Twisted Read online

  TWISTED

  lola smirnova

  Published by Quickfox Publishing

  PO Box 12028 Mill Street 8010

  Cape Town, South Africa

  www.quickfox.co.za | [email protected]

  First edition 2014

  Copyright © 2014 Lola Smirnova

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the author.

  Edited by Angela Voges and Chuck S.

  Proofread by Vanessa Wilson

  Front cover photography by Bradley Ruiters

  DISCLAIMER

  All names and characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Thank you Chuck S. for making the right turn. Without you this book would not be possible. Love you…

  1

  ‘Sag es!’ he screams at me.

  The heavy motorcycle helmet is so tightly strapped to my head that I can hear the blood rushing through my ears. The smell of stale sweat reeks from the worn padding inside it. I struggle to swallow. A drop of spit runs down the ball gag that has been shoved into my mouth, then down my chin, and drips onto the couch beneath my knees. My shoulders are screaming from the pull of the handcuffs, which force my hands together behind my back.

  He stands in the middle of the small and gloomy room and I can see the outline of his large body. Two bloodshot eyes are firmly fixed on my exposed nipples. A fleshy tongue slides backwards and forwards through the gap in his teeth. He licks the sweat off his lips, moans, and starts rubbing his groin, rocking his wide hips back and forth. He increases the pace, while his moans get louder and louder. Next, he stops abruptly, moving his eyes from my chest to my face, scowls, and takes a few menacing steps towards me. I shrink instinctively, tensing my body …

  ‘I know him. Don’t be scared Jul. He’s a bit strange, but a harmless motherfucker.’ That is what my sister, Natalia, managed to whisper in my ear half an hour ago, before I followed this freak, with the brain bucket in his hand, upstairs.

  Natalia and I were sitting at the bar counter when he walked in. He didn’t even have a drink; just stepped in the door, looked around, stopped his stare at me, and mumbled, ‘I want you. Let’s go.’

  ‘It’s time to work!’ teased Natalia. Her naughty look followed us all the way up the stairs.

  ‘Sag es!’ the crack-head screams again, which I think means ‘say it’ in Luxembourgish or German.

  He grunts, and with a wild thrust shoves his hips right into my face. He doesn’t even bother to take his jeans off. A quick unzip and he pulls out a flaccid penis, puts one foot up on the couch and starts violently pumping it, so close that his clenched palm is punching the helmet. Lucky for me the visor is shut.

  I sigh deeply and try to shift on the couch to get rid of the cramps, which start crawling up my legs and back.

  A bit strange? Come on, Natalia! You could call him anything – cracked, insane, alien on Earth – but hardly ‘a bit strange’!

  I glance at the half-empty bottle of champagne seductively chilling in the ice bucket. If I’d known what Natalia had meant by ‘a bit strange’, I would have finished it before he handcuffed me and shoved the damn ball into my jaws.

  ‘Sag es!’ brings me out of my thoughts again.

  I peep at his red face … What the hell does this crack-head think he is doing? I wouldn’t even call it masturbation! He tortures his penis in a spasmodic exertion. The awful tongue tossing in his distorted mouth, the dark brown hair stuck to the film of sweat on his broad brow, and the whimpering noises coming out of his fat body make a disgusting spectacle.

  ‘Sag es!’

  According to the instructions he gave me before we started this session, I was supposed to say ‘I love you, I forgive you’ through the gag.

  I wonder what my seventh-grade teacher would say if she walked in the door right now? She always believed in me and encouraged: ‘You are going to come out on top, Julia …’ Good shot, Anna Ivanovna. You were pretty close!

  He shuts his eyes and wrinkles his forehead in concentration. Frustrated, he drops his limp penis and squats next to the small table in the centre of the room. He pauses only to wipe the trickle of sweat from his forehead. Then he quickly snorts the line of blow on the glass table, and doesn’t get up for a while, staring deadpan at the wall.

  Hey, fat boy, get on with it so we can have some together after this. I think I deserve a little pick-me-up for my efforts here.

  I wonder what could possibly have happened to turn his grey matter inside out like this. A few hours later, when I kick my ‘labour hour’ around with the girls, they will tell me some rumours about him having had a motorbike accident. Apparently, he was riding ‘under the influence’ with his fiancée in tow. She died there on the street, in his arms, in a puddle of mud. With the last beats of her heart, he stared at her wide-open eyes, full of terror, and at her bleeding lips that breathed in agony: ‘Please, baby, I don’t want to die.’

  I shudder. I don’t know if he was injured in the accident, but after this short time we’ve spent together I can assure you that his brain was nowhere to be found after that crash.

  ‘Sag es!’

  Yeah, whatever …

  He finally comes back to the couch, pulling and beating his poor half-dead cock in front of my plastic shield. I try to say what he demands – anything to get this over and done with, and me out of here – but ‘I love you’, that forms beautifully in my throat, dissolves into an incoherent mumble as it hits the ball.

  His small eyes devour every inch of my naked body, which is truly just skin and bone with boyish nipples where there are supposed to be breasts. The only reason why any man would choose to fuck me (aside from being a paedophile, of course) would be my big blue eyes and long blonde hair.

  ‘Sag es!’

  His whole face is scrunched up in an ugly leer and his bottom lip is quivering as he makes a weird whining noise.

  Oh please! Don’t tell me you are going to cry now! Pathetic, sick, even disturbing, but not just ‘a bit strange’, Natalia?!

  He keeps on yanking and jerking and thrusting like a maniac – harder and harder. He’s going to pull that thing off if he doesn’t stop!

  ‘Sag es! Sag es!’ he whines over and over, then forcefully flips the visor up and pulls the bottom of the helmet so close that his soft crotch hits my face. I shut my eyes a second before the first squirt of semen hits them.

  ‘It’s over’ slips with warmth and ease into my head, then streams down through my body, echoing the semen on my face. My eyes are closed but I can still hear him sobbing, sniffling and mumbling.

  I can’t believe this fucker just ruined my make-up!

  All I’ve got from this pathetic episode is an experience I will never be able to share with my grandchildren and €60 with no promise of a tip.

  2

  My name is Julia. I am from Ukraine. I work as an entertainer in one of the many cabarets in Luxembourg City. In other words … I am a prostitute.

  Luxembourg City is the capital of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, the pint-sized, landlocked country in the heart of Western Europe. By Shanghai, London or New York’s standards, it wouldn’t be strange to have sixty champagne bars in one city, but it does sound quirky when you consider that Luxembourg City is twice as small as Orlando Disney World.

  This sleepy and conservative locale, the world’s eighth-largest banking and financial centre, motherland of prioress Yolanda and the 100-watt radio transmitter, is stuffed with sex-orientated ‘establishments’, like the one where I work. What’s more, they are jam-packed with able-to-eat-a-horse-for-the-dough girls from different countri
es – mostly, of course, Eastern Europeans, who would do anything to make an extra buck.

  Champagne bar, whorehouse, brothel, house of assignation, bordello, den of vice; call them what you like, it does not change the core of these places. Although they are often called cabarets, and occasionally there is even strip-dancing involved, you shouldn’t associate them with merrymaking or extravaganza. ‘Trade’, ‘sex’, ‘transactions’, ‘carnal’, ‘barter’ or ‘perversion’ would be the better words to portray this type of nightery.

  This is a place where one man can spend thousands of euro in an hour or sip only Coke all night long; where the currency is not money but champagne; where often nobody is really interested in the champagne’s quality or taste, but rather finds its value in the size and quantity of the bottles; where the sanctity of the sparkling drink of the gods and the missionary position are lost in the blue confusion of fake orgasms and sex noises.

  It works as simply as a jukebox – to get music, you have to stick in a coin. If you want a girl to lavish attention on you, pay for her champagne.

  The cheapest option is a €25 glass of bubbly, which gives you 15 minutes of an affectionate and solicitous bond with a girl at the bar. Pay twice that price and your ‘date’ drinks piccolo, the 250 ml bottle. In this case, the time you spend with her is doubled, but the storyline stays the same. Next: the demi-bouteille, a 375 ml bottle that costs about €180 for half an hour. This ‘denomination’ grants a little bit of comfort, because both of you can move to a dim semi-private lounge, as well as the confidence that physical manipulation will be involved. And last, but not least, is the ‘full house’ for the standard bottle, the price for which varies. It kicks off at €250 for questionable swill, which is reasonable damage considering that in addition to a drink, you get screwed for an hour in the séparé – a private room, most commonly upstairs. You could be asked to pay up to €650 for Cristal or Dom Perignon, where, of course, you cough up not only for sex but also for the champagne’s snobbish name, fine finish in the mouth, and the supplementary fondness and devotion. Sad to say, these pricey bottles – and the one-and-a-half litre magnums that go for €1,000 or more – are a rare occurrence in these clubs.

  The uniqueness of such places is that while you, the customer, are having leisure time with your ‘pick’, her mind is constantly dividing the amount that you’ve already spent by five (this is how much commission the house pays her), adding her €60 daily salary and planning how to badger you to buy another bottle, all the while smiling or laughing hard enough to make sure that all of these calculations in her head are not reflected on her pretty face.

  Most of the clubs open at one in the afternoon and cease their trading at about four in the morning. Of course, the run has to be split – there are day and night shifts. Even though, practically, there is no big difference between the two spells, the contrast in the clientele is huge.

  The day shift – fuck, I hate it! – is all about the married and the perverts, but more often the married perverts. As a rule, they drop by to use their lunch break for a dull, uncomplicated quickie, or for depraved ‘activities’ they have never had the guts to share with their wives and girlfriends. They don’t drink much and have limited time. That is why the club is usually boring and full of freaks, but in the end, who cares if you can get the bottle?

  On the other hand, the night transforms the club and fills it with a party flavour – the music is louder, the customers are drunker and the laughter gets more sincere. Even the girls’ sweat looks like a piece of cake. The problem is that the boys often get carried away by the alcohol and the thundering crowd, so their brains switch out of sex mode. If there is no sex, there is probably going to be no bottle either.

  But enough, I don’t want to bore you. Let’s set in motion my adventure that, by the way, began without me.

  3

  One year before the helmet guy, my sisters, Natalia and Lena, decided to go to Luxembourg to make some extra bucks. Irina, their best friend, had gone there before. When she returned, she kept on boasting about big money she had earned there. Moreover, after just a few days of being back at home – in gloomy Kherson, our small town in the south of Ukraine – Irina looked around, crinkled her nose, and fancifully decided to throw a grand in US dollars at a trip to Istanbul, simply because she wanted to hang out with Natalia, who, by that time, had already been living in the big smoke for five years.

  Back in the nineties, I wasn’t the only one in newly independent, barefoot-but-proud Ukraine, who felt a nasty bitterness about Irina’s blow. It didn’t matter what occupation or job you had – doctor, teacher, scientist or student – all ex-Soviet folk struggled equally, seldom able to stretch their money further than the rice or potatoes on their plates.

  Funny, when Natalia asked what kind of job it was, Irina, with an innocence in her voice that didn’t match the hussy look in her eyes, just prattled, ‘Dancing in a nightclub.’

  ‘Whatever! For that cash I would eat from the dirty floor!’ flashed through Natalia’s mind. She was fed up with trying to make a living by doing a ‘proper’ job. Therefore, it was a perfect moment for Irina to plant seeds of doubt in my sister’s soaked-up-in-suppresseddepression head…

  Well, imagine our shock when, a few months before the end of Natalia’s final grade and the school exams, she decided to drop out and take off. She wanted to escape from run-down Ukraine with no hope for its future – where the best-case scenario would be her selling goods from Turkey or China on the free market – and run to unknown Istanbul, with no guarantee that she would even get a job but with the faith that somewhere there, if she worked hard and used any opportunity, a better life would be waiting for her.

  When Mom found out about Natalia’s big plans, she took her for a long walk. A few hours later, at a family meeting, standing in front of us in the middle of the living room, she announced, ‘It definitely is an avant-garde decision, but I am inclined to support Natalia’s choice.’

  My sister cried out, ‘Da!’

  Our father became furious and started yelling ‘Mad women!’ and then ‘I can’t fight all four of you!’ Luckily, our mother knew how to handle him. She added, ‘Yuri, our girl is determined to start an adult life with or without us, so I suggest we do anything to make it with us.’

  He stopped arguing, but stayed hellishly mad. Of course, eventually, our father found peace, together with the principal of one of the local schools, who agreed to issue a school-leaving certificate for a straight-A student for only fifty US bucks – with Natalia’s name on it.

  Natalia moved with Mom to Istanbul. Even though my sister never regretted her decision – she went overseas, lived in a big city and had a real adult life with real adult dreams – it wasn’t a summer camp for her either.

  By that time, Mom was holding Russian language courses for Turkish entrepreneurs in small and medium-sized businesses. They sold their goods – leather, textiles, clothes and shoes – to traders from Russia and Ukraine. She managed to find a job for Natalia, making tea and coffee in some shipping company, which ran from a huge and sophisticated office, with a long set of wall-sized windows over-looking the Bosphorus. My sister got the best deal, that’s for sure, considering she didn’t speak Turkish and had no work experience. Her big, dark eyes, her childishly cute but at the same time intricate face, and mop of curly burnt-umber hair, together with her slightly heavy hips, which were balanced by bursting-at-the-seams boobs on a tight body, got her her first job, paying $300 per month.

  During these years, Natalia mastered the Turkish language and used any opportunity to get the hang of all types of office work, including how to manage the re-supply of cargo ships. She even learnt about shipping brokerage. She had also got herself involved in a tiring, full-of-empty-promises relationship with her boss. The fucker was married with two kids, and was almost twenty years older than her. He loved to impress Natalia with a good dinner at a fancy restaurant and clumsy sex for dessert in the apartment he rented for su
ch occasions. He generously shared endless wisdom about life with her, as well as gifts of cheap jewellery that he presented to her as if they were diamonds.

  He also had a truly Turkish way of becoming over-suspicious from time to time. Natalia would get into trouble if one of the restaurant’s other male patrons looked at her, for whatever reason: either some man would find her pretty, or, as often happens in restaurants, someone would get bored and just look around at others. Once, he even got pissed off when she asked a male waiter for directions to the bathroom, causing a scene in front of everybody that ended with him slapping her sharply in the face.

  The jealousy of this man was often caused by absolute absurdity, as was the case with his own business partner, who was a Russian ex-captain. The Russian was practically Natalia’s boss too, but because he was a handsome man and famous for his Casanova reputation, he often caused my sister’s boss-lover to yell at her during his moments of groundless rage – which usually ended up with him calling her a Russian whore who was no different from the other prostitutes who overran the city.

  The bastard would be satisfied and stop his ugly, jealous scenes only once he’d brought her to tears. At the same time he constantly fed her bullshit about how unhappy he was with his wife and that the only reason he didn’t end the nightmare of his marriage was because of his kids: ‘The divorce would devastate them,’ he always said with great concern on his face.

  No shit! Devastating my sister, instead, was the perfect solution, then?

  So, her life was quite intense: ten-hour workdays often without lunch breaks and days off; hours spent on public transport in the city’s heavy, endless traffic; wasted tears and ragged nerves from the love story with the boss. Hers was a life of haste and too little sleep, chronic fatigue, and eyes that were red and swollen from crying.

  Don’t get me wrong – Natalia was not a hard-labour victim. Her life involved absolutely normal things that many people have to do in order to survive. But I do want to make a point: her future decision was not the result of failure or laziness.