Dottie finished the last of the plastic bottle whiskey and wiped her mouth triumphantly smearing fuchsia lipstick across her cheek. It had been a rough weekend, and she required severe fuzzing of the brain if she was to sleep without twisting her last two dangerous episodes into nightmares. Bree would be home soon, and she needed her to clean and bandage some large, unreachable scratches across her back. They felt open and angry and fresh; dots and thin lines of blood stained her favorite white semi-see-through strapless bandeau top.
Dottie wouldn’t be able to work until those wounds closed up. Tramping the Boardwalk with obvious bruising or open lacerations was an invitation for more.
Neither she nor Bree worked with a pimp. Although they provided a modicum of protection, those thieves stole over ½ their earnings and usually controlled with fear and a very large knife. Dottie would rather take her chances with the johns and packed her own weaponry. She practiced nightly with Ninja Stars, throwing them accurately at plastic garbage cans in the alley. She killed a man once. He didn’t know what hit him in the neck until he stupidly removed it and bled out from his sliced artery. Dottie stood pantiless above him, legs spread in clear plastic pumps and laughed.
She chuckled even now at the depraved violence.
Bree exploded into the room. “Toss me that fucking bottle! You won’t believe the night I’ve had!”
“You need a lude and 4 or 5 episodes of ‘Teletubbies’”. Dottie was slurring and almost started to cry. “Darling, it’s gone; I’m sorry. Look at my back.”
“Fuck.” Bree grimaced, inhaling sharply whistling between her teeth. “Christ. What did he do to you?”
Dottie got blazingly drunk before every work night. It helped her enjoy her occupation more fully. She had been riding on top of her most recent client and got carried away. After slapping him viciously across the face for fun (it seemed like a good idea at the time), he began to rip at her back, first with fingernails, then with the tines of a fork from his room service tray. She escaped quickly collecting only her initial $38; she didn’t have time to rifle though his gambling winnings or obtain $200 for the fuck.
“I’ve blacked out before and never woken up ripped to shreds by a fork,” Bree sympathized and gently sponged the crusted blood off Dottie’s gashes, “Punched in the face, yes, but a fork? Sick fucks in this town. We need to go to Mexico.”
Dottie curled up knees to chest in her happy place while Bree stroked her hair to the side smoothing salve on her back. This was going to scar if they didn’t take care of it. It was going to scar anyway; Dottie would remember this atrocity despite her drunken state.
“I love you”, whispered Bree, kissing her lightly on the forehead.
Dottie was already sleeping peacefully dreaming of fuzzy pink and purple alien animals next to the lake of whiskey.
Bree slunk out the door to re-earn the $200 they needed to survive another day.
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