Page 10 of Daughter of a Monster

“Night, Barrett. Go have some fun,” I call out as I climb into the driver’s seat.

I cruise slowly through the streets, scanning the faces of the women leaning against the closed shop walls, wafts of vapor swirling around them, but I don’t see her. Three times I circle the block. One woman comes over when I’m stopped at the lights. She smiles when I roll down my window, hoping I’m about to become her next client but it’s not her I’m looking for.

“Alice about?” I ask.

“You sure I can’t help you with something, hun?” She’s hungrily eyeing me, taking in the cut of my suit, the badge on my car. She can basically smell the money.

“I’m looking for Alice, or you might know her as Scarlett, or Ruby,” I prompt. “You know where she is?”

Her smile drops and she stands, straightening from her stance of leaning in the window. She narrows her eyes. “Alice who?”

I pull out the photo from my wallet and hand it to her. She looks over the image while sucking on her vape. She doesn’t reply until she exhales, the vapor filling the car.

“Could do.” She shrugs.

I reach into my wallet and hand her a fifty-dollar note. She smiles.

“Yeah, sure. Alice. She goes by Cherry now. You’ll find her down a block and to the left. Can’t miss her.”

I drive off, heading in the direction the woman pointed. Sure enough, as I turn the corner, I see her. Pulling to the side of the road, I just watch for a while.

She’s standing under a streetlight, the glow illuminating her dirty pinkish-red hair. Well, half pink. The rest is black streaked with gray, the roots having grown out. She’s aged since I last saw her. Even from this distance, I can tell her wrinkles have deepened, the dips under her eyes are darker and she’s thinner. She couldn’t afford to lose weight as it was. Now she’s nothing but skin and bones.

When a car pulls up in front of me, she walks over and leans inside. But then she backs up, waving him on. The man obviously doesn’t want to take no for an answer because he follows, calling out the window as she walks back to her post.

She pulls the finger and I chuckle. At least she’s standing up for herself. But then he gets out of the car and starts advancing toward her.

Being careful to open the door quietly, I get out.

“Come on, love, do us a favor. What else are you going to do? Something is better than nothing, right?”

“Fuck off,” is her answer.

She hasn’t noticed me walking up behind them. Neither has he.

He corners her against the wall, pushing his body against hers, grinding his groin into her as she struggles to push him off.

“Fuck off!” she spits.

“Just a quick tug, a little jerk. It won’t take long,” the man pleads.

Having managed to leverage her hands in front of her, she shoves him away, but he lunges after her, grabbing her hand and mashing it against his cock.

“Can’t you feel how desperate I am for you, baby? What are a few dollars? I want your mouth—”

He doesn’t get the chance to finish his sentence as I grab him from behind and toss him to the ground. “Did you not hear the lady? She told you to fuck off.”

The guy holds up his hands, scrambling across the pavement to get away from me. “Didn’t mean no harm. Was just offering her a job, that’s all.”

He manages to get to his feet and stumbles back to his car, muttering under his breath about the dangers of visiting this part of the city.

“You all right?” I ask.

Her eyes scan me coldly as she sucks on her vape again. “What do you want?”

I take a deep breath. “I haven’t seen you in a while. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

She holds her hands out to the side, a lopsided smile on her face as she walks backward. “Well, you’ve seen me now. I’m okay. Now you can fuck back off.”

---