Above It All

"I know you didn't want word getting out, but maybe one of our regulars is wealthy enough to buy the place, or have a bunch of us go in on shares." Hilda pleaded, not realising how much she loved her job until it was now I'm jeopardy.

"I'm not gonna put this on one of my regulars, this here's an albatross, I'm happy to let Bananabee's take the hit instead."

"Motherfucking Bananabee's. Fuck me that's bleak. You think I'm perky enough to be an Bananabee's waitress?"

"Sorry Hilda. There's still time for others to put in a bid but I don't see anyone else wanting in on this."

"...Fuck."

...

Hilda sat in her room staring at her laptop, four pertinent windows open as she flicked between them. On one page was the email confirmation of her meeting with a the commercial bank offering her great rates on a business loan when it saw the size of her savings and that she had an unmortgaged house to add as collateral.

The next was the email from Big Mike's lawyers, confirming that the amount she was offering was not the highest bid, but if she could confirm she was going to keep the bar running, Big Mike was minded to take her lower offer.

In another window she had an email from her father, though he didn't know it was his daughter that he was corresponding with. He was outlying the obligations her shell company would be taking on if she agreed to their deal to purchase the derelict Ten Pines Mall site.

Hilda had to choose which lawyer she would be responding in the affirmative to, she could not afford both. If she chose the bar, she could keep turning up and occasionally have a lascivious bet turn against her. But if she went for the mall, through the shell company she could return it to being locked up and derelict so she could go back to sneaking into the ad space. She could retreat back into anonymity, pushing herself further than she would think possible, plus the business was pretty profitable when she wasn't handing money back to enhance her sexual thrill.

The fourth window she had open was the porn site where a familiar video called 'Crazy Bartender strips naked at work' was playing on repeat.

...

Hilda awkwardly finished her pudding as her mum and dad sat in silence across from her. Every normal topic of conversation had been shuffled off limits by the convention of not acknowledging Hilda's most egregious fall from social grace.

Her father would have talked about how local golden girl Macy had surprisingly lost the election for probate judge, but then he would have to acknowledge that the voters turned against her when a scandal broke because she turned up in the middle of a humiliation porn video to be spiteful and malicious to Hilda as she was naked and bound outside her bar.

Her mother could have mentioned how nice it is that Hilda now insisted on paying for them when they went out to eat, even if it was just a visit to Bananabee's. But then she would have to acknowledge the rumours that swelled about how she was making her money.

Her dad couldn't even talk about the latest difficulties with the legal status of the Ten Pines Mall, having put two and two together on the stories he had heard about Hilda and the stories he had heard about the Ten Pines ad space.

Given the circumstances, her mother certainly didn't want to talk about if she had met anyone special or if she was planning to raise a family.

Hilda relished the awkwardness, in her mind it was the ultimate victory, her success in chasing a dream and getting paid handsomely for it didn't require her to become someone her parents wanted to be, someone like Macy. They couldn't argue she wasn't successful, but they also couldn't acknowledge it because she did it despite their disapproval.

"This was fun." Hilda acknowledged, placing her card on the tiny tray and letting the waitress go through the rigamarole of taking it away only to bring it back inside a card reader.

"Are you... um... working tonight?" Her mother asked.

"Looks like it. It's nice that I don't have to work every day now but sometimes I have to pull a shift and tonight looks like one such occasion." Hilda remarked while checking her phone. She shared the awkward hugs with her parents then strolled out into the car park where her Harley was waiting for her.

...

Hilda took her familiar route, to the business choice she had made and stood by every day. She turned the corner on her bike and a grin crossed her face as she once again saw the big neon sign, rechristening the biker bar as 'Hilda's'.

There was always some commotion whenever Hilda visited her bar, there were many reasons she could be visiting, she could be there to do some accounts or cover shifts of absent employees. But if everyone was lucky she could be there to indulge the unique premise she had given her bar.

The bartender nodded at her, Hilda had no idea where some fellow freaks had come from but the bar was now fully staffed with people with similar sensibilities to her. Behind the bar and offset so as not to get in the way of serving drinks, each bartender had a table, matching up the colours of a spinner wheel with a kinky punishment, usually completing their shift in a state of undress or going through a humiliating ordeal. Every 1000th customer for that specific bartender would get to spin the wheel.

Beyond that there was one more board that occupied everyone's mind. Hilda's board. After every 10,000 customers one lucky person would get to spin the wheel to see what the owner of the bar would do for their amusement. Hilda had deliberately picked the most extreme scenarios for herself.

Red: Hilda does a shift as a naked bartender and gives all earnings from that shift to the customer.

Orange: Hilda spends a shift handcuffed naked to a toilet in the men's bathroom.

Yellow: Customer gets to drive Hilda naked on the back of their bike for ten minutes. When ten minutes are up, Hilda gets off and has to walk back to the bar.

Green: Hilda gets a tattoo of the customer's choice.

Blue: Hilda is the customer's slave for 24 hours.

Purple: Customer gets to destroy Hilda's clothes, phone, wallet, keys, and any other possessions she currently has on her.

Pink: Hilda now owes the customer $1000. She is not allowed to pay them directly and must instead perform services for others, from which the customer collects the fee until her debt is paid off.

Black: All of the above.

Hilda let her glance linger on the board for a moment before heading over to the bar.

"Busy night Deb?"

"Every night's a busy night with your... loyalty rewards." Deb replied, she had been the most surprising discovery, always seeming so no-nonsense in their conversations between shifts and yet Hilda had now seen her volunteer more more exposure then she ever thought of her long time coworker. "You here for that?"

Hilda checked the app that Derek's tech guy had built into the sales system to track this crazy promotion and its progress.

"Between you and me, that guy you just served was customer nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety four." Hilda whispered in Deb's ear, her stomach churning in anticipation.

"Well I better call the babysitter because this is going to be a hell of a night and I'm not going to miss any of it." Deb remarked.

"Hilda!" Derek announced as he approached the bar. "Good to see you again, have you heard the news?"

"Got to be more specific."

"The old Ten Pines Mall, someone else bought it and then went bankrupt before they could do anything with it. But whatever work they did has meant that the adverts in that room above the freeway are back."

When Hilda decided to buy the bar instead of the mall, the next highest bidder was a private prison company who thought the remote location could work to their favour. They put a sturdy wall around the perimeter then did not get the contract they wanted to actually house prisoners. With the building resecured all Hilda needed to do was take a hacksaw to the police door locks and she was able to restart the old business of renting the ad room for fun and profit.

"What do you think? Should I put another banner up there?" Derek joshed.

"You'd have to wait in line. I got a special advert planned for the bar that I'm sure the person in charge will want to put up."

"Looking forward to it. I was thinking we could have another bet, after all..." Derek's thought was interrupted as a blaring siren went off above the till. A biker looked confused for a moment then a big smile crossed his face as he realised the siren meant he was the 10,000th customer. Hilda broke away from Derek without a word to talk to the lucky winner.

"Congratulations, you are our 10,000th customer. Please step forward to spin the owner wheel." Hilda announced, moving the man over to the wheel that had made this bar famous. She gave him a kiss on the cheek, then stood back and watched as the wheel spun.

This moment; the blur of colours and the rapid clicks of the pointer echoing through her mind, the tingle of excitement in her belly as she awaited her fate, the overwhelming sensory overload of imminent humiliation, this was all Hilda Grimsdottir lived for now.