Post by TABOO on Jan 1, 2010 20:10:22 GMT -5
P A R D E S U
Chapter One :: Love For Sale
The life of a prostitute was a sleazy one no matter how you looked at it; selling your body to anyone willing to pay for it, living off of anything you happened to find, cutting corners and dealing in the alleys and back streets, running from the law at almost every turn. One might think that such a place could not be found in beautiful Florida, with its clear water beaches and huge, fancy hotels along the coast, housing millions of tourist every year. But they’re there, to all of those willing to look. Behind the extravagant buildings and tourist attractions were the darker places, the place where only the basics were needed, where drugs, sex, and money were the only things that mattered.
It is here in which our story starts, with the prostitutes and junkies and pimps and dealers, masters and slaves to the three essentials. They were struggling and fighting to survive and at the same time hiding and wasting away. Things were hard; sometimes they did it to themselves, sold their lives away to the addiction, and other times they were forced to, being trapped in the ring by poverty.
Here hookers were the underlings, the slaves to their pimp. They slept in warehouses all together to keep warm, bathed in the sink of random convenience stores, often owning nothing but the clothes on their backs. They were sad, pitiful souls, their lives wasted in filth and grime. And that was why Alexander Dalton, a very well off man from the upper class, made a very interesting decision.
He had been watching these people, not in disgust, but in almost pity, as some of them wore out with time, disappearing almost as if they never existed and as others faced each day head on, never giving up no matter how bleak it looked. It was these few, the headstrong, pretty little things that had more life in their little worn bodies than most rich people had in their entire life, that he pulled aside.
Paying for them as if he were a customer, the man waited until they were in privacy to offer them a one-time, make-it-or-break-it deal. He said to them that if they agreed to leave this filthy life, to leave their current pimps and come to work for him instead, he would share his home with them. He would give them their own room, provide them with clothes, and allow them to go out as normal people as long as they continued to bring in money.
Now Alex was no fool; he knew his home would not hold every whore there was, but he could pick twelve lucky ones to bring home with him. But then he also knew that the ones he did bring home, he could not spoil. They were still his employees and to get what you wanted from your employees, a few rules had to be laid down and strictly kept.
His ‘escorts’ could not be allowed to have public relationships, for what he was doing was still illegal and getting close to someone meant providing them with information that could prove to be presented to the authorities. For the same reasons, they could be allowed friends outside of the estate. Customers could only be allowed access to the estate after an ‘employee’ had been with them at least three to five times, for a certain amount of trust was needed before the location could be given out. And of course, all earnings had to go to him; as the head of the house, he had to make sure everything was paid for. If they needed something, they could ask for it.
He would have to learn how to be a pimp, to be feared and respected at the same time, if this was going to work. He had a lot of work ahead of him.