I saw him on the street corner, looking lost. “Are you... a prostitute?” he asked me nervously.
“Honey, I’m a whore. Nothing to be shy about. We’re all whores around here.”
“So, how do we do this?” Like it was a business transaction.
“You’ve never been to the district before, have you honey?” He couldn’t meet my eye. I found him cute, maybe in a way which says something about me. Most of the rest of us wouldn’t have touched him. But I sensed something. He didn’t look around, didn’t see them all around us. He was fresh. “Tell you what. This one’s on me, okay?”
I don’t think he knew how to take that. Maybe he was expecting me to take him back to a dark room somewhere. That’s not how we do things here. He didn’t move as I pulled his pants down, frozen in terror or surprise. His cock had no trouble though.
“This is... amazing,” he said as I slithered out of my clothes and knelt to be mounted. “I can see all these people now. They weren’t here before.”
Shades. Anyone can see them, but for visitors they’re usually hard to spot, like the shimmer of air on a hot day. Residents see them all the time. We see ourselves in them sometimes.
He was hot and thick, pressing into me without the hesitation he’d shown earlier. I had to bite my lip to keep from taking payment as I came. It’s hard not to drain them, but a promise is a promise. He grunted and came too, and despite my promise I took a little of him, carefully, a taste and nothing more.
Once the act was over the shades faded for him, the other couples in the street were gone, and he was standing, forlorn, his wet cock drooping. “That was...” he said, but my look silenced him.
“Don’t come here again,” I snarled. “Leave. Now.” I had tasted him, wanted more, and if I saw him again, he would join the shades.
I guess there’s something in me that still cries, still laughs, and still hopes.
I want to make it clear from the outset that this is not about vampires. If you'd like it to be about vampires, you may feel free to interpret it thus, but strictly from my point of view, that's not what it's about. I'm not sure what it's about; it came to me like this, and with a few tweaks and some refinement of concept, it barely fit into 354 words.
I guess I like the idea of a district of sexual echoes, where congress is in the streets because no one can see you. It's both intimate and lonely simultaneously, the way paying for sex has always seemed to me. What does joining the shades mean, exactly? I'm not sure. Not necessarily death. Echoes.
Also, I liked the idea of turning the "prostitute with a heart of gold" trope on its head. What can I say?
I'm thrilled that PB is back because he picks good pictures (and I'm not just saying that because this week he picked one of mine) and also because I don't want him to have unpleasant things happen to him. Also, once again, I must say that while this picture is mine and I substitute-hosted last week, Max and France both stepped up and filled a gap which I couldn't have because those weeks I barely made it in on time, let alone coming up with a challenge. It's all about them, not me. Anyway, head over to Flash Fiction Friday HQ to see who else is playing (and boy does it feel nice to be able to say that again) and maybe play yourself. As Advizor said earlier this week, drop the damn towel and get in; the water's fine.
11 comments:
oh wow! i loved your take the photo with the prostitute.
@TemptingSweets: Thanks hun; it was a bit different this week than it has been the past few weeks. I was feeling more fantasy, maybe. Or darker. But with a glimmer of hope.
I love it. Very creative take, and no, I didn't think it was about vampires. :-)
Thanks also for the shout-out. It was my pleasure to try to keep things going, and, like you, I'm thrilled that PB is okay and back to hosting FFF!
Happy Friday!
I like the idea of a unseen world, a physical plane of existence only a few can see. Makes it easier for certain "activities" (not vampire related, of course!). Great take on the pic!
@Max: Now I've scared everyone into denying the vampires. Ah well. And you deserve a shout-out, because like I said, if you hadn't, I certainly wasn't able to.
@France: What I said about Max deserving it also goes for you. I like the idea of an extra-planar red-light district. That might not have been what I originally had in mind (because I didn't originally have anything in mind except a lack of vampires), but it works.
I saw it as energy vamps. Psychic vampires who feed on emotion. Much more insidious and deadly. I enjoyed your story and think that there should be a longer version. :)
@Word: Finally, someone with the guts to own up to it being vampires ;) I think "psychic energy vampires" is about as close a descriptor as you can get, and if it included vampires, that's okay. It's a term which can mean things other than Hot Topic Draculas ;)
I also saw no hint of the vampire in this piece. It was dark, for sure, but you write an innocence into the characters that makes their folly that much more tragic.
@Topaz: Wow, I'm clearly writing better than I think I do. Thanks for the great compliment; I probably couldn't have deserved it had I tried ;)
I didn't see, or feel, this as a Vampire story at all. Vampires are predators, aggressive, even when being passively seductive.
Topaz gets it right when she speaks of the folly of the innocent. I also read in to this piece the idea that we all leave a little of us behind when we have sex. We speak freely of sexual adventure and a "no regrets" lifestyle but each lost climax gives away a slice of our emotions and a shaving from our heart.
After too many slices, we fade into a shadow of ourselves....
I love this piece.
@Advizor (also CC Topaz): I really hadn't thought about any of that. I think Word's psychic energy vampires are probably closer to the mark of what I was thinking, although without the vampires being quite so explicit. But hey, I'm glad that something I wrote has different ways of looking at it, and yours may be better than mine. Can you tell I was getting a little China Mieville-y though? ;)
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