An intro

I'm not entirely sure to what, yet.  This is more of a tone setter...

I straddle a rickety chair by the window, blowing Cuban smoke into the dense night air, listening to the languid jazz humming from a pub down the road.  The singer’s voice is warm honey down my spine, though her limp-wristed pianist lacks the heft to back her up.

The hotel room is a gaudy affair: all white-wood furniture trimmed with over-polished brass.  A lazy ceiling fan swirls crisp air around the lounging form in the middle of the bed.  The whore’s shallow breath is drowned out by her heavy pulse.  She stares at me with vacant, emerald eyes.  Thick, red hair; child-baring hips; freckles; skin a shade less pallid than my own: What more could an old Irish boy ask for?

My sister once told me I should admire them for the lives they lead despite their brevity.  And I do, I suppose.  The spectre of death looms large over the precious few decades they have, yet still they carry on.  I just wish they’d make better use of what little time they have.

“Take you, for example.  You’re young.  You’re beautiful.  You have, what, five, maybe six decades to play with?  If you’re lucky.  And what are you doing with it?  Opening your legs for any fucker with a fat purse to stick his prick in you for five minutes, slap you around for ten, then stagger home under the illusion of satisfaction to his wife and spawn.”

The fan stills.  Her heart stops.  Cuban musk hangs in the air like a heady mist.  In an instant, to her offended eyes, I’m on top of her: her thick hair curled in my fingers; her wrists pinned.

“Your species,” I tell her.  “You piss away your lives on monotonous ventures, for a handful of paper you’ve been told is important, so you can hand it over to some other feckless shite to hand back a bottle of booze, or an illicit iconograph to help you forget your pathetic, mundane existence.”

She struggles, and I tighten my grip.  Anger flares in her emerald eyes, but it’s tinged with fear.  Yes, I admire her.  I admire her spirit; her passion; her sense of self-preservation.

And I’m disgusted by her wasted potential.

“I’ve seen exceptions, of course: those who’ll put aside their pride for a morsel, or will fight to their end for the life a stranger.  Great minds and great people doing great work for the betterment of you all.  Squandered, because some areshole told you some benevolent ghost says it should be otherwise.”

“What are you?”  The question is choked out through barely suppressed tears; her throat dry with rising panic.

I smile, with a flash of fang.  “You shouldn’t ask questions to which you don’t want an answer.”
That strong heart of hers is now defening.  I feel her pulse run up my arm, filling my chest and pounding behind my eyes.  The fiery hair, pale skin, freckles, emerald eyes: all lost to me now.  There’s only the quickening of blood; the life surging through her; the desperation to survive!  She’s more alive now than she will ever be.

Two hundred thousand million of them in the world: take one away and what changes?  Her family will grieve, and move on.  Her Madame will briefly lament, then replace her.  Her ‘colleagues’ will continue under the same veil of fear that clouds their lowly existence.

I should really stop feeding on whores; they make me maudlin.