Campaign of the Month: October 2017

Blood & Bourbon

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Story Fourteen, Zoe IV

“You’re full of shit.”
Jefferson Parish sheriff’s deputy

Friday night, 1 April 2016, AM

Zoe: Zoe doesn’t remember the walk home. It feels faster than it was, her memories a blur. Maybe it’s fatigue. Maybe it’s hunger. Maybe it’s her smarter subconscious blocking out what memories would otherwise prove to damage her future self.

She slips her key into the lock, nearly falling into the apartment with fatigue. She closes her eyes. She breathes. She needs a shower.

A long, hot shower, and a night of sleep. Chuck can wait. Chuck will wait, no matter what sort of deal they made.

Or maybe not? Fuck, what is in this cocaine, Cash? Maybe she won’t mind it if he wants his payment.

After a shower.

GM: Zoe would say she’s not sure what she expected to find back in Chuck’s apartment, except she was sure.

She was sure it would be something other than this.

Chuck is naked in the bedroom, eyes barely open, ballgag strapped around his mouth. His wrists are secured to the bed with steel cuffs, while a spreader bar is secured between his ankles. His thighs are wrapped and connected to the headboard, so he’s at an approximately 90 degree angle. The head of his penis is covered in a steel sheath that looks as if it prevents erection or stimulation. It’s secured to a padlocked steel ring around his scrotum. There are two keys on the nightstand, on top of a napkin with a lipstick kiss print. On the floor is a strap-on with a double-ended dildo and bottle of lube.

Four photos lie on the bed:

From behind, Chuck bent over on hands and knees. He’s looking back at the camera, ball gag in place.

From behind, there’s a closer shot of his ass. The dildo’s head penetrates his ass.

A closeup of a long-nailed feminine hand locking his penis in the cage.

A photo from behind showing a woman’s back as she rides him. Her body is bare and perfect, with long brown hair that falls down to her back.

Up close, the napkin reads in stylish cursive,

He’s all yours ;)

It’s signed underneath with a simple,

—A

Zoe: She walks into the bedroom and opens her eyes.

…

“What the FUCK, Chuck?!”

Zoe is caught between trying not to laugh, trying not to be angry, and wishing the entirety of his antics can vanish long enough that she can recover from her endless nightmare.

She stomps into the room, hands flailing. She isn’t sure what to do.

GM: Chuck is still there after the shower.

Still naked.

Still restrained.

Still everything.

He tugs against the cuffs as she re-emerges.

A moaned noise slurs past his gag.

It sounds angry at her.

Zoe: She presses hands to a too-tired face.

She doesn’t need any of this nonsense. Why can’t she have a normal day? A normal night? A normal anything?

Did she actually die and go to hell? It feels like it.

Zoe unlatches the ball gag.

“Who the fuck is A?”

GM: “Fucking… un… tie me…” Chuck grogs.

Zoe: She pinches the bridge of her nose. Okay. This is fine. This is fine. Everything. Is. Fine.

She grabs the keys, then moves to unlock him.

GM: Chuck immediately grabs the first of the pictures and starts tearing it to pieces.

Or at least as ‘immediately’ as he can. He’s pretty slow and groggy about it.

“Fucking… cunt…”

Zoe: For the first time since her phase of questionable faith the first time she’d been made to distance herself from the substance, Zoe wishes she wasn’t as high as she is. Fuck. Her fatigue feels as if it’s been replaced with an injection of coffee, bypassing the stomach and taking a direct line to her heart. She wants to dance, and to fuck, and to scream, and to play, and to shower—mostly shower—and to be fun

She shakes her head, pressing a palm to her forehead and smacking herself a few times.

“Can’t fucking—I’m too high for this shit.”

She sits beside him, picking up one of the errant photos.

“I didn’t know your ass could wink.”

She shrugs, cackling, and tosses it down.

“Is it really winking with one hole? Hmn.”

Maybe that’s a topic for a thesis, when she returns to school. When.

“I’m too in need of you to consider blackmail, too tired of my day to have the energy to think any other way on it, and too high to connect one thought to the next.”

A little embellishment, but just a little.

“So, what in the fuck happened, Chuck?”

GM: Chuck does not immediately answer. He just grabs the next photo and rips it up. His eyes are drooping as he slurs,

“Bad. Decision. All right?”

Zoe: She picks up another errant photo, glances down at it, and begins to tear it.

“Want revenge?”

GM: Chuck stares at her for a second.

His face looks out of focus.

But she sees the hate in his eyes.

“Yeah.”

Chuck grabs the last of the photos and rips it up.

“Those. Those whores.”

“I’ll fucking ruin them.”

Zoe: “Girlfriend, or…?”

She tears the picture to pieces, bit by bit. The edges come first; the periphery of the room, then the bedposts, then the nightstand, then the headboard. Little by little she tears it apart, until all she holds is the center—a snippet of his asshole so focused that one can’t even tell the hole is attached to a human unless they know the context.

She holds it up to her eye, as if an entire dimension of possibility lay inside.

The grin that spreads across her face could light up a city.

GM: Chuck isn’t grinning. At all.

“No,” he growls, though it still comes out half a slur.

He rips the photo’s pieces into even smaller pieces.

“Literal, fuckin’, whores.”

Zoe: She shakes her head as if she’s a dog throwing off water.

“Fuckin’.. what the fuck is in this?!”

It’s some good shit.

“You hired a bunch of whores and they did this? Are you high?”

GM: “They… drugged me.”

He blinks slowly.

“Those whores… they fuckin’ drugged me.”

“They drugged me,” he repeats, as if to himself.

He grabs the key on the nightstand and fumbles to unlock the padlock on the device around his dick.

Zoe: “Sounds like you’ve got some enemiiiiieeessss…” she sings, waggling a finger back and forth like a bony metronome.

She comes up behind him, throwing her arms around his neck from behind, as she would her boyfriend. If she had one.

“We should help each other get revengeeeeee! It’ll be fun! I’ll kill your whores, and you kill a cop! Easy peasy.”

GM: There’s a padlocked leather collar around his neck.

Chuck, though, is still fumbling to get off the chastity cage. He swears several times before he finally undoes the padlock and pulls off the steel head. His penis is tinged an unhealthy shade of blue.

“I’ll fuckin’ destroy them,” he slurs.

Zoe: “Ooooooh… That looks sick! We should get the blood flowing.”

She does not, however, move to touch it.

“How will ya destroy them?”

She moves to flop back onto the bed.

GM: Chuck tugs at the ring around his scrotum and swears some more when it doesn’t come off.

Zoe: “How many fucking locks do they have on you?”

GM: “Isn’t a lock, it’s…”

Chuck finally crams in the head of his penis and drags it underneath a protruding, keyhole-shaped portion of the ring. Then he pulls his balls through and throws it aside with an angry look. Normal color starts to return to his manhood.

“Z’where’s the other key,” he slurs.

Zoe: “You need another key?”

She sounds both surprised and annoyed.

“Haaaaa…. guess you’re lucky they didn’t chain your asshole shut!” she says, poking the shred of a picture she’s determined to keep.

GM: Chuck grabs at it.

Zoe: She closes her fist. It’s no more than a square inch after all her ripping.

“I waaaant it!”

GM: Chuck tries to un-pull her fingers. But the man looks ready to pass out at any moment, and there’s barely any strength behind his hands.

“Not… funny!”

Zoe: She rolls back further onto the bed, having the time of her damn life. Why did she ever feel tired?

“Cmonnnnn! It’s cute! I waaaant it! What made them do this, anyway?”

GM: Chuck glowers at her.

“‘Cuz they’re fucked up, is why!”

“Give it to me and I’ll tell you, all right?”

Zoe: “Nuh! They’re whores! Whores fuck! This is a conspiracy.”

She mourns the pretty little photo; at this point, barely a crumpled black dot and vaguely Chuck-colored background.

Then hands it over.

“Fine.”

GM: Chuck rips it up.

“Did a whore a favor. Said she’d pay me back with sex.”

“Brought a friend.”

Zoe: “You should invest in a safe word. Or a gun.”

GM: “Gun,” he mutters.

“Yeah. Drugged me and did…”

He fumbles around for the other key.

Zoe: “Well, technically, they didn’t break their word. Whatcha do for them?”

GM: “Some loser didn’t pay them for sex. Called my uncle ’bout where he lived. Rented from us.”

Chuck finds the key and tries to unlock the collar’s padlock. He swears when it doesn’t come off.

Zoe: “Ooooh. Not very bright going back on their word…”

A pause.

“Whatcha want to do to ’em?”

GM: “Fuck ’em,” he mutters.

“Ruin their lives.”

He tries the other key on the collar’s badlock. It finally comes off. He angrily throws it aside.

“Get them arrested. For whorin’.”

Zoe: “That’s boring,” she sings, waggling a finger at him.

“Oooh, let’s call the cops! That’ll show them what’s what. We’ll just show the cops the pictures—which don’t exist anymore—and they’ll chase them down. That’ll show them.”

Is she mocking him? Absolutely.

“You can do better than thaaaat!”

GM: Chuck glowers at her.

“No, dumbass, get them arrested for being whores.”

“Prostitution is illegal.”

Zoe: She palms her face.

“Dude, you’re literally paying me with a place to sleep and eat with sex. How will reporting them to the police—”

She shakes her head. Hypocrite.

“You don’t want to take revenge yourself? Something more personal? Come onnnnn!”

She reaches out, tugging on his forearm.

GM: He gives her a bleary look.

“Are you… high?”

He shakes his head.

“Whatever. Personal revenge. Yeah… wouldn’t say no.”

“Fuck them.”

“Fuck those cunts.”

Zoe: “Top of the fucking clouds. MAN that was some good shit he gave me!”

She tugs him over and kisses him, hard, exactly as unromantic and unsexy as a cartoon rabbit in a dress kissing a hunter.

“Good! Don’t say no. Personal revenge is much more satisfying.”

GM: Chuck’s response is equally unromantic. He doesn’t even kiss her back. Just pulls away and mutters, “Not in the mood,” with a dark look.

He ambles up and rifles through his dresser for some sweats and a t-shirt. He tugs them on.

Zoe: “Come onnnnn! There has to be something more going on! Paid whores don’t just torture their client in repayment of a favor. Are you suuuuure you don’t have enemies?”

GM: “Yeah, sure!” he exclaims, sinking heavily down back down onto the bed. “Yeah, my family’s got enemies, but I dunno who the fuck’d… who the fuck’d do this to me.”

“She was just some whore I fucked a bunch. Paid her.”

“Then brought over this… this literally insane…”

“I dunno where the fuck she came from…”

Zoe: “Did they at least get you off once?”

GM: “I d-ddunno, wh…”

Chuck clutches his stomach, then barrels out of the room. Zoe hears the sound of him retching.

Zoe: She clicks her tongue. Now that she finally wants to fuck, not a soul available is ‘in the mood’. Maybe her mother gave her a good enough fucking that karma continues to decide she’s meant for chastity. Hmn.

“Do you need me to hold your hair back?”

She doesn’t sound entirely serious.

GM: There’s no answer, but after a little while, the toilet flushes.

There’s the sound of gargling and spitting, then Chuck ambles back in to the bedroom with a barely comprehending look and plops back down on the bed.

“Why the fuck are you even here, anyway?”

“Don’t you have… friends?”

Zoe: She shakes her head.

“They won’t talk to me. Mom wins this round! You want to be my friend? Like, the kind I don’t have to fuck? I’ll still fuck you. Apparently I’m good at it! Good enough for three-hun—”

She looks puzzled all of a sudden.

“Two-hun… Dred and…”

She can’t remember how much cash she has. Oh well.

“I got paid for it! I went out and got locked in a closet!”

GM: She doesn’t have any cash. The other Cash took it all.

“Yeah,” Chuck grogs.

“You’re high as a kite, ‘n I’m drugged. Night.”

He sags onto a pillow and rolls over.

Zoe: "Pffffff! Kites got NOTHING on me!”

She lays back beside him.

“…so…”

A pause.

“Develop a pegging kink?”

GM: Her answer to that is total silence.

Friday morning, 1 April 2016

GM: Zoe’s dreams that night are troubled and fitful. She feels like shit when she wakes up. She supposes that a night of cocaine, stripping, and nothing to eat in 24 hours but cheese sticks and O’Tolley’s cheeseburgers may do that.

Chuck is still soundly asleep and lies face-first against the pillow. He doesn’t even snore. The pale-faced man looks really out of it.

Zoe: Fuck. You can’t live with drugs. You can’t live without them. Take them, and you earn a hangover to make any bottle of rum blush with envy. Don’t take them, and you earn a hangover to make any bottle of rum blush with envy, and you’ll punch your own mother to get some.

Zoe doesn’t need a lack of cocaine to want to punch her mother. She’s wanted to do far worse for days now.

She stirs, pressing a palm to a sweat-slick forehead.

Her heart thumps with urgency upon seeing Chuck. She places an ear to his chest. Did she kill him now?!

GM: The sheets are sweaty too. Hers and Chuck’s. Neither of them seems as if they had a good sleep.

Zoe finds it impossible to place her ear against Chuck’s chest when he is lying on the bed chest-down, but his neck has a pulse.

Zoe: He’s alive. That’s good. That’s a relief. For a moment, she wondered if Cash killed him while they slept with intent of pinning a murder on her. It seems he either has a merciful side, or he’s not as vindictive as paranoid-Zoe thinks he is.

She hasn’t showered in days. That’s her first order of business. Also, a time check.

GM: She has a marked sense of deja vu as she steps into the shower. It can’t have been days, can it?

It’s around noon. Friday.

Zoe: It can’t have been days.

But it has been.

She’s a has been.

She has to.

Has to what?

Has to shower.

Has to get to work.

Has to eat.

Food.

Real food.

So much food.

All the food.

She tries to recall what Chuck has in his freezer.

She stored frozen tadpoles in her shared office at Tulane. Some stupid exhibit-to-be to wrestle the interest of doe-eyed undergraduates-to-be. She had better things to do, but as Master commands, Apprentice does.

Maybe she’ll strike him down, one day.

Tadpoles aren’t food.

Not unless you cook them.

And season them.

In that order.

Shower.

Then food.

The sweat won’t come off.

Her skin will come off before the sweat.

Is Cash under her skin?

Are metaphors reality?

Does he really call himself Cash because he likes money?

She has money.

Had. Money.

He’d have liked Zoe.

Last week.

Except her tadpoles.

Though, both are green.

She has no clean clothes.

Fuck.

GM: It has been days.

One night with Chuck already.

Locked up all day in a closet for another.

Stripping all night and parting with her dignity for $280 and coke.

The sweat eventually comes off under the shower. Zoe may or may not feel clean.

There’s food in the fridge and freezer. Frozen meals and leftover, half-eaten restaurant takeout.

Her laundered clothes are a mess. At least half are ruined.

Chuck had wanted to see her naked.

Zoe: She would fuck Chuck three times right now for enough spare cash to buy some clothes and pay back those who fronted her dancing gear, but Chuck is passed out in his own drool.

Should she call a doctor for him? Probably. His heart continues to beat, so she continues to eat.

Zoe rummages through his freezer, finding a breakfast of eggs, sausage and a biscuit—somehow mashed into a paste—and nukes it in the microwave.

It’s better than some alternatives in there.

GM: The microwave dish slowly rotates around with the two ‘biscuit-style scrambles.’ The packaging looks appetizing enough, but it always does.

Do strippers work during the day?

Maybe she has that to herself. Cash Money didn’t say when or at what time she needed to be back.

Zoe: He didn’t, and while she is sure he expects common sense to be applied, she doesn’t want to make assumptions on his expectations lest she get locked in a closet. Again.

The microwave beeps, and she descends upon that poor plate of depressed eggs and other accompanying niceties with all the reserved restraint of a starved dog.

There are no survivors.

Once her plate is clean—quite literally, licked so—she finds the remnants of her clothing. What’s even left?

GM: The finished product, for ‘product’ seems the most fitting term to call it, is two open-face biscuits with egg, sausage, and cheese topping. The food tastes very salty and simultaneously filling but empty. Zoe can already feel her blood sugar spiking.

Technically, all of her clothes are left in the returned hamper. The delicates are ruined. The main articles to survive are the sturdier ones, like jeans.

She feels another striking sense of deja vu. Has she done this before?

Zoe: She has. She knew she had before subjecting herself to facing the same reality again: she doesn’t have enough clothing lift over to make an appropriate outfit to get coffee from down the street.

She groans, tugging her hair.

Okay. This is salvageable. No underwear is fine, for now. Jeans are safe.

She’ll borrow a shirt from Chuck.

GM: The shirts in Chuck’s dresser are a little big for Zoe, but he has plenty of them. They range in style from formal button-ups to wear with suits to more casual t-shirts like the one he’s still sleeping in. Polo shirts and long-sleeved tees round out the middle.

He’s still collapsed on the bed and looks completely out of it. The handcuffs, spreader bar, strap-on, ballgag, and chastity cage lie haphazardly strewn over the floor.

Zoe: They’re a little big, but it’s better than going out topless.

Concern laces her face when she regards him again. She slides onto the bed beside him.

“Chuck.”

GM: The sleeping man does not answer her.

Zoe: He doesn’t answer her, but he’ll probably be fine; and, if he isn’t fine, it’s because she’s already died days ago, gone to hell, and is living an eternity of punishment for her selfish existence.

So, you’re on your own, Chuck.

For the first time since her ‘Worst Day Ever’, she pulls her laptop out. She’d shut it off with intention to preserve it from any water damage before she left the coffee shop. It should be fine, right?

GM: For once, fortune smiles upon her, as the Sunbook laptop boots up without issue. She must’ve packed it fairly high up in the soaked and ruined bag.

Zoe: Blessed be!

She plugs the laptop in, gives it a few minutes to charge, and boots up her browser. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no.

How bad is her inbox?

GM: It could be worse.

But her advisor asked her to come work on Saturday and seem distinctly irritated by the lack of response. Someone else will do that, she’s told, and will get all the credit.

Her advisor also tells her to come wash his car by Monday.

Grad students are, unfortunately, their advisors’ bitches, more or less.

Zoe: She writes her advisor most of the truth: that she ran into some trouble with her family, and that she needs to find a source of income to continue giving her focus to the remainder of her degree. It shouldn’t take her too long! At least, that’s what she tells him.

Unfortunately, she can’t make it to work and she can’t wash his car; but, she says she’ll wash it twice!

Probably in a bikini, if he has his way.

GM: It’s perhaps Zoe’s “luck” that her advisor seems to be checking his mail right now. Her inbox pings with a new email.

Granted, it’s not as if the response took him very long to compose.

It’s only one sentence long.

Wash the car by 5 PM today or you’re terminated.

The threat, she knows, is completely genuine. Advisors have total power over the doctoral students who work for them. There is no appeal. There is no transfer to another advisor. There are no second chances—leave your doctoral program, which you can do at any time, and you are done forever in academia.

Zoe’s heard horror stories about doctoral students who quit and went back to flipping burgers at O’Tolley’s because they found the abuse from their advisors so intolerable.

Zoe: She grits her teeth hard enough that she worries about cracking one.

Given her luck, she consciously relaxes her jaw, rubbing the connection at the rear.

Okay. Leave the supplies out and I’ll come over right now. But seriously, I need to find income aside; my projects will have to keep on hold.

GM: Another just as swift and curt reply pops up:

Keep up with the work or you’re terminated.

Zoe: She smacks the desk.

GM: There are other doctoral students eager to replace her.

She knows that bitterly well, too.

If only she could turn to Mom or Grandpa or even Dad to get him to see reason.

Zoe: How the holy fuck is she supposed to manage her degree, pleasing Cash—literally, probably,—keeping Chuck appeased, and somehow managing to keep enough income to eat once Chuck gets tired of feeding her?

Where does Chuck keep his stash?

She goes to rummage for that. Fuck sobriety.

GM: Zoe’s parents would be the first to tell her she’s a disappointment. She’d be the first to agree that her life is now a disappointment.

Chuck’s stash doesn’t disappoint, though. He keeps a fair bit of booze in his place. Enough that she might be able to kill herself via alcohol poisoning, if she wants to go out that way.

Zoe: No, no, no. She doesn’t want to die. She just wants to feel something more than cold, harsh reality. Cocaine is ideal! She’ll wash her advisor’s car in minutes!

GM: Alas, Chuck has no cocaine in his apartment that Zoe can find. Just alcohol.

Zoe: She whines. What kind of wealthy spawn is he? Terrorists are no fun.

She huffs.

Fine.

She’ll go wash his stupid car.

Maybe blow up his stupid head.

GM: Her advisor’s address is in Metairie. She’ll need transportation.

Or she can just walk the seven or so miles.

Zoe: Why can’t the world pass free transportation?

Well, Chuck did agree to lend her a car. She’ll just take that.

GM: It takes some searching, but eventually she locates his keys.

Zoe: Perfect! Lucky for her, she managed to pass her driver’s test. On the second try.

GM: It’s a too-familiar route to the parking garage with her keys in hand. It almost feels like she’s going out for a drive, in her old car, in her old life—apart from the fact she’s borrowing someone’s else car.

Is she borrowing someone else’s life, in so many words, staying here?

Zoe: The thought strikes her like a pallet of bricks.

All those thoughts of death and Hell and this false reality, when she really is a ghost, possessing others and living their lives, punished every time she tries to live her old life.

She was rewarded when she lived a new life the night before. Somewhat.

But how can she just move on? She can’t just forget who she was, drop decades of work and become a whore.

Her hand settles to her belly at a red light. The thought of a parasite inside her from Trip, or worse, Cash…

She shudders.

But how can she move on?

GM: The only answer she receives is a rude honk from the car behind hers.

Traffic is a poor source of advice.

Zoe: You know how Zoe moves on from who she was?

She rolls the window down and flips the driver the bird, then—checking VERY carefully to ensure she’s not about to hit someone—zooms off.

Friday afternoon, 1 April 2016

GM: It’s a much briefer trek by car than it is by foot. The house of her advisor, Craig Estes, is a well-to-do property located in a nice suburban neighborhood. There’s a big and neatly maintained lawn. It’s a fairly nice house, the kind that belongs to someone with a six-figure income.

If on the lower side on that income level, for him to be relying on his doctoral students to do household chores for him.

There’s a Suburban parked in the driveway, ready to clean. Zoe sees no supplies laid out.

Zoe: Stupid advisor. Stupid Suburban. Stupid supplies. Stupid missing supplies. Stupid PhD. Stupid Zoe.

She huffs, locks the car behind her, and knocks on the door.

GM: She’s answered by Dr. Estes, a middle-aged man with rectangular glasses and receding hair who’s dressed in a button-up. He looks her over with a bored air.

“Supplies are in the garage. When you’re done, I have a list of groceries for you to pick up.”

Zoe: “Yes, Dr. Estes,” she answers, as if it’s Christmas. What’s gotten into Zoe? She’s never been so happy to serve his needs.

“I miss Tulane. I know it’s only been a few days…”

GM: Dr. Estes gives her an odd look.

Zoe: She smiles at him. What a lovely smile. Something’s different.

“Well… I’ll let you know when it’s done!”

And so she sets to it.

GM: Dr. Estes gives a grunt of acknowledgment and closes the door.

Zoe finds some cleaning products, rags, and a bucket in the garage. There’s a garden hose nearby to work on the car with.

It may be April, but the Dixie sun is fat and swollen overhead. It feels around 80 degrees, and it’s extremely humid. Like it always is in south Louisiana.

Dr. Estes’ house is almost certainly air-conditioned.

Zoe: Stuffy corpse. Act like that and I’ll grant your wish.

Still, she cares about finishing her degree. If that means washing his car, and buying his groceries—with his own money—it’s a small price to pay. He’ll pay the bigger price in the long run.

GM: In short order, Zoe finds herself drenched in sweat and extremely thirsty. It’s tiring and physically intensive work, especially in this weather, to scrub the car completely clean.

Zoe: She pushes herself, for now. Suffering is part of the game, isn’t it? He doesn’t care to see his mentees succeed or fail. He cares to see them suffer; so, suffer she will. It will all be worth it in the end. Every. Last. Bit.

GM: Zoe is a sweat-soaked and red-faced mess by the time she’s done scrubbing. Maybe she’s gotten sunburn. She smells awful. Her clothes are going to stink after they dry out, if they do at all in the muggy weather. Dr. Estes looks the car over after she’s done, then says,

“My cat got diarrhea. You can clean the litter box before you pick up my groceries.”

Zoe: “Can I…”

She swallows a sandpaper tongue.

“Can I have a glass of water before I go?”

She’s worked herself to exhaustion; at least, it feels that way, and it shows that way.

GM: “Wash the glass when you’re done,” Dr. Estes says impatiently.

He snaps his fingers.

“Oh. I’m glad you reminded me.”

“My dishwasher’s broken. The repairman comes by tomorrow. Wash and put away everything that’s in there.”

Zoe: “Certainly, Dr!”

She always does. Cleanliness is one of the core tenets of her chosen educational path. Once you know what really lays unseen on used surfaces, you never forget to wash them again.

She just might bash it over his head first.

“Before or after I shop for you?’

GM: “Either,” he shrugs. He produces a wallet and hands her $200, along with a paper shopping list. “That’ll be enough for the groceries.”

Zoe: “Yessir.”

Water. Then another glass.

She takes care in washing the dishes, ensuring that nothing is scratched or broken. No. Zoe is the perfect student. She’s the perfect candidate. She’s perfect. Perfect perfect perfect.

She drinks a third glass, then washes, dries and adds her own glass to the collection.

Next: cat poop. At least it’s in the litter box, right?

GM: There are a lot of dishes. It’s over half an hour before Zoe finishes drying and putting away all of them. Her legs are sore from stretching on the hard tile floor. Her fingers are wrinkled like raisins and smell of dish soap.

At least it’s cool inside.

Zoe’s hope, however, proves misplaced. The litter box is in the pantry room. The cat looks like it missed the box. There’s wet, stinky poop all over the floor.

Zoe: She could leave the cat in the oven…

She hasn’t had Chinese in a few weeks.

Deep breath, Zoe. Outside the pantry.

It’s not the first time she’s been made to clean up after that geriatric feline. It will probably be the last.

She collects the supplies, regretting contacting the doctor, and sets to her next task.

GM: If she wasn’t doing his household chores she’d be terminated from the program.

It’s gross and unpleasant work, even if it is shorter than doing the dishes. Zoe’s wrinkled hands smell like cat shit through the layers of paper towels she uses to clean it up.

Zoe: Where is the monster, anyway? Maybe it can read her mind.

Back to the sink. More washing. Always washing. Her hands still smell like precum to her.

Money in her back pocket, she calls out to him, “Going for your groceries! Back soon.”

GM: Dr. Estes gives no answer. It’s a short drive to the local Herrick’s. Dr. Estes looks like he’s planning a nice dinner, or maybe dinner party, given some of the items on his grocery list. There’s a lot of wine and prime cuts of beef.

Zoe also realizes, as she tabulates up the prices of individual items, that he’s not given her enough money to buy everything. She’s around $50 short.

Zoe: She pinches the bridge of her nose, and looks up at the sky.

I know I’ve never been one for visiting your house on Sundays, God, but if you’re trying to make a point, I’m listening. I give up. Truce. You win. White flag. What do you want me to do?

She calls him.

GM: God doesn’t answer.

Neither does her advisor.

The phone rings until voicemail. She’s invited to leave her name and number and the nature of her call,

“And I’ll get back to you as soon as convenient.”

Beeep.

Zoe: She hangs up.

Okay.

Fine.

Back to his house, buying what she can as close to $200 as possible—including tax.

GM: Dr. Estes looks over everything when she’s back, as if to be sure she did it right. Then he says,

“This isn’t everything on the list.”

The man with absolute power over her future in academia stares at her with a very displeased frown.

Zoe: She whimpers. The moment he opens the door, she tells him, before he even takes the bag.

“There wasn’t enough cash. I’d have paid it forward myself, but—I don’t have any money. I’ve only been eating because a friend has been kind enough to feed me.”

Annoyance: boiling.

Demeanor: calm apparent.

GM: Dr. Estes stares at her, as if making up his mind.

Zoe can see the future of her PhD hanging in the balance.

Over this man’s groceries.

Then he reaches into his wallet, gives her another $50, and says,

“Go pick up the rest.”

Zoe: “Thank you for understanding, Dr. Estes!”

It must be near time for work. She won’t race—she doesn’t want to kill anyone—but she will skitter along quickly when she can to ensure she can get back and shower in time. The last thing she wants is Cash upset with her.

GM: The trip back to the grocery store feels as if it takes forever to pick up the remaining one bag of items. When she’s back, Dr. Estes tells her,

“Go clean my bathrooms.”

Zoe: She checks the time.

GM: A few hours past noon.

Zoe: She groans internally. Still a few hours before she has to be back at Barely Legal.

“Okay.”

He’s punishing her for disappearing for a few days.

On to the bathrooms…

GM: Zoe gets sore from kneeling over tile floor and stains her hands with bleach as she scrubs.

“Did you do the toilets?”

Zoe: “Not done yet!”

GM: There’s no reply.

Zoe: Toilets. Cleaner than when they were bought. At least it’s a feasible request, unlike buying groceries with more money than she’s given.

GM: Then when that’s done and they’re freshly scrubbed, her advisor tells her,

“You can vacuum the floors next.”

Zoe: “O-okay! Anything else?”

I can’t pay for my own funeral when Cash kills me. If you keep this shit up, one of us isn’t surviving the night.

GM: “Not for now.”

For now.

Zoe: Zoe is the best at vacuuming. There’s never been a person who’s vacuumed quite as good as her. Just ask anyone who matters, and they’ll tell you, Zoe J Kelly is the best vacuumer. Believe you her. Her vacuuming brain is yuge.

GM: Dr. Estes doesn’t look particularly impressed when she’s done. He doesn’t tell her she did a bad job, but he doesn’t praise her either. Instead he says,

“Laundry hamper’s in the bedroom. Do a load and fold everything when it’s dry. Iron my shirts.”

Zoe: Eat my shorts. Don’t you have other grad students to fuck with? Does everyone with an iota of power wield it over others as if they’re the ruler of their own, minuscule empire?

The answer is yes, Zoe, and you know it.

“Okay.”

If there are streaks, she’s lighting the washing machine on fire.

GM: There are bunch of dirty men’s and women’s clothes for Zoe to haul to the laundry room and load into the machine. It spins and spins in its cycle.

30 minutes until it’s done.

Does Dr. Estes expect her to just stand around until it’s done?

The drying cycle will take more time, too.

Does her time mean that little to him?

Zoe: Apparently, it does. He’d have been kind to ask her to do this in the midst of everything else.

But he didn’t, did he?

No, he elects to inconvenience her—and other candidates—every chance he can. He’s a bully through and through, even if he is one of the brightest people in the state.

How many of his achievements—how much of his success as an academic—stems from abuse and theft of his protégés?

He doesn’t encourage growth. He doesn’t encourage the field to move onward. He doesn’t want to breed a healthy community that will shepherd humanity into another era.

In a moment of clarity, she decides: If he doesn’t care for any of it in the way she does, he doesn’t deserve his position any longer. Since this Hell began, every time she’s felt that all-consuming fire of inside her—toward Chris, and toward the rapist-that-wasn’t in the club—their life was snuffed out as if a candle in the wind.

She walks back out while the laundry is in.

“Thank you for all you do.”

And she wills that same passionate hate to tide onto him.

GM: Dr. Estes is in his office, working on something over his computer.

“You’re welcome,” he agrees without looking at her.

They are the last words he ever says.

At first, all that happens is he stops typing. The clitter of fingers against keyboard goes silent.

Then he sags forward, breathing hard. He clutches a hand to his chest.

He jerks around in his chair, swiveling to face Zoe. His forehead is beaded with sweat. His mouth hangs open and his eyes are wide. With pain. With terror.

He tries to say something to Zoe, as his eyes lock with hers. All that comes out of his mouth is a paper-dry rasp, but there is no mistaking the look of pleading in his eyes. As he finally sees her as a fellow human being, who right now, he needs.

He staggers out of his chair, towards her, clutching his heart. He makes it two steps forward before he collapses forward onto his shoulder, then rolls to a stop on his back. His mouth hangs dumbly open as his eyes vacantly stare towards the ceiling.

The smell of piss wafts up Zoe’s nostrils. There’s a wet stain around his crotch.

Zoe: Zoe shrieks as if she witnessed her own father stabbed in the heart in front of her. There’s some guilt there, in her heart. What gives her the right to be judge, jury and executioner? Who is she to decide who is and isn’t fit for anything at all?

Guilt is made to take a back seat. This has to look right.

“Professor!? Wh—”

Her eyes widen with surprise; faux surprise, but surprise nonetheless.

She crosses the room in a pair of long strides, meeting him just as he stumbles and collapses in front of her.

“I-is it medicine?!”

Her fingers fumble across his chest, lowering herself to listen to a heartbeat she already knows is fading.

“Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my GOD!”

She draws her own phone out, shaking, and dials emergency.

GM: Zoe might be faking it if she screamed over her father’s death too.

“911, what is your emergency?” greets a female dispatcher’s calm voice.

Zoe: “I-i-it’s my profewdor! I w-was ’elwing him anee COLLAPSED!”

She’s bawling so hard that she’s hardly understandable.

She does, however, manage to convey the address.

GM: The dispatcher stays on the line with Zoe for the seven or so minutes until the EMTs arrive, accompanied by a police escort. It’s a fast response, all things considered. Zoe is asked to open the house’s door for them so they don’t need to break it open.

Zoe: Her voice quivers like a sapling in a storm while the dispatcher tries and fails to restore some calm to her, her tears taking the role of the rain. The leading lady stumbles over her words while they speak, finding a nearby seat on the floor.

When the EMTs arrive, the door is open, Zoe standing moon-eyed behind the frame. The tears stop. She doesn’t have any more tears. How can she? Tears are replace by shock, and Zoe is shock incarnate.

GM: The EMTs try the defibrillator paddles on the motionless man, anyway, despite his minutes-stopped heart: there is always a chance they may be able to resuscitate the clinically dead. They try several times.

Their patient just lies there.

It’s not long before the EMTs “call it” and document his time of death. There’s talk of notifying next of kin.

Dr. Estes’ eyes stare blankly up at the ceiling.

Friday afternoon, 1 April 2016

GM: The EMTs leave the resuscitation adjuncts in place. No one moves Dr. Estes’ body or otherwise disturbs the scene.

Two black-uniformed Jefferson Parish police officers ask Zoe to tell them everything that happened.

Zoe: Zoe tells them the truth: that she was helping her advisor when she came back to mention a thought—momentarily spiraling off into some too-deep, boundary-pushing thought on cellular biology, before getting back to the point once their eyes gloss over sufficiently—and he collapsed. She describes the symptoms in the vague detail that she remembers, and she immediately called emergency.

GM: The biology talk seems to largely go over the heads of the two police officers, if the glazed looks on their faces are indication.

They trade glances between each other when Zoe is finished.

“How well did you know him?” asks one of them, a middle-aged man with a graying mustache.

Zoe: They seem to have bought it. That’s good.

She sniffles. It’s wet and globby.

“A… a few years. He was my advisor. I’m one of the d-doctoral candidates at Tulane.”

GM: “Did he have any health conditions you know of?” asks his partner, a slightly younger and clean-shaven man.

Zoe: She shakes her head.

“We didn’t talk about his health. I just… I didn’t expect anyone… I’ve never—”

GM: “What was your relationship like?” asks the other cop.

Zoe: She explains what is again the truth: that she’s been his candidate for the last couple of years, and is nearing the end of her degree.

“About as healthy as any professor-candidate pairing is,” she adds with a shrug.

“I… I didn’t expect…”

GM: “Who would,” nods the mustached cop. “How long you been over at his house today?”

Zoe: She pulls out her phone to check the time.

“A few hours?”

GM: “And you spent these past few hours talking about biology with him?”

Zoe: “Among other things. I helped him out with this and that around the house,” she shrugs noncommittally.

“I’m…” She shakes her head. “I just can’t—”

GM: “Pretty easy stuff, I’m guessing?” nods the second cop. “Dishes, that kinda stuff?”

Zoe: She nods. “Nothing stressful. Not that I’d think would cause enough stress to—”

GM: “How’d you get so sweaty?” asks the first cop.

“Your clothes smell, no offense.”

Zoe: “Have you been outside?” she answers, raising a brow. She’s more teasing than accusatory, as much as one can tease when so distraught.

“I helped him out by washing his car earlier.”

GM: “Miserable work in this weather,” says the second cop. “Really miserable.”

“He couldn’t just go to a car wash?”

“Looks like he makes all right money.”

“Made,” says the first cop.

Zoe: “Probably. You ever been through the military? The masters in our world trial their students, just as the masters in that world do. One has to be strong, even in academia,” she answers sagely.

Her eyes widen.

“You don’t think there’s something in the house, do you? Gas or something? I haven’t used bleach or anything, but..”

GM: “Mm, maybe. We’re definitely gonna have a detective look this place over,” says the second cop.

“Ask his wife about his health history, that kinda stuff.”

Zoe: She nods solemnly.

“We’re worse off…”

GM: “So, why’d you wash his car, again?” asks the first cop.

Zoe: “When you went through the academy, did your, erm… sergeant? I’m not sure who runs things in the police academy. Did they make you do push-ups? Anything like that?”

GM: “Sure did,” says the second cop. “You gotta pass the fitness test. Same as in the military.”

Zoe: She nods.

“Similar idea, I guess. Need to be able to ensure discomfort and monotony, even in my field. Washing a car sounds silly, but it matters. Things like that aren’t uncommon in doctoral candidates.”

GM: “Less about discomfort than needing to be fit,” says the second cop. “Police work can involve pursuing fleeing suspects. Gotta be able to run. Can involve fights, too. Gotta be strong enough to do push-ups.”

Zoe: “Gotta be able to sit in a lab with a broken air conditioner for more hours in a day than not, or lean over a sink, or—”

GM: “Was washing a car the only thing he made you do?” asks the first cop.

Zoe: Zoe stops in mid-answer.

“What’s this all have to do with him?”

GM: “Just helping us paint a picture of what he was up to, on his last day alive,” says the first cop. “His wife and kids are gonna want to know why.”

“Might be he had a health condition or something and this doesn’t matter, but we like to be thorough.”

“So what’d you do besides wash his car and talk about biology?” asks the second cop.

Zoe: She frowns, sniffling. “Maybe. I’ve been his protege for years, and he’s never talked about his health. Nothing major like this. A cold here and there. I came over to talk about finishing my degree. He mentioned hosting a dinner, and that he needed some help before we’d discuss some problems I’ve been having that took me away for a little. I figured we’d talk after the preparation was done. Just a few other things: the car, shopping, which he paid for, and throwing some laundry in. He was doing some things for the university anyway, so better my time is used than his.”

GM: “So you washed his car, bought his groceries, did his laundry, and talked about biology,” says the first cop. “That was everything you did today?”

Zoe: She shook her head.

“I was just coming back from setting his laundry to go when he—”

She gestures toward where his body is.

GM: “What else did you do?” asks the second cop.

Zoe: She has to think about it. “Cat… poop? Nothing that would make the news or be considered out of the ordinary, officer.”

GM: “So you did his cat litter, bought his groceries, did his laundry, washed his car, and talked about biology,” says the first cop.

The second cop guffaws. “No way I’d wanna do all that shit. Hire a maid.”

“You shoulda seen him at the university. Office hours or whatever.”

Zoe: She smiles politely, pained.

“We’re more than just students. Doctoral candidates are—a brotherhood, of sorts.”

She breathes a quiet sigh.

“I don’t know what we’ll do.”

GM: “So, you wanted to help with all this stuff?” says the first cop. “It was your idea to come over?”

Zoe: “My idea to come over. His idea that he needed help. It’s really no trouble,” she shrugs.

GM: The second cop grins. “Yeah, figures that was his idea.”

“Seems like a real cheapskate.”

Zoe: She shakes her head.

“Sometimes time with the masters is valuable, even in such mundane ways.”

A pause.

She sighs.

GM: The first cop laughs.

“You’re full of shit.”

Zoe: She shrugs.

“Aspirational, probably. Too dreamy? Definitely. Full of shit? Maybe the first two make it so.”

GM: The second cop removes some handcuffs off his belt.

“Hands please. You’re under arrest.”

Zoe: She squints. “Arrest? For what, officer?”

GM: “Hands. Now.”

Zoe: She offers them her hands gingerly.

GM: The second cop snaps the steel around her wrists while the first dryly recites,

“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have a right to an attorney. If you can’t afford an attorney, one will be provided to you. Do you understand these rights?”

Zoe: She nods silently, eyes welling up.

“Wh—what am I being arrested for?”

GM: “For hating his guts, being alone with him when he died, and feeding us shit.”

Both police take Zoe by the arm and start leading her out of the house. She sees that more responders have already arrived and are filing into Dr. Estes’ office. They start snapping pictures of the body.

Zoe: “Wh—but I didn’t—”

She doesn’t resist. What is she going to do?

They’re irritating her, but she’s already so thoroughly worn through bone into marrow on how thoroughly this purgatory is punishing her that she doesn’t feel much else.

Fear? Yes.

Anger? Somewhat.

Mostly impatience. What comes next? Will she be charged for wishing someone’s death?

GM: The officers help Zoe into the back of the cop car. The seats are hard, plastic, and uncomfortable. Steel bars separate any passengers in the back from the front seats. The second cop stays behind. The first cop starts driving.

Zoe: She begins to wonder if these are even real cops. What’s next on the menu? Rape? A beating? Maybe they’ll force her to snort cocaine, too.

“What’s your name, officer?” she asks, heart thumping just a little too quickly for her own comfort.

Calm down, Zoe. Thoughts aren’t crimes. Not yet.

GM: “We prefer not to disclose those to crime suspects, ma’am,” answers the officer.

Zoe: “Wh—b—but… how can I have committed a crime? He… he just collapsed!” she whimpers.

Thump thump. Thump thump. Thump thump.

This doesn’t feel right. She is liable to have a heart attack if she doesn’t calm herself down.

“Where are you taking me?”

GM: “The station,” says the police officer. Suburban houses roll past the car’s windows.

Zoe: She doesn’t answer him, nor does she ask anything further. She leans her head against the glass, focusing on her breathing. Why does everything feel so complicated? Every little thing, every moment of every day since she returned home just a few days prior.

In. Out. In. Out. In. Out. Don’t have a heart attack.

GM: The police officer drives Zoe to an ugly beige building with Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Department written over the entrance. The surroundings are nothing but concrete, cars, and viaducts for as far as Zoe can see. There’s no plants or trees. There’s a small and dilapidated building near the police station, almost a shack, with a sign that reads, Troy’s Bail Bonds—The Key To Set You Free!

Zoe: Every step she’s taken for the last few days feels like the long-delayed result of a children’s playful game of warning. ‘Step on a crack, you’ll break your mother’s back!’

Zoe doesn’t much care if her mother’s back is broken for every step she takes, but the relentless, spine-shattering pain she seems to be dealt at every choice she makes—and even some she doesn’t—she does mind.

In.

Out.

In.

Out.

What if she holds her breath? What if she holds it and doesn’t draw another here in the back of this cruiser? What would her false accusers do?

GM: There’s only one way to find out for sure.

The police officer parks his car and opens Zoe’s door for her.

He leads her inside a side entrance to the building and past several empty rows of cells to a room where some other people tell her to stand on a yellow line facing forward and sideways while a flash goes off. They ask her several questions:

“What is your full name?”

“What is your home address?”

“What is your phone number?”

“Who is your current employer?”

Zoe: She gives the officer her name, sparing her mother none of the shame she’d have prefers, sure she’ll pay for it later. She gives her phone number just as easily.

Her address, however, she clarifies as ‘staying with a friend’, followed by his address.

“I don’t really work,” she answers. “My degree is my work. Well… I don’t know where that is, given…”

She huffs.

GM: Then comes fingerwiping. A deputy rubs Zoe’s fingers with a sequence of baby wipes and then splays them onto the glass plate of a scanner: images of her fingertips floating in the computer monitor. A series of electronic chirps seems to indicate the pictures are keepers.

Zoe: The fingerprinting she doesn’t mind and complies.

GM: After that, Zoe’s taken aside by a black, portly, and middle-aged female deputy who boredly says to her,

“Strip search. Take off your clothes.”

Zoe: The strip search prompt earns a raised brow and a questioning pause, but she does begin to undress with all the urgency of a would-be president being informed he’ll be chained down in an all-you-can-rape Middle Eastern dungeon.

“I didn’t do anything…” she whimpers.

GM: No one blinks upon hearing her name is Kelly. She supposes it’s a common enough name.

The cops accept the address she gives without remark.

They ask what university she’s attending for her degree.

The deputy clinically searches Zoe’s clothes and person before handing the former back for her to re-dress. Any personal effects she had with her are confiscated.

Zoe: She answers the questions as simply as they’re asked, redressing with more haste than when the Tulane football team rushed through the women’s locker room whooping and hollering. Shock humor. Ha ha. Very funny. Go Green Waves. She’d have turned the waves a little more red if she had the power.

GM: Another officer then tells Zoe she will be allowed to make a single phone call at this point.

Zoe: She mentions her friend—Chuck —who she’s staying with. He’ll be the one she calls.

“I’m not, like—am I being held? With bail? Because I really didn’t do anything.”

GM: “You’re being held ’til your arraignment,” answers a cop. “Judge’ll set your bail then, if any.”

No one seems to care who Zoe says she’ll call. She’s given access to a landline phone and space alone to make her call from.

Zoe: “How long off is that?”

Can they legally hold her that long? She could have gone into law. She’d know what to do if she did.

Pending their answer, she dials Chuck.

GM: The cop helpfully shrugs.

The phone rings for a long time before it’s answered with a tired-sounding,

“Nnnh, what.”

Zoe: “H-hey, Chuck? It’s Zoe. Look—I—I’m at the police station, or jail, or… something. They think I killed my professor, but I—I didn’t!”

Of course she didn’t. How could she have? She hasn’t been anything but an obedient, complacent protege.

“Can you help me out? Please? I’ll owe you.. and we can call it even on what I helped you with the other night.”

GM: “Wai… wugh?” he says groggily. “What your professor?”

Zoe: “C-come on, Chuck!”

Think, think, think. What was the sign?

“Jefferson Parish Police Department. Please.”

GM: “Righ’, start from the begin… th’ fuck you mean, killed him?”

Zoe: “I said I didn’t kill him! He just—he collapsed! I was at his house, and he collapsed. I called the cops, and they arrested me. Come on, I need help, Chuck!”

GM: “Righ’,” Chuck grogs. “I feel like shit an’ I’m a property lawyer anyway.”

“Bu’, okay. I’ll sen’ you a crim’nal lawyer, and we’re even. For las’ night.”

“Don’ talk to cops without your lawyer,” he adds, seeming to find a bit more wind. “Can only hurt you. Won’ ever help.”

“Literally don’t say nothin’ but ‘lawyer.’”

Zoe: “Thanks, Chuck. I owe you. I mean it.”

Little late for the last bit, but she’ll heed it from here on out.

GM: “Eh. Fuck it. We’re even. Balances out.”

Zoe: “What’s the lawyer’s name? Are… you covering the fee, or…? If not… you know I’ll pay you back. One way or another.”

GM: “Amber Cox. An’ yeah, I know you’ll be good for it.”

Chuck still sounds too out of it to be giving a proper leer.

Zoe: She verifies that Chuck is indeed sending the lawyer, and that he has the correct police station, then hangs up. Okay. At least there’s that.

GM: Yes, he’s sending her. Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Department.

“All done?” says a deputy after she’s done. “This way.”

The police take Zoe to a small, bare, and claustrophobic room containing a single table, several hard chairs, and a single dim light. Two handcuffs bolted to the table are securely fastened around Zoe’s wrists. Two middle-aged men dressed in plainclothes suits rather than police uniforms come in and sit down on opposite sides of the table from Zoe.

“How long have you worked under Dr. Estes?” asks one of the men.

Zoe: She nods to the deputy, and follows. Her hands are cuffed, she sits, the men ask their question, and she answers.

“I’ll answer all you’d like to ask once my lawyer is in the room.”

Let it not be said that she doesn’t listen to Chuck.

GM: “This is just double-checking whether the info we have is right,” says the man. “Sooner it’s in order, sooner you can get out.”

Zoe: She simply raises a brow. Nope. Lawyer.

GM: The second man smiles.

“‘Say nothing without a lawyer,’ right?”

Zoe: She nods.

GM: “They give that advice to their clients a lot.”

Zoe: She nods.

GM: “Yours tell you how soon you can expect to get out?”

Zoe: She shrugs. Are non-verbal answers considered ‘talking without a lawyer’? Probably, but these seem harmless.

Zoe folds her hands, waiting. Any minute now.

GM: “Well, it’s up to us and up to the judge,” says the first man.

“We have some leeway in how long we get to hold you before seeing a judge.”

Zoe: “Officer, I won’t be answering anything else until my lawyer —Amber Cox —is sitting next to me.”

GM: “Then when we see the judge, up to him whether you get bail or not,” says the second man. “If he doesn’t set bail, you could be sitting in jail for months.”

Zoe: She falls silent again. Threats won’t sway her. Chuck said not to talk, so she won’t talk. She was polite, yet firm —as she’s been told to be.

GM: “Our jail isn’t as bad as OPP, but I’m sure you have other places you’d rather be.”

Zoe: “All respect, we’ll continue once my lawyer is here.”

GM: “You’re working on a PhD, right?” says the first man. “How many months can you miss before you get dropped from the program?”

“Being sent to jail for any length of time might be an automatic disqualifier,” says the second man. “Lucky for you, police holding cell isn’t real jail.”

“We can talk to the judge,” says the first man. “Get him to set bail instead of sending you to jail.”

Zoe: Silence. Not a smile. Not a frown. Lawyer.

GM: “Are we on the same page?” asks the second man. “Do you expect to complete your program if the judge locks you up for months?”

Zoe: Maybe the cops are less educated here. Oh well. Silence.

GM: “Suit yourself,” shrugs the first man.

He and his partner get up and leave. They close the door behind them.

Zoe is left by herself on the uncomfortable chair, hands chained to the table.

Zoe: She whistles one of her songs. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting.

GM: She waits.

There’s no clock to mark the passage of time.

No windows to look outside from.

Nothing to do but stare around the featureless room and wait.

Zoe: She counts cracks in the wall.

GM: She counts six.

Zoe: Six! Six whole cracks!

GM: Maybe there are more. The lighting is dim.

Zoe: Wait… No, seven!

What a shit hole.

She bets the officer is so grumpy because he has a tiny penis.

GM: Zoe’s not sure how much time she spends staring at the walls. She feels very sore. She’s hungry and needs to use the bathroom.

Eventually, the door opens and a woman walks into the room. She looks in her early to mid 30s. She’s blonde, somewhat pudgy, and dressed in a gray pantsuit and pearl necklace.

Amber.jpg
“Hi, I’m Amber,” she says as she sits down across the table from Zoe.

Zoe: She looks up from her daydream.

“Ms. Co—Hi! Zoe. Zoe Kelly. Thank you so much for coming.”

GM: “It’s my job,” says Amber. “So, let’s not waste any waste time. Why don’t you tell me what happened?”

Zoe: “My PhD advisor collapsed. I called emergency, and was arrested,” she states plainly. Succinct, and to the point.

“In no way did I harm or want to harm the man, Amber.”

GM: Amber nods. “So you know, it’s my job to defend you whether you harmed him or not. Are you familiar with attorney-client privilege?”

Zoe: She shakes her head. She’s been around lawyers all her life, yet never interacted with one in a legal manner.

“Explain?”

GM: “Basically, anything you tell me as your lawyer, I’m not allowed to repeat without your permission. Even if you’ve killed a dozen people, and I tell the police, I lose my license and don’t get to practice law anymore.”

Zoe: She nods. Simple enough.

“I haven’t hurt anyone. Honest.”

A pause.

“They threatened me. Saying if I talked I would be let out sooner, or kept longer and given bail if I didn’t. I didn’t say anything more than that I wouldn’t talk until you’re here.”

GM: “Smart,” says Amber. “They do that a lot. But talking to cops on your own never helps you. If there’s something that would help you to tell them, waiting a few hours to vet it past me isn’t going to kill them.”

Zoe: She chews her lower lip, thinking.

“I let them know some things at the house before I was arrested. That I was his student, I was helping him around the house; that sort of thing.”

She pauses.

“Why would they arrest me? How could I have hurt him?”

GM: “Lots of reasons to arrest you, unfortunately,” says Amber. “Doesn’t cost them anything to lock someone up, and pretty often that’ll get people to spill.”

“And if they’re wrong, oh well. No skin off their noses.”

Zoe: “They are wrong,” she huffs, trying and failing to rub her temples. Stupid chains.

GM: “Well, hopefully we’ll have you out soon. Can you tell me the full story of what happened?”

“Starting when you went to your advisor’s house.”

Zoe: “That… really is the full story. I was helping him at his house with various bits and bobs, he collapsed, I called emergency services, they came, they examined him, then they arrested me.”

GM: “Can you tell me the extra full version, then? Even things that seem irrelevant, like why you were over at his house, what bits and bobs you were helping with, etcetera. You never know what will turn out to be meaningful, whether to the case itself or just to what the police or DA may seize on.”

Zoe: “He’d asked me to help with a few chores. It’s common for PhD students. I washed his car, picked up his groceries, and cleaned a bit around his house.”

A pause.

“The police mentioned my being sweaty as suspicious.”

GM: “To be clear, I meant those things as examples. Can you give me a full account of your time at his house?”

Zoe: And so she does, recounting her time at his house in honest detail. She’s cognizant of what is and isn’t appropriate for a student to say, but tells the full truth in the confidence of client and attorney.

At the end, she clarifies, “…to be clear, we had no form of sexual or romantic relationship, nor had the thought ever been raised by either of us.”

GM: Amber takes that all in and asks for the details of Zoe’s conversation with the police after Dr. Estes collapsed. As much as she can remember there.

Zoe: And so she relays, as much as her memory recalls.

“I just want to go home, Ms. Cox.”

GM: “Getting you out is what I’m here for,” nods Amber.

“I also don’t think you’ve been completely honest with me,” she says frankly.

“Now, it’s up to you how much you tell me and how much you don’t. I’m your lawyer, not your interrogator. But the more I know about the facts of your case, the better I can defend you and represent your interests.”

Zoe: Her brow softens with a touch of defeated hurt.

“I am honest. I didn’t lay a finger on the man. Not one.”

GM: Amber looks less than convinced by the denial.

Zoe: She lofts a brow. “Be honest. What do you think happened?”

“Why would I throw my degree —a goal I’ve worked on most of my life —and my life itself into jeopardy by murdering a man while alone in his house with him and no reasonable alibi for being elsewhere, then call emergency and sit there? I’m suspicious, I understand —but I’m not stupid.”

GM: “I don’t think you liked him. Doctoral students have to put up with a lot of abuse from their advisors. No one enjoys being made to do a lot of unpaid chores.”

“Could be you saw him collapse and you waited before calling 911, instead of doing it immediately. But that’s just speculation. You’re the one who was there, not me.”

Zoe: “I called immediately,” she affirms with reserved tension. “I don’t know if he has cameras or not, but you’re welcome to check them if he does.”

“Is delayed call of emergency actually a chargeable offense?”

She sounds as surprised as she is.

GM: Amber holds up a hand. “Look, I’m not your prosecutor. It ultimately doesn’t help you to convince me of anything.”

“I’ve represented clients who haven’t told me the full story on their end before. Their thinking usually went, ’She’ll represent me better if she thinks I’m innocent’ or ‘she doesn’t need to know I did X illegal thing to do her job.’”

“But it doesn’t work that way. It’s my job to represent clients whether they’re innocent or guilty. Very often, seemingly unimportant details a client leaves out can be relevant to their cases, as they lack the legal expertise to know for themselves. That usually results in me defending them less effectively, and their getting a worse sentence or plea deal.”

“And no, a delayed call of emergency isn’t a chargeable offense. You’re under no duty to aid someone in peril.”

Zoe: “It doesn’t matter how I feel. Frustration isn’t a crime,” she answers.

What is she going to say? That she liquefied his brain with her thoughts? That isn’t how sane society works.

“Every PhD candidate on the planet becomes ireful toward their advisor at one point or another, whether for mistreatment or high expectations. I’m no different. I didn’t want to be there all day serving him, but I did. Because that’s what my life demands. Under no circumstance did I harm him in any way. He is —was —my path to a career.”

Lesson one in murder, Zoe. Plausible deniability. Noted.

GM: “Frustration isn’t a crime, but it is a motive,” says Amber. “Most murders are committed by people who knew the victim and had something against them.”

Zoe: “What did I kill him with? My thoughts? I didn’t touch him. I was barely within touching distance all day.”

GM: “There are ways to kill someone without touching them. The coroners are probably doing a toxicology test on his body.”

“Telling the police you were honored to do his housework was a bad look. They obviously didn’t believe that, because no one likes doing unpaid labor, and it made you look as if you were trying to hide how much you disliked him.”

Zoe: “Okay—fair. I shouldn’t have said that. I still didn’t harm him.”

And she sure hopes toxicology doesn’t come back with anyone else feeling murderous…

GM: “Okay, you didn’t harm him. Is there anything else you haven’t told me that you’d like to?”

Zoe: “What else would be smart to tell you?”

GM: “Everything. As I’ve said, the more information I have to work with, the better I can do my job of getting you out.”

Zoe: She tentatively shakes her head.

“Can you get me out today?”

GM: “Nope. Police can hold you for up to three days before an arraignment.”

Zoe: She groans. “And they’re probably pissy because I didn’t cave.”

GM: “Or better said, I might be able to. What the police think isn’t everything. You only get arraigned if the DA’s office decides to charge you with anything.”

Zoe: “How long will toxicology take?”

GM: “So, first, the police are going to examine the scene of Estes’ death. The coroner’s office is going to examine his body. The police are also probably going to search his house and talk to his family and/or doctor about any health conditions, to see if him dying the way he did is an unusual event.”

“If it turns out he had a heart condition, or if there’s some other ready explanation for his death, then the police won’t talk with the DA’s office and will just let you out.”

“If they can’t find a satisfactory explanation for how he died, they could then decide to tender their findings to the DA’s office, who’ll decide whether to file charges against you or not.”

“The police can’t hold you for longer than three days, so if the DA doesn’t decide to charge you with anything by then, you’ll be out by then.”

“However, a prosecutor is not bound by your initial charging decision; they may later change the charged crimes once more evidence is obtained.”

“So, for instance, the police could let you out within three days, but then arrest you again a month later if the DA decides to charge you with anything.”

“As for autopsy and toxicology, around three days is pretty typical turnout time for both. They might release you before finishing the exam.”

“It’s also possible that Estes’ family will pay for a private exam of his body, if they’re not satisfied with the results of the coroner’s.”

Zoe: “I see.”

Words hardly true. The fact is that Zoe can’t see the path her future carries her toward any further than she can kick a pebble of gravel. Despite understanding their logic—thanks to Amber—she’s lost respect in the police force.

Is that loss in respect reasonable? Fair? Absolutely not, and even she sees that. It makes the feeling no less true.

“Whatever you can do,” she continues, wilting her head to run shackled fingers through her hair.

She hasn’t forgotten about Barely Legal for so long the entire day. Bigger problems. Fuck Money in more ways than one.

“What do I do now?”

GM: “At this point? Mostly sit tight and see if the DA chooses to prosecute within three days.”

“If this were the full story, I’d advise talking to the police again in my presence, answering their questions, and being helpful enough they decide to release you early. But if it’s not, talking to the police only has the potential to get you in more trouble.”

Zoe: “That’s up to you,” she answers. “What do you feel I’m being untruthful about?”

GM: Amber shakes her head. “Doesn’t matter. If that’s everything, I’m going to look in to some more things on my end and see if there’s anything else I can do.”

Zoe: “That’s everything. Thank you for helping me, Amber.”

GM: “It’s my job.” Amber hands Zoe a business card with her contact info.

Zoe: “They’re probably going to take this…”

GM: “Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. Memorize the number just in case.”

Zoe: She looks down at the card, committing it to memory one digit at a time. Over. And over. And over.

“I’ll see you again within three days?”

GM: “Yes. I’ll review the evidence against you, if any, find out whether the DA intends to pursue charges, and talk about your legal strategies from there.”

Zoe: “I’d give you a hug, but…”

She pulls the chains.

GM: Amber gives a wry smile. “We usually prefer to shake anyways.”

Zoe: She offers a hand, however limited.

GM: Amber shakes it and says she’ll be in touch, then takes her leave.

No one comes for Zoe.

Zoe: And so the wait begins.

Timer: 72h.

Friday afternoon, 1 April 2016

GM: Jail is mind-numbingly boring. Jefferson Parish doesn’t seem as if it has too many arrests, because while Zoe hears the occasional person marched into a nearby cell, she never has to share hers.

She’s left to sit on a bench and stare at the wall for hours. And hours. And hours.

She’s able to piss in a stainless steel toilet bolted to the floor.

She’s really hungry.

Eventually, once it feels like night, a deputy comes by with food. Zoe’s told to turn around and stick her hands through a grill in the door to her cell. The deputy handcuffs her to the door, opens it, then drops something onto the ground. Then he re-closes the door and undoes Zoe’s cuffs.

Lying on the floor, swaddled in saran wrap, is the saddest-looking sandwich Zoe thinks she’s ever seen. The bread is white and soggy-looking. She can’t tell what’s inside it. A sticker over the wrapping reads:

Not For Human Consumption

Zoe: One crack. Two crack. Three cra—no, that’s a crackhead. That counts as ten cracks.

She whines. How long has it been since she’s had a serving of her vice? A day? Just about a day. She wonders if Cash is looking for her yet. Maybe he’s forgotten about her entirely.

She huffs, then picks up the sandwich, unwrapping it from its wrap. Does it smell at all appetizing? She images the label must be a scare-tactic.

GM: It smells like something that’s been left in a compost heap. The odor is actively unpleasant.

Zoe: Hunger it is. She sets it down.

Even she’s not hungry enough to consume that. Is that really what they give to even the innocent?

GM: There are no innocents in Zoe’s cell.

Zoe: The only dessert Zoe serves is just desserts.

Saturday morning, 2 April 2016

GM: Sleep comes fitfully and with difficulty. There are no blankets, pillows, or other bedding items in the cell. Zoe is left to make herself comfortable along the steel bench. She’s sore everywhere when she wakes up.

Time passes.

Eventually, a deputy strolls by her cell with something else in plastic wrap. He looks over her old sandwich.

“Didn’t want dinner, huh? Guess you won’t need breakfast.”

Zoe: Did she sleep at all? It doesn’t feel like it.

“Please…” she whimpers. “I haven’t done anything. Can I have some real food? A glass of water?”

GM: The deputy grins.

“Suck my cock and I’ll get you better food.”

Zoe: She narrows her eyes, and silently commits to reforming the police department when she rules the city.

GM: The man just grins and waits.

Zoe: “I’ll take breakfast, please.”

Zoe Kelly is no criminal.

GM: “Stick your hands through the grill,” says the deputy, pulling his cuffs off his belt.

Zoe: She places her hands through the grill, contemplating making a sandwich grenade.

GM: The deputy handcuffs her through the grill and secures her to the door. Then he opens it, undoes his belt and unzips his fly, and sticks his erect cock towards her.

Zoe: She shrugs as far away as humanly possible while chained to an iron door.

“What the fuck?! Aren’t the police supposed to be good?!”

GM: The man chortles, puts his hands on Zoe’s shoulders, and attempts to lower her to her knees.

“C’mon, just suck it off and you can have breakfast.”

“A nice breakfast.”

Zoe: “I didn’t do anything! What the fuck!? You can’t just—you can’t just shove that in my face! Do you know who I am!?”

Was, Zoe.

She lurches away from the bars, tugging on the bindings.

GM: She finds her bindings quite secure, and with the door opening inwards into her cell, there is only so far to get away.

The deputy shoves her to the ground, laughs, and smacks his cock across Zoe’s cheek.

“Can’t I?”

Zoe: “You’re really going to force an innocent woman to suck your cock?”

Yes, he is, and she knows it.

“I am innocent. Do you really want a rape allegation?”

She glances to his chest. Badge? Name?

GM: She sees a number on the gold badge attached to his shirt.

“What, you don’t want breakfast after all?” he smirks.

Zoe: “The sandwich will do.”

Fucking pig. Is this normal for jail? How bad could prison be?

GM: The deputy shrugs.

“Suit yourself.”

He walks over to her toilet, then drops the sandwich inside with a wet plop.

“Oops,” he grins.

Zoe: She glares daggers, committing the number to memory.

GM: The deputy laughs and walks out of the cell, pulling the door closed behind him. Zoe is still chained to the bars.

“Do you want me to let you off from there?”

Zoe: At what cost?

“Yes, please,” she answers, polite as she can manage.

GM: “Say sorry for being a bitch.”

Zoe: You have no idea.

“Sorry for being a cunt, officer.”

She raises a hand in the smallest salute ever to be made, thanks to the cuffs.

GM: The deputy opens the door and walks back in.

“Good girl,” he smiles, then pats her head.

Then he leaves again, closes the door, and unfastens Zoe’s hands. His receding bootfalls echo down the hallway.

Zoe: She recants his badge number in her head.

Over, and over, and over, and over.

And over.

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Story Fourteen, Zoe III

“Do you think your cunt is worth two eighty?”
Ricky “Cash Money” Mouton

Thursday night, 31 March 2016, AM

GM: “Zoe,” says Christopher.

He gets down on one knee before her and clasps her hand in both of his.

“I’m sorry what I said to you. I’m so sorry. It was humiliating, it was cruel, and I didn’t want to do any of it. Your family put me up to it. Can you forgive me?”

Zoe: Zoe whimpers. She feels tears well up in the corner of her eyes as he takes her hand.

“W—why. Why would you d-do that, even if they…?”

GM: “It was all part of a plan,” Christopher says, still kneeling. “They’d think we were done with each other. So they wouldn’t be on our backs as much, after I let you move in with me.”

Zoe: She doesn’t remember walking—driving?—back to Pequod’s. Yet, it feels so natural. Maybe she’ll buy one of her favorite blondies.

Zoe sniffles.

“You… really mean that?”

GM: “Absolutely, Zoe,” Christopher answers somberly.

He doesn’t see nervousness in his eyes. But she sees the question. The hope, that her answer is yes.

“Are we still an ‘us’?”

Zoe: She draws her hand back, biting one of her fingertips, her nerves causing her to tense.

How can she forgive him after what he did to her?

“What about… that girl?”

GM: Christopher frowns.

His face twitches. Sweat starts to bead down his brow.

He stares ahead at Zoe, though, as if unconscious of anything happening.

“Zoe… there’s something you need to know.”

Zoe: She feels a pit well up in her stomach, and she begins to sweat herself. Oh no. Don’t puke. Don’t puke.

“Y—yeah?”

GM: Christopher opens his mouth.

Nothing comes out.

He gives a silent gasp and collapses forward against Zoe’s legs. His hands seek purchase along her blouse. His eyes are wide and feverish.

“Z… oe…”

Zoe: “Ch—chris!” she stammers, clutching at his shirt. She steps forward, catching him as best she can, sinking to her knees with him.

“Are you all right?!”

GM: His mouth opens and closes. Nothing comes out. It reminds Zoe of a fish out of water, gasping its final breaths. The coffee shop’s lights haphazardly flicker. Shadows swim over the other customers, and there’s sounds and exclamations and people rushing up, but Zoe probably isn’t paying attention to them. Chris’ eyes bulge.

“Z… e…”

Then, just like that, they go blank and still.

His hands slacken.

Zoe: Then, just like that, she turns and runs from the shop, abandoning him in her fear to his fate, just as she did the first time.

Zoe Kelly isn’t who she claims to be.

Zoe Kelly is a coward, alone in the world, just like she deserves.

GM: Rain pours over her in thick and relentless sheets. The city’s streets are dark and long and eerily unfamiliar. Pedestrians jostle into her, tall and hard and uncaring. No one moves aside. She’s going the opposite direction as everyone else. She stumbles blindly, buffeted by the uncaring crowd. Hair gets in her eyes. Is it rain or tears that blurs her vision?

She’s swiftly soaked to the bone beneath freezing rain. She’s cold. So cold.

Then, like a flash of lightning, he’s there. Chris’ face. Staring at her through the crowd. Bulging eyes, gasping mouth, waxy pale face and sunken eyes. Like he’s been dead for a day. The other girl is there, too. Her eyes blaze with hate, but her mouth is set in a ghastly and utterly incongruent rictus grin.

Chris seizes Zoe’s hand in his. It’s ice cold. His body presses into hers as his voice croaks into her ear, a death rattle against the pouring rain,

“Murderer…”

Zoe: “N-NO! I’m—I’m not a murderer!”

She tugs with all her might, but he has her, as if a wolf took her wrists between its hungry jaws.

But she is a murderer, isn’t she? Somewhere, somehow, she knows it. It was when she willed it—when she wished he would die—that his eyes bulged.

GM: Zoe desperately tugs and flails. Hollow, heartless laughter rings in her ears as the rain pours over everything. Sight and sound dissolve beneath a deluge of misery and cold. Even Chris’ pale features swim out of focus, and for a moment she could swear they aren’t Chris’ features at all, but Rosalyn’s.

“I’m so disappointed in you.”

Her boyfriend’s corpse seizes her in its arms. Envelops her. Crushes her. Squeezes the life from her. It’s all she knows as the final blackness overtakes her. She kicks and screams and thrashes. Her skin is slick with sweat as she feels the body pressed against her with its cold feet pull away, as she flings blankets off Chuck’s bed.

Zoe: As the corpse that clings to life holds her, draining the heat from her body as if it were one with the icy rain above—one purpose, one drive—she struggles.

And struggles.

And struggles.

And then she doesn’t. She gives up. For the first time in her life, she accepts her defeat, and the punishment she deserves.

It’s easier that way, isn’t it? To just give up?

She sits up with a panic, cold sweat drenching her bare form. Her hands press to her face, blocking out the light of the room.

Or is there no light? The black of her dream is so strong that she can’t tell.

She feels around for Chuck.

GM: There’s a flush of the toilet, and then a door-shaped outline of light as a bleary-eyed Chuck walks into the dark room and plops down on the bed.

“The fuck you throwing off the blankets for?”

Zoe: Her breathing is ragged. She’s cold. Maybe he’s sleeping with a corpse.

GM: Chuck mutters something, picks them up, and hogs them around himself as he lies down, face-first against the pillow.

Zoe: She tugs on the blankets and tries to cuddle under them.

GM: Chuck seems too lazy to stop her and grunts something under his breath.

His feet are warm.

Zoe: Good. She was considering finding a lighter if he didn’t let her under.

She looks past him, checking the clock.

GM: There is no clock.

They are millennials.

It’s on their devices.

Zoe: She whines. Stupid modern era. She taps one of their phones to activate the screen.

GM: 3:36 AM.

Zoe: She huffs. Can’t sleep. Not after that. At least he didn’t yell at her. Plus, he’s warm.

Still can’t sleep.

She rolls out of bed, takes a few minutes to collect herself in the bathroom, then dresses.

Or, goes to examine what rags are left.

GM: Many of her delicates are good for little more than cleaning rags at this point. Sturdier clothes like jeans better survived their prolonged soaking in dirty water. She’s lost probably half of what she packed.

She has a particularly distinct shortage of underwear.

Zoe: “Fuck me…” she mumbles, sorting through her things. Whatever. She can live without underwear for now.

Jeans and a t-shirt it is. Top a hoodie on it, and she’ll be fine.

And an umbrella. Just in case.

She steels herself and steps into the hallway—taking the spare key he gave her for the month—and takes the elevator down.

Where does she intend to go? She isn’t entirely sure. She can go to Pequod’s, though it isn’t open this time of the night.

It only takes her a moment to realize: she doesn’t particularly care where she ends up. A bar. A club. A basement. She steps out into the night, turning left and focuses no further than one foot before the other.

April night, 2016

GM: New Orleans nightlife scene is never quiet, especially on weekends. She finds herself at what looks like a hole in the wall strip club called the Barely Legal. It’s stuck in between the plethora of restaurants and shops that line the partygoer-filled street.

IMG2012754979HI.jpg
Zoe: Her stomach rumbles. She’s still only had a few mozzarella sticks since she puked her candy bar up.

They have food, don’t they?

She heads inside.

GM: Unlike many of the topless establishments of the French Quarter, Barely Legal asks for no cover charge, ushering patrons straight into a neon-red world of scintillating lights, thumping music, and pole-dancing, ample-breasted women in various states of undress. Frat boys, dirty old men, sleazebag cops, and washed-up losers variously cheer, gawk, and leer at the strippers as they stick dollar bills between g-strings. An omnipresent musk of cheap perfume, sweat, pre-cum, dollar bills, and cigarette smoke suffuses the dimly-lit place. A fully-stocked bar lurks in the corner, offering a “wacky” party menu that lets patrons do everything from having the staff refer to them as “master” for $100 to managing the club for a day for $25,000.

Hustler-Barely-Legal-Club-b.jpg
There’s no food that she can see.

But this is the first time she’s been inside a strip club.

Zoe: No food, unless she develops a sudden hunger for eating ass, as is being borderline-demonstrated by a portly man in the corner to a woman whose ass could store a bank vault. She is sure it won’t be quite so secure, nor hard to get into.

Still, for the moment, she finds herself interested in what’s unfolding around her. Perhaps not the sweat. Or the precum. Or the— did the find that perfume in the gutter?

She crosses the room, seating herself at the bar, probably the most out of place creature in the establishment.

GM: The bartender is taking care of other patrons’ orders. He looks pretty busy. Most people here look like they’re drinking.

A middle-aged and dark-skinned man plops down next to Zoe and swings an arm around her. He’s fat and has a stained and partly undone shirt that shows off graying chest hairs.

“Lesh’ have a smoochie!” he grins, holding up a dollar bill as he leans in close with puckered lips.

He smells like the rest of the place, except even stronger. Especially of booze.

Zoe: Maybe this midnight wandering isn’t such a great idea. She cringes at first at the touch, then the thought, and finally the smell.

“I’m not a worker! Just looking for… a drink.”

That was probably a mistake to say.

GM: The man gives a drunken hiccup, then wetly plasters his half-open lips across Zoe’s face. His slimy tongue sloppily pushes into her mouth while his yellowed smoker’s teeth grind against hers. The man makes gumming-like motions as he tries to envelop his mouth all the way across Zoe’s. It feels less like he’s trying to kiss her than he is attempting to slurp down her face.

“Mm-uh-hff-uufff!” he exclaims in something like a guffaw, his nictone-flavored drool freely running down Zoe’s chin.

Zoe: GROSS!

Even Chuck wasn’t this bad early in their relationship!

She tries to struggle out of his grip and away from him, disappearing into the crowd if she can.

GM: The man is flabby and out of shape, but he’s drunk and horny. Zoe’s head painfully clonks against the bar as the man shoves her all the way back onto it, then half-throws himself on top of her, his fat chest pressing into hers. Zoe is pinned beneath his bulk. She feels his hard cock pressing into her thigh through their pants. His hands tear at her clothes as his slobber leaks over her face.

Zoe: She can already feel the bruise that will be there tomorrow, just above her eye. That fucking hurts!

He presses her into the wooden countertop, the breath forced out of his lungs by the hundred pounds or more he has on her.

And that cock.

That stubby.

Little.

Choad.

She wants it gone. She wants it to disappear; to explode into chunks and shrapnel and seed and become nothing.

“G-get OFF!”

GM: The man guffaws something past his mouth, which is still caught wetly swallowing down Zoe’s face. His fat, fumbling hands unzip her jeans and hungrily press against her sex.

Then he makes a little choking sound.

A gurgle, from the back of his throat.

His eyes bulge.

The man doesn’t get off. He collapses face-first onto Zoe, his body completely slack and motionless. Nothing stares out of his wide-open eyes.

The same nothing that stared out of Chris’.

Zoe: Zoe shrieks. She feels those grimy, sweaty palms, coated in a night of beer and unclean women and probably shit from the last time he didn’t wash his hands snaking into her pants.

He falls into her, holding her—pinning her—to the countertop, his fingers invading her.

Or is he?

With a thought—a single tower of hatred dominating her mind—he stops.

She looks, side-eyed and drenched in a vile mixture of his and her own sweat.

…and she finds a blank face. Just like Chris. As if his mind was never there at all.

“WH—WHAT THE FUCK?! HELP!”

GM: At Zoe’s scream, or perhaps the man shoving her onto the table, the Barely Legal grinds to a halt. People shout and make exclamations of alarm. Hands descend on the body, pulling it off her. Hands descend on Zoe, too. Holding her in place against the bare, her clothes rumpled and her sex exposed for all the world to see.

“What the fuck is this shit?” comes an angry voice.

Cash_Money_Mouton.png The speaker resembles a beanpole that decided to grow limbs. His narrow head is only slightly widened by his black sideburns and ‘70s style coiffure. His puffy lips are pressed into a permanent smile, as if life is a joke whose punchline he alone knows. He smells of deodorant, hair tonic, tabasco sauce, and contagious sleaze that gives his tan skin an almost iridescent sheen. His outfit consists of a ballooning lime silk leisure shirt, a long brown leather coat, bell-bottom dress slacks, and crocodile wingtips. All things told, the man looks like a self-appointed Casanova who’d have a pretty hard time with the ladies… but somehow, Zoe gets the distinct impression, he’s used to sticking his cock into whatever he wants.

“He ain’t breathin’,” says a large man who looks like a bouncer, touching his palm to the man’s neck.

“He’s dead.”

“He have a fuckin’ heart attack?” asks the bartender.

The strippers have stopped dancing. The men in the audience are gawking, but not at the girls anymore. Many sets of eyes come to rest on Zoe.

“You,” says the beanpole-faced man. He makes a fist in Zoe’s hair and yanks her head up to meet his eyes.

“The fuck happened?”

She spots a crescent NOPD badge clipped to his belt.

Zoe: So is streaming more tears than Niagara Falls on its worst day. Between the sudden bouts of attention, and the state of her (newly washed, barely survived) clothing, her nudity, and the fact that she seems to be the one in trouble out of this whole mess, she can’t quite handle it.

“He—he…he was forcing himself…on me, and—and—and…!”

Her words devolve into hiccups and sobs. Poor thing. What a day. What a night.

“He—I don’t know! He just fell! I—I was just looking for s-something to—directions.”

She has a feeling asking for something to eat in here will get her exactly that, and after Chuck, she doesn’t want to earn another mouthful.

GM: The beanpole-faced man looks over the body.

Then he looks back at Zoe.

There’s a dangerous look in his mud-colored eyes.

“Get the little bitch upstairs,” he says, waving at the bouncer.

Zoe: Oh. Maybe they’ll just get her out of sight.

She tries to pull her pants up once she’s let go. If.

GM: She’s not. She doesn’t have time. Zoe’s grabbed by a dark-skinned man wearing a tight black t-shirt that smells like cigarette smoke. He tromps off towards the stairs, yanking Zoe along by her upper arm. Her bare ass and pussy are exposed for all the world to see, when her pants slide down her legs, but not for overly long. The man pulls her up the stairs into a ratty-looking office, then all but throws her onto the ground.

He crosses his arms and silently stares down at her.

Zoe: She scrambles to pull her pants up, eyes locked to the floor, counting the cracks in the flooring.

GM: The man doesn’t stop her.

The clock on the wall slowly ticks.

Zoe: She murmurs, half to the bouncer and half to herself.

“I just wanted to buy some food…”

GM: The man does not answer Zoe. Just stares with his arms crossed.

The clock ticks by.

Finally, there’s footsteps coming up the creaking stairs.

One is the puffy-lipped and beanpole-headed man with the NOPD badge.

The second man might be called handsome. Might. He’s dressed in a leather jacket, dark pants, and tight black shirt. His head is shaved bald. His features are comely enough, but his too-wide smile doesn’t quite meet his eyes. His eyes don’t quite meet Zoe, either. They’re just a few inches off from her face. He slowly runs a tongue across his teeth.

Both men sit down on chairs. Zoe is left on the floor.

“You’re gonna explain this shit,” says the beanpole-headed man.

He idly takes out a handgun from a shoulder holster beneath his coat and turns it over. He doesn’t point it at Zoe.

Yet.

Zoe: Why won’t the Worst Day Ever end? She could be safe in bed, even with Chuck.

He isn’t that bad.

She lifts her eyes from the floor when they enter, acknowledging the men with implicit deference in how she keeps her face largely down.

Mom, you could have given me another chance. Now…

Now she might have her brains paint the walls.

“I…”

She swallows, steeling herself.

“I… don’t know. I just… tried to fight him off. I didn’t want what he did, and his heart gave out. Or something.”

Or something.

GM: “Or something,” says the beanpole-faced man.

“The fuck were you doing in my club?”

He turns the gun over in his hands again.

The smiling man tilts his head, staring to the patch of floor several inches to Zoe’s left, and licks his lips.

Zoe: Zoe’s eyes flit between the wall behind the man, the man, and his shirt. She can’t seem to maintain eye contact with his face.

“I—I was just looking for directions. I—I was hungry. I’m staying with a friend. I don’t want to eat all his food.”

GM: “What is this club?” asks the beanpole-faced cop.

Zoe: “A—a—a strip club, I guess. It s-seemed cool. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to a-ask about the area, especially if I b-bought a drink or something.”

GM: “Are you a muff diver?” asks the cop.

Zoe: “A… what?”

GM: The man idly aims the gun at her.

“Do you like to slobber over girls’ cunts?”

“Do you like girls slobbering over your cunt?”

Zoe: She yelps like a wounded dog when the gun rotates toward her.

“P-please! I’m b-being honest! I won’t c-c-come by ag-gain!”

She knows that not answering probably won’t make him happy.

“I-I don’t know! I… I’ve kissed a girl once. I haven’t thought about i-it more than that.”

GM: The gun does not point away from Zoe.

“So you’re not a muff diver.”

Zoe: “I-I-I don’t know that I’m n-not one!”

Which is true, though he probably understands that Zoe will give any answer to not get shot.

GM: The man with the off-kilter gaze lets out a giggle.

The cop tilts the gun away from Zoe, then back at her.

“So you’re not sure if you’re a muff diver, you got partway there to slobbering over some slut’s cunt, you haven’t thought about slobbering over other sluts’ cunts, and you came to my club because you thought it was cool,” he says.

“Did you come here to watch sluts take their clothes off?”

Zoe: “N-n-no! I—I came because I was hungry. I thought you might h-have food, or that I could get directions to s-some; but, I m-mean. I’m not opposed to—”

She gestures around vaguely, meaning clubs, probably being misconstrued otherwise.

“It s-seems cool. Without the… what happened.”

GM: “Cool,” says the man with the gun.

“It seems cool.”

“But you didn’t come here to watch sluts take off their clothes.”

“You wanted food. From a strip club.”

“You wanted directions. From a strip club.”

“So you went to a strip club. Where you didn’t want to watch sluts take off their clothes.”

“When you could’ve gone anywhere else.”

The man suddenly leaps to his feet, clamps a wiry hand around Zoe’s throat, and presses his gun’s barrel against her head. His puffy-lipped features are set in a furious snarl, like he’s just discovering eggs pelted all over his house.

“How big a fuckin’ idiot do you take me for, you stupid whore? Why the fuck are you here?!”

Zoe: Her lips part to answer when her his hand wraps her throat, cutting off and killing any words that would have been given life.

The gun sets her to crying again.

“I—I—I—I—”

GM: Zoe’s throat burns.

“You have ’til the count of ten before I blow your fucking brains out.”

Zoe hears the gun’s safety click off.

“One.”

Zoe: “IT’S THE TRUTH!” she shouts, forcing her throat open enough to croak an answer.

“HONEST! I’ve had a real shitty day, and… I just wanted to fucking see something new!”

Technically true.

GM: The gun doesn’t withdraw from her head.

“Yeah? Then why’d you say you aren’t a muff diver?”

The fingers around her throat squeeze.

“Two.”

The other man runs his tongue across his palm.

Zoe: “I d-didn’t! I s-said I haven’t! I never tried! B-but honest! I’ve walked by this place every d-day for years, a-and I’ve never… b-because I n-never… a-and I’M JUST SHY, OKAY!”

Why, yes! I came here to rob the place. All 120 pounds, unarmed, untrained. Captain Nefarious, at your service.

GM: The other man licks his index finger, seemingly oblivious to Zoe’s presence.

“So you are a muff diver who came here to watch sluts take off their clothes,” says the cop.

“Three.”

Zoe: “W-well, I r-really did j-just come in t-to look! I am h-hungry.”

She is. She really, really is.

“I g-guess? Will you not sh-shoot me if I am? I r-really don’t want to be shot.”

She puts her hands up, as if swearing before a court.

“I m-meant nothing bad.”

GM: The cop lets go of Zoe’s throat.

Then he smashes the barrel of his handgun over her head. Zoe’s skull explodes in pain as she crashes face-first onto the dirty carpet.

“That guy died,” sounds the cop’s voice.

“Heart attack.”

“After you tried to fuck him.”

“Dead guy scared my customers.”

“Scared customers spent less money.”

The cop’s voice is a dangerous snarl.

“You cost me money.”

Zoe: “S-sorry! It’s—it’s not my fault. H-he tried to f-fuck m-me and his h-heart..”

How is this HER fault?!

GM: With her face still pressed against the dirty carpet, Zoe can’t say the cop’s face.

But she hears the venom in his voice.

The anger.

“You owe me money, whore.”

Zoe: “I-I’m s-sorry! I—I’ve got $50! Th-that’s it! I c-can get some from my p-parents!”

GM: “$50?”

A crocodile wingtip suddenly comes down, hard, on Zoe’s fingers, with a grown man’s full weight behind it.

“You owe more than that, you stupid fucking whore.”

Zoe: The scream that fills the room is fit for a movie.

“I-I’ll pay you b-back! I’m s-sorry! I’m sorry!”

GM: “You sure will,” says the cop, grinding his shoe down on her fingers.

“Aaron, get this whore dancing with the others. We’ll collect what she brings in.”

Zoe: DANCING?!

“I— D-d-dancing? Like… on stage?”

GM: The cop lifts his foot off Zoe’s hand, painfully yanks her up by her hair, and shoves her at the bouncer.

The bald man’s eyes flash as he licks his fingers.

The bouncer grabs Zoe by the arm and starts tromping down the stairs with her.

Zoe: This has to be a nightmare. It has to be! She’s still at school—at Tulane, or Chuck’s apartment, or at home—and she’ll wake up soon.

Her family still loves her, and she’ll wake up soon.

She clamps her eyes shut as she’s tugged down the stairs, and opens them again.

No. Still here. Still living a nightmare. Maybe she did die. Maybe she is the one who collapsed and died in that little coffee shop.

She doesn’t struggle. She doesn’t scream. She simply follows, arm in hand.

Thursday night, 31 March 2016, AM

GM: The man’s heavy footsteps creak down the stairs. Zoe finds herself dragged into a mostly empty-feeling locker room. It smells like sweat and perfume. There’s less pre-cum and cigarette smoke. There’s around half a dozen girls in various states of undress. Most of them look like they’re putting their clothes on rather than off. Most of them look dead exhausted. They sound as if they’re gossiping and sharing stares about their shifts, but mostly they look like they’re going home.

A posted sign reads, Entertainers must stop crying before returning to the floor.

The bouncer drags Zoe up to a 30something black woman with a pixie cut and three piercings along each of her ears. She’s dressed less revealingly than the other girls in a black halter top, dark jeans, and lace-up boots.

“Cash Money wants her started,” says the bouncer without preamble.

The woman gives him a frank look. “Everyone’s leaving. That’s not happening tonight.”

The bouncer shrugs.

The woman looks at Zoe. “You danced before, hon?”

Zoe: Zoe shakes her head, pauses, then nods.

“Not, uhm… Not like this. In school. They taught us ballroom dancing. Things like this.”

A pause.

“I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to cause any problems…”

GM: “This ain’t ballroom dancing, hon,” the woman says dryly.

“All right, you’re a baby stripper. You got shoes? Clothes?” Her gaze passes over what Zoe has on. “Thong? Makeup?”

Zoe: She shakes her head.

“I—I don’t have anything. Just what I’m wearing.”

GM: “‘Kay, get those things by your first shift. For shoes you want Pleaser brand, not just whatever heels you’ll find in any girl’s closet. Those’ll kill your feet and you’ll probably fall over. Glitter is good, but you don’t want too much. Married guys don’t want it getting all over them.”

“Also, tampons. If you’re having your period, you can’t dance.”

“Other shit you don’t need but will want. Baby wipes, superglue, baby powder, mints, painkillers.”

“If you don’t have money to buy all that, you can buy it from me. Cost’ll come outta your earnings.”

Zoe: “Wh-when would my first shift be?” she asks after a moment.

GM: “Today. 6 PM.”

Zoe: And they’ll just let her walk out right now…?

“Can I… ask an obvious question?”

GM: “Sure.”

Zoe: “What’s to make me come back once I leave?”

She sounds nervous. She is nervous. She knows there must be something that will make her return.

GM: The bouncer grabs Zoe by the arm again and hauls her away. He marches through some back rooms and opens the door to what looks like a closet. It looks like it’s for cleaning supplies. It’s one of the most cramped, dingiest, dirtiest little rooms Zoe has ever seen. It smells awful and there are funny stains over the ground.

“Get in.”

Zoe: “O-okay! Okay! I’m honest! I d-don’t break my word! I cost you money, and I will be back to pay you back!”

And she will pass any lie detector in the world with that.

Still, she steps in.

GM: The door slams shut in her face.

She hears a lock click.

Zoe: She huffs. She knows better than the bang on it.

“I meant what I said,” she calls through the door.

GM: Her only answer is the sound of retreating footsteps.

It’s pitch dark. It smells horrible.

Zoe: She’s not going to stand all night, so she sits, despite the grimy grossness of the closet. She can feel something sticky beneath her left foot.

They won’t leave her in here all night? All day? Right?

No one can dance and be chipper and cheerful after a full night in a closet.

No food.

Not bathroom.

No water.

No nothing.

She has her phone, but should she try using it? Not yet.

GM: It’s cramped. There’s no room to spread out her legs, just squat. Her company is bleach, brooms, paper towels, and rags.

Time crawls.

Zoe: She knocks on the door. Just gently.

“Hello?”

GM: There’s no answer.

Zoe: She huffs. She could be in bed. In luxury. With Chuck. Even with their deal, he still provides her access to the life she enjoys.

It’s uncomfortable, and she’s already getting sore, but she tries to sleep.

GM: Her task swiftly proves futile. She’s never slept in surroundings like these before. She’s not lying down. She has no blankets or pillows.

She already woke up at 3 AM.

She was assaulted. Watched a man die. Was threatened, repeatedly, with death, and beaten like a cheap whore.

By a sleazebag cop who says she owes him money.

Now she’s being forced to sell her dignity to washed-up losers like the dead man who tried to swallow her face.

She’s being held captive against her will.

In the shittiest little cleaning closet her mind could conjure.

No food. No water. No bathroom.

Nothing to do but squat until whenever they let her out.

What would her mother think? Her father? Grandpa?

Sleep does not feel as if it will come easily.

Zoe: And so she doesn’t sleep. Perhaps a wink. Perhaps a blink. No real, deep, restful, dream-filled sleep.

Like she would have had with Chuck.

She cries at points. Her stomach rumbles. She has to pee. She’s had to pee so often today.

Why did her life flip on its head so suddenly? It feels as if she really has died and gone to hell.

GM: Time crawls.

Minutes.

Many minutes.

Hours.

Many hours.

No one comes for her.

Squatting in the same position for so long becomes intolerable. Zoe has to stand up. There’s nowhere to move. Nowhere to stretch her arms. She stretches her legs, then she squats back down.

At several points, she hears light skittering sounds.

Mice.

Zoe has no idea how much time passes. The pitch dark closet eventually gets lighter, though.

No one comes for her.

Maybe they’ve forgotten she’s there.

Maybe they’re just leaving her to die of thirst.

She’s so thirsty.

Zoe: Time loses its meaning when one is so long without sensory input, let alone an actual clock. Her tongue is dry. Will she be made to kiss someone? They won’t like it.

How can they like it? How can she be anything to be liked at all, caged and unfed and abused like an animal?

Is that what you want, Mom? For me to become an animal?

GM: Maybe?

Time crawls.

On and on.

The light outside dims.

Darkens.

Then.

Footsteps.

There’s a clicking sound. The door opens. It’s the same bouncer.

“You’re up,” he says.

Zoe: Zoe is covered in sweat, and her stomach is roaring, and she has to pee, and she wants to puke. Her heart has been racing for the last few hours, and it’s made her exhausted.

She’s so thirsty, when she speaks it comes out raspy.

“I—n-now?”

She’s still wearing her hoodie and jeans.

GM: The man grabs Zoe by the arm and yanks her to her feet.

“No, you dumb bitch, after you change.”

Zoe: She’s dragged along, and for what it’s worth, she’s compliant in that much.

“I d-don’t know how! And I need a shower! Do you want someone who sat in their stink all night—day—to dance for them?”

They probably won’t smell her over themselves.

GM: “I donno how, I donno how, I donno how!” mimics the bouncer in a shrill, whining voice.

Zoe’s hauled into the strippers’ dress room. It’s got a different vibe than last night. There’s more girls, some naked, others changing into costumes. A couple of them of them are snaring down fast food. More of them are putting on perfume, makeup, deodorant, pole grip, hair wax. Zoe sees one woman inserting a tampon inside herself.

The woman from last night is helping another upset-looking girl glue a broken heel back onto her shoe. She turns to regard Zoe as the bouncer hauls her in. A frown crosses her face.

“Right. I’m guessing you didn’t get the stuff. What’s your shoe size?”

The bouncer leaves without a word.

Zoe: She shakes her head.

“No. They left me in the closet. I’m a six-and-a-half.”

Zoe shivers.

“I really have to pee. And I’m starving. Can I…?”

GM: “Oh, yeah. Cash Money does that sometimes,” the woman says absently.

She turns around, rummages through a bag, then slaps a wrapped O’Tolley’s cheeseburger into Zoe’s hand.

“Bathroom’s that way,” she says, pointing. “Give yourself a sponge bath.”

Zoe: Sometimes?! This is normal behavior?!

And not even a shower?!

Her eyes droop. She can fall asleep. She really might.

She takes the hamburger and moves toward the bathroom, stuffing as much of it down as she can before she gets there.

She strips—silently questioning herself as she does—and bathes herself. She can run. She can fight. She can do try to escape, but she knows that if she does, she might be met with an even worse scenario.

What’s a little dancing? What’s a little groping? What’s becoming the animal dear Mother wants her to become?

She isn’t good enough for her? Fine. Zoe Kelly isn’t beaten. In the battle, perhaps, but not in the war.

So what is the cost of a little groping?

The bath is quick, the burger consumed even quicker, and she returns to the room naked, looking for her guide.

GM: The bathroom is filthy. It makes the one at Tantsy’s look clean. The cracked ceramic tile floor is caked with so much filth that it shines. Toilet paper (some used) and tampons (used) are littered everywhere floor. Everywhere but the actual toilet. The inside looks like it’s never been cleaned. It’s caked almost completely brown, and smells to match.

Zoe also observes, as she squats down to relieve herself, that the door has no locks.

Mid-way through her piss, another girl walks in, glances at Zoe, then pulls down her thong. She proceeds to urinate right into the sink.

“New?” she asks conversationally.

Zoe: Zoe nods, looking around. She gathers her soiled clothing, holding them to her chest sheepishly.

“I—I guess. I’ll be working here tonight.”

Just tonight?

GM: “Trying it out, huh?”

Zoe: She shakes her head.

“I made Cash Money mad. Now I need to make him cash.”

Money.

She amuses herself, even in the darkest times.

“…got any tips? I’m Zoe.”

GM: “Audrey,” says the girl, grabbing some toilet pepper to use on herself.

“Is that your real name?”

Zoe: She nods.

“Should I not use that?”

GM: “You’re green,” the girl remarks amusedly as she tosses the soiled TP onto the ground.

“And no, never. Not even just your first name.”

“My mom gave a guy her real name once, when she was young. Just her first name, but he tracked her down. Dunno how, but he did.”

Zoe: Zoe shudders, grimacing as if she’d just been forced to lick the bathroom floor.

“What should I call myself? Like… anything at all?”

GM: “Well you want something that’s gonna make money,” says Audrey. “Y’know, bold, exciting.”

“And also something that’s hard to get wrong.”

“Like we had a Ruby once who guys mixed up with Rudy.”

“We had another girl who was Aries, ’cuz that was her sign, and customers thought she was Harry.”

She washes her hands as she talks.

Zoe: She thinks about that. What do strippers call themselves?

“Isn’t Rudy a—guy’s name?”

She shakes her head. If the man she killed—

Did she kill him? She wished he would stop existing, just like Chris. Just like Chris before he—

No. She feels her panic spiking her heart rate.

Stop thinking about it, Zoe. Not now.

But if she did, does that mean she can…?

GM: “Yeah, Rudy is a guy name, that’s why Ruby’s bad.”

Zoe: No. Fairy tales aren’t real, Zoe. Wouldn’t it just be perfect if she could make someone’s brain leak out their nose when she wants to?

“…how about Winter?”

GM: “Winter, that’s not bad,” says Audrey as she pulls her g-string back on.

“You should have a fake real name, too.”

“Lotta guys who wanna know.”

Zoe: "I like Ruby! But I like Winter more. Can’t mistake that. Hmmm… I’ll think about a fake real name. What other advice do you have?

She’s almost forgotten that she’s naked. Almost.

GM: “Hm, smile a lot, like you’re having fun. Customers aren’t gonna wanna tip if you don’t look like you wanna be here.”

Zoe: “What if they get too handsy…?”

Is she really going to do this?

GM: “They aren’t allowed to touch,” says Audrey. “You can touch them, though.”

“I mean some will, and duh if you go upstairs, but not on stage.”

Zoe: “O-oh! So if they break the rules…? Is there a signal?”

GM: Audrey pushes open the bathroom door and walks back out towards the lockers.

“Well security’s watching, and you can tell them to knock it off, or yell. They’ll usually warn the guy and kick him out if he doesn’t stop.”

Zoe: She dips her chin. She really is going to do this.

But what’s wrong with that? Why should she care? She won’t be paid for it, but…

Maybe today will stop being the Worst Day Ever when she accepts that Zoe Kelly died, and something new rose from her ashes. Something better. Something stronger.

Wouldn’t that be something, Mom?

GM: Audrey walks up to her locker.

“Also, no offense, you kinda smell… you should go heavy on the perfume.”

Zoe: Not even the sponge bath helped. Drat.

“Borrow a spritz?”

GM: “Yeah, sure,” Audrey says as she slips on a fishnet see-through top that matches her thong. She starts doing up her face in the mirror. The lipstick she uses is very red.

Zoe: “Thanks! I’ll… be back after I get dressed.”

She wonders in what, but at least for tonight, that isn’t her decision.

She looks around for her earlier guide.

GM: She finds the woman helping another girl with her makeup.

Zoe: “Hey. I’m… Ready. Bathed as best I can.”

Which isn’t well at all.

“What can I wear?”

“And… I’m Ellie.”

GM: The woman looks her over.

“Brooke. You’ve got a ways before you’re ready.”

She shows Zoe a couple spare costumes:

Zoe: Zoe picks a black number from the bunch; the one of the lot that fits something close to her style.

She slips it on, if only to erase the fact that she’s still naked.

“Do you have any… tips?”

GM: Now she’s only mostly naked.

“Wear shoes,” says Brooke. She’s got two pairs of shoes in Zoe’s size to pick between. They’re sky-high heels with ankle straps and tall platforms.

Zoe: This one is much quicker. She snatches up a pair of pretty, pastel, and black shoes.

Is that a bubble of excitement she feels?

“That’s it? Just wear shoes?”

GM: They add at least six inches to her height after she fits them on. The combination of non-slip outer sole, heavily cushioned inner sole, and ankle support from the strap makes them deceptively comfortable to wear.

“Nah. Makeup’s next. You want bright lips and long lashes. I can sell you makeup and jewelry, or you can ask the other girls to share.”

Zoe: “I’ll see if Audrey will let let me borrow some. Be right back.”

And so she scurries back to Audrey.

“Hey. Can I borrow a bit of makeup? I’ll have some of my own tomorrow, and you can make free use of it in exchange.”

GM: Zoe nearly trips in her haste. These shoes are not conductive to running. The grip at the bottom makes her feel balanced, though, and they give her hips a very noticeable sway as she walks. Her legs have never looked better as she stares down at the world from over half a foot up.

She finds Audrey getting her own face touched up by a woman who looks maybe a decade and a half older than the 20something girl. Both of them are dressed in the same revealing apparel and platform heels as Zoe.

“Yeah, sure, no big,” says Audrey. “This is my mom, by the way, Aubrey.”

Zoe: “Nice to meet you, Aubrey! I’m Z—Ellie.”

She holds a hand out to the woman, her professional history not forgotten yet.

“You really mean it, Audrey? You’re the best!”

GM: Aubrey shakes her hand with an amused look.

“You don’t use your fake name in the dress room, by the way. That’s for customers.”

Zoe: “Oh…”

Her cheeks flush madly.

“Zoe. Sorry.”

Why does she feel sorry?

“I… guess I’m up. Say, if you do well, do they let you go home…?”

GM: Aubrey laughs.

“You’re a baby stripper. It’s fine. And depends how pissed Cash Money is.”

“There was that one girl he kept for a week,” said Audrey.

Aubrey shakes her head. “Wasn’t a week. Three days, tops.”

“That’s true,” says Audrey. “I mean, if he’s really pissed, he can al…”

Aubrey mutely shakes her head.

Audrey finds a spot of makeup on her mom’s face that needs touching up.

“Earn some money, don’t cause a scene, and you’ll go home,” Aubrey says to Zoe.

“Just look like you’re happy to be here. If you see him, be friendly, and he’ll forget about you.”

Zoe: She nods. “I’ll be good.”

Be a good girl, Zoe. You’re my girl, aren’t you?

Her mother’s voice echoes in her head as if she stood right behind her.

She bites her tongue. Gently.

“Okay. Look like I belong her. Don’t cause a scene. Smile. I can do that.”

Is she telling it to them or to herself? She’s not sure.

Don’t wish for anyone to disappear.

She’s not sure she can do that.

What if she makes Cash disappear?

With Audrey’s offer, she applies her makeup to her face, taking care to paint herself a good bit more than her aesthetic calls for, but such is this strange culture.

She could have just made more mozzarella sticks.

“Thanks!” she calls, walking more carefully back to Brooke.

“How’s this?”

GM: Would Rosalyn be calling her a good girl if she saw her daughter here in a strip club?

She could have just made more mozzarella sticks.

Brooke looks her over thoughtfully.

“Looks good. You need to do your nails, though. You want every part of you to look good.”

“I can sell you polish or you can get some from another girl.”

“You need perfume, too.”

“And to pop a mint. You don’t want cheeseburger on your breath.”

Zoe: Zoe looks down at the faded pastel blue of her nails, bitten down and flaked and picked, all breaking her promise not to do any of that. She sighs.

“I’ll see if Audrey will loan me some. I’ll pick up my own for tomorrow.”

And back to Audrey!

GM: Audrey has red polish and cotton candy perfume. Her mom has Calgon body spray. Up to Zoe which she wants. They mentioned that most strippers fall into two camps, in that regard: Calgon I’m-not-even-going-to-try types, and those who swear by their Pink Sugar/famous celebrity/Viva La Juicy I-can’t-believe-she-stole-my-signature-scent-even-though-it’s-readily-available-at-Nordstrom variety.

Both women say she get manicures and pedicures regularly, if she wants to keep doing this. Part of taking care of her body.

Neither of them has a mint, but they know another dancer, Neveah, who usually has a pack of them.

Zoe: Zoe is a simple woman with a simple mission: don’t fuck this up, and don’t end up pissing off Cash. She’s fine with red polish, fine with cotton candy, and fine bugging Neveah for a mint. It all goes into the list of favors she owes in the future.

“Maybe we can go together sometime?”

She can’t remember the last time she got a manicure with anyone. Sami wasn’t ever into that.

GM: Audrey and Aubrey are both amenable to. There’s a nearby salon on Royal Street they really like.

Zoe: In the end, she approaches Brooke, and if she figure herself out, she might even look like she belongs. How strange that such a terrible, horrible, really-bad day could turn into one that makes her feel good.

Even if she won’t be paid today.

Thursday night, 31 March 2016, PM

GM: Zoe’s made to sign an extremely casual if not sloppy-looking employment contract before she’s up. A bouncer glares over her shoulder the whole time she reads it. She’s also given a locker to store her things in. Audrey and Aubrey have some last tips.

“Play up how it’s your first time, guys will love that.” “Don’t be pushy, make a little conversation if he’s into that.” “But if he doesn’t buy anything in 10 mins you’re wasting time.” “If you mess up, just keep going like nothing happened. The guys are too drunk to care.”

Zoe: Zoe stuffs her soiled clothing into her locker, slamming it shut and locking it, speaking to Audrey and Aubrey as she does.

She nods.

“Okay, be a salesman. Got it. And know who’s a buyer and who’s a moocher. But don’t say that.”

She nods again, mostly for her own self-confirmation.

“What if they want to buy me a drink?”

GM: “That’s great, you want them to buy you drinks,” says Aubrey. “The bartender will just serve you water. The money will go towards the cut the club takes from your dances, so you’ll make more from those.”

Zoe: “Ooooh, I figured it’d be non-alcoholic. Oh well. Water is fine.”

GM: “They don’t want you getting drunk on stage,” confirms Audrey.

In short order, Zoe and the other strippers are ushered in. Deafeningly loud music with the beat of a jackhammer blares in her ears. Brass and chrome accents glint along her peripheral vision, from the poles where strippers try out for the nudie Olympics to the rails around the stages and bars. Pulsating neon lights illuminate just enough—and hide even more. A few TV screens show sports, just in case the live action gets boring.

There are a lot of guys. Some are there at booths along a back wall. Others by tables with upholstered chairs, which look like good spots for lap dances. Last are chairs ringing the stage, where up close and personal takes on new meaning. There’s more of them than last night. They all look the same. Washed-up middle-aged losers. Younger losers, who maybe can’t get a woman anywhere else. Drunken frat boys. Average-looking husbands and dads, maybe, if on the seedier side. Some guys look like mobsters. There are even two in police uniforms. There’s also a few women, some on their own, some with guys. Everyone is drinking. Cigarette smoke is everywhere. So is last night’s musk of sweat, pre-cum, and cheap perfume.

Meanwhile, the DJ announce the next set of girls, his voice barely audible over the vibrating bass of the music, “Cinnamon, Kaylee, Gem, Jewel, Winter. You’re up."

Zoe: Zoe wishes she had a drink in hand right now, but knows that’s only another errant thought to procrastinate her inevitable march onto stage.

Naked.

Almost.

In front of a crowd.

At least it won’t be a crowd that shares a circle with her mother.

Right?

…right?

She draws a steadying breath, and walks out into the booming music.

GM: Maybe Rosalyn is there, among the crowd. It’s hard to tell under the dim neon lighting, or amidst the sea of unfamiliar faces.

But Zoe has a hard time seeing her mom tolerating cigarette smoke, drunkenly waving dollar bills, making lewd jeers and catcalls, and yelling for the girls to bare their asses and take it all off.

One guy blows a wet and sloppy kiss at Zoe. Another one mimics cunnilingus. “What’ll you do for this!” yells a third, waving a $20. “What’ll you do for THIS!” exclaims a woman, waving a $50, to the laughter of her girlfriends. “I’m gonna fuck your ass ’til it bleeds black!” shouts a fourth man, loudest of all. He gets sharply told to “knock it off, buddy” by a bouncer.

Most of the men are actually fairly quiet. It’s the women who seem the rowdiest.

But all of their eyes are on Zoe, her fellows, and the brass and chrome poles they attach themselves to.

Zoe: The sheer number of women in the crowd—really, that the number is more than 0—surprises her. The rowdiness that they present surprises her a step forward. She expected to see boisterous men, and frat boys, and those well past their prime or so out of shape that a strip club is their only inlet for flirtatious accommodation.

She draws a breath, and steps out with a swagger to her poise, a smile on her face. She throws her arms up and out, jutting a hip.

They’re naked, not you. It’s them. You’re just putting on a show, right? Don’t worry about you. Worry about them.

It only works a little bit. Her heart is hammering as if a ball dropped on a taut drum, faster and faster and faster and faster.

She finds the pole, and spins as if it’s her partner, and begins. It’s sultry, and pretentious, a coy, but shy and telling of her first time dancing such a scandalous dance. She isn’t trained, and it shows, but her untrained dance is interlaced and interwoven by juts of her hip and sliding down the pole and grasping her chest and crawling toward whichever victim deigned to lock eyes with her and engage her spell.

Maybe her novelty is something endearing!

GM: Zoe’s pole dance receives a few drunken claps and exclamations. Whistles, too. The other girls are also getting attention, Audrey and Aubrey among them, but Zoe feels like she’s doing all right for herself. Especially considering it’s her first time. It’s easy to feel above all of the men, on the stage in her 7-inch heels as she swings and shakes her assets around the pole. The music thumps past the floating cigarette smoke, and staring down at her neon-painted flesh, it’s hard to imagine that Zoe Josephine Kelly was ever a girl on the straight and narrow.

She sees the other strippers leaning close to the audience so that men (and a few women) can slip dollar bills into their g-strings. A couple ‘rain cash’ over the girls and laugh as they get down on their knees to pick it up.

Zoe: The other girls are masters of their craft. At least, it seems that they are to someone so new to dancing before such a large crowd. Her focus drifts to the other dancers, taking in their various ticks and nuances as quickly as she can.

She dips to the floor, chest to the polished material and hind to some lucky gentleman—or lady—to pick up an errant pair of bills, stuffing them into her top.

GM: The other girls are doing more elaborate things with their poles. Aubrey and Audrey have a move where they grips it with both hands and splay both of their legs in the air, above their heads. That seems to draw a lot of attention. They and the other girls do more things with the pole. There’s a grace born from simple experience with it.

Zoe’s knees swiftly hurt on the stage’s hard surface, but it’s hardly as if she can collect the money by another means in 7-inch heels. Guys hoot and holler as she gets down on the floor. People stick dollar bills along her g-string and down her cleavage. Some do just that. Two get more handsy, though. One man gives her left breast a solid grope. Another guy runs his finger down along her asscrack, then smiles and licks it.

Zoe: How can he find that acrid taste arousing?! She hasn’t had a real shower in over a day! And there is—ewwww….

She wants to try more intricate incorporations to her dance, but she wants even more not to cause a scene by splitting her head on the floor.

…of course, that might turn them on more, and life would be easier if she isn’t part of it. Hmmmn.

Zoe keeps to what she knows is safe and what seems to be working: light exposure, ample movement of her hips, slipping her own hands to her chest and nethers, and collecting bills when they arrive.

She tolerates them. She may not in the future, but she doesn’t want to earn ANY ire this evening.

GM: The increasingly liquored customers all seem to like what she does and money comes in relatively steadily. It’s tricky to hold onto, past a certain point, though Zoe notices some of the other girls setting their cash down on part of the stage that’s out of reach to the customers.

Eventually, though, the song concludes and the DJ announces the next set of girls is up. The ones on-stage clamber down and head back to the dressing room to put away their money in their lockers.

Zoe: Zoe collects her winnings and moves off-stage, offering a little wink to some of her more generous donors.

When did she start sweating so much?! It was hot in the main room, but most of it is from nerves.

She shivers, thanking Audrey, and moves to store her money in the locker. It’s not hers—not tonight—but nor is she done for the evening. She’ll settle up with Cash later.

GM: “You did good, honey,” sounds Aubrey. “Just put it in the hours and you’ll get used to it.”

A quick count of Zoe’s money reveals that she’s pulled in $102.

Zoe: “You really think so? I’d love to learn some of the tricks you two did!”

One day. When there aren’t gawking drunkards.

“Do we… go back out now?”

GM: “Yep,” says Audrey as she stores her cash. “You’ll make most of your money from lap dances. And if you do really well, the VIP room.”

Aubrey checks her makeup in the mirror.

Zoe: She flushes a light shade of crimson.

“What do you… do in the VIP room?”

GM: “Pretty often you give a blowjob,” says Aubrey.

“Sometimes sex.”

“Sometimes just more lap dances.”

Zoe: “O-oh.”

”O-oh…"

GM: “It pays really well,” says Audrey. “You wanna do the VIP room.”

Zoe: “Y-yeah. Okay.”

How much does she owe Cash, anyway?

GM: “But with a condom,” says Aubrey. “You dunno where these guys have been.”

Zoe: “Blowjob with a condom too?”

GM: “You can ask for more to do without. Your call.”

“But you dunno where they’ve last stuck their pricks.”

Audrey starts running her mom’s body over with baby wipes to get rid of sweat.

Zoe: She shakes her head vigorously.

“No money is worth that risk.”

Especially because it’s all a pittance compared to…

Will she ever be taken back if this wild day gets back to her mother?

“…can I borrow one of those? I can’t give you any of what I earned yet. I don’t know how much I owe Cash, but I’ll be good for paying you back.”

GM: “Yeah, sure,” says Aubrey, passing her a wipe. She starts wiping down her daughter’s body too.

“You wanna spot yourself up after every song,” says Audrey. “You’ll probably be sweating a bit.”

Zoe: A bit? She feels like a beached whale after a sponge bath. She takes a wipe and begins to clean herself.

“Hey, um… what do we do if they touch you on stage? More than they should.”

GM: “Call a bouncer,” says Audrey.

“Well, tell them to knock it off first.”

Zoe: “How? I don’t want to cause a scene.. Or seem unfriendly to the rest of the crowd.”

GM: “Yeah, you should just let it slide if it’s not that bad,” says Aubrey.

“But just grab one’s eye and wave him over, you don’t wanna scream or anything.”

Zoe: She doesn’t want to let it slide. She doesn’t like how it felt to have that man swipe a finger through her cheeks; to see him lick and suckle as if he were a greedy child stealing a taste of someone else’s cake.

Yet, she does. She does because she’s the new girl, and she’s the one who might find herself with broken fingers or a smashed nose if she’s even perceived to cause another scene in Cash’s club.

For now, she suffers. For now, she endures.

For now.

She nods.

“I guess I’ll go back out now. To the floor. Mingle, right? Sell?”

GM: “Yeah,” says Audrey as she and her mom finish wiping. She gives her makeup another inspection in the mirror.

“You just wander around the floor while the other girls on stage dance. You chat and give lap dances, see if they’ll buy you drinks, and get them up to the VIP room if you can.”

“For privacy, and more fun,” says Aubrey.

Zoe: Privacy. Fun.

Money.

She isn’t here to have fun, and she isn’t going to escape with any money, but if she keeps this up, she will escape.

Is it so bad, though? She made more money in a few minutes than many did in a full day. It’s less than her family makes in the same time.

Not her family. Her past. Her birth family.

The thought brings a note of sadness to her, which she dispels with a shake of her head and a brushing of fingers through her hair. She smiles.

“Right. Privacy and fun.”

With that, she steps out into the front.

GM: Her fellow strippers don’t sound as if they regard this as particularly fun either. Just a job.

But for the customer it’s all about the fun. The fantasy.

There’s a new song belting out over the speakers when Zoe leaves the dress room. There’s new girls dancing up on the stage and sensuously swinging against the poles. Customers are already slipping bills into their g-strings.

Zoe’s fellows from the first song are already making their rounds around the club. One girl is already giving a lap dance. Most customers not sitting up along the stage, and presumably more interested in the dancers there, are seated back along booths or at tables by the bar. They aren’t close enough to tip the stage girls.

“Remember, you’re a saleswoman,” says Aubrey, patting Zoe’s shoulder before approaching the guys at a booth alongside her daughter.

The crowd is the same one she saw earlier—it has been only a few minutes. Washed-up middle-aged losers. Younger losers, who maybe can’t get a woman anywhere else. Drunken frat boys. Average-looking husbands and dads, maybe, if on the seedier side. Some guys look like mobsters. There are even two in police uniforms. There’s also a few women, some on their own, some with guys.

Zoe: Zoe mulls over her options, keeping a faint smile on her lips as she does; something pleasant, yet simple enough to be genuine.

The younger men look to be a poor source of income. Maybe if others turn her down.

Loser. Loser. Another loser.

The fathers-probably are a healthy target. She can play the role of exactly what they aren’t getting at home; though, she’s sure that highlighting anything of the sort is as sure a way as any to be sent right to Cash’s office. Hm.

The police are a fair option, though it’s sure to be a gamble. They’re likely to be Cash’s friends, given the badge she saw the night before, and so are sure to highlight her performance—for better, or for worse.

For the moment, she saunters over to one of the male-female couples, exuding confidence.

“Hi there! Having a good time?”

GM: The man looks in his mid-late 20s. He’s brown-haired and dressed in a button-down and jeans. The woman looks around the same age, with longer dark hair. She’s got on a club dress.

“Yeah, pretty good,” he grins.

He looks Zoe up and down.

“You’re hot. How much is a BJ?”

“Trip!” says the girlfriend, swatting his arm.

“I’m just asking,” he laughs.

“We don’t want a BJ, we want a lap dance,” says the girl.

“Well, I wouldn’t say no to a BJ,” says Trip.

“I just said we wanted a lap dance,” says the girl, more crossly.

Zoe: She winks at Trip, once he says his last bit.

“We can start with a lap dance,” she hums, tapping a finger nail against the rear of his seat, taking careful care to ensure her skin finds his shoulder on the way by.

Her eyes find the girl next.

“…but for who, hmmmn? You, or… you?”

A pause.

“…twenty dollars for a song, either or.”

GM: “Yeah, I want a lap dance,” says the girl. “Me first.”

Trip looks a little annoyed at that.

Neither one blinks at the price she asks, though.

Zoe: Okay. Reasonable price. That’s a good sign. They weren’t surprised, whether for cheapness or expense.

Zoe draws her fingers back, brushing the tips along his cheeks as she sweeps over to the girl.

She settles into her lap, one leg on either side, facing her.

“Any requests?”

GM: “I dunno, just do what you do,” says the girl, leaning back in her seat.

Her eyes sweep up Zoe’s body. “What’s it like to wear those costumes?”

“I thought you wanted a lap dance,” says Trip.

“Shut up, I’m talking,” says the girl.

Trip mutters something rude-sounding and takes a pull from his drink.

Zoe: Zoe slants her eyes toward Trip, her rear grinding toward into the nameless girl’s lap. Her fingers clasp around her neck while she gyrates.

“Don’t act like you get nothing out of this,” she teases the man.

“What’s your name, darling?” she asks the girl.

GM: Trip permits himself a smile, or at least less of a glower, as he watches.

“Delaney,” says the girl.

She’s still underneath Zoe, as if not sure what she’s supposed to do at this point. Her eyes wander along the other girl’s torso.

“I asked you what those costumes are like.”

Zoe: She takes Delaney’s hands, pressing each of them to her ribs, just where her skin meets the fabric of her top.

Her lips find the girl’s ear and she murmurs breathily, “…you’re welcome to feel for yourself. Just don’t get too adventurous.”

A wink, and she leans back, exposing her torso in more full for her to view—and explore, if she wants.

So Trip can hear too, “They’re fun! This is my first night in this one.”

First night ever, but they don’t need to know that.

Her gaze drifts to Trip again.

“You’re welcome to raise a bid for the next song.”

GM: Delaney feels up along Zoe’s body. She limits herself to the other girl’s stomach at first, since that’s what’s there. Then she slowly works her way up to Zoe’s breasts, squeezing them back and forth, rubbing her palms over Zoe’s nipples. The costume’s fabric is very thin.

Trip’s getting a bulge in his pants as he watches his girlfriend feel up Zoe.

“Okay, $30,” he says.

“Your dance isn’t over,” says Delaney, crossly. “Do more lap dancey stuff.”

Zoe: “Oh no it’s not,” she purrs, slipping off the girl’s lap, down down down to the floor, her fingertips dragging lightly down her arms, Zoe’s face pressing to her stomach, then her crotch, eyes angling upward.

She kneels on the floor at the end, a minor dramatic flare, then stands, turning away with a sway of her hips

“…when I’m done with her. $30.”

Tips welcome, though…

GM: Delaney looks notably more into it at that. Especially when Zoe doesn’t break eye contact. She runs her hands along Zoe’s head, pressing the other girl’s face into the space between her legs. Is she wet down there? All Zoe would need to do is pull up her dress just a bit.

Trip’s bulge gets bigger as he watches the exotic dancer entertaining his girlfriend in motion.

Delaney wraps an arm around Zoe’s shoulder and pulls her back onto her lap.

“You’re not done, you stripper,” she breathes.

Zoe: Zoe falls elegantly into her lap, her left hand finding the bare skin of Delaney’s thigh. A little higher, a little higher…

She looks back, up from under the girl’s chin.

“…you could have everything you want back there,” she breathes heavily, flicking her eyes toward the VIP section.

She kisses the underside of her chin.

“Every touch.”

Another.

“Every kiss.”

Another.

“You could make him watch, or… you could have him join.”

For a moment, Zoe wonders what the fuck happened to her. It comes naturally—these words, these actions—as if she were with Chris, or with any of the other number of fantasized encounters she’s had over the years. Playing it out for real upon this woman—a customer, and her boyfriend—draws her out from why she’s here.

For a moment, she is having fun.

She doesn’t want that fun to die.

Delaney’s tug into her lap is foreign, and strange, and some not-entirely-ignorably-small part of her wants to shrug away at it; yet, in the same breath, it’s the first piece of positive validation Zoe has in what will be the worst two days of her life.

In two days—a little less—she’s gone from the pinnacle of society with dreams in the stars and a free ride to them to rubbing her ass on a horny guy and his horny girlfriend.

She’s asked many a time, but: What the fuck?!

“So you want to come upstairs, hmmmn?”

She makes a show of thinking while she slips from Delaney’s lap into her boyfriend’s, her crotch finding his—his jeans and her underwear separating—and grinding them together.

The suddenly-stripper whispers into his ear.

“…another $50 and I’ll make her cum upstairs. Another $100 and I’ll do it naked.”

GM: Chuck wanted her to suck his cock.

But that was extortion, wasn’t it, next to this? He was dangling what she wanted, shelter, in front of her, in return for sexual favors.

These two just want her.

These two will pay to have her.

Boyfriend and girlfriend grow all the more aroused at Zoe’s touch, at her kisses, at her sensuously murmured words. Delaney moves her hands down from Zoe’s breasts, and starts to fondle her ass an work towards her sex, until the other girl slips away to straddle her boyfriend. Zoe can feel her glare, but Trip pays his girlfriend barely a second glance as his and Zoe’s loins meet. He’s very hard and Zoe can feel his manhood quivering through his pants.

The man immediately reaches into his wallet produces five $20s, which he sticks down Zoe’s cleavage.

“Make her scream,” he breathes.

The two can’t head upstairs with “their stripper” fast enough, hands hungrily roaming along her scantily attired body with every step. A pale club employee directs Zoe to a comfortably seated mirror-lined room with TV screens in every corner. Past that is a private room with magenta lighting and tiger print furniture.

Barely_Inside.jpg
Trip shoves Zoe backwards onto the couch cushions. Delaney plops down next to her, planting kisses along Zoe’s neck as her hands steadily knead the other girl’s breasts in clockwise motions. Zoe’s nipples are already stiff under the thin fabric. Delaney looks like she’s wet too, judging by the stains along her panties when her dress comes partly up.

“Ah yeah, our stripper’s gonna show us a good time…” says Trip, starting to unbuckle his pants.

“Our stripper,” breathes Delaney, giving Zoe’s nipples an emphatic squeeze.

“We’re buying her. Aren’t we?” she grins, shooting a look in her boyfriend’s direction.

“You guys want some Jameson or whatever?” the club employee asks casually, sticking his head in.

Drinks.

Money.

Zoe: “Oooh, do you want a drink?” she asks, feigning excitement—and doing so well—while her fingers find the hem of her top, pulling it over her head with shameless haste. The timing is intentional.

“I know I do!”

Just like that, she’s back to the girl, kissing her throat, pushing her down into the cushions with unabated hunger! The longer she does this, the easier it is to slip into a natural state. She’s never slept with a woman, but it doesn’t feel quite so strange an idea in here.

When in Rome, right?

Zoe lifts Delaney’s legs up, hiking her dress and dragging her panties down her thighs. She doesn’t intend to let her answer.

GM: With her panties out of the way, Zoe finds Delaney wet and ready.

“Eat me out, you stripper,” she breathes, grabbing the back of Zoe’s head and forcing the other girl’s face against her pelvis. She looks like she’s been waxed fairly recently down there.

“Eat me like you’re getting paid for it, stripper! God! You’re so fucked up!”

“Bet your daddy molested you,” breathes Trip. He’s gotten a bottle from somewhere. He takes a glug from it one hand and strokes his dick with his other.

“Bet you’re on crack, aren’t you, with a toddler at home!”

Delaney grinds her pussy against Zoe’s face, holding the other girl’s head firmly in position with both hands. Trip holds the bottle to her mouth.

“Stripper. Stripper,” she pants, pausing to take a pull of booze. “You’re our stripper. You’re just some stripper!”

Zoe: Zoe shoves Delaney’s legs further upward, forcing her head between her thighs, her lips brushing softly against the outer lips of her sex. She wishes she’d thought to read an article on how to please another woman; but, here she is, and here she’s left with only her own imagination.

What does Zoe like?

She likes to be teased.

Her fingertips seize into the flesh of her thighs, controlling and taut, yet without pain. Her lips part, her tongue running along that lip; a hint of a presence, but only a hint.

She doesn’t answer the words. She’s busy. She tells herself she’s focusing. They’re not true, of course, but their intent doesn’t help her state.

GM: Chris ate her out before. She liked that. Just do what she knows she likes, right? Easy enough.

“Lick me, stripper!” Delaney moans, yanking Zoe’s hair as the other girl’s tongue draws teasingly closer to her clit. “Lick me! I bet you’re a lesbian! I bet you do this a TON!”

“Most strippers are lesbians,” says Trip. There’s another glug from the bottle.

Without warning, Zoe feels him enter her pussy from behind. Trip grabs her neck with one hand as he thrusts in and out.

“Ah, yeah! I’m fucking a stripper! I’m fucking our stripper!”

“Fucking our lesbian stripper!” pants Delaney.

Trip delivers a sharp smack across her ass.

“Ah, yeah! You like that? You like having a dick in you, lesbo stripper? Doesn’t it feel good?”

Zoe: Bit by bit, the words eat through her shell. Lick me. Fuck me. Lesbian this. Easy that.

Then she feels him enter her, and she nearly rockets off in revulsion.

No, Zoe. No, no no, no no no. The very worst thing you can do is anger cash, though it seems like everything is pining to make you do that.

She does pull off him just as the first thrust hits, but it isn’t with revulsion. With a faintly forced smile, she turns on her knees.

“You want to fuck me, huh?”

She checks for a condom on him.

“How much do you think that’s worth?”

GM: There is no condom.

“’Fine, ’nother $100,” Trip says impatiently.

He takes another swig from the bottle.

“Stripper! Get back and lick me!” demands Delaney.

Zoe: “Uh, uh, uh,” she answers, waggling a finger. “You want to fuck me, you need a condom, and it’ll be another $200.”

A pause.

“And you can put it in whatever hole you want.”

GM: “I don’t have a condom,” Trip grouses.

Zoe: She shrugs. “I’m sure they have plenty here. And… the cost?”

GM: “Well where the fuck do we get a condom?” Trip asks impatiently.

His erection is starting to sag a little.

“Yeah, fuck that. Bareback, stripper!”

He sets down the bottle, grabs Zoe by both shoulders, and moves to re-enter her just as the male employee sticks his head back in.

“Hey. Condom.”

He tosses one to Trip.

Trip looks a little disappointed.

So does Delaney.

“Oh. All right,” says Trip.

He fits it on.

Delaney impatiently swats the couch.

“Lick me, stripper! Eat me out! I want a lesbo stripper to eat me out!”

Zoe: Zoe breathes a quiet breath of relief when the bouncer interrupts to deliver a condom. The thought of him entering her again at the word ‘bareback’ nearly makes her hamburger rise.

Composing herself, she slips a finger between Delaney’s lips, entertaining her sex while she addresses Trip for the third time.

“Why don’t we have a race, hmn? Let’s see if you finish first… or her. After you agree to the price.”

GM: “Okay, okay, $200,” Trip says impatiently.

“Trip! Look at the lesbo stripper fingering me!” says Delaney, spreading her legs wide as she leans back against the couch.

Trip doesn’t answer his girlfriend. He just grabs Zoe’s shoulders and moves to enter her again.

“Yeah, you dirty lesbo stripper, gonna teach you to like cock…”

Zoe: If I was a lesbian, I wouldn’t be working in a primarily male domin—oh, why even waste space in my head on them? Ingrates.

She adds them to her mental journal of names she’ll hang from the ceiling when she rules the word, and moves her face forward.

Delaney’s sex has an acrid flavor to it—something salty, and sweaty, and wrong, but not so wrong that it’s repulsive. New? Strange? Foreign? She’s never tasted another woman before. Maybe it’s that. Maybe she needs a shower. She doesn’t care.

She knows what she likes—liked—from Chris, and uses those thoughts to guide her while she feels Trip enter her again.

The first time she’s been mounted by another man since—

A long time. She can picture faces, but not names. Scents, but not dates. Emotions. Mostly emotions. She doesn’t like these emotions. She doesn’t like these people. She doesn’t like their names, or their attitude, or their smell, or their feel, or how they touch her…

But they pay her—pay Cash—and so she continues.

For now.

Chris Downs.

Rosalyn Kelly.

Chuck Pavaghi. Maybe.

Delaney and Trip.

The list is growing quickly. She doesn’t even plan to let the dead rest.

GM: But not until then, neither does she.

Trip fucks her doggy style, with relish, cock steadily pumping in and out of her cunt. He grabs Zoe’s hands and pins them behind her back while she eats out his girlfriend, juices running over her mouth. Delaney growls and pins Zoe’s face against her crotch with both hands. It makes what she’s doing less, she supposes, delicate than how Chris ate her out. She can’t teasingly circle the girl’s clit with her tongue, pick how fast or slow or in what direction she goes. She just has a cunt unceremoniously shoved against her mouth. It makes her think of how Cash Money described ‘muff divers.’ “Slobbering over girls’ cunts,” he said. Zoe is definitely slobbering. She’s sloppy. She’s having it done to her, not doing it to them.

“Look at our stripper go!”

Between her pinned hands and head, Zoe is completely immobilized. It feels like she’s being used, for the two’s pleasure. She can’t talk, not really, with her face buried in Delaney’s cunt, but the girl and her boyfriend shout over her.

“God! Look at her! She’s such a slut! She’s a fucking stripper!”

“Takes off her clothes for money!”

“Fucks people for money!”

“Look at those fuck-me shoes she wears!”

“She’s a whore!”

“Bet she’s a high school dropout!”

“She’s on heroin!”

“She’s a drug addict!”

“Lost her kid to CPS!”

“She’s a stripper! Our stripper!”

“Our lesbian stripper!”

“We fucking bought this stripper!”

“Stripper! Stripper! Stripper! SHE’S A FUCKING STRIPPER!”

Zoe: Stripper. Stripper. Stripper. Stripper. Stripper.

Stripper.

Stripper!

Stripperrrrrr!

The words echo in her head, as if she’s four years old on the playground again. Her knee bleeds, and three girls and a boy hold hands dancing and skipping a gleeful ring around her.

Clumsy! Clumsy! Clumsy! Clumsy! You know what rhymes with Zoe? CLUMSY!

She wants to cry, and she can’t stop her eyes from welling up, nor tears from flowing down her face. Is it their words? Their chiding? Or is it the sweat dripping into her eyes, searing them to moisture?

Her cunt tastes like ocean water and battery salad. She doesn’t like this. This isn’t a good first experience. She could like this.

But not like this.

Stripper. Stripper. Stripper.

She wants them to disappear.

But she blankets that thought, stifling it to blackness. The last two times she’s wished for people to die or disappear, they did. They did, and if these two do, Cash will blame her.

At least he isn’t big; smaller than Chris was.

Was.

No more Chris.

More Chuck to come.

And cum.

She takes the verbal abuse in silence, servicing the girl and allowing her boyfriend to pump her.

Delaney and Trip. Remember their names.

Friday night, 1 April 2016, AM

GM: Zoe’s two customers never even ask for her name. She’s just “the stripper” or “our stripper” to them. She needs a long shower by the time they’re done with her, and pay her for the sex like a literal whore.

A long shower and her old life back.

But she’s getting neither. She’s up for her next dance. Her top needs to come off for this one, she’s told. So the men can all stare at her tits.

She does okay, she supposes. Her heart’s not really in it. She’s groped and pinched and molested and demeaned as a sex object. And paid for it, even if the crinkled bills lining her g-string feel all-too few.

The lap dance, she supposes, goes okay. The fat middle-aged guy doesn’t keep his hands to himself—so much for no contact—but he doesn’t bite on the VIP room. Maybe part of her doesn’t want him to. So she grinds against his body, and feels his erect cock through his jeans instead of in her pussy. He pays for her for the privilege, and then she finds that all of the money she made from last song’s table dance is gone.

Who stole it?

Doesn’t matter. She’s up for her next song.

That one goes better. She’s desperate to make up for the missing money. The crowd is drunker, three songs and two lap dances in. The fact she’s completely naked but for her shoes no doubt helps. The money flows as freely as the drink—even if the wandering hands and lustful touches do as well.

She winds up on the lap of a young loser who looks as if he’s never touched a breast before. He ejaculates in his pants mid-way through the dance. Zoe only gets a little wet from it.

Only a little.

She’s paid for that, too.

By the time the club closes down for the evening, at too-late-o-clock in the AM, Zoe is dead on her feet. Her shoes are comfortable enough, for seven inch heels, but her calves are stretched. Her knees are really sore from crawling along the stage’s hard flat surface to collect her money. The only thing she’s had to eat in…. 24 hours (?) is an O’Tolley’s cheeseburger that digests in her stomach like glue. Her borrowed spritzes of perfume do little to cover up her sweaty body or the fact she’s not bathed all day. The club’s odor of sweat, pre-cum, and cigarette smoke clings her like a lustful patron wanting to cop a last feel. Her nipples and ass are sore from the number of times they’ve been pinched.

The work is physically and mentally exhausting. Zoe’s not sure how any girl makes a career out of this.

But like any job one hates, there’s money to show for it.

$351, for her second set of songs and dances.

Missing at least $100 from the money stolen earlier.

$102 from her first song. $20 from Delaney’s lap dance. $30 from Trip’s. $100 to fuck Delaney. $200 to fuck Trip. $350, to be “our stripper,” undeserving of even a stage name.

$701 total, for her dignity tonight.

That’s when the Barely Legal’s manager, a sleazy-looking man with a receding hairline, pencil mustache, and an oily grin, explains the concept of “house cut.”

First, the club takes 50% of everything she makes.

She’s left with $350.50.

Then, she’s responsible for tipping the DJ and the bouncers. 10% of everything she brings in.

She’s left with $315.45.

Then, there’s something called a “house fee,” which is a fee charged by the club just to dance on their stage, no matter how much she makes or doesn’t make. That’s a flat $50.

She’s left with $265.45.

The club takes the 45 cents, because they round down and aren’t paying her in literal dimes and nickels.

She’s left with $265. For her dignity tonight.

Also, if she wants to keep dancing for the club, her costume is $50 and her shoes are $100. Brooke is “kind” enough not to ask for a payment tonight, if she comes back tomorrow, though she’ll need to leave the costume and shoes at the club.

Zoe brings up the Jameson ordered by Delaney and Trip, a detail the manager seems to have conveniently “forgotten.” He tells her that half is credited towards her earnings. $30 bottle, so $15. That brings her up to $280.

All that’s left is to see whether Cash Money is satisfied with that much.

Zoe: She doesn’t like this. She doesn’t like any of this. Not the touching, nor the staring, nor the grouping, nor the feeling that she’s no more than the inverted perversion of a ‘Where did the bad man touch you?’ doll. She’s meant to be touched. She’s paid to be touched. She’s not smart Zoe Smart Zoe died, remember? Strong Zoe died, too. Successful Zoe was hit by a car. Loving Zoe had a heart attack. The garou-that-was has become the garou-no-more; the wolf beaten and abused as if all the abusers-to-be collectively decided to explore their depraved fetish at the same time.

Then they sold tickets.

She isn’t even good at this. Not really. Not as good as she can be; as good as she thought she would be. This isn’t like school, where everything comes naturally; or, in the later portions of her educational career, with enough of a push to succeed.

Maybe that’s what she needs; to be pushed.

Hasn’t she been pushed enough?

She stares down at the palm full of grimy bills, not even bothering to count them. All that work. All that perversion, and depravity; all the poking and prodding and fucking and sweat and grease. All for the price of a nice dinner.

And she isn’t going to keep any of it, is she?

She grabs her clothing, soiled as it is, and knocks on the door to Cash’s office.

“Hey,” she calls. “Paying up.”

GM: “So come in.”

She opens the door and finds the police detective reclining on his seat, unbuckled pants lying in a pile below his hairy legs.

Audrey is giving him a blowjob.

Up close, the beanpole-faced man smells even more strongly of deodorant, hair tonic, tabasco sauce, and contagious sleaze that gives his tan skin an almost iridescent sheen. She’s not sure if the lack of neon lights makes it better or worse.

But he sees her, and his mouth spreads in a half-leer, half-grin that gives new definition to the term ‘shit-eating.’ She’s not sure if he’s sexually aroused at the sight of her, enjoying the sight of what she’s been reduced to, or both.

“How much you got, slut?”

“How much did guys pay to oggle at your snatch?”

Zoe: Zoe marches inside, stopping just shy of his desk.

“T-two hundred and eighty dollars,” she stammers, holding the neatly folded wad of bills out to him. She’s taken enough care to order and stack them. How kind.

She feels an angry spark crack inside her. She wants to lash out—to reduce him to pulp—but that spark has only ever gotten her in trouble.

Besides, it isn’t real. That would be absurd.

She shivers. Gross.

GM: “Two eighty,” drawls Cash Money as he plucks the wad of wash from her grasp.

Audrey keeps sucking his cock.

“That’s how much your cunt is worth.”

“Do you think your cunt is worth two eighty?”

Zoe: She doesn’t answer right away.

“I… I don’t know. They had fun, though—the customers—and they paid, so it must be worth something.”

A pause.

“But is it… enough to make up for…?”

GM: Cash Money idly picks up the gun on his desk.

“That’s not what I asked, whore.”

He doesn’t turn it in her direction.

But he does turn it over.

“I asked whether your cunt is worth two eighty.”

Zoe: Sparks become a small, crackling fire.

“I—I think it’s worth more! ’Cause I learned! I got better! And I can get even better!”

GM: Cash Money points his gun at a bag of white powder on his desk.

“Snort some of that or you’re under arrest.”

The NOPD descent badge glints from the pants at his feet.

Zoe: He’ll probably charge her for this, too.

But she’s needed something to take the edge off for more than just these two days.

She falls to her knees, scooping some of the nefarious powder out and snorts it.

GM: It’s like coming home to an old boyfriend. Casually lying there on her bed, naked, seductive, confident that he’ll fuck her silly and she’ll beg him for seconds, and text her current boyfriend that maybe he shouldn’t come by tonight.

At first she feels her heart beating faster, and faster, and faster. Then she gets this sudden rush wash over her, both inside and out. Her body feels tingly. She’s sweating a little. She has a a drum inside of her limbs and her mouth and her brain that’s moving in sync with her heart. She has the sudden urge to talk, to explain, to listen, to DO. She wants to dance and sing and go somewhere, and take on the world. She’s on top of the world. She’s Zoe Kelly!

Oh, how she’s missed this.

How could her mom cast her out for this?

“See my junkie whore tomorrow,” leers Cash Money, cock still pumping back and forth in Audrey’s mouth.

Zoe: “H-how much do I owe you?” she asks, trying to keep her focus off the fact the fact that she suddenly wants to be happy.

GM: The leer spreads across Cash Money’s face like a cumstain through tightey-whities.

“You’ll pay us back.”

“Now get out before I throw you in the OPP male ward.”

Zoe: “Y-yes sir.”

She scurries out of the room.

And down the hall.

And down the stairs.

And across the room, pausing long enough in the changing room to put on her regular shoes and soiled clothes.

And out the door.

And only once she’s out in the Louisiana pre-dawn fog does she stop to think.

All of that—all her pain and suffering, being locked in a closet, and starved, and forced to dance, and being made to please men she wouldn’t give the time of day—is because she made a decision to stop somewhere new.

What if she doesn’t come back tomorrow? What if she chooses not to?

He’ll put our a warrant for her, probably. Somehow.

Daddy isn’t going to bail you out this time.

Neither is Mom, or her sister, or Chris. Definitely not Chuck.

All alone in the world, indebted to the worst cop she could have met. What a day.

Maybe tomorrow she’ll wake up to a cancer diagnosis.

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Story Fourteen, Zoe II

“It’s the same across all families. Piss them off and you’re done.”
Chuck Pavaghi

Wednesday evening, 30 March 2016

GM: Zoe’s (miserable) path takes her to a three-story house built in the second-generation Creole style that is easily recognizable by its distinctive L-shape, flush position to the sidewalk, French doors, broad roofline supported by light wooden colonnettes, and generous, traditional wrought iron gallery overflowing with potted red and pink geraniums. (In southeast Louisiana, a distinction is made between “balconies”, which are self-supporting and attached to the side of the building, and “galleries,” which are supported from the ground by poles or columns.) A wooden sign hangs from the red-bricked building’s front entrance. Faded and crammed-in letters read:

Tante Lescaut’s Occult Curiosities, Horoscopes, & Palmistry

Zoe would have to squint to make out the last two words below the shop’s name. They are even smaller and their paint is even more faded. She can’t read them now. Doesn’t bother. But she knows what they say.

Since 1721

A more legible sign on the double French doors reads simply:

OPEN

The store’s telltale chiming bell sounds as Zoe pushes the door open. The smell of old books, incense, and stranger things has barely filled her nostrils before three mewing cats—one black, one ginger, and one calico—approach her legs.

They sniff, but they don’t rub against her.

She’s too wet.

Further meows sound from further inside the store. It’s a dark, claustrophobic space cramped with overflowing bookshelves, ancient paint-cracked radiators, and occult knick-knacks ranging from pin-stabbed voodoo dolls to coiled, insignia-painted snake skeletons that stare at Amelie with empty eye sockets. Pentagrams, dream-catchers, and apotropaic talismans dangle from ceilings and partly obscure the doorways’ bead curtains.

Cats are everywhere. They roam over the stage prop furniture, track soiled cat litter over the floor, and crouch from perches atop bookshelves to silently watch the store’s patrons. Two felines even lie sleeping on the countertop that shares the cash register. They casually claim the whole space without regard for the dark-haired person who is also trying to use it. Brijbala, a twenty-something third-gender South Asian dressed in an orange… Zoe can’t remember what it it’s called. Some kind of Indian-looking robe or dress. They’re also bedecked in a multichromatic array of crystal- and wood-beaded bracelets, necklaces, and pendants. A red bindi stares unblinkingly from their forehead.

Brijbala’s eyebrows raise at Zoe’s state.

“Astagfarallah,” they murmur.

Zoe’s not sure what that literally means.

But it’s probably stating the obvious:

She looks like shit.

Zoe: Zoe adores cats near as much as dogs. Perhaps it has something to do with how unconditional a creature’s love is. Maybe that’s why she’s never gotten along with her mother.

She looks to Bri—she’s always called them Bri, whether they like it or not—and forces a smile that looks as if she’s a children’s spooky bedtime story come to life. It’s painful.

It’s probably even more painful to look at.

“…I need help.”

GM: “I can see dot,” Bri replies, eyebrows raised as they approach Zoe. “Astagfarallah, you are wet.” They raise their voice. “Tantsy! Tantsy!”

Zoe: Dot? What dot?

She nods.

“It’s—it’s not been a good day, Bri.”

She’s shivering. Drenched. Mud up to her thighs and flecked up her shirt.

GM: “I can see dot too,” says Bri. “Tantsy! Tantsy!”

“I hear’ ya da firs’ ti’, Bala, I’s comin’!” comes an elderly-sounding lady’s gumbo-thick reply.

Several feline mews and the faint rustle of beads heralds the proprietor’s arrival through a curtain of the same material. Césarine "Tantsy” Rouselle’s skin is lumpy all over and so black it has a purple sheen, while her hair so grayed and frizzy that it looks like half-worn S.O.S. pads. Her sunken cheekbones are struck with rouge and her upper eyelids are painted with fluorescent shades of pale lilac. She wears a blue moo-moo stitched with yellow stars, moons, and more esoteric planetary symbols, along with bifurcated librarian glasses that look plucked straight out of the 1960s. Three cats purr and circle around her spider-veined, swollen legs and sandal-beaded feet.

Pic.jpg
The old woman squints at Zoe past her glasses.

“Zelda, ya look righ’ awful, wha’ happened to ya?”

Zoe: What dot? Is this more of her usual insanity? She’s not unknown to speak what sound like wackadoo words to anyone outside the occult community.

She’s long-since given up on correcting her name. At least his one has two syllables.

“I—.. It’s a long s-story.. I— Everything’s w-wet.” She blubbers her words, slurring between her crying and shivering.

“I—.. I need a shower. And food. And—and—and—andtheytookEVERYTHINGTantsy!”

GM: She needs to pee, too.

It’s been a while since she went.

Zoe: “And I need to PEE!”

Her last word blows a bubble of snot so large that its apex hovers at the low end of her vision.

GM: “Righ’, righ’, Bala, make i’ happen, willya?” says Tantsy, seemingly unbothered by the snot. Or perhaps noncomprehending. “F’get da tea, now, f’get it, willya?”

Several cats meow.

“Ov course, Tantsy,” says Bri. “I’ll see ef we haf any food.”

“Lemme see ya han’, Zelda, lemme see ya han’,” Tantsy says distractedly as Bri sets off. The old woman shuffles closer.

Zoe: Zoe is the human equivalent of a wounded animal placing trust in the first warm embraced offered. She gives her hand, trembling.

GM: Tantsy splays out Zoe’s hand in hers, squints close, turns it upside down, then right-side up, and squints even closer.

“Whoa!” she exclaims, looking back up. “I go’ sum ba’ news, Zaylee, you go’ sum BAD lines! Real bad! You gon’… you gon’ be dead ’fore da year out, ’m sorry ta say.”

Zoe: She stares.

..

“WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!… I D-D-D-DON’T W-WANT TO D-DIE TANTSY!”

GM: Several of the nearby cats meow sharply at the outburst.

Tantsy absently nods and pats Zoe’s wet hand, as though she’d merely said “that’s interesting.”

“Sorry, sorry, bu’ you gon’ die! Is’ wha’ ya lines say, Josie, nothin’a be done. I’m real sorry, bu’ ya gon’ die pretty soon!”

Zoe: Her words are hardly intelligible she’s crying so hard.

“Mm-mm-mom— icked— out! An— -ank, EMPTY! Clothes-!”

She points at the bag.

“A—and he—he cheated on m-me and DIED!”

She sniffles.

“D-d-did you jynx him?”

GM: Tantsy nods agreeably and pats Zoe’s hand a few more times.

“I jinx lossa folks, I sure do! You be’ I did, the car hit ’im, dinnit? Suh-mack! Middle of da road!”

Zoe: She shakes her head, spiraling water about her. Oh no. Poor cats.

“N-no! He had a—.. an accident! A heart or—or something. In the coffee!”

GM: The cats have mostly pulled away from the soaking wet intruder into their home. There’s a few affronted-sounding mews.

“Righ’, righ’, da coffee, I knew dat, Sophie,” Tantsy nods, indifferent as some raindrops splash over her face. There’s a few more absent pats of the hand. “Boilin’ coffee, he gulp it down, an’ it burned ‘im, dinnit, boiled righ’ outta his guts, it was so hawt! I made ‘im ’splode, haw haw! Dat’ll teach ‘im! Das’ wha’ he get fo’… fo’…”

Tantsy trails off.

“’Mind me, what he do, ’gain?”

Zoe: “Y-yeah! H-he must have!”

Despite her crying, the sheer ridiculousness of Tantsy brings some balance to her negative clime.

“H-he cheated on me! I said I needed him! He-.. he brought another girl! And kissed her! Then died! I think.”

GM: “Yep, yep, dat it, he died!” nods Tantsy. “You go’ it wrong, dough, he died, den he kissed da girl. Das’ how it happened.”

Zoe: Zoe squints. What?

GM: Tantsy waves a hand.

“No, no, wai’, firs’ he kissed her, den he cheated on her, den he died. Das’ it.”

“Bu’ he loved you, Sophia, he really did. ’Member him always, how he loved you.”

Zoe: “He DIDN’T! He CHEATED on me! And my—my mother shut me out of—..”

GM: Tantsy nods agreeably. “Das’ right, it real sad, real sad, but ‘is life. If you wan’, I can summon ‘is spirit, so you can say bye. Long goodbye, nice an’ proper, sweet-like?”

“I can feel ‘is spirit righ’ now, Scarlett, you’re da only thing he thinkin’ of!”

“You wan’ some weed?”

Zoe: Zoe nods, then stops.

“I.. don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

Even if Tantsy can summon spirits, what if he only validates what he implied: that he never loved her? That he used her?

She regards the woman.

Drugs got her into this mess.

“Fuck it. Yes.”

GM: Tantsy ambles over to a junk-cluttered seance table with several cat-occupied chairs. She absently sits down on the cat, causing it to meow furiously and race off before it’s squashed under her posterior. The old woman reaches into the folds of her Mickey Mouse-stitched moomoo and produces two handrolled joints and a cigarette lighter. She directs Zoe to hold the former as she lights the latter.

“Dis’ll help ya talk ta as’roids too, Pisces real happy wi’ ya, ya know. Say ya gon’ live a long wonnerful life. Ya gon’ have ten baby boys, an’ twelve gran’babies!”

Zoe: Zoe takes the joint, slipping it between her lips. It comes back to her easily. Too easily. She leans in for the light.

Then chokes.

“I thought I was going to die soon!”

GM: The marijuana smoke is a welcome feeling until she starts choking.

Tantsy waves a hand.

“Two of ‘em gon’ die young, ya boys da’ is, bu’ eigh’ boys an’ foah moah granbabies ain’ bad, innit?”

Zoe: “N-no! You said I was going to die!”

She realizes then that she didn’t question it at all. She simply accepted it when Tantsy first said it: Zoe will die soon.

GM: “Oh, well, you is gon’ die soon, bu’ ya gon’ have ten baby boys ’fore ya do,” nods Tantsy, taking a long drag from her joint.

“Be’er get started on names, righ’? Haw haw haw!”

Zoe: Zoe clasps a protective hand to her belly.

NOPE.

She inhales deeply from the joint. Make it go away. Make it all go away.

“I don’t know what to do, Tantsy. I’ve got nothing.”

GM: Tantsy smacks her lips and takes another long drag from the joint.

“Naw, naw, Pisces like you, you go’ plenny. You gon’ do a lot, ‘fore ya die. Ten boys, an’ one o’ em’s gon’ be president!”

Bri appears. They’ve got a candy bar and a tea set with a steaming kettle and two full cups.

“Dat’s all de food I could find, sorry. Vould you care for tea?”

Zoe is aware that the tea at Tantsy’s is very, very strong.

Zoe: President of what? Loserville?

That single but of kindness is enough to bring the tears back, this time silently. The old woman always seems to know exactly how to help Zoe find her footing. Even if her sanity is in question.

“That would be lovely.”

GM: Bri sets down the teacups on the table, along with the Butterfingers candy bar, then withdraws.

The tea tastes incredibly strong. It’s at once sweet and bitter like black licorice and makes Zoe’s head swim. She can feel her heart pounding in her chest.

Zoe: It’s incredibly strong, but such is the norm for Ms. Tantsy. She doesn’t half-ass anything! And she has a big ass!

“I wish you could understand what’s happening, Ms. Tantsy. I really need your help,” she laments after a sip of that horrid solution.

GM: It leaves an oily aftertaste in her mouth.

Her stomach growls.

She still needs to pee.

She’s still soaked to the bone in her wet clothes.

But it is warm and dry here, at least. She can hear the rain pounding against the roof over the low mewing of the shop’s many cats.

One of them rubs against Tantsy’s leg. She smacks her lips and takes another long drag of the weed joint.

Zoe’s head feels funny. All of her feels funny. Like she’s floating away from her body and all of its aches and wants and pains. It feels like this scene can’t possibly be real. Is this actually happening to her, Zoe Kelly, whose life was fantastic just under an hour ago?

Zoe Kelly was rich. Zoe Kelly was successful. Zoe Kelly had a successful boyfriend. Zoe Kelly lived in a nice apartment. Zoe Kelly had a future ahead of her.

Zoe Kelly isn’t supposed to be a sobbing, rain-soaked mess who sits around an occult shop’s rickety table smoking weed with a crazy old lady while a sad-looking torn sack of soiled clothes sits in an expanding pool of dirty water.

“You wan’, we cou’ do a tarot readin’,” Tantsy offers helpfully.

Zoe: The tea used to be used as a private exercise in modesty. She consumed not because she liked it, but because it helped center her lifelong lack of need in reality: sometimes, those who had not had to make due with what they had.

Of course, she knows that Tantsy simply enjoys the wildly unattractive blend of spices and suffering.

Today, it makes Zoe want to vomit. It’s not so philosophical on an empty stomach.

And it’s more to pee. Her bladder hurts. And she’s hungry. Her stomach hurts. If she vomits, it’ll be bile and a mouthful of tea.

The warm-dry only makes her cold-wet more apparent. She shivers.

And then she doesn’t. She’s warm, and cuddly, and light, and loved, and—

What did Tantsy put in that joint?

She settles dilated, glacial eyes on the elder and harumphs.

“Sure. You can’t predict worse than a dead, cheating boyfriend leaving you with 8 kids after today.”

She looks left and right, making sure there isn’t any beer to hold. Superstious? A little.

GM: There’s no beer, at least. Just a glass of green-looking tea and a fat candy bar.

Tantsy just cackles at Zoe’s answer, cricking her joints as she gets up. She sets the lipstick-smeared weed joint down on the table. She ambles off, past the mewling cats, then retrieves a stack of tarot cards from a cluttered shelf. She absently shuffles them between her veined hands as she returns and sits back down.

“So which way you wan’ do it, Samantha? We kin do da love spread, da success spread, da celtic cross, c’reer, three car’, spirishal…”

Zoe’s familiar enough with those.

The Love Spread. This six-card spread helps you evaluate your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual connections with your partner. It can tell you how strong and happy you are, and what you can do to improve your relationship or take it to the next level.

The Success Spread. This five-card spread is used when you are facing hardships or obstacles in your life. It can point you in the right direction to deal with a problem, and it can help you to solve the problem and overcome the challenges you are facing. It can also warn you about a coming disaster in your life and how to prepare for