wallace.livejournal.com/.
Until game day, that is.
Isabeau came from Maryland County in southeastern Liberia, just a kid from a bad part of the world cursed with easy-on-the-eyes. She told me that back there they've got something like twenty cops for a hundred thousand people. She told me her father fixed wagons and built crates on a rubber plantation until warlords torched the whole thing. She told me she never had a boyfriend. I usually don't ask questions like that; I usually don't ask questions. But ever since her exam I've been interested. Our Cuban expatriate house doctor confirmed she was a virgin. He also confirmed she was pregnant.
The bosses stopped listening after the first part.
Me, my hearing isn't that select. As I watched Isabeau shimmy down the sawed-off barrel of a satin dress, the motion sexy because she had no idea what sexy was, the whispering in the back of my brain got louder and louder. I was raised Episcopalian, born again realist, and practicing couldn't-give-a-fuck, but this was some weird shit.
Isabeau's client turned out to be a Kraut who looked like my third grade teacher. His bodyguards were a couple of ex-Spezialkräfte commandos; one of them had the beret badge tattooed on his wrist. The look she gave me from the bedroom as the Kraut closed the door could've lasted from the first time I felt my mother's lips on my tiny bald head to the last worm nipping at my bloated corpse. But it is funny how you measure time in moments like that.
My next decision, for example, took from the tip of an unfiltered Camel to about half-an-inch above the ring.
Wrist Tattoo mimed smoking and gave me the German word for "cigarette." While I leaned in to spark a light for him, I took one measured step behind his heel. Then I dug my shoulder into his back and jammed him against his partner, trapping Commando Two between Tattoo and the wall. The chiv was already in my hand, and I sunk it deep. I had my other hand cupped under Tattoo's chin, mashing his mouth into fish lips. When he brought up all the blood flooding his popped lung, it sprayed Commando Two in his eyes, his mouth, up his nose.
I used the chiv's handle to spin Tattoo away from me. I thought I'd have another second, but Commando Two's reaction time was live. He drew and fired blind. I crouched, spun, and pulled my burner. The first slug must've just grazed his liver, but the second one sent him to meet his Nazi forefathers. I'd been hoping to keep it quiet at first.
When I busted the bedroom door all I saw at first was Isabeau, hugging her knees between the bed and the wall, still mostly dressed. I turned too late, and the Kraut swiped at me with a straight razor, slicing a frown into my side. He wasn't strong, but the blade was sharp. I hammered the butt of my burner down on his nose. He must've been more frail than he looked, because when his head jerked back I heard that piece of spine in his neck snap.
Maybe whoever sold Isabeau to the bosses pimped her out for some of those black market eugenics experiments you read about in Newsweek first. I don't know. But I'm real interested in what pops out of that oven nine months from now.
It's longer than I've ever been able to hold onto that noble feeling, anyway.
I've had stories published in a handful of print, on-line, and podcast magazines. My neo-noir novel The Failed Cities Monologues is currently featured on Podiobooks.com, and I'm in the middle of adapting another story of mine into a screenplay for an Australian production company. You can find me here also, http://matt_wallace.livejournal.com/.
(Insert WICKED laugh) More, pretty f-ing please!
Nice piece of bad-assery, Matt!
~Kim