fiction

It was now February 2022 and a real winter had came to Toronto for the first time in recent memory. It had arrived over the course of two days during the last week of January. The snow had been piled high everywhere. There was no street parking available and the kids got not one, but two snow days as the city was so unprepared to plow it all away, that it really wasn’t very safe to travel. It was a lot like a real winter, similar to those I remember from my youth. This one had shown it was still possible in this era of warmer and warmer winters due to climate change. Then surprisingly as the usually coldest month showed itself, the temperature turned above zero, the sun shone shrinking the mountains and then for a few hours over a few days drizzle fell from the sky, helping the large snow banks get even smaller while uncovering the detritus that had been shovelled and eventually plowed into the now dirty piles.

Dyanne had been working the stroll off Gerrard near Jarvis on and off for a couple of years now. Not right out in front of “Hooker Harvey’s” but up the block of side streets off Mutual St. This used to be a good drag to ply her trade but the area had changed a lot over the years. The best dance floor in the area, at The Barn had shut down so many years ago. For a queer bar it had certainly brought a lot of straight boys and did they like the treat Dyanne had under her short leather skirt and for the most part were willing to pay for it with cash, though sometimes drugs or drinks was all it took. She would park her self on a stool on main floor bar, at The Stables on a Friday night, maybe do an E, a couple of lines of Charlie or at minimum a few tequilas with orange juice and like flies to honey, the boys would be drooling for her long legs and what she had between them. One summer she was in such demand that a few parking lot fights broke out over who got to blow her. Suburban gym rats looking in the open for the thing they were ashamed of. All that was in the past and now she was lucky to turn a couple of quick tricks over the course of a long dark February night.

The thirty something guy rode up on a mountain bike, in the snow. She thought it might be one of the newer ones that were electric, but couldn’t be sure as they don’t make any noise. Since you can’t do business on the back of the seat of a bike, she had him leave his giant Uber Eats bag on the back of it and led the overweight slovenly dressed guy over to the loading dock. It was late and secluded and she knew the spot would be discreet enough for what he wanted.

Taking the two twenties from him she lightly pushed him into the corner around the far side of the loading dock. Several years ago trucks would have been coming and going from this spot all night, when the place was a distribution point for a janitorial company. The company had been forced to relocate, as the beeping trucks were disturbing the peace of the new residents of the condos that had been springing up in the increasingly gentrified downtown core. It was deserted now as she positioned them between the metal ledge and the wall. She folded the cash and in a quick motion, slipped it into her bra. She had learned long ago to never let a trick see where you put the cash. No buyers remorse or refunds allowed in street business.

Simultaneous to pulling down the zipper on his green plaid pants, she lowered her self into a squat with bent knees and fished his warm, sweaty, half erect cock out, while gently squeezing the shaft. She expertly popped a cola flavoured condom into her mouth before sliding his now fully erect member into it. With one hand pressed firmly against his chest, the other cupping his exposed balls she moved her head forward and back, when suddenly he started violently bucking while a long, loud guttural groan sounded in her ears, raising her eyes and looking up she could see his eyes wide in terror and fixed to the right, looking towards the loading dock.

She leaned back on her heels, as she rose, while he quickly bent his torso forward, pulled up his pants, squeezed around her in a surprisingly quick motion and ran screaming away towards his parked bike. His screams echoing against the two walls of the loading dock corner as she watched him hop on the bike and pedal out of sight. Dyanne, herself now wide eyed and completely spooked from the trick’s response looked towards the snow topped loading dock and saw four dirty fingers of a large male hand, crooked, bloated and bruised sticking out from the tightening of the semi melted snow. They appeared to be reaching towards her, spectrally. The wall mounted high pressure sodium light above to her left, cast a yellowy and creepy luminousness over the scene. Looking beyond the fingers, she saw a scraped knee, a bloody chin and what appeared to be a clump of peroxided hair also sticking through the snow. Had she floated above the scene, she would have seen the outline of a person, frozen in a full body grimace, slowly revealing itself as the snow melted away.

Dyanne looked away and slowly backed herself from the gory scene, as if it was a movie monster ready to pounce from a melting glacier. Turning swiftly she got as far away as quickly as she could, without actually running. She made her way south and still shaking, stopped at the ESSO gas station at Church and Dundas. There on a corner of the lot, she stood in front of the pay phone unsure if she should call it in. It was an open outdoor phone, face and receiver covered in tags, E3 in silver marker being the most prominent. After a few moments she picked up the receiver of the filthy looking phone. Tapping her right foot she dialled 911, the only number available without inserting coins.

The voice of the bored sounding operator turned to annoyed when she declined to provide her name. Though she did sound genuinely concerned when Dyanne explained the reason for her call. All the while she was focusing on her breath as she had learned to do at a 10 day Vipassana Meditation retreat she went to last summer. This helped to prevent her from hyperventilating and having a panic attack. Hanging up, she wandered south to the 24 hour Rabba, just past Shuter St. She was in some kind of dissociative state, when she bought herself an Orange Crush. As the sickly sweet flavour always reminded her of happy times at Wasaga beach as a child during many summers past, it helped bring her back to the present. She now felt calm as she walked back up Church St., to the bachelor apartment she shared, with another girl that worked days at a rub and tug spa on Yonge Street. They had become close, living in the tight quarters and took shifts on the double bed when the other was at work. Unlocking the apartment door Dyanne was looking forward to a long bath and getting into the warmed and empty bed once Yolanda woke up in an hour for work.

Donna ran into the bathroom screaming, “You fucking Bitch, who the fuck do you think you are” and smacked the woman sitting on the toilet across the face.

Gwen, was shaking, a turd still half inside of her and half outside of her as she jumped up in an attempt to flee from the unexpected intrusion. There was no exit with the other woman in front of her. In a movement that defied reason, but was her only option, she swung her torso towards the bathtub and tripped as her pants were tangling her legs. The sound of her face hitting the porcelain, made Donna grimace but did nothing to curb her appetite for violence or the anger that was coursing through her.

Holsten point the converter towards the TV while pressing the volume up button to drown out the yelling from the bathroom. In the darkness of the room, he was bathed in the flickering light of the badly acted action movie bouncing into the din from the large flatscreen attached to the wall opposite where he slumped low on the beige couch. He was wearing boxer shorts and a torn stained sleeveless Metallica, Master of Puppets t-shirt. He knew better than to get involved in “woman business” and simply reached to the side table for his half empty can of warm Labatt Blue, while dropping his cigarette butt, burnt to the filter into the empty can of Blue beside the one he was drinking from.

“You stupid fucking twat, thinking you can blow my man for a couple of rocks”, Donna hissed as she reached forward and grabbed a handful of the crying woman’s hair.

Gwen went limp, tears streaking from her eyes overly caked with mascara , running like an oil spill down her ruddy cheeks. She had managed to kick off her pants. She wasn’t wearing any underwear, hadn’t in several years due to a cyst near her anus that she was far too afraid to go to the doctor to find out what it was all about. Her white crop top, with a large CK, in black ink in the centre of her chest was the only thing now covering her emaciated body.

Donna was pulling the unresisting woman out of the tub, her greasy hair, rope like in Donna’s hand, the younger woman’s feet flipping against the slippery porcelain like a cartoon character trying to get a grip on a sheet of ice.

Donna was a hard woman, 15 years on the pipe, she finally got clean of it by switching to IV meth use. She didn’t give a shit about too many people, including the fat fuck in the other room, though he did have his uses, the occasional fuck with his beer can sized cock and he was at least good to make the rent, by the first of every month. She was so tired of being disrespected by these street creatures that showed up when she was out boosting clothes and jewelry from the Eaton Centre, so that she could pay for her need for speed. Holsten sat around all day waiting for the trash to show up to buy 10 pieces. He then put most of the profits and then some in a glass stem and toked until he was just barely even, the stupid fuck. All these street bitches knew Donna was with him, but that never stopped them from knocking on the door and pointing their pale toothless cocksuckers at him and since he was a man, she really didn’t expect much different from him anyways.

As she pulled the cowering girl out of the tub, she sort of laughed and muttered to herself, but at the same time started feeling bad for her. Not necessarily enough to stop abusing her but enough to feel for her a little bit. She too had done some terrible things over the years for drugs, for money, for a place to crash, she had been in her shoes, she had been naked and desperate, hated, beaten, abused in all sorts of ways.

Donna let go of the girl’s hair and slumped down against the closed bathroom door. She was exhausted from a 72 hour run and the blood dripping from Gwen’s nose made her want to puke.

“Put your pants on and go”, she said in a low defeated voice, almost a whisper, almost a plea, as she lowered her head and started to weep. Big throbbing sobs tore through her no longer youthful body, ravaged by so many years of every kind of abuse. She hated herself so much, she hated being stuck in this god forsaken city, knowing these horrible people, living with the fucking cowardly man in the next room.

Gwen wasn’t sure what to do after wiping both her ass and her face and then pulling up her pants, as Donna was blocking the only exit. She asked in a soft voice, “you okay, hon?”. Donna lost for a moment in her grief, looked up at the now dressed girl and didn’t know what to say. She tilted her head and while fishing her right hand in her purse that lay open on the floor asked, “you wanna smoke a joint”. Gwen nodded and slid her back down the wall, tucking her feet towards her ass, knees in the air and also exhausted she rested the side of her face against her left leg and looking at the older woman said “I’m Gwen, what’s your name?”