Cracked Porcelain (5 page)

“Shut up!” she barked, snatching up her bag and anxiously scurrying past him, struggling to see through tear-blurred eyes.

Maximillia didn’t make off with much: some random chotchkies, a few unused uni-cred cards, a bag of candy. The oppressively emotional reunion with her father forced her into a mindless grab for whatever was in front of her. Gareth could only sit helplessly in his chair as she scuttled off. He’d lost her again.

Things weren’t much better in the world of the Bay Bruisers. Mardo was a man of many vices, regardless of his self-projected persona of modern-day messiah to the lost social outcasts of Mandra Bay. Many of his vices were public: young
women, food, drugs and drink and self-love. His lesser known, private vice was gambling. The problem was that he didn’t gamble with
small-time hoods. He gambled with the big boys. Amongst the Bruisers he was the top-of-the-food-chain apex predator, but amongst the upper class underworld warlords he was just a prawn in a sea full of hyper-evolved thrash sharks. He was also a prominent, world-class loser.

If a god existed that lorded over the realm of hopelessly ill-fated degenerate gamblers who were destined to never
feel the warmth of the light of victory on their chapped, pock-marked faces, that would be the god whom Mardo had unwittingly won the favor of.

Summarizing Mardo's fiscal shortcomings were simple: H
e owed lots of money to the wrong people. Dropping 150,000 uni-creds in games to the nephew of the head of the Tsen-Tze crime family wasn’t a wise fiscal life decision. Kylaxian crime syndicates were genetically predisposed to gambling, loved to win and loved even more to collect winnings.

This wasn’t 150,000 uni-creds that Mardo was good for. He hadn’t earned an honest uni-cred in years so every bit of money he called his own was pilfered from someone else, either directly or indirectly through the criminal indiscretions of his mongrel crew. Mardo knew this, but, much like with his passion for young girls, he couldn’t help himself. He was on a thin wire with the Tsen-Tzes and had little to no collateral to keep his neck from being detached from the rest of him. They humored him because of how pathetically comical they found him. He was a court jester who thought himself a king.
Unfortunately for Mardo, they had finally lost patience with him.

When a representative from the Tsen-Tzes showed up at the compound, Mardo knew reality had shown up at his doorstep. The man
, named Kee, immediately stood apart from the mangy native riffraff: from his clean-shaven head, his pressed suit, his polished, gleaming, glossy-black shoes and the digital holographic timepiece bound to his wrist, he wasn’t a Bruiser.  His shoes were worth more than the lot of these mouth-breathing scoundrels. They didn’t send a single unpleasant look in his general direction, though. He was human, like them, but breathed the rarified air regularly; he was of different stock and with qualitatively different benefactors. He was a messenger from unseen gods that could strike the Bruisers down at any time so they played the role of obedient dogs expertly.

Kee
stood in the broiling destitution of Mardo’s slum kingdom, eyes scanning the rusted steel canopy above. “You live well, Mardo.”

“Hey, I have modest standards. Freedom is my currency,” the fat man chuckled nervously.

“You have no currency, Mardo. That’s why I’m here.”

Mardo’s uneasy smile faded. “I want to pay. We’re good earners. We’ve got cash coming in through different enterprises. We can offer bulk percentages on the monthly collections until we smooth this out.”

“That’s a start!” a sharp, disembodied voice barked out.

Kee held up a small metallic disc in his palm and a beam of shimmering holographic pixels materialized in the space above his hand. The pixels congealed into the form of Dom Tsen-Tze, the gang’s irascible figurehead. The top of the pyramid. The capstone. His rigid, angular features mirrored his personality. His brown exoskeleton was peppered with glints of silver;
his was a royal veneer. His eyes were soft, yet penetrating. They commanded respect.

“I could’ve put you in the ground at any time, Mardo, you tub of shit. No one would’ve missed you. Your litter of miscreants down there would’ve found a new pair of tits to suckle from, too. Low-level messiahs are in heavy supply nowadays, especially messiahs big on talk and small on action.”

The typically silver-tongued Mardo had nothing to return. No pithy retort. He absorbed the verbal salvo with uncharacteristic passivity. Maximillia inched towards him. He was a sick, abusive pervert, but she’d grown a depraved bond with him. She knew he was an unrepentant degenerate time-bomb but the very nature of their association reflected and amplified her
self-hatred. She felt that he was the only thing she deserved; in her mind she deserved this pain, this life.

“I’m going to take a chunk out of your rackets. That’s right,” Dom declared. “That won’t suffice, though. I’ve assumed management of an establishment uptown. I need girls. You’ve got girls so now I’ve got girls. Unless you’ve got issues with that?”

Mardo didn’t know what Dom was referring to, but had no option but to concur. “None. None at all. What kind of establishment, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“A run-down little brothel in the middle of North Antheiser called Xartha’s. I’m renovating the place and putting in some new talent. Not a high class place but, then again, if I wanted high class girls I wouldn’t be tapping your wares, would I?”

“I’ve got a stable of girls for you. All young, good stock. Ready and willing to do what they need to do for the family. They all know their way around a stick, if you know what I mean,” he cackled bluntly. He reached out to Maximillia, taking her by the shoulders and presenting her outward. “This one especially. Look at her. Pristine condition. Great hair. Tight as a coiled socket, I’ll tell you. I’ve tested her out personally.”

Maximillia looked over her shoulder at him in disgust.

“She should be worth a good fifty thousand!” Mardo remarked.

Dom raked up and down her form with his eyes, scanning her carefully. “She’s skinny. Don’t you feed these girls, Mardo? Kryta be damned.”

“Girls these days. This look is the standard!” he argued with a nervous chuckle, still on edge.

“You beat the shit out of her or what?” Dom sighed. “Well, let’s get a look. Strip down, girl, and give me a tour.”

Maximillia was confused. It was all moving so fast. Mardo helped her out of her bath gown leaving her in nothing but her panties.

“Let’s see what she can do, Mardo.”

Mardo signaled for his goons to leave the room, leaving only he, Maximillia and Kee.

“Consider this an audition, my dear. He says you know your way around a stick. I prefer to see for myself. If you don’t pass muster we take his head as payment.”

Maximillia looked at Mardo, both worried and angry. He goaded her with his eyes, pressing lightly on her shoulders until she dropped down onto her knees. He fished out his limp dick, shriveled by the pressure of the consequences of this “audition”. He wasn’t nearly at optimum length to display her skills. She had to dry jerk his floppy member, beckoning it to swell. After a minute or so he finally stiffened to a passable rigidity and Maximillia took him into her mouth.

When she first found her way into Mardo’s care she was just an un
touched flower, a lost, inexperienced greenhorn. She’d seen other cocks before and even tasted a few, but Mardo spent months slowly ingratiating her to the ways of carnal sophistication. It was instinctual to her now. The combination of her shattered home-life, his mesmerizing oratory and the tyranny of the Gatekeeper’s influence turned her into a nearly catatonic sexual automaton who allowed herself to be sexually shamed at Mardo’s discretion and with whomever he chose. When she saw his cock she moved as a mindless somnambulist, knowing what deed had to be done.

Very little internal joy was had by Maximillia from these mechanical routines. Of course, Mardo found a sadistic joy in splitting her petals open on a daily basis or watching her be defiled by whichever of his thugs he nominated. When he snapped his fingers she responded, a slave to the man who held the blissful Gatekeeper. Sure, high-end pleasure droids were almost indistinguishable from flesh and blood humans, but the knowledge that he’d corrupted something scarred, yet pure was the kicker. In her he had a perfectly programmed sperm receptacle.

Dom admired this feisty little firecracker, less than half Mardo’s size, working his cock with torrid enthusiasm. It was a sight to behold; this tiny, scrawny, pale form crowned with this long, dark mane sucking the cock in her mouth with wild abandon. Mardo wouldn’t last long because she was applying a massive amount of suction, her unseen tongue curling around the underside of the tip of his member. His rising groans exposed his eminent climax.

Suddenly, Mardo let out a guttural below, his legs trembling as he grabbed the back of Maximillia’s head, shoving his
hot club deep into her mouth and holding her in place as he emptied his balls into her. Ever the well-studied pupil, she didn’t gag or thrash about as the hot goo splashed the back of her throat. She merely kept her flattened palms facing outward, letting him expel himself down her gullet. After a few seconds he stopped trembling and let his saliva-coated cock plop from between her lips. Obediently, she didn’t move, she just put her palms back onto her thighs and coughed lightly as spittle dripped from her lower lip, letting the men continue to evaluate her. Rock bottom.

Dom said nothing, but the ridiculous bulge in Kee’s pants was the unspoken appraisal of Maximillia’s skills. Mardo stepped away from his girl, chest heaving, pants still down, and looked over at Dom’s holographic avatar.

After a few tense seconds, he finally muttered with stone-faced bluntness. “She’s hired. Send six more of your girls with this one. Kee will give you the location. Have them check in with the manager tomorrow morning at noon. Her name’s Vaika. We understand each other, Mardo?”

The tub nodded. “Of course. They will not disappoint.”

“For your sake, I hope not.”

Xartha’s was in the industrial district, planted smack dab in the midst of patches of cond
emned office complexes. The lowlifes didn’t bother to aimlessly shuffle the streets because there was nothing to take and no one to beg from. Xartha’s customers favored the underground parking lot where their limousines could quickly disappear into, sparing them from having to breath the heavy pollution being pumped out by the nearby refineries and factories.

The place was your typical pump and dump whorehouse where local businessmen came to get the thrill of violating young girls before quickly paying their tab and being shuttled off before the guilt sank in. Most of the girls under the employ of the house were human, and for good reason. The majority of the businessmen were thoran, saracian and kylaxian expats who were sent to Arceus to manage local branches for off-world banking and real estate conglomerates. Young human girls were something of a cultural delicacy for many alien species; a novelty for the perverse. They found the slim, lithe,
relatively hairless forms of nubile human females intoxicating. Thorans, kylaxians and saracians were physically large in comparison to humans and the compatibility of their sex organs with human girls sprinkled a dash of almost immoral, bestial impropriety to their already vulgar indiscretions.

The aliens also tended to be quite liberal with their spending when it came to rendezvous with their human play-things. Xartha’s general manager was an older tarian woman name Vaika. She’d seen it all and done it all and had little sympathy for any of the new girls that walked into the door. She affectionately called her girls “holes” because she liked to opine that their holes were the only part of their bodies that had the potential for talent. Her husky, smoky voice didn’t help fend off the several new wrinkles that rose on her miserable hide every day. She had an eye for the gifted, though. She preferred the youngest stock available. The more green, the more nubile, the better. She knew her consumer base. Her foreign clientele, unlike human males,
didn’t always favor the extreme hourglass figure; flared-out hips, bountiful bust line and a firm, bubble ass. More often than not they were more infatuated with unripened, streamlined bodies that were embroiled in the heat of pubescence. They wanted girls who had matured past the point of being mere girls but hadn't reached full womanhood yet; females dancing on the twilight of physical maturity who were untainted but corruptible. It stoked an unreasonable passion in them that loosened the purse strings.

Maximillia and the other Bruiser girls piled into Xartha’s. None of them were innocent but all of them were understandably apprehensive. This wasn’t the dank confines of the Bruiser compound; here, results were expected. The girls would be expected to perform, to entertain their “company” and do so with abundant proficiency. They even took in Taryn as a willing
recruit. Half the time she was higher than a star cruiser and the other half of the time she was Chota’s primary recreational pastime, but she was young, cute and had working orifices, so she qualified. Maximillia hadn’t fared much better than Taryn, but Taryn actually liked her predicament whereas Maximillia tolerated hers.

Maximillia knew that her friend would be a popular commodity for the establishment: Taryn still carried with her a healthy degree of baby fat held over from her youth, most of which had gravitated to her thighs, ass, breasts and cheeks. She embodied the female whose body matured beyond her ignorance and gullibility, which is a huge reason why Chota could be found most nights on top of her, laboring to fill her with another copious load of his seed. She was easy prey and rarely mounted even the most passing protest.

On that first day, Maximillia got a surprise upon settling in at her new place of employment. Vaika notified her that “the boss” wanted to speak with her and to meet him in his office. Dom happened to be in town and apparently wanted to supervise the maiden voyage of the Bruiser girls.

She
entered Dom’s office, which was a sleek, classy, smoke-filled abode. The thumping beat of the house music rattled muffled through the walls. She shut the door quietly and spun around to find Dom sunken comfortably across the room in his cushy chair, bathed in the low light and puffing on a toco cigar.

“Come forward,” he offered firmly.

She obeyed, stepping into a shaft of light slicing in through the glass. He studied her for a moment, his cigar effortlessly crimped between his fore and middle fingers.

“So, you’re Mardo’s girl?”

She stood respectfully silent, unclear on the man’s prominence but instinctively knowing enough to stay quiet.

“Where did he find you? Park? Shopping center? Kidnapped?”

She shook her head timidly. “No.”

“You one of these girls into that sick naughty uncle thing? Maybe you got a sorry home life so you headed out looking for a father figure and instead you’ve got this fat, dirty piece of shit fucking you in that pig farm he’s running out in the desert?”

She sniffled, wiping her nose, the protocol on how to react lost on her.

“
Ahhh, he got you hooked on something? Hyperia? Narcotep? Gatekeeper?”

Her body language convicted her.

“Gatekeeper it is,” he practically mocked. “I can’t imagine a little flower like you would voluntarily find yourself in his bed."

The off-color name drew her attention and she finally spoke up. “He used to call me Flower."

“Before he plucked you, am I right? I’ll bet he talked a sweet game right before that first time. Wined you with the Gatekeeper. Whispered those sweet nothings. Played the suave tribal chief."

He was right but she didn’t have the courage to admit the predictable nature of her own faux-pas in getting suckered. She didn’t have to admit it. He could see the regret on her face.

“How did you know?” she asked.

“Predators are like-minded, but, unlike me, he’s an elevator in free-fall. Doesn’t care who he carries crashing down into the basement with him..”

“You’re no different than he is.”

Dom was somewhat surprised by her sudden boldness. “Really? You really think that?”

“You’re both criminals.”

“You run with him. So are you
then, correct? If me and him are alike, you and me are alike.”

“I don’t have anything in common with you.”

“You’re very right about that. I’ll bet you were born in the dregs and figured, '
Hey, why not live here forever?'
, taking whatever scraps you could find along the way and clinging like a parasite to whatever host you could find that would let you plant your flag. You stick to the first one that would have you, right?”

She looked away, intimidated.

“You’ve got fire in you. You’ve got a mouth on you, too. That’s why I picked you. You know how to use it. I’m going to earn a lot of money with you. But, I have to say that I think
you’re making a mistake. I’ll bet you could clean up nicely. If you were fed a little, got your hair done... You know, your face has an incredible structure. With a little make-up...”

“I’m not a toy,” she interjected finally, sensing the context.

“A toy is inanimate. It has no wants, no needs. It exists only to be played with but has no opinion one way or another how it’s played with or who is playing with it. You’re no toy. You’re alive. You have motivations, goals, aspirations, regardless of how far away you think they are. What I’m proposing is a deal that’s mutually beneficial. I have something you undoubtedly want.”

Dom opened a drawer at his desk and drew forth a small decanter from it. The glass contained the familiar Gatekeeper.

“I can’t,” she hurriedly admitted.

“I thought you liked it.”

“I’m trying to quit.”

“You don’t just quit Gatekeeper,” he chuckled.

“I’m trying.”

“This isn’t the backwater swill that Mardo’s been dousing you with. This is premium, ultra-refined stock. Purified by artisans who know how to extract the essence of the flower the drink is derived from.”

She shook her head faintly, maintaining a respectful degree of eye contact. “No, thank you.”

He sat back looking her over. “Maybe next time.”

Kee walked in. Dom’s gaze became fiercely trained on Maximillia, cutting through her eyes and into her soul. “Now, if you think you’re going to come in here and play the defiant little princess, you’re up for a rude awakening. If you present yourself to any of my clients as anything less than a willing whore, one whose only purpose is to happily and proudly drain the balls of any cock that drops a uni-cred in my establishment, then I’ll burn your compound out in the desert to the ground. Then, I’ll kill all your friends. If you don’t give a shit about any of them then I’ll find out who you do care about and I’ll make you wish you never knew them because the pain I’ll inflict will scar you for the rest of your life.”

Maximillia wilted under the weight of his reticent delivery.

“Do we understand each other?”

She swallowed, nodding in  resignation. “Yes.”

“I expect you to be my star performer out there, but not looking and smelling like that.” Dom looked up at Kee. “Take her to the shower room. Get her cleaned up and have her report to Vaika so she can’t get acquainted with the program. And make sure she washes thoroughly. Every inch of her.
Every
inch. I don’t want any clients complaining about dirty goods.”

Kee looked Maximillia up and down. “I’ll make sure she’s clean from head to toe.” He held out his hand to her. “Come on. Let’s go.”

The showers were a dank, grotty pit. The walls suffered from water erosion and the internal piping and wiring were largely exposed in gored out sections. The constant litany of desynchronized drips from the defective faucets created an unnerving vexation.

Maximillia stood pinned against the wall of one of the showers while Kee hosed her down as Vaika supe
rvised. The water pressure was cranked up painfully high and she whimpered helplessly as the water mashed her against the tiles.

The rest of the Bruiser girls got similar treatment and it was then time for Vaika to run them through the gauntlet. Xartha’s doubled as a strip club, so there were stripper poles, runways and private rooms populating the main show floor. Maximillia had never danced in her life and neither had the other girls. A few of the older girls, veterans that had weathered the storm of endless waves of horny alien clientele, showed Maximillia and the other rookies the ropes. The vets had this war-weary, defeated look in their eyes; the looks of lost souls irretrievably bound to their detestable tasks. They exuded this sad emptiness, these bleak husks that existed only to provide temporary sexual relief for nameless travelers. Maximillia felt sorry for them. She wanted to rescue them, but, in a way, they terrified her. She could see herself in every one of them.

Then, there was the primary function that Maximillia was expected to perform at
Xartha’s. As far as the sex, there wasn’t much that needed to be taught. She had months and months of on-the-job training, courtesy of Mardo’s preposterously high libido. Only at Xartha’s she’d have to keep her gag reflex policed even better than with him. If she broke the fantasy of even a single client then she’d lose her selling power. She threw up the first night, about ten minutes before her first client walked in. She’d never felt so low. Her room—the same one where she’d be entertaining clients—was a gaudy, slipshod mess, decorated to look like an administrative office. Painfully bland, almost clinical.

Xartha’s knew the cultural nuances of the clientele. Their kinks in terms of favorable environmental stimulus was unintelligible by a typical human. Something about the sterility and formalness of the setting facilitating such fleshly indecencies added to the fantasy for the alien johns. They preferred it, and in this instance, the customer must always be right. The Tsen-Tzes had all of the Bruisers over the proverbial barrel. Hostages typically didn’t prostitute themselves to spare their own lives, but her circumstances were far from typical.

Maximillia was in her room, sitting on the edge of her bed, knees together, hands in her lap and head down, mired in disquiet when Vaika walked in. The old woman noticed the quivering fledgling.

“I’ve got some helpful advice for you, if you’re interested," Vaika offered.

“Okay," Maximillia whispered.

“When you’re working, pretend like you’re wearing a mask. Pretend like you’re someone else. Do your job well. Entertain the males and try to make them want to give you as much of their money as you can. The better you do that the quicker you’ll pay off whatever debt your master owes Dom."

“He’s not my master," Maximillia stated firmly, before sinking back into weakness. “Mardo. He’s not my master."

“Then what is he?"

She didn’t know how to answer.

“Is he worth doing all this for?"

She shook her head. “No."

Vaika’s gaze drifted down. “Well, for now, you don’t have much of a choice. You work, you earn and once the debt is paid, you’re not my problem anymore and this place won’t be your problem, either." She looked the dark mop-topped girl over. “You are very beautiful. You’ll be a big earner. You won’t be here long. Just do your best. Be strong. For every client, wear your mask. When they leave, you take it off again. That way they’re not taking anything away from you, just the woman whose mask you’re wearing."