I am Noah Canner, also nicknamed Piece – the source of that despicable series hosted by Mafalda Kase: Secrets of Our Leaders. It only aired a few episodes, but as you probably know, it was the foundation for the uproars in the streets, for the massive amount of people dying. The truth is, those secrets were only half of it. There is much more intrigue than you can possibly imagine – the state is rotten to the core and it has been eating me up inside for years. But now it is not only my knowledge; these words are no longer my problem but everybody else's. It is your turn to deal with my stories. The stories which began a morning in September.
I wake up at the first crack of dawn, the early rays streaming in through the blinds in my room. A headache is pounding against my skull and I have a bad taste in my mouth as if I've been eating decaying metal. Still, I've had worse mornings.
I groan and stretch before throwing the blanket to the side and letting the sunlight shine on my naked body. Soak up its warmth. It takes a good five minutes before I stand up and try out my muscles. They're behaving admirably well considering the work-out they got last night. But then again, they have become used to Old Greg and his methods.
I grab the bathrobe and rubbing alcohol from my closet and walk outside to find most of the others already milling around in the hallway. Most of them are wearing clothes, a few count their dollar bill tips with each other. The customers always pay a fee, but tips are ours to keep and use as we see fit. I turn my head to Sammie and Quills comparing black and yellow bruises. Bruises are taken seriously in the Cave. We don't sell bloodied bodies, we sell fantasies, perfection, sometimes even hope, to the upper class of America and everyone else who has the excess resources to seek us out.
In our world, there are five real classes of socioeconomic standing: In the bottom, the lower class, are the ones who provide entertainment. They are crossbreeders, cage fighters, prostitutes like me, and the ones who sell their bodies to science commonly referred to as hooders. They sell their lungs or kidneys, or let themselves be experimented on for the sake of medicine which can benefit the upper classes. They are the corpses strewn in the streets, the ones nobody acts as if they notice. The ones who die of drug overdoses or because their bodies or minds finally give up on them and their sorry excuse for an existence.
Then there is the middle class which provide food and necessities. They include farmers, mechanics, blacksmiths, interior decorators – everything one might need to live an ordinary life. Some of them live in the middle parts of the cities, like shopkeepers and bakers, while others are settled in smaller communities in the country and import their goods. They stay far away from the part of the cities that belongs to the lower class, and they are right to. They have money enough and food enough to be able to avoid the terrors we deal with; the dead and the damned and the places where children turn into opioid addicts within a fortnight.
There is of course always the exception, like the city Chicago which is a representation city, aka how the Government want us to be viewed: Shiny, new, technologically advanced. There is no lower class in Chicago.
The middle class also mostly have the luxury of avoiding the Pacifiers; an elite force the Government supports and which provides their security. I have no idea who they are or where they come from, but they must either be medically enhanced or stripped of their humanity because they don't care about people overdosing in the streets while having no quarrels shooting others for stealing apples. Yes, that did happen once, and yes, I saw it. I don't think I'll ever forget the little girl's dead eyes, or her younger brother crying over her corpse, shaking her to please wake up, to say his name again. There are rumors the Pacifiers come from some of the hooders after getting their memories removed. There are also rumors they are robots. It's hard to know since they never take off their white insect-like helmets which cover their whole head.
Then there are the celebrities, which are split into two categories: The scientists, who are the ones recruiting hooders for experiments, and the luminaries. While the scientists are a backstage presence, nerding away in futuristic buildings and producing medicinal and technological wonders, luminaries are the real VIPs. The Hollywood stars with their acting and their talents and their skills. The ones who can win competitions and who always, always come up with the latest drama, taking up 90% of the tv-time. Who cheated on who, who married who in secret, and a lot of other stuff I never pay attention too. They also provide entertainment for the upper class, but in a less dishonorable way than us in the lower. They are the public image whereas we are the secret. They are Chicago whereas we are Washington DC. They are treated like Gods whereas we in the lower class are treated worse than the dirt under the rich's shoes. If that even exist considering they never bother to step outside on foot.
The rich live more decadently than the ancient aristocrats, but the real difference is that they believe there are only three classes: Them, the ones who serve them, and the Government.
You all know the head of the Government of course; Potentate Remus Thelonious. Can you see him in front of you now, looking at you from dozens of bright screens? With his dark-brown hair and white-ish eyes, how he looks as if he is made of knots and held together by bolts. Him and his wife Hera and their six Ministers; Governor Raze, Ministers Milla and Carlton Carlina, Minister Jacques, Father George, and Minister Grant Shawthon, rule the country. They are all bastards for letting people die in the streets. Bastards for even more I've learned through my 17 years of life. I know the Potentate also has a son, but Anton Thelonious has never been one for the cameras.
This morning though, my only concern is getting some food. I don't even have to worry about making my weekly fee to the brothel where I work, the Cave of Dionysus, because I have been a favourite for a long time now. In the beginning, I thought it was because of my looks: My dark eyes, the black waves of my hair I color blue, the femininity of my exotic features which gives me an androgynous, fairy-like exterior. Even now, tired and hungry, I can feel my coworkers' gazes on me as I make my way to the bathroom. I put my robe and alcohol on the sink and step into my usual shower stall, ignoring the half-washed graffiti on the walls and turn on the water. I try to imagine it is hotter, that it blisters my skin and burns away my thoughts, but there's only a limited amount of hot water. If I rise earlier in the mornings I will maybe get some, but I have long ago resigned to lukewarm temperatures, if not icy cold.
I step out of the shower and brush my teeth, clean the toothbrush off with the alcohol I brought before I put on toothpaste. One never knows what could have happened to it in the night, where it could have been, so I always clean it. I learned that the hard way.
All around me, the others are chatting, exchanging experiences. It was a slow night last night. I figure most of our usual customers were watching the televised tournament. I am faintly aware it was on, but I don't remember who was in it and I have no desire to know who won. I knew Old Greg had reserved me for three hours so I had anesthetized myself, floated around on a cloud, which has resulted in my current wicked headache.
"There you are Noah," a voice cuts through the fog in my brain and my best friend in the Cave leans into the mirror and tentatively touches the missing part of my ear, outlined in the shape of a dentition. A souvenir from an old customer. "I've been looking for you."
Garmen is a rarity with her blonde hair and blue eyes. I've only ever seen two other blonde person, one of which might be bleaching his hair and the other whose hair is a shade of strawberry. But Garmen is the real deal. That is also why she is so coveted. We are thirteen prostitutes and she is by far the most popular, ranked number one on the desirability chart hanging in the hallway.
Right now, she is sending me a giant smug smile, making her look much more goofy than sexy. "Did you enjoy the tournament last night?"
I groan and give her a murderous look. She knows better than anyone I was preoccupied with work last night, and she laughs at my mood. I spit toothpaste into the sink and turn on the tap to wash it away. At least my mouth tastes better now. "Don't worry, we didn't win," Garmen continues and begins inspecting her nails as I greedily slurp water down my raw throat and into my protesting stomach. I don't remember the last time my voice wasn't hoarse or I wasn't hungry. Sex just seems to exhaust my body in every way possible. "But there will be more customers tonight because they have to bang the disappointment out of their system."
I smile and dry off my mouth. "I also get to do the banging now and then you know. It's not just girls who can be on top."
"God, you must feel so important for having a penis," Garmen retaliates, but there is humor in her voice. She is right though. We are only three males which makes us somewhat precious to the owner. And I'm the only androgynous one. If a customer comes in looking for a giant beef of a man they pick Ricardo or Brice. But if they're on the hunt for someone delicate, someone with a vulnerability that invite abuse and submission, it's me they pick.
"Breakfast?" I ask as I slip on my bathrobe and let the alcohol drop into the pocket. Garmen snorts.
"When has breakfast ever been a question?" she asks and turns around. I follow her out of the bathroom and push past Quills and Sammie on my way downstairs to where Carrie-Ann is standing behind the counter, serving eggs and some sort of vegetable broth. Behind her in the kitchen I can see Endria cleaning a colossal pot. My stomach is already jumping towards the strong smell of the food.
We have to eat well and good in the mornings, sometimes because of hangovers, but mostly because we need our stamina for the rest of the day. Sometimes a customer will buy someone for days, and whoever is chosen will have to go for however long he or she is paid for without food or water, and sometimes going to the toilet, unless the customer allows refills and bathroom breaks. Sammie, ranked the third most desirable one, was once claimed for two days after having skipped lunch because there had been a cage fight she'd wanted to go to.
Our work is not as dangerous as it sounds: There are panic buttons all over the rooms if you know where to look, which every one of us do, but Sammie was determined to see her deal through. She came staggering out of the room, not beaten or bloody or in any harmed shape really, but incredibly dehydrated and with her blood sugar levels scraping the floorboards. She fainted in Brice's arms and we had to coax grapes and water into her for hours afterwards until she could sit up again.
Garmen and I get in line to the food and Garmen slaps me lightly on the chest and points at the coffee on the counter. I'm not a coffee person myself, but Garmen can live on the stuff. For me, coffee means that this month's shipment has arrived, which also means sugar and salt. Now I understand all the delighted chatter in the bathroom although it was a low day yesterday.
My gaze climbs from the coffee pot and into the swirl of damp it gives off, rising in the air, until my focus is drawn to the tv screen which is always turned on. On the screen is one of the other two blondes I've ever laid eyes on; a tv-interviewer named Harmon Lovecast. He is a luminary in himself, the darling of the rich, and has been since his seventeenth birthday a million years ago where he was offered a job right after High School. At the moment, he is sitting on a tall stool with his nearly-reflective white skin and face which might as well have been an ad for plastic surgery, turned to two people in front of him. I have to blink once before I realize I know the girl. It takes me another second to place her olive skin, darker hair and heart-shaped face in my mind, but then I recognize her from my old Middle School as Alle Bronze. She was class Potentate and champion of some competition I don't remember, but her smile was once seared into my mind. All those late nights dreaming about her can't be forgotten in a few years.
Beside her sits a young man around her age with black hair and cognac eyes stunning enough to get drunk on. It is with a flinch I realize I know him too, although the memory is less nice. He is the son of one of the Ministers. Roxy? Riley? Can I really not remember his name?
"Ridder," Harmon Lovecast says with a dark and husky voice, conveying exactly how we as an audience is supposed to feel about this young man. "How does it feel to be engaged to one of the most prestigious Ars imperatoria-athletes in the world?"
Ars imperatoria. That was what Alle championed in. Of course, she is engaged to the son of one of the most powerful men in the country. For the first time, I notice how their hands are clasped together below the camera. It doesn't surprise me she became a luminary with her giant arsenal of social capabilities and happy exterior and the fact that she's apparently a strategic genius.
Ars imperatoria, as far as I learned in school, and I did because I was in love with a girl who played it, is a pull and push game which literally means 'strategy' in Latin. It consists of five kinds of pieces: One monarch, two frustums, three protectors, four followers and six peasants. It works slightly like chess in that each player alternates between making a move and each figure has different abilities on the board, but you have to use some of your moves to take care of your peasants, like feed them and give them water. You can win in two different ways: Either you can kill all of the protectors and get to the monarch to take him down, or you can pose such a threat you force the monarch to neglect his peasants, thereby getting them to turn on him.
"It, uh, feels extraordinary," Ridder chuckles and tears me away from my memories. "I honestly can't believe I could ever be this lucky."
On the screen, Alle blushes and kisses the back of Ridder's hand. An audience which may or may not be special effects 'aww' somewhere outside the screen span.
"Me neither," she says and I can all but hear the upper-class sigh as they watch this young love unfold. I, in turn, feel like puking, but that might just be withdrawal symptoms. I haven't been high since yesterday.
"Oh, aren't you two sweet," Harmon Lovecast says and gives off a delighted laugh. "Alle tell me, is the upcoming wedding any consolation prize for your lost trophy?"
Alle cocks her head to the side with an innocent smile. "I wouldn't call it a consolation prize. Games and competitions, we win and lose them all the time. There will be other trophies." And then she looks over at Ridder. "This on the other hand? It seems like it will last forever."
When Ridder leans in to kiss her on screen I look away with the audience's ovation echoing in my ears.
"Huh, I guess she lost. I hadn't seen that coming," Garmen says. Apparently, she has been just as swallowed up in the interview as I have. I don't answer, and then we're at the bar counter where Carrie-Ann serves us two platters of eggs and broth and we take a seat at the refectory table where all of us can just about squeeze in. The food is hot and strong, and I eat it fast without worrying about my tongue getting burned. In the other end of the table, Hannah and Alivia are making lines of something that might be cocaine, but right before Hannah bends down to inhale it, her head is yanked back by a strong dark hand.
"What have I told you about self-medicating before rush-over?" Barooba, owner of the brothel, asks. She is a coal-skinned voluminous woman who wears glasses when she does the accounting and has a moon tattoo over one eye. Although she makes it absolutely clear that her sole job is to make sure we are healthy so we can perform well, she has a certain set of rules we have to follow or we're thrown on the streets without a blink of an eye. The rules include; no fighting, if you are bought you are owned unless the customer's demands are so over the line you need to press the panic button, no stealing each other's tips, if you miss a check-up you're out, and no drinking or drugs before rush hour at seven pm where we have to be our best to impress the customers. If we are not chosen we can shoot up as much as we want until dawn. I think it is also frowned upon to overdose, but I have never heard it spoken as an official rule. It's not like I usually wait till after rush hour. Inside my shoe upstairs is a small vial with a liquid fluid, just waiting to be taken. My body is already tugging at me to feel it in my bloodstream. We cannot take drugs in our veins because the syringe marks don't say 'fantasy', but drinking it has nearly the same effect. And what does Barooba want me to do. Say no to the gift from a customer? That would be considered rude.
"Oh, come on," Alivia croaks in laughter, "It's seven o'clock somewhere."
One look from Barooba and she is silenced. Alivia is the biggest crackhead in the Cave and also ranked 13th on the list of Most Desirable at the latest count. Everybody but her knows she has to watch it or Barooba is going to find someone to replace her with.
I don't know who Barooba replaced me with, I just know that I'm grateful for it. I had been thirteen years old, a few days shy of fourteen, and had just taken my Middle School test and come home to make dinner. My twin sister, Grace, who had taken the same test the same day just the row up ahead from mine had hugged me close and told me she'd see me again at supper. She had gone to work then, after having worked the whole night prior. When our parents died when we were eleven, she'd found a job as a cleaning lady at a place where I as a boy looked too untrustworthy to work, and somehow, she kept us above water and housed in the middle-class part of town. But that evening we were both finished with Middle School, and I was going to do something special for us, so I pushed away all the books she'd spread out across the table, dressed it up with a few candlesticks and made a cake for dinner. I traded myself to sugar from illegal alley dealers which are illegal in the middle part of the city with a life-time of experience in evading the Pacifiers, and I made some sort of matte which actually made a solid cake.
I'd just taken it out of the oven when there was a knock on the door. I figured maybe Grace had lost her keys or something, but when I opened there were Pacifiers outside. My heart began beating in double tempo as soon as I realized who they were. I was just about to confess about the sugar when one of them held out a picture of a giant container, a single familiar arm sticking out, the elbow good and squished. Then the Pacifiers left, and I was alone in the world.
I was kicked out, obviously, because I couldn't pay the rent and nobody wanted to hire me. The heritage which made my sister look weak although she was everything but, made me look like a thief although I wasn't even sure I'd hit puberty yet. Within a week I was stumbling around in the lower streets, dehydrated and starving and begging for either money or death, whatever came first. My birthday was spent in alleys, shaking so violently I thought I was going to die. I tried to find one of the medics who sometimes roam the streets to make hooders out of beggars, but as luck would have it, Barooba found me first. I remember the moment clearly. I had curled up at a curb in the small shade of a house, the rain hammering against my malnourished body as I lay in fetal position, praying for the rain to stop so I could at least try and become warm again, when a shadow leaned in over me and the rain seized. I opened my eyes to look up into a moon-tattooed face shaded by a dark purple umbrella.
"Hello," the woman said. "What's your name?"
"No- Noah," I said, wondering if she was going to harvest my organs now. I didn't care as long as she got me something to eat. "Noah Canner."
"Are you alone Noah?" she asked and I nodded, barely managing to keep my eyes open. Maybe she was the personification of death come to take me away. I wished she would hurry. There was a soft touch as her hand ran through my hair and down over my hollow chin. I hadn't been touched that softly since my mother died. Not even by Grace who showed love through night time stories and funny reenactments of her literary heroes instead of human contact. "Do you want to have a better life?" Barooba then asked, and it took me a moment to comprehend what she'd said. "I can show you a better way of existence."
I must have nodded because the next now I was underneath the umbrella and curling into her warm arms as the brought me to the Cave of Dionysus.
In the now I'm licking the last of the broth off my fingertips, trying to savor it.
"Hey, you wanna go visit Gunnar today?" Garmen asks and I raise my eyebrows at her.
"None of us have any money," I tell her. Old Gunnar has a number of skills, but usually he's our go-to guy for powder. He makes a strong blend of all the good stuff, says he has a special feel for mixing drugs. I believe it's just another one of his tales, but the drugs are good so I don't really care where they come from.
"I'm actually just in the mood for some entertainment," Garmen smiles. I shake my head at her, but we both know it means yes. "Great," she says and is already rising. "We'll just throw some clothes on."
"I am completely fine wearing this," I say and gesture to my thin bathrobe which makes Garmen roll her eyes.
"I'm not," she says.
"The girl is right," Barooba says from where she has taken a seat at the end of the refractory table to write on her pad. Her glasses are on and she doesn't look up. "You're selling the idea of sex, Noah, which means you have to leave some to the imagination."
I wasn't planning on going out half-naked anyway, so I follow Garmen upstairs where she makes a beeline for her room and I mine. There are three floors in the Cave of Dionysus. The first floor where our rooms are, the ground floor where we eat and greed the customers, and the basement which is the 'Cave'-part of the brothel name. Being one of the top three desirable ones I get my own first floor room whereas the last ten have to share two and two. Still, there is almost only room for a bed, a closet and a window. All of our toys are in the locker room in the basement (the Cave), as is our makeup and where we fight over who gets to use the mirrors. Except for the drugs and the sex, this could just as well be a fraternity house.
I open my closet and shuffle out my shoe to grab the transparent vial. It's cold in my palm, and my hands shake as I remove the lid. They don't stop shaking before I've downed the last drop of the drug and then I feel the soothing silk through my veins, calming my brain and heartbeat. I put on a pair of jeans and a tight shirt and jacket before I slip the vial into my pocket to discard of later. With my own room I have more privacy, but that's not a guarantee nobody will come snooping through my stuff. Alivia knows I get gifts from my customers, expensive drugs which are less dangerous and damaging than the ones she can find in the streets, and Endria has the annoying habit of forgetting to ask before she borrows my clothes.
I'm just pulling on my shoes when the door swings open and Garmen is standing in the doorway.
"Are you ready lov-er," she asks in her fake-sensual tone. She is much more comfortable in her body than what is good for her.
I grin, stand, and we make out way downstairs, past the remnants of the breakfast rush and the tv I can't forget, and into the cool morning air with Barooba's 'say hi to him from me' bellowing after us. The mist is heavy this time of year, but it doesn't cover the odor of pee and vomit as we make our way through the clustered streets. I throw the vial into the first alley I see, having learned from experience how much more suspicious it is to throw it in one of the trash cans still standing bravely although they never get emptied. For a long time throwing away trash in trash cans was a leftover habit from my days as middle-class citizen, but it's not how it's done in the slum. We walk in the middle of streets filled with trash, lacking the fear of being run over because of the lack of cars. The only time I see cars are when the rich come to burn money on us, and that is usually reserved for the nights. In the day, it's only the fumes that kill us and not the traffic.
Garmen is as always happy and chatty, but her cheeriness reaches almost squeaky heights when we pass a ruffled stray cat. I'm high enough I don't care about much of what goes on outside my head and Garmen, but if she wants to squeal that's none of my business. We pass an active shoe store with concrete instead of windows, a trade-market made of quickly-disassembling chunks of wood, and many abandoned shops with packs of hooders cluttering together inside before we make it to the old underground warehouse where the crossbreed fighting is taking place. Outside, an old grumpy man with less than half his teeth left, looking like I imagine Santa Clause would look like if he was homeless and on opioids, sits on a weathered green plastic box.
"Tickets?" he grumps.
"Well," Garmen smiles and takes a step closer to Santa Clause. "I was hoping this one would do." She holds out a slip of paper I recognize as a coupon for a free blowjob, if you buy a deluxe Dreamer's Night too, which is two or more prostitutes for eight hours. Considering the holes and patches in the man's trousers we are probably save, but he doesn't seem to notice the fine print. He's barely able to read the slip, then looks up, his eyes darting between Garmen and me.
"Which one of you is it for?" he asks, slightly less grumpy. I put on my best seductive smile, let it slide up my teeth.
"Whoever you want," I say.
Santa Clause looks down on the slip. Then he drags a grey nearly perfectly-camouflaged curtain aside behind him.
"The show's just started," he says and Garmen smiles at him as we dive in through the opening.
"That was amusing," she grins as we climb down the ladders into the underground warehouse. The sound of hooting, which was inaudible from the rustle of the outside, grows as we descend until it's smashing into our eardrums.
Crossbreed fighting is an everyday occurrence in the lower parts of the cities, but they save the real bloody ones for the evenings where the rich are off work and ready to indulge. This time a day it's mostly bored lower-class people who have a little extra to spend after a night of the rich indulging. We climb onto seats which consists of blocks of concrete and fences to stop any fighting there might be prelude to. In the cage under us is a ragged form which might look like a kind of otter with chunky feathers sticking out from its teared pelt. It's seizing up another animal which has monkey-features and a snout but has to jump on one leg because the other has been ripped off and thrown into the corner, bleeding dry. On it are bite marks that are slowly leaking ooze and blood.
"Wohoo!" Garmen yells as I take off my jacket. "Go peacock!"
"Peacock?" I ask. Garmen points at the otter-bird.
"Look," she says. "The feathers sticking out of the tail. Don't they look like they have eyes?"
I squint at it and have to admit she is right. Still, a crossbreed between an otter and a peacock? It must have been for the breeding itself and not extra fighting abilities.
"Maybe it's a mistake," I say. "A mutation gone wrong?"
"I think it's cute," Garmen says and fishes up two candy bars from her jacket. "Twix?"
I laugh and grab one. "What don't you have in those pockets?"
"Nothing," she says and bites off the plastic with her teeth. "They're magic."
I grin and eat my candy bar while the peacock-otter and the snout-monkey are going at each other in the fighting ring.
It takes only a few minutes before the monkey has beaten the otter to a bloody mess. Whoever bet money or belongings on the monkey are hooting, a few others are booing and some are even throwing empty cans into the ring.
"Wrut, I really was betting on the peacock," Garmen says as we pick up our coats.
"Good thing you didn't bet anything materiel then," I say and Garmen shrugs. We wait until most of the crowd has left before we make our way downwards, pushing against the few lingering people until we're at the bottom class where Garmen points out a man in a crooked hat, barking orders at two young boys sweeping up the arena.
"Gunnar!" I call and the man turns around. He's chewing tobacco, but at the sight of us he turns into a big smile which stretches all the lines in his face.
"Well I'll be wrutten," he says with a slight accent I've never been able to place. "If it isn't miss one and miss two."
Garmen flings herself at the middle-aged man and he spins her around. Garmen was abused by her mother once upon a decade ago before she ran away. Gunnar found her and brought her to Barooba in the hopes the owner of the Cave could give Garmen a better life, and Garmen has cared for him like a surrogate father ever since. "Did you suddenly come into means?" he asks after putting Garmen down.
"Nah, but your doorman is prone to bribes," Garmen says. "Just thought you should know."
"Well, I might need to get another one," Gunnar says and turns to the two boys. "Oi, anyone of you interested in better pay and less work?" he asks loudly. The two boys immediately both raise their hand.
"Me!" calls one of them.
"No, me, me!" the other yells and jumps up and down. Gunnar points at the second of them and the boy cries out in joy and almost flies up the ladders while the other one gets back to work. Gunnar laughs.
"Anything else you need?" he asks. "Except warn me about my doorman?"
"We just wanted to say hi," I say. "From Barooba too."
"Well how about lunch then, eh?" Gunnar asks and pats me on the back as he slings an arm over Garmen. "I got this new breed, part chicken, part turkey. It couldn't fight for the chance to wrut but Hell, it'll make a mean stew. Been simmering for two days now, so it has."
We eat the stew while Gunnar tells tall tales from his alleged time in the Pacifier corpse and the time he was the right hand of Jacques, the Minister of Education, and was about to decide which should go; education for the young or rehabilitation for criminals.
"And then I said, I said Jacques," Gunnar say as he fights into the air with his spoon, stew dripping from his chin. "If ye take education away from those youngster, I swear, I will cut off ye hand. And he said, and this was while he was still young so he could still sound threatening, he said; 'but Gunnar, they're unthankful. They don't deserve it.' And I said, and I remember this very clearly, I said; 'they need the privilege of hard work, and they need an education. The criminals, they've already gotten that'."
None of the stories are true, obviously. Gunnar has a vivid imagination, but usually not the greatest grasp on reality. In all fairness, he could have dreamt he had been Minster Jacques' vice Minister and then just went on to believe it. I still think it's admirable that he prioritizes kids' education high enough to argue with the Minister of Education about it, even if it did happen in a dream. I do find education important although I didn't get to participate in much of it.
I am not even sure I passed Middle School. I mean, statistically I did. Everybody passes Middle School. But I will never be 100% sure.
After sitting in Gunnar's 'crib' as he insists on calling it and enjoying his tales, only interrupted once by a fuming jobless Santa Clause doorman which Gunnar makes some of his workers throw out, Garmen says we should get going so we'll be at the Cave for rush hour. Gunnar gives us both a bear hug and we make our way home. As we enter the brothel, Ricardo walks past in a pair of leather shorts which leaves his abs to the view of the world. He is right to do so, it is his most impressive feature after all, and he knows it. All of us has something we like to show off: Sammie has her legs, Ginnifer her breasts, Quills her ass and Garmen her hair. It falls in soft ringlets around her face and she makes sure to take good care of it. I do understand why she is ranked one in most desirable; she looks like a kind angel and this is the world of cruelty and demons.
She told me long ago that my best feature is my eyes. To be honest, I like my lips better. They have a good curve which people of both genders seem to respond to. But maybe it's just because I like using them.
"Where have you two turtle-doves been?" Ricardo grins mischievously as we take off our jackets and shake off the beginning dew. I raise an eyebrow. A lot of the prostitutes in the Cave assume Garmen and I have something going on. It's not like we haven't had sex. She trained me two weeks after I first arrived at the tender age of fourteen when she was six months younger than me and already a professional. I know both how she tastes and moves and sounds in dark rooms and vice versa, but it has never been anything but friendship between us. She understands me and I understand her, that's all there is, although I am aware of plenty of people thinking something more will happen sooner rather than later.
"You're just jealous you have no one to go visit," Garmen shoots back and Ricardo grunts something and moves along.
We put our clothes back up in our closets and go downstairs into the basement to get ready for rush hour which begins in a few normal hours. The girls and Brice are all pushing for a space at the three mirrors, trying to get a peek at themselves.
"Move scumbag," Hannah growls and push Frei away from one of them, causing her to smear lipstick all over her cheek.
"Hannah!" Frei screeches and is just about to throw herself at the other woman when Barooba appears in the doorway.
"Everything alright down here?" she asks loudly, clearly conveying she knows it isn't. It's like she can sense when someone is fighting.
"Fine," Hannah barks, at which Frei, after a second, nods. Barooba groans something about hormones and disappears from the entrance again. Hannah smirks.
Ah, Hannah frikken Ngata. Indigenous Polynesian, in her thirties, chronically annoyed and an all-around frothing bitch. If she was an animal she would be a seagull, but a genetically engineered one, more prone to violence.
She always seems to have a problem with me, which is fine because I have a problem with her too. Actually, that's not true; she always seems to have a problem with everybody, even customers sometimes. If it isn't because she just squeezes into the top eight at every ranking, Barooba would surely have replaced her long ago.
It takes only about thirty minutes for me to get ready all the while Endria is distributing pills of something too weak to work on me. I brush and put gel in my hair and draw up my eyebrows, make my skin glisten with powder. Starring in the mirror, I let a hand slip over my smooth chin. At our weekly check-up, Dr. Terry looks for diseases and scars and scrapes. If we happen to have pimples or some other blemish she removes them or gives us lotions for them. But we also go through a complete body-hair removal. Everything goes - the girls has the hair on their legs and vagina and underarms ripped off, some of the harrier ones also has the hair on their bellies removed. The three of us who are males also have to have our whole body waxed down, but where Brice and Ricardo get to keep their beards as long as they're groomed right, the tiny down feathers pricking out of my skin are always taken off completely. I don't mind. I wouldn't mind having a beard, but I don't mind not having one either. Plus, Brice once found lice in his and that doesn't seem like something to strive for.
When I am done I move aside so Alivia can get to the mirror. She has sprinkled gold over her face which complements the flecks in her eyes, and she is dressed in a sort of costume which has a whip on the side.
"I was reserved," she explains when she catches my look. It happens a customer calls ahead for something specific – a way for us to dress, a way for us to behave to further their pleasure – but it doesn't happen often considering one has to be a regular to know our names.
I leave Alivia to her preparations and walk upstairs to where Ricardo and Ginnifer are already standing and waiting. Ginnifer is wearing a silk sheet which drapes over her body and pink lingerie which truly does show off her bust, her most prominent feature. Ricardo has put a leather choker around his throat which matches his underpants. I go to take a glass of water and a piece of gum from the kitchen before rush hour. The Cave only opens at rush hour, but then there is usually a line outside which materializes half a minute before the door is opened. I don't think it's to minimize the risk of being seen, it's just that it's a well-known brothel because Barooba keeps her workers beautiful and healthy, and everybody who ever use it and some who don't, know the opening hour. It also helps that there are posters with all the information distributed around the upper part of the city.
I can feel Ginnifer's eyes on me as I stand there leaning against the counter, but I can't worry about that because the drugs I took this morning are wearing off and my thoughts are getting loud again. I briefly consider asking the two others if they have something I can take before Garmen comes up. She is dressed in her usual costume of a white bikini with angel wings on her back, her features high-lighted by fluorescent make up and her hair falling around her. She looks older than she is, but then again, she was never really young.
She smiles at me and wraps her hand around my neck, dragging me down so she can reach my ear with her lips.
"You know what I found in my magic pockets?" she whispers, and then she opens her hand to two pills lying side by side in her palm. My heart kick-starts although I immediately feel bad for not sharing my gift with her earlier. I promise myself to make it up to her as I pour her a glass of water and we take the pills together – the fairy and the angel.
It might be placebo but I am pretty sure I can feel the drug almost instantaneously, working its way via veins from my stomach up to my brain. I let out a relieved sigh.
"Okay, everybody, on your marks," Barooba bellows and then to the downstairs; "get your pretty little butts up here at once! Rush hour's in five minutes! And remember to close the door!"
The last girls and Brice come hurrying up and get in line with the rest of us. The middle floor's usual yellow light has already been dampened, the soft red and pink lit, bathing us in what looks like pure baby-smoothness.
Barooba turns a few of us, moves Carrie-Ann down a step and makes sure Sammie has her legs stretched out in front of her. Then she takes a step back and nods.
"Go get 'em," she says before she opens the door.
One good thing about Barooba is that nobody puts up a fight with her. She's intrusive and hardcore, but she's also fair and her protection of her prostitutes is widely recognized as something to be respectful of. Her care for us means the customers are allowed into a place of safety where they don't have to worry about STDs as long as they show us the same regard. If one of us gets chlamydia or herpes or something else, all of our customers from the last week is tracked down and given notice. It is as simple as that.
And if everything should fail, Barooba has a gun stashed somewhere in her office, ready to dive in and stop anybody who don't follow the rules.
The first wave consists of a woman and five men. One of them, a balding with glasses who I imagine is a lawyer or a banker, can't take his eyes off of me. Maybe he has only now come into money, but it is unmistakably his first time her. I like them that way; new and fresh. They're easy to please and always gives lots of tips to soothe their consciences. Especially when they look at you the way this man looks at me. I am showing off my teeth in a smile when there is a push and an 'ungh', and suddenly two of the men are shoved aside.
"Hey!" one of the two exclaim. "Get in line!"
"Excuse me," a voice I realize I recognize says. "I don't mean to intrude, I just need a place-" the girl, or young woman really, turns her head and when I see her face I have to stifle a surprised gasp. It's no other than Alle Bronze herself.