Chapter 40

The ringing clunk of the cash register was like the tolling of a ****-bell. A sealing of unavoidable fates. Your step-father had handed over the single, large bill without a blink. To him that was just pocket change… but to you it was an inescapable contract for things to come.

For months, you hadn't really had a single doubt about where your life had taken you. Once it had all began happening, you had just moved on to accepting it as you always had. Strangers came. They paid. They fucked you or your step-sister. Skeg took the money. Nancy took it back off him to buy you nice food, or new movies, or pretty clothes. It all just worked, without you really having to think about the connotations of any of it. You liked the simplicity. The fact that you could just muddle through and let other people make all the big decisions for you. You liked feeling another satisfied customer grunting his climax into your rear-end… or down the back of your gagging throat. It was such an immediate and undeniable moment of success. Of knowing you had made another human feel good.

Suddenly it all felt a bit more complicated, though… as you led your own step-father along the passage at the back of the shop. There was only really that one room where Skeg and the others played cards, which had been set up to contain a bed and some other… useful supplies: Ropes and paddles and dildos and things that a few customers had requested or graciously donated. So if both the shop’s ‘assets’ were required at once… one of you had to take their work into the yard out back. It had high enough walls and a mouldy, old couch to lie out upon, if that was what was wanted. But you were always very aware that anyone in the buildings above could look out their windows and watch everything. You had caught glimpses of ghostly faces leering down more than once, so always tried to just not look up and pay attention. Of course, no-one had ever complained or called the cops… in this neighbourhood, such a thing just counted as some free, backyard theatre.

You blinked in the sunlight as you stepped out through the doorway. It was actually quite a lovely day. You wondered what would happen come Fall and Winter… but didn’t really have to wonder too much. One man had already asked to bend you over in the pouring rain the other day, delighting in tugging upon your bedraggled hair and complimenting how your sopping clothes clung tighter to your shape. It had been quite refreshing, in its own way… though you had spent all the next day stifling cute, little sneezes.

You turned back to check your step-father had followed. Twisting your hips and sticking your butt out a bit, just on instinct. It was funny to think… how you had started picking up poses that were ‘sexy’, by admiring his daughter’s unquenchable urge to tease and all the movies and magazines and music videos that society threw at you. None of it was on purpose, really… It was just there was a certain expectation in the eyes of every man who came to claim you, and your inherent need to live up to those expectations. A need that had almost definitely been put in place by your life-long desperation to live up to what this particular one present had demanded of you. A desperation that had so often seemed to fall short.

Bending yourself suggestively over the arm of the couch, and just letting your skirt ride up a little… you wondered: Was this what he’d really wanted, all along, maybe? Was this how you could finally earn Step-Daddy’s pride? Presenting the rise of your bouncy, young butt to him and looking back over one shoulder with big, doleful eyes. It seemed almost empowering… in a way. Certainly the most settled you’d ever felt in his presence. Whether he recognised you, or he didn’t… what happened next you knew how to deal with.

You’d had plenty of practice, after all… Plenty.