Fiction: Euthanasia Motel

By George Gad Economou

“See what happens when you disrespect your father? You like that, don’t you, you spoiled brat?” He tugged at the belt wrapped around Lina’s neck, forcing her to arch her back hollow.

The leather burned her skin and as its grip tightened even more, she gasped for air while the old man pounded her from behind, his swinging balls slapping against her cunt while his protruding gut punched her buttocks.

“Are you gonna start listening to me from now on? Answer me, dammit!” He barked.

“Yes, Daddy, I’m so sorry,” she mumbled under her wheezing breath. Some welling-up tears caused her green eyes to glisten when she bent her head back, looking straight into the man’s old, weary eyes. “Please punish me harder; I deserve it.”

His face had turned scarlet and his breathing grew heavier after every thrust. He let go of the belt, allowing her to inhale a few big drags of air, and pulled out of her. “It’s time, I’m almost there,” he said with a deep grunt and laid down on his back.

“Yes, Daddy,” she said and climbed on his lap, flipping her long, auburn hair caught in two pigtails and lifting the plaid short skirt. With her hands on his chest, her nails softly scratching his skin, she took him inside her and started rolling her lower body while clenching her inner muscles.

“That’s it, you little brat, ride Daddy’s cock,” he said, his voice turning more distant and weak as his eyes rolled to the back of his head.

With slow, determined movements, she slid her hands up his chest and closed her hands around his throat. “Doesn’t it feel nice, Daddy, your daughter riding your big, hard cock?”

“Yes, you brat, yes…you always deserved it, Angelica, you sure did,” he mumbled under his fading breath. When he started throbbing, she clenched her fists around his neck, crushing his windpipe.

“I sure did, Daddy, I sure did,” she whispered as she squeezed harder. His eyes popped wide open and she encountered the all too familiar sight of last-second regrets. She imagined it’s the same look that appears on people’s faces when they jump off bridges or in front of oncoming trains.

He gagged and his cock, having gone flaccid after ejaculating, slipped out of her. Within seconds, all signs of life dissipated from his eyes. She put her ear over his nose and mouth and pressed her thumb against the veins in his wrist.

“Well,” she said after clearing her throat and planting a tender kiss on the dead man’s wrinkled forehead, “I’m sure Angelica deserved it.” A giggle escaped her lips as she climbed off the bed and headed to the small bathroom of the motel room.

She splashed some water on her face, then sat on the toilet trying to piss the last cum the man would ever unleash out of her. After drinking some water from the tap, she fished her high heels from the floor and stepped out of the room.

Her heels clicked on the tiled floor of the hallway connecting the ten rooms of the small motel with the reception. “Hey, Lina,” Ryan, the motel’s owner, said, “job well done, I assume?”

“Always,” she nodded, without a hint of pride in her voice, or heart. “You can call your friend to come pick him up.”

“John’s already here. Lucy finished another job ten minutes ago.”

“Two in one day, huh?”

“A lot of people get tired of living, babe. Especially old people. Here’s your purse and your cut.”

She put the ten fifty-euro bills in her purse and took out a pack of Marlboro.

“I have to ask,” he said while she lit a cigarette, “does it bother you when guys want you to play their daughters?”

“Used to,” she nodded and exhaled a plume of blue smoke toward the ceiling. “After a while, you learn to drown your feelings and just live the part. I imagine it’s how actors are able to portray characters that make them uncomfortable.”

“It’s strange how many guys ask for roleplays like that, huh?”

“To be honest, I don’t look forward to getting old enough to take those requesting a mother roleplay.”

“That’s gotta be weird, pretending that an old dude that could be your dad or even grandpa, is your son.”

“Yup. Anyway, I’m off. When do I have to come back?”

“Don’t have anything for you at the moment, however, I would appreciate it if you could come tomorrow. A new girl’s coming and I’d like you to meet her, let her know what the job really is.”

“Why me? I’ve only been working here for a couple of years.”

“And that’s precisely why I want you to talk to her; you’re still new enough to feel something. Most of the other women have grown too cold, they see it as nothing but a job.”

“Well, it is.”

“Sure, but you still feel every death, don’t you? Feel the need to comfort them in their last moments.”

“How would you know?”

“Everybody does it in the beginning; eventually, they stop. You’ll stop, too. Besides, you always look haunted when you walk out of a room. It’s okay, by the way. Shows you still haven’t lost your humanity. Anyway, will you come tomorrow?”

“I will, yes. Well, have a good one.”

“Take care.”

He was right about the job taking a toll on her. As she stepped out of the small motel sitting inconspicuously in the middle of a small town with the no vacancy sign always lit, she thought about today’s client; she never asked for his name, she only knew he had a daughter named Angelica, who was, apparently, a rebellious teenager that hated her Catholic high school and did a lot of crazy stuff way back when.

Only when a couple of young men whistled at her did she realize she was still dressed like a bloody schoolgirl. Her flat was just around the corner and she didn’t feel like walking back to the motel to get her clothes.

“Hey, babe, I’ve got a big ruler for you,” one of the men said.

“Need some teacherly love?” His friend added, and they both cackled.

The temptation of taking them both to her flat was big enough to cause her to worry about her sanity. It made sense, though, since she hadn’t had non-job-related sex ever since she started working as a “euthanasia prostitute”, as Ryan called it, and even these two cackling baboons would be a welcoming change.

She worried that choking people while fucking them had become an instinct; what if she did it to someone that hadn’t paid to die during sex? She gave the young men a smile and walked away, only checking over her shoulder once to ensure they didn’t follow her.

Home sweet home; well, it was a one-room apartment with the bare necessities. A small kitchen in one corner of the room, and a foldout couch in the other, facing a big TV that stood between two bookcases. A two-door closet was built into the wall, allowing her to store her clothes without losing more space, and the bathroom door was right next to the fridge.

She didn’t need much else. After all, the job was temporary. It paid well enough for her to save up money so she could retire young and enjoy life away from the insanity of the sex work industry that had been her life since she turned fifteen.

Somehow, working as a waitress at a strip club at fifteen was harder than getting paid to kill guys while offering them their last orgasm. Back then, she didn’t know how to deal with crude, drunk, horny men.

It didn’t matter anymore. She grabbed the plate of leftover pasta from the fridge and parked in front of the TV, trying to focus on the reruns of old sitcoms instead of the memory of squeezing the life out of a man.

Part of her wanted Ryan to be right about the other women losing their empathy towards their clients; the rest of her did not look forward to becoming a cold sexual murdering machine.

By the time she finished her meal and had a shower, a M*A*S*H marathon began that kept her company, along with a few glasses of gin on the rocks, until she passed out at around dawn.

 

* * * *

 

“So, Wendy, why did you take this job?” She asked the fresh-looking twenty-year-old sitting on her neighboring barstool.

“I was working at Aphrodite’s Love Nest and heard about it from some other dancers. Heard it pays well, so, I figured I could give it a try.”

“Aphrodite’s Love Nest, huh? It’s a good club, pays well, rarely any shady shit taking place. Always hated the cliché name. Anyway, you realize what the job is, right? What it is that we do?”

“I guess you don’t mean getting paid for sex, huh?” Her red lips twitched into a tiny scowl right before she took a sip of her gin and tonic.

“Yeah. I mean, how we finish each job is the reason why with only three or four clients per month you can make more than most people having good office jobs. Besides, a lot of these people demand specific things, want to fulfill sick fantasies and dark desires right before they shuffle off this mortal coil. You have to be prepared to do a lot of things; get pissed on, get fucked by massive objects, get shit on, fuck them with strap-ons, or playing their daughters or mothers or whatever. Sometimes, you’ll have to dress up and act like a little girl. It can be a lot.”

“What about the…killing?” She whispered.

“It’s not easy. You do it because it’s what they want, what they paid for, but there’s always regret in their eyes right before the end. Makes you want to stop but you can’t. They can’t leave the room alive, so…to be honest, it’s when it becomes easy that you should start worrying.”

“Right. But, I mean,” she started mumbling under her breath while stealing sips of her drink, “how did you do it the first time? I mean…”

“It was hard,” she admitted and had a good sip of her Jim Beam. “It’s always hard but the first time is special; it’s when you understand exactly what the job is and learn if you’re cut for it. I almost quit after my first client. I couldn’t sleep for a week, I just kept seeing his face in front of me, how he went from an orgasmic bliss to being dead, just like that,” she said and snapped her fingers for emphasis.

Her stomach knotted as the kind, old man with a slight limp who had waited for her in the motel room dressed in a tuxedo and holding a bouquet of roses returned to the forefront of her brain. He was eighty-seven and had cancer in four different organs; yet, being the one to kill him had severely affected her psyche.

She drained her drink and signaled to the bartender, who was sitting in the corner reading a newspaper, for a refill.

“Do you still see them?” Wendy asked. “Your clients’ faces, I mean.”

“Sometimes. This helps,” she raised the glass. “And it also helps to remember that they asked for it; besides, our clients are old and sick, on the cusp of dying by natural means. We just offer the quick, painless, voluntary death society refuses them. Doesn’t make it easier but it helps.”

“So, what happens if I can’t do it? If I freeze?”

“You’ll get fired, obviously. But there’s always someone else on hand to take over if you find yourself struggling to finish the job.”

“How about legal ramifications? I mean, consensual or not, we’re still murdering people.”

“Ryan—you’ve met him, right? good—takes care of all that. All our clients tell their families they’re going on vacation for a few days and most of them are found in some hotel room in one of the several resorts that exist in the surrounding area. It’s why Ryan chose this town. It’s small but the surrounding area gets a lot of tourism. Plenty of excuses for why our clients are here. And, of course, other people scrub the bodies for DNA, hair, and all that. Besides, most of our clients are widowers with adult grandchildren who often live in different countries. No one’s gonna question their deaths; most people would wonder how they lasted as long as they did.”

“Right, okay. I’ll be honest, I was far more enthusiastic when I first heard about it, and how much it pays. Now, I don’t know how to feel.”

“It’s normal. I was blinded by the money, too, in the beginning. And was nervous as fuck before my first client. You just have to think that you’re doing what your client asked for. But killing people is not easy. Perhaps, we think it’s easy because of the movies, and the news telling us of how that person killed his wife, or how some crazy person gunned down a whole school, but doing it yourself will steal a piece of your soul. You can still quit; no one’s gonna blame you or call you a coward.”

“No, I’ll try it, at least once. I kinda need the money,” she muttered and hung her head.

“Fair enough. Do you have any other questions? Well,” she said after Wendy shook her head, “I’m gonna head home. Got a few things to do. You’ll be alright?”

“Yes. Thanks for meeting with me.”

“No problem. Take care and I’ll see you around.”

 

* * * *

 

“So, what’s today’s job? Any special requests?”

“Honestly?” Ryan let out a gentle chortle. “None. You can dress up however you like, he left no instructions about special treatment or any fantasy fulfillment…I mean, aside from wanting a threesome, the guy hasn’t asked for anything. I assume it means he wants plain vanilla sex. Easy-peasy, right?”

“Almost too good to be true.”

“I’m not late, am I?” Wendy asked while panting heavily as she dashed into the reception.

“Just in time. Was just telling Lina here that today’s job’s pretty easy. Just some threesome action, no special requests. And you’ll have someone more experienced to take care of the euthanasia, too. Not bad for your first time, huh?”

“Yeah, I guess,” she said with a shrug. “So, no need to put on a costume?”

“Doesn’t look like it. You can still go to the back and find something else to wear, if you don’t want to get stains or anything on your dress.”

“Don’t worry, all the clothes and uniforms go to a Laundromat after they’ve been used. They’re pristine,” Ryan reassured her.

“So,” Wendy asked while they both changed into sexy dresses—wanting to keep the stench of the job off their clothes—“how often do we get clients like this? That don’t have special requests or strange demands?”

“Honestly? It’s rare. It makes me wonder who he is, to be frank. Most guys have some secret desire, fetish, fantasy, or whatever, they decide to live out when they know they’re gonna die and, hence, don’t have to fear being judged. This case? Maybe a priest that regretted his celibacy oath or some deformed weirdo that never got laid.”

“It’s gonna be easy, though, right? No weird stuff, no piss or shit or any of the other crap you mentioned the other day.”

“We still have to kill him, Wendy…sorry, euthanize him. It’s what we call it when Ryan’s around, it’s the only word he accepts when we describe what we do.”

“I’ll try and remember that. Are you ready?”

“Yup. You?”

“I think so,” she hung her head and licked her lips.

Ryan welcomed them back into the lobby with a whistle as they walked past the desk in their mini dresses and high heels and headed for room 105, where the client waited.

Every time she opened the door of a room, the same thing happened; her hands would begin to tremble, her skin would get too hot and flushed, and her knees would turn to butter. As always, she drew a deep breath, counted to five, and opened the door, ignoring the incessant click-click coming from Wendy tapping her foot on the floor.

“Ah, there you are,” he said and raised the half-empty bottle of Four Roses he was holding. “How about a drink?”

No words would come out of her mouth and only when Wendy crashed onto her frozen body did she stumble forth into the room. On the armchair by the window, covered by a dark blind, sat a young man with long, blond hair, a thick beard, and green eyes. He couldn’t be more than thirty-five and was handsome enough not to be a virgin loser.

Right away she knew she couldn’t do it. Perhaps, he was terminally ill; the doctors had given him a couple of months to live. Yes, that had to be it. It had to.

“So,” he said as he clambered up to his feet, “how about that drink? I did bring another bottle, so we have enough.”

“Wouldn’t mind a swig,” Wendy said with a chirpy voice as she strutted to him and wrapped her arm around his shoulders.

“Do like your enthusiasm,” the young man chuckled and handed her the bottle.

Lina just stood there befuddled, incapable of wrapping her head around the scene. She had so many questions to ask him but she couldn’t. Discretion was paramount in their job; normally, she appreciated it, as she didn’t want to know details about the lives of the men she was about to kill…euthanize. In this case, she needed to know enough just to reassure herself that she was doing the right thing.

“Look,” the man addressed her after taking another swig out of the bottle while Wendy remained glued on him, gently caressing his crotch, “this is my choice. I know what I’m getting into. If you want, I can give you a sad, riveting story about why I’m here, some dramatic tale of illness, of struggle, of whatever will make you feel better. I don’t mind. While I’ve always appreciated honesty, I’ve come to realize that truth can also be subjective, if you look at it under certain epistemological prisms. So, what should it be? Do you want the truth, a lie, or the freedom to believe whatever you want to believe?”

“I just want to be sure you know what we’re here to do, that’s all.”

“I do. And don’t worry about the booze.” As if to illustrate an unspoken point, he had another swill. “It’s not clouding my judgment. And I haven’t had enough yet to affect my hydraulics, so you’ll be able to perform all the tasks of your job.”

“Come here, Lina,” Wendy said with a broad grin while she massaged the man’s crotch.

Despite every part of her brain yelling at her to turn around and exit the room, she moved forward and stood right next to the young man. Her heels left the floor when Wendy groped her ass. Her new colleague’s enthusiasm was unsettling but, at the same time, the nature of the job demanded a positive demeanor.

“So, how does this work?” He asked after another generous pull out of the fast-emptying bottle.

“It’s up to you,” Lina said. “What do you want to do?”

“Drink, shag, and die,” he said and his insouciance had Lina’s stomach knot, “but I was just wondering if there are protocols, guidelines to follow…”

“Everything’s game, baby,” Wendy chimed in and went down on her knees, quickly unbuckling his pants. “We’re here to rock your world.”

“What she said,” Lina added. Her glance moved downwards at Wendy having already taken his half-flaccid cock in her mouth, sucking and slurping at it as she tried to command more blood to flow away from his brain and into his pole.

Lina wrung the bottle from his grip and had a good sip; warmth instantly rushed through her body and it helped loosen up the knot in her stomach. Still holding the bottle by the neck, she shoved her tongue down his mouth, while Wendy’s exaggerated gurgling reverberated across the room.

“Can I have the bottle back? Thanks,” he said with a smile. “Well, be a doll and grab the other one.”

She did and he immediately took it from her and had a good pull. “You drink a lot, don’t you?” She asked with a soft, only half-forced giggle.

“What gave it away?”

All the while, Wendy was doing her damnedest to suck him fully erect, and she could see some frustration in her eyes as their client appeared more interested in the booze.

She went down to her knees and started rubbing his balls while Wendy worked on the shaft. Slowly, his prick began to throb and engorge; he still seemed more interested in the bottle than them. It was arguably the most bizarre client she had gotten and even as she took his balls in her mouth, swirling them around with her tongue, she wondered why he’d chosen to pay for their service when he could just as well have committed suicide anywhere and without spending money.

It wasn’t her job to analyze the clients; her only job was to give them a good final sexual release before helping them abandon the realm of the living. Wendy grabbed her hair and raised her head just enough so their lips could meet over his now-turgid cock.

They both licked the glistening mushroom head, their tongues connecting into a sloppy, salty kiss; their eyes met momentarily and the gleam in Wendy’s eyes had her gulp down. Something was definitely off about her new colleague, if only she could identify what it was.

Of course, no truly sane person would accept a job as a euthanasia prostitute; right? Deep down, she knew something had to be off about her, too, for having stayed at the job for almost three years.

“You like that, baby?” Wendy asked him.

“Sure, yeah,” he replied in the dullest voice possible, right before wetting his throat with more Four Roses.

 His disinterest caused Wendy to increase her efforts, as she once more took him in her mouth, bobbing her head fast and furious while producing loud gagging sounds. The enthusiasm she was showing had Lina lean back, both turned on and confounded.

It should have been the young man going nuts, having paid for the privilege to do whatever he wanted—bar murder or mutilation—to them. Wendy leaped to her feet and grabbed him by the cock; after giving him a sloppy kiss, she dragged him to the double bed and made him sit on the edge of the mattress.

His grip didn’t loosen from around the bottle. Even when Wendy sat on his lap, lifting the bottom part of her dress and grinding her pussy over his shaft, he seemed more interested in stealing sips of bourbon.

Despite how bizarre the situation was, she crawled onto the bed and sat next to him, sucking on his earlobe and running her fingers across his chest. A half-hearted moan was the only sign of enjoyment he showed.

“Come on, baby, fuck me,” Wendy said while rolling her lower body against his groin, “I want you inside me. I need it.” She was more convincing than most pornstars.

Not even a faint glisten appeared in his eyes, not even when Wendy grabbed his cock and guided it inside her. “Come on, baby,” she addressed Lina right before grabbing her by the hair and pulling her off the bed, “help me make this a night he won’t forget.”

Despite herself, Lina chortled at the irony of the statement. She got down on her knees and started rubbing and licking his swollen balls while Wendy’s ass bumped on her head as she rode it. Even without looking at him, she knew the young man remained apathetic.

Even when Wendy commanded her to climb on the bed, so she could lick her clit while she rode their client, she continued wondering why the fuck he decided to die this way, when he could just have drunk himself to death. It shouldn’t matter, but it was the only thought occupying her mind.

With the corner of her eye, she caught him taking another swig of bourbon, almost draining the second bottle. He was drunk enough never to ejaculate. Wendy rode him faster and faster and she licked her clit, taking in the salty taste while the smacking sounds of her pussy landing on his balls filled her head.

“Let’s change positions, huh?”

With just a nod, she took the young man inside her, clenching her inner muscles around his turgid cock, while Wendy shoved her tongue down her mouth after sitting on the man’s face. They rubbed each other’s clits while she rode him and Wendy ground her cunt against his mouth.

She couldn’t even see if the man bothered to at least taste Wendy’s pussy or if he just lay there.

“I don’t think he’s ever gonna come,” Wendy whispered in her ear. “Shouldn’t we just do it? I mean, that’s why he’s here for.”

She nodded, in spite of the reluctance burning up her heart and causing her stomach to clench. Wendy rolled off his face and blew a short kiss on his lips. He just lay there, his eyes wide open and dazed. With a deep breath, she grabbed a pillow and put it on his face. A moment before she did it, she saw a smile twitch his lips for the first time since they had entered the room.

She pressed the pillow down on him and clenched her inner muscles, trying to squeeze something out of his cock right before she killed him. “Damn it,” she spat in exasperation when his body started shaking and she lifted the pillow. “Can’t do it. I’m sorry, you’re too young, too…why do you want to die?”

“What else is there to do?” He replied after subduing the coughing fit of almost being suffocated.

“So many things,” she insisted. “You don’t have to die, you’re young, you can do so many things.”

Her eyebrow arched when she heard something breaking. Still, she stared deep into his eyes which broadcasted nothing but exhaustion. He sat up on his elbows, seemingly as if he didn’t even know he was still inside her and bit the corner of her lips.

“I may be thirty-three but I’ve lived more than enough lifetimes. I’ve seen people die, I’ve almost died myself, I’ve lost years to drunken blackouts, I’ve lost a soulmate to the needle…I’ve lived more than most seventy-year-olds. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to walk away from this rotten place on your terms.”

“Holy shit, what are you doing?” She shrilled when Wendy used a big shard of glass—from the empty bottle she’d just broken—to slice his throat open.

As blood gushed out of the wound, and out of his mouth, the young man let his head drop back onto the mattress with a wide grin illuminating his face. “Thank you,” he mouthed right before he started coughing. Within minutes, his eyes turned blank and he exhaled for the last time.

“What the fuck did you do?”

“What you couldn’t,” Wendy shrugged. “Besides, you’re the one with a dead guy’s cock inside you.”

Immediately, she leaped up and rolled away from the young man; it wasn’t her first time having a dead man’s dick in her but the sight of the slit throat and the crimson pool staining the bed’s sheets created a too grotesque image.

“That’s not how we do things,” she said, unable to remove her gaze from the maimed corpse underneath her.

“Oh, come on. You couldn’t do it with the pillow, I just sped things up a little.” Wendy’s nonchalance caused her stomach to knot even tighter.

“Have you done this before?”

“Kill someone? No,” she replied with a giggle. “I have fantasized about it. Those fantasies started after my uncle raped me when I was thirteen.”

She just stood there, speechless, as her gaze moved between the perfectly calm young woman and the maimed dead body of a young man.

“What did you do?” She whispered again, unable to remove her eyes from the dead young man lying in a puddle of wine-red blood.

“Again, what we’re getting paid for.”

“This is not how we do it.”

“Well then, you should have kept the pillow on his face.”

“I know. I just couldn’t,” she mumbled under her breath and hung her head.

It was her that chickened out, yes, but she also couldn’t fathom the ease with which Wendy just slit the man’s throat. So much enthusiasm for the job was not good; she definitely would never work with her again. Even now, Wendy remained cool and unaffected by what she’d done and the grotesque visual proof of her actions.

“So, shall we tell Ryan we’re done here or are we gonna hold a eulogy or something for the sod?”

“Okay, fine.”

She let Wendy walk in front of her, unwilling to let her out of sight. The nonchalance with which she strutted down the hall, wiggling her ass in the tight dress as if she hadn’t just killed someone, got straight to her thundering heart.

“That was fast,” Ryan remarked.

“You might want to call the cleaning service for the room,” Wendy stated dryly. “Things got a bit messy.”

“Messy?”

“Bloody,” Lina explained.

“Jesus Christ,” he spat when they explained the situation. “That’s not the kind of business we’re running.”

“He paid for us to kill him, right? That’s what I did.”

“We don’t stab people, or slice them up to pieces. We’re not running a torture chamber.”

“He didn’t suffer. He died quite fast; maybe faster than if she had suffocated him with the pillow.”

“And you’re okay with that?”

“I can’t bring him back to life to redo the whole thing, can I?”

With both anger and fear swarming her shaking body, she headed into the small room behind the reception and changed into her normal clothes. “I’m going home, I need to think.”

She even refused her payment. Felt wrong taking it, after she failed to do her job. Instead of home, she went into the small dive bar around the corner from her apartment. Got a double bourbon on the rocks and sat in the corner booth, trying to disappear in the darkness of the barroom.

Only a handful of other people were in the bar, including the bartender, and no one bothered her. Part of her was tempted by the idea of taking one of the barflies to her place and fuck his brains out—without killing them afterward—but she had no idea if she could do it. Especially not while the image of a man’s slit throat, and how the blood gushed out of the wound like a gruesome fountain, remained alive in her head.

The first drink didn’t help erase the image. Nor did the second or the third. By the time she reached the bottom of the fourth drink, she could still see the bloody image but had also decided something else.

It was time she quit her job as a “euthanasia prostitute” and find something else to do with her life. She knew she’d stay in the sex industry, it’s all she’d ever known, but she’d find something that didn’t involve murder and was located preferably far, far away.

The next morning, despite her hangover, she walked to the motel and told Ryan she was quitting. He did his best to convince her to stay, offering more money, fewer jobs, and the ability to choose her clients; it did feel good being wanted but she remained adamant. She had saved enough to start anew.

Moving away proved harder than she thought it would be. Not because of practicality issues or because Ryan caused her any problems but simply because leaving the small town she had come to view as home made her heart twitch in pain.

She hadn’t felt this way when she ran away from home at sixteen. She had never gotten attached to any of the cities she lived in, nor did she ever have trouble leaving a strip club or fancy brothel. Yet, as she watched the three men carry all her belongings down to a truck, she peered about her emptying apartment, battling the few tears that wanted to escape her glazed eyes.

Once she got into her car, ready to follow the truck for a few hundred miles down the highway to her new home, she let the tears flow.

Eventually, she made her new apartment feel like home. She got a job at a strip club, then came some offers to star in porn movies. She made good money and enjoyed the work, especially the not having to kill anyone after making them orgasm part. As years went by, and age started catching up to her, she was asked to do more and more extreme stuff.

Gangbangs; double and triple penetrations; watersports; extreme bondage. She made good money out of those films but still less than in the beginning when she had sex with a single guy.

The more degrading and extreme the films turned, the more she relied on booze to numb the pain, both the physical and the mental. Then, came meth. After smoking an 8ball of glass, she could endure anything, which delighted certain directors and actors who pushed extreme fetishes to their limits. If she wasn’t high and drunk while filming, she’d realize they had raped her in front of rolling cameras several times. Thanks to substances, she didn’t give a fuck as long as the checks didn’t bounce.

By the time she reached fifty, she had enough. Had spent all her life getting fucked for a living, and she was unwilling to take any more. Besides, most directors only called her when they wanted someone to star in degrading films that required a lot of abuse and her body refused to take more punishment.

She had enough money in the bank to survive for several years without doing anything. The thought of writing her memoirs crossed her mind; she abandoned the idea before she ever sat in front of a computer. Who the fuck would care enough to read it? 

As she spent her days, and nights, drinking wine, smoking glass, and watching movies and TV shows she never had the time to watch before, she realized how fruitless everything felt. Every day was the same and often the only thing keeping her alive was the prospect of watching another show to the end. Eventually, having to crawl out of bed every morning, hungover as if hell had teleported inside her skull, to down a couple of screwdrivers and have a few drags from a glass pipe only to feel alive, so she could sit on the couch and lose herself in the colorful worlds inside a glowing screen became too much.

And so, she made a call; a call she never thought she ever would make. She informed her landlord she’d be leaving abruptly, telling him to feel free to sell her stuff and keep her deposit. She withdrew her savings from an ATM and hopped into her car.

As she approached the small town she used to call home so many years ago, memories assaulted her brain and her heart began palpitating. Even her old apartment building looked the same—perhaps, just a tad more dilapidated. She parked in front of the small motel and drew a deep breath.

Was this how her old clients felt when they stood outside the motel? Wondering if they’d done the right thing, thinking about how everything they did would be done for the very last time?

She slogged towards the front door and blinked at the young, pallid man standing behind the desk. “Where’s Ryan?”

“Did you know my dad? He died six years ago.”

“Oh, I’m sorry…didn’t know.”

“How would you? So, your name? Ah, yes, okay,” the young man said after she told him her name and he looked at a small ledger. “You’re in room 105.”

A shiver crossed her spine. She walked down the hallway toward the room wherein she decided to quit the job, now as a client.

Once inside the room, she encountered the same furniture, the same cheap lamps, the same satin sheets (hopefully, not the very same from all these years ago), the same generic paintings on the yellowish walls.

She sat on the bed, shivering as she momentarily saw the young man lying there with blood around his head, and gulped at the sound of heels clicking on the floor. The door opened up and she gasped at the slim woman who entered the room wearing a skin-tight black jumpsuit and thigh-high boots.

“Wendy?”

George Gad Economou has a Master’s degree in Philosophy of Science, currently works as a freelance writer, and has published three novels and two poetry collections, with the latest being his horror novel, The Lair of Sinful Angels, by Translucent Eyes Press. His words have also appeared in Spillwords Press, Ariel Chart, Cajun Mutt Press, Fixator Press, Horror Sleaze Trash, Outcast Press, The Piker Press, The Beatnik Cowboy, The Rye Whiskey Review, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, and Modern Drunkard Magazine.