ARAWN – ELEVEN YEARS AGO
“What’s your name, sweetie?” one of the madams managing the whorehouses on the territory as the girl with the most beautiful eyes that I have ever seen fidgets with her fingers.
“Nerthus Hendriks, ma’am.” She answers shyly, and I have to force down the urge to shift in my seat.
One of the men sitting in the room with me laughs, his colleagues joining him soon after. “What a silly name.”
“Oh, please, call me Theresa, sweetie.” The madam speaks again, making Nerthus’ face light up with a smile.
“Okay,” she answers cutely.
I am glued to the television as I see how Nerthus starts undressing herself as the madam assigned to her asks her to do so.
My guts boil at the men around me starting to make indecent jokes, and surprise myself as I clench my teeth.
This is not the first time they show this sort of ritual. All the girls that come in to work on our territory get “scanned” like this. And it is certainly not the first time that they have made stupid sexistic jokes about the girls.
So, I am surely accustomed to it.
Then why does it bother me so much when they start joking about her?
I can’t even remember a girl who ever got my attention for more than two seconds if she wasn’t already naked, so why did I listen to her tell the camera about where she came from?
“She is 17, you pigs,” I growl, causing fat Tony to hit the back of my head with his heavy hand.
My head gets catapulted forward by the hit while he cusses at me.
“What? Is she your little girlfriend?” He laughs, his stinky breath making me shield myself with my shoulder. “Eyes on the screen. Don’t forget to rate her!”
He rips the pieces of paper out of my hands before throwing them into my face.
Another round of laughter rumbles through the room, and I collect the papers silently. Back on my seat, I rewind the tape and start filling out the papers as usual.
I resist the urge to rewind the tape again, not wanting to show the men that I like her.
Like her.
I scoff internally as I get over her and go on to the next recording. I can barely concentrate on what the next girl says as my thoughts go back to Nerthus and all the possibilities to get to her or at least get the tape the little voice in my head shouts.
After I rewind the tape once again, I get the first remark from one of the men, who accuses me of liking her. I groan, looking at the hot woman with big breasts standing in front of the camera.
That’s when a plan forms in my head, and I write her name onto a separate sheet of paper.
Finally, I finish with the last tape and get out of the stuffy room to reach the office of my father. I blend out the spiteful chattering of my sisters as I pass the living room they are sitting in and straighten my spine before knocking on my father’s door.
Hearing his rough voice through the door, I open it with a quick movement and reach the massive black desk of my father with quick steps. He has his nose buried in a pile of papers as he growls at me, without even looking up. “Are you done?”
“Yes, sir,” I answer, passing him the files I filled out and compiled.
“Someone interesting?” He asks again, making me nod.
“Yes, sir,” I repeat before sitting down.
He lifts his brows, looking at me. Suddenly, he stands up, lifting a glass to smash it against the wall. I don’t even flinch as I lower my gaze immediately.
“Would it be too much to ask for you to speak more than two fucking words!” He shouts at me, and I keep my eyes glued to the floor. “Fucking waste of air!”
Taking a deep breath, he presses the intercom on his phone. “Carwyn!”
He walks around his desk, holding his hand out with a scoff. “Give me that damn thing!”
I have barely lifted the files into the air as he snatches them out of my hands.
He hums as he goes through the files and laughs as he finds my separate note. “Nice choice, son. You like her?”
“I would like to have her.” I nod, making my father crack up.
Just as he takes his seat, Carwyn steps into the office, looking around shyly.
“Everything okay?” he asks as my father is about to calm down from his laughing fit.
My father gestures for him to step forward, and while still grinning at me, he passes him the note with my favorite. “Take this one for the next tape.”
I have never done that. I never liked a woman. Never found one more attractive than the others I could pull on the streets.
They all look the same, more or less.
So, when I passed him the note, I had hoped that I could get her.
But now I’m glad I did a test first.
My blood freezes in my veins as he sentences my fake favorite to her death with a grotesque smirk. “And, Carwyn, make it special!”
Carwyn nods and leaves the room, and my father’s expression falls. “Nothing good comes from liking women, Arawn! Now, get the fuck out of here.”
I leave the room, seeing him throwing the rest of the files onto a pile, and my heart flips.
Rubbing my chest, I still cannot fathom what this feeling was as I reach Carwyn who is waiting for me, leaning against the wall. As I pass him, he wraps his arm around my shoulders, shaking me. “Let’s get some air, son.”
I follow him outside on a small terrace, and we light a cigarette in silence.
“You are lucky that you get to see all those girls,” he says jokingly, punching me into my arm. “Annie is so cranky lately. I would enjoy seeing some girls strip for me.”
I swallow a groan before taking another pull.
Why? All the affairs you have don’t strip for you?
“Here,” he takes his cigarette between his lips, as he starts searching his pockets.
My eyes widen as he passes me a CD while grinning at me. “I already heard that you liked one of them. They couldn’t tell me who it was, so I burned all the tapes of today on it.”
After another slap on my arm, he puts out his cigarette under his shoe and presses his finger onto his lips. “Psst, don’t tell your father.”
With a shuffle through my hair, he disappears back into the house. I stare back at the medium, gulping.
Trying to finish my cigarette as if nothing happened, nearly makes me want to peel off the skin from my bones.
I get back into my home and climb the stairs up, taking two steps at a time and reaching my bedroom as fast as I can.
Just as I’m about to put the CD into the computer, I decide otherwise, and hide the medium behind the books in my library.
It takes me a few seconds before I effectively fight my desire to watch the tape once again. Sighing deeply, I step away from the library and pour myself a glass of whiskey out of my secret stash.
Sitting down on my small couch, I close my eyes and lay my head onto the backrest of the couch. I allow my imagination to wander towards her. I see her smile and hear her melodic voice saying my name. Her full red lips feel warm as they move against mine, and I drive my hand into her silky red hair, grabbing it to pull her closer. Her cheeks blush deep red as I shower her with compliments and her tender hands push against my chest playfully as she asks me to stop telling her that she is the most beautiful being that I have ever seen. Her cute little gasp makes my heart squeeze in my chest as I cover her creamy skin in love bites. She looks at me with her big green eyes while I push into her slowly, giving her all the gentleness that she surely had been deprived of so far.
For a split second, I feel the best I’ve ever felt.
Before I cancel her name off my hard drive and sink back into my darkness.