Artwork by Marc Scheff
The green-eyed girl steps up her pace, she’s late. The customers don’t like it when you’re late, especially when they’re sat there in their leather suits…it can get hot under there. She flicks her cigarette with careless grace into the side of a bin and turns the corner. Number 19, a wide set of steps leading up, yet the houses all look the same, huge three or four story town houses. A rich part of town for rich clients. She much prefers this type of work to others she’s been exposed to: Reason #1 – she’s in charge, and she gets to make these fat, disgusting pigs feel as small as their penises. Reason #2 – there was no sex.
Running away from home at 16 is one thing, but when you run away from the dark and empty streets of your small Scandinavian hometown and thumb a lift through three countries and across one sea on a concoction of varying sob stories, it is quite something else. She was forced to escape. She was forced to run from him, her father. Within an hour she was 20 miles out of town. Strikingly beautiful, enchanting features with the most piercing eyes, as if plucked from the sky during the Northern Lights. It was easy for her to get around, she was ageless, she was untouchable, she could see through people and see exactly what they were.
After running a dozen bar jobs in her adopted city to simply make ends meet she decided she needed more. She lied about her age, not that it probably mattered, and started out in dingy strip clubs six months after landing in the UK. Her gaze had the power to cast people under a spell, men in particular, which always led them to part with hundreds of their cash in a single hour. She soon gravitated to more up-market surroundings, bigger clubs, bigger customers, bigger pay.
By 19 she had done more things than she could ever block out, and the city became a tormented place. She moved to a quiet part of town where everyone knew each other yet ironically no one knew her. Skills are acquired in time, doing certain things, as well as a separation from and disdain for the people you do them with. The perfect avenue for whatever emotion was left was being a dominatrix. One sad, sweaty man became the same as another, and all they wanted was one thing – to be taken over. Fees were high for this kind of work, and she soon became settled. Her next job was now a regular: a family – two kids and a wife who would not meet his gaze. He saw the green-eyed girl’s ad in a phonebox and feebly called up, stuttering, not sure of what he was even calling to say or do. Now, once a week, he would work half a day from home, close the blinds to the long road, darkening his grand lounge, and get suited up. Every time she came round the door opened slowly, he would be hiding behind it so no one could see what his life had become.
His safe word was ‘Jamaica.’ She had no idea why, she wondered sometimes if he had maybe shared a wonderful honeymoon in Jamaica with his wife when they were still able to look at each other with smiling eyes. Now it was his gateway to safety while a young woman from Scandinavia tortured him. What these years must have done to him to make him resort to this as his only means of feeling anything. ‘Jamaica’ was her last call of the week.
She gave him one last triumphant slash of the whip, kicked him in the side, as a bonus, and departed. Lighting up, she walked briskly down the road, cash lining the pocket of her coat.
Craig Elderfield