The Hooker: A Reprehensible Acts Story (2 page)

“Oh,
fuck, man!”
 
Lance said then laughed.

I
leaned forward, my eyes snapping open.
 
I
was holding a wig.
 
But that wasn’t what
caused my dick to shrivel.
 

Lance
burst into fits of laughter.
 
“Fuck, it’s
a dude!” Lance got out between laughs.
 

I
couldn’t speak.
 
My tongue clung to the
top of my mouth, unable to free itself.
 
Maybe I’d been too drunk to see.
 
Maybe Hope’s makeup was too thick.
 
I honestly hadn’t thought Hope was a guy, but I could see it now.
 
Without the wig, any feminine features
evaporated.
 
It was obvious Hope was a
guy, not a hint of doubt.
 
The worst
thing was I didn’t have a clue what to do.

Hope
stared out from my groin with spittle-soaked lips.
 
Panic flashed across her…his…face.
 
The transgender remained stone still.
 
We all did.

“Fan-fucking-
tastic
.
 
Christ, I
don’t know why I listen to you.”

“Everybody
be cool.”

“Be
cool?” Lance spat.
 
“You’re a fucking
guy.
 
You’ve just been sucking my man off
and you want us to be cool about it?”

“Honey,”
she said to me, “look at it this way, a mouth is a mouth and a dick don’t
care.”

“I
do,” I said.
 
“Get the hell up.
 
We’re done.”

“And
I want my sixty bucks back.”

Hope
edged away from me and towards the door.
 
“I’m sure we can work this out.
 
I’ll give you twenty back.
 
A
girl’s
gotta
eat.”

“I
ain’t
after a discount,” Lance held out his
hand.
 
“I want my money back.”

“OK,
OK, OK,” Hope conceded and reached into her purse.
 
“You guys need to widen your horizons.”

“Yeah,
yeah, yeah, just give me the money.”

I
quickly zipped my pants back up and buckled my belt.

“Here
you go,” Hope said.

Lance
leaned forward between the front seats to take the money.
 
Instead of the cash, Hope brought out a can
of pepper spray and blasted Lance full in the face.
 

I
lunged for Hope, but she slammed a fist into my groin.
 
I doubled over, the pain excruciating and
crippling.
 
Hope took this as her escape
and bailed backwards out the passenger door.

“Christ,
we deserve this,” I croaked.
 
“You OK?”

Lance
grabbed a water bottle from a cup holder and splashed his face.
 
“Yeah, she didn’t get me too bad.”

He
wiped his face off with his sleeve.
 
Then
he froze.
 
“Goddamn it.”

“What?”

“The
bitch grabbed my cell and wallet.”

He'd
left them on the center console.
 
I
couldn’t believe he’d been that careless.

I
didn’t wait for Lance.
 
I grabbed the
Club out of the foot well and scrambled from the Jeep after Hope.
 
I don’t know why I went for the Club.
 
When I think about it now, Hope was packing
Mace, so I needed something to protect myself when I caught up to her.

Running
was painful.
 
A punch to the balls did
that to you.
 
And because of it, I
watched Hope extend her head start, even on those ridiculous heels.
 
I couldn’t let her escape.

I
threw my arm back and hurled the damn thing, tomahawk style.
 
It struck Hope in the back only inches from
her neck.
 
She went down like a sack of
shit.
 
Our prey was down and I swooped
in, groin pain or not.

I
grabbed Hope’s arm and flipped her over.
 
She was stunned, managing a groan.
 
She looked ridiculous in that moment—a man pretending to be a woman.
 
What had happened in her life for her to end
up like this?
 
It was just sad.
 
This life couldn’t be a choice.
 
I picked up the Club as Lance caught up to
me.

He
dropped to Hope’s side, rummaging through her purse.
 
“Where’s my money, bitch?”

“Fuck
the money,” I said.
 
“Just get your
wallet and phone.”

Hope
groaned again, seemingly coming to.
 
I
thought she was just stretching but she was reaching.
 
Her grasp found a beer bottle half under a
dumpster, then she rolled over in one swift move and smashed it down on the
back of Lance’s head.
 
It didn’t break,
just bounced off his head.
 
My best man
crumpled under the blow.

Hope
raised the bottle for a second blow but I batted it out of her hand with the
Club. It exploded against the alley wall.
 
I didn’t give her a chance to find another weapon and dropped on top
her, pinning her to the ground.
 
She
flailed at me.
 
I dropped the Club and
grabbed her wrists.
 
What I’d mistaken
for a slim feminine figure actually disguised a lean and powerful
physique.
 
Maybe it was the booze getting
in the way of the adrenaline, but Hope wrenched away my grasp on her.
 
A moment later, her hands were around my
throat and squeezing.
 
I tried to speak
but Hope’s grip turned my words into a gurgle.
 
Her grip intensified.
 
Pinpricks
of light exploded in my vision as the last breath in my lungs stagnated.
 
I clawed at the hands biting into my throat
but I couldn’t break Hope’s grip.

I
looked into her face.
 
It was knotted
into a grimace intent on squeezing the life from me.
 
Then she noticed me staring and grinned with
contempt.
 
Contempt for me and no doubt
for everyone who’d contributed to her having to whore herself out.
 

“Enjoyed
it, didn’t you?”

I
just gurgled.

“Can't
believe a guy was getting you off?”

Then
she did it.
 
She winked.
 
It shouldn’t have mattered, but it did.
 
There was mockery in that simple little,
gesture.
 
It said look at you, big boy,
could barely get it up for a girl who turned out to be a dude and now that dude
is choking you to death.
 
I’m more of a
man than you and I wear a goddamn dress by choice.
 

I
snapped.
 
Hope had duped me, injured me,
robbed me and now shamed me.
 
There was
no going back on that.
 
I didn’t think I
had an ego, but I did and it lurked in the shadow of that damned wink.
 
I snatched up the Club.
 
Hope was too consumed with strangling me to
notice until I smashed it down on her face.

Hope’s
unstoppable grasp around my throat lessened with the first blow and fell away
with the second, but I continued to rain down the blows.
 
I don’t remember how many times I smashed the
Club down on her head.
 
A dozen?
 
Maybe more?
 
Maybe less?
 
I just remember Lance
dragging me off her.

The
two of us stared at Hope.
 
She was still
and silent.
 
Blood masked the damage I’d
done to her face.

“Shit,
man.
 
What the fuck have you done?” Lance
said, his voice a whisper.

I
didn’t know.
 
I’m not making excuses but
I wasn’t myself in that moment.
 
I just
shook my head in reply.

As
quickly as the rage had taken over, it was gone, leaving me drained and myself
again.
 
I saw things as they really
were.
 
I’d killed her.
 
I didn’t need to check.
 
Her skull was caved in.
 
Scant hair and flesh had given way to expose
a brain bristling with bone shards.
 
My
violence had completely warped her features.
 
It was impossible to tell what sex Hope was under the blood-soaked distortion.

“Oh,
Christ,” Lance said, recoiling from me.

I
climbed to my feet, the Club still in my grasp.
 
Blood and brain was pooling at my feet.
 
Scarlet continued to drip from the Club, pitter-pattering on the
concrete.
 
Gore had rubbed against my
pants, leaving behind condemning smears.
 
I was numb.
 
I felt like the kid
at school who pees his pants in front of the class.
 
When you’re like that, you don’t know what to
do with yourself.
 
The Club slipped from
my grasp, landing in the blood and splashing my shoes.

I
was shutting down.
 
I could feel it.
 
As the realization set in, my systems
switched themselves off.
 
Speech,
movement, thought, all went into hibernation.
 
I simply just stood there, staring at a person I’d killed.

“C’mon,
we’re
gonna
have to clear this shit up,” Lance
instructed.

I
was lucky to have him there.
 
If I
hadn’t, I probably would have stood there until the cops turned up.
 
But seeing him spring into action, his
drunken haze evaporated, drew me out of my shock-ridden stupor.
 
The best thing he did, and I’ll thank him
until the day I die, was he didn’t ask me why.
 
He just took over.

Lance
snatched several sheets of newspaper off the ground and picked up the
Club.
 
He found a plastic bag and stuffed
the weapon inside.
 
He told me to put it
in the Jeep and park the car at the end of the alley, keeping us out of sight.
When I’d done that, I rejoined him.
  
He
was crouched over Hope’s battered form.
 
Luckily for us, Hope’s blood wasn’t spattered as far as I expected.
 
When she’d gone down, she’d landed on a bunch
of trash bags next to the dumpsters.
 
The
bag supporting Hope’s mashed head also supported the slop that had run out of
it.
 
Some days, you’re just plain lucky.

“What
do you want to do with her?” I asked.

“Let’s
put her body in the dumpster.
 
The cops
will know she’s a hooker.
 
They won’t
give a shit
who
did it.
 
They’ll probably pin it on her pimp.”

It
sounded reasonable enough.
 
But when
you’re fucked and you’re looking for a way out, anything sounds reasonable.

I
flipped open the closest dumpster.
 
It
was nearly full.
 
I hoped it meant that
collection day was close.
 
She would be
in a landfill before she had a chance to stink up the alley.
 
I returned to Lance as he manhandled Hope’s
remains.
 
I took her legs.
 
We hoisted her off the trash bags.
 
Hope’s head flopped down under its own
weight.
 
Brain and fluid leaked out.

“Christ!”
I shrieked, and we dropped her immediately.
 

We
tried again.
 
This time, to prevent
spillage, I bagged Hope’s head, but Lance had the unholy job of supporting her
skull.
 
It wasn’t an easy task.
 
Hope might have been tall and slender, but
lifeless, her body was slack, all inherent strength gone.
 
Handling her was like handling a length of
rope.
 
She weighed no more than me, but
lifting a totally compliant mass was difficult.
 
It was called dead weight for a reason.

We
carried the corpse over to the dumpster, clean and jerked like power lifters to
ensure no more of Hope’s brain fell out and hefted her in.
 
We covered her with the trash bags left in
the alley.
 

There
was still the matter of the blood in the alley and on our clothes.
 
We had nothing to change into, so we had to
risk leaving blood on the car seats, but luck was on our side again.
 
Lance’s seats were leather and blood wouldn’t
penetrate the material as much as fabric.
 
Hopefully, a good detailing would eliminate the traces.
 
But we couldn’t worry about that.
 
We’d spent too much time in the alley
already.
 
It was time to haul ass.