Harlotsville II: Altar Ego

Harlotsville II: Altar Ego

©2021 Embers X

The rumors started in earnest among the few stray night-walkers of Madison. It spread quickly to those hard-working ladies down in Stanardsville.

By the time the buzz reached the heady back alleys of "Hooville," it already had approached the distinction of common knowledge within the trade.

Even those women inclined towards histrionics found little reason to indulge in gross exaggeration; for those who saw it with their own eyes, the truth itself was quite enough.

As more attestations rolled in, a tone of caution came to surround the news. Good for business, they all agreed, but this was definitely going to separate the gals from the girls.

As the story went, a young man of no particular distinction, with an inexplicably deep wallet, had descended upon their territory with a frightful voracity.

This alone was not particularly newsworthy. Although the enthusiasms of moneyed men enticed some of some greener amongst them, most harlots knew better. The opportunity to "marry out" of the dreaded profession very rarely happened in practice. Certainly none in recent memory had managed this feat of seduction.

This being as it were, there existed a baser reason for all of the chatter. For, it was confirmed, this unnamed man possessed a prick so monstrous that even the humblest calculations tended to strain believability.

Further, he was said to desire extremely long sessions, and require very little in the way of sleep. Either by happenstance or character, he appeared to be roundly undiscerning; he just as soon would patronize a wigged androgyne than he would any natural-born woman.

It is said that he was something of an ethicist, however. Children, however popular and available to him through these same illicit channels, were of no interest to him.

A wholehearted permission, or at least a convincing imitation of one, was required before he went about the business of wielding his tool. With such an insatiable appetite and so formidable an endowment, this proved merciful.

On average, it was said that he bought the favors of roughly a half dozen women per night, and nearly every night, starting very shortly after sundown; each one was patronized for no less than two hours apiece. Only at the cock's crow would he retire, temporarily quelled.

Where he went during the daytime, nobody was exactly sure. Some, presuming a lifestyle befitting of his apparent opulence, imagined that he absconded to some secluded palatial estate. Yet given he was a shade duskier than the weather dictated--a mulatto at best, a yaller at best--nobody could figure how such a situation would be sustainable. And so he remained a mystery.

Through it all, none were more curious about him than Betty.

Like most of the old guard, she no longer held lofty pretenses; wealthy clients are good for a day's pay, not a fairytale ending. But unlike her peers, money itself was only of secondary interest to her.

Having formatively lived within the bound of wealth, she could remember well a time when she'd been blissfully unaware of the earthier world she now inhabited. The real world, she came to call it.

These days, she harbored very little nostalgia. As she now approached the cusp of middle age, her true animating force was purely carnal. Perhaps this rare sincerity explained the fondness with which many of her clients regarded her.

In any case, with her sights thoroughly set on the sinful act and nothing but it, the news about town of this invading young man truly excited her.

And it filled her with first envy, then jealousy, then a slow-cooked form of outrage; after all, "Backdoor" Betty was by now one of the biggest names on the scene. How had this young man neglected to find her? Nearly all of the others in her circle had encountered him.

What offended her most was that the boy seemed well-researched; he had sought most of these women out by name, going on tips and descriptions. He had chosen them. Why not her?

Perhaps it was her reputation; her name was quite literally synonymous with buggery, an act which she specialized in with an almost ascetic exclusivity, and which some men found distasteful.

If that were the case, her hopes would surely be dashed, as over the years she was dismayed to learn that her cunt's design was somewhat abnormal; though its exterior possessed all the rosy allure of the most well-kept specimens, there was a regrettable reason for its virginal appearance.

Being so narrow and shallow, her sex's interior was neither accommodating nor particularly erogenous, with smaller male endowments providing it only subtle pleasure, and ones above that distinction simply unable to fit.

So for Betty, the titular "Backdoor" was still the epicenter of her erotic life. That was an immutable fact of her existence, so if it precluded her from experiencing the man of her dreams, this would be the least troubling reason.

More troubling was the thought that it was perhaps it was her vintage. She was on the more mature end of the spectrum for her trade, although there were women far older than her who claimed to have encountered the man.

Or perhaps she'd been described unflatteringly by a rival or the stray dejected client. There were a few of those in her midst, and she could even seek to punish them if need be.

How awful of a description must it have been, though? This was a man who was characterized as being governed by voracity, not petty details. She had met women far rougher in the face, and far shabbier of figure, who had been touched by him.

Then maybe, given his wealth, the man avoided her for tactical reasons? Try as Betty might to deny her lineage, the Arbach family name was still a politically salient one, and the various fictitious patronyms she'd adopted over the years only sufficed when the audience was uneducated; while this was most often the case, the truth was still out there for those who knew to look.

Any of these reasons brought unique frustrations with them. What was more frustrating was not knowing which one of these were true, if any. Nobody around her seemed able or willing to posit an explanation.

Yet this creeping feeling of rejection did not kill her desire, it only stoked it. "I am Backdoor Betty, after all," she drunkenly whispered to herself as she squatted on the floor, laying in wait for her next client. "Few gals can do what I do. If I only could meet that man face to face, and then face to..."

Hearing its dimensions conveyed from the lips of other women never ceased to fascinate her. It was consistently said to well exceed that of a foot in length; its thickness at full tumescence was comparable to that of a birch's trunk. Even in its resting state, it reportedly swung nearly to the young man's kneecaps. And although the testes were described as being only slightly larger than average, their discharge was said to be of a beastly volume.

What a challenge that would prove! The mere thought made her heart race.

The rest of his description she regarded as unremarkable. His height was, by most accounts, eye-level at best. His physique, wiry as it was, only nominally qualified as fit, and some suggested that he displayed signs of malnourishment--though she considered that drug use may be a factor.

Yet none of those extraneous details really mattered to Betty. Most of the uglier prejudices that had been bred into her had no application in her current life, after all. What did it matter what the man looked like, as long as he had what she wanted?

Maybe, she considered, it was simply a matter of time, and this man was taking his own. Perhaps he already knew of her, and wanted her, but merely was working his way to her methodically. The main course.

How flattering. And there was some credence to this theory; he seemed to move through districts in a linear fashion, exhausting the options there before moving to the next. Once he came through, he did not return; few women had seen him more than once.

If that was true, he'd find her soon enough. The latest reports were from Buchanan county, only a few miles down the path. Maybe he'd find her tonight...

"Mm, imagine that..." she mumbled, becoming more impatient. "Imagine that...!"

If only he were the next John to walk through that big door. Imagine that.

If he did find her tonight, he'd find her here in the Easy Hole. She held considerable sway amongst the prostitutes and patrons alike in this place; her name was synonymous with good business.

Betty looked around the dank, mostly plywood room. Nothing new, nothing interesting. Just a few waterbugs scattering about the edges as usual. And a slow drip from the ceiling that created a rhythmic tip, top, tip, top.

Her mind wandered some more. Despite the rickety nature of the place, she knew that she remained safe here; those girls toughing it out on the chilly Autumn streets risked battery, murder, or worse.

At least at the Easy Hole, she could rely on a modicum of accountability. Her debts had long been paid off, but she planned to stay for as long as they'd have her, for no other lifestyle was fathomable to her at this point.

She grunted a bit as she placed more weight on the Campbell's Soup can beneath her. After all these years, that old trick still proved to be a bit trying. She could not deny that it worked, however. To distract herself from the discomfort, she thought a bit more about the possible ways in which this fabled man could come to interrupt the monotony of her everyday life.

Now, there was a chance he might miss the Easy Hole. Although its existence was a bit of an open secret--even the local law enforcement had a vested interest in keeping the place open for their own discounted patronage--it remained nigh invisible to the innocent eye.

Some of the reason for this was purely architectural; the Easy Hole was expertly concealed far beneath the pub that enabled it, and which it enabled in kind. Thick floorboards covered by visually seamless carpeting properly obscured the entrance. The space itself was far enough underground that one could even hear the rumble of the sewer pipes.

Then there was the fact that the regulars at the pub upstairs had grown increasingly hostile to outsiders over the years. Fights were more common than ever before these days, and their degree of brutality was increasing as well. The alcohol on offer certainly would not draw a connoisseur, nor would the paltry culinary offerings, lest some eccentric literally wish to sample the "saltiest of the earth."

An opulent Negro, strange as the concept was, might still not dare to even come into such a place, especially if he were as scrawny as she'd heard. Then again, any man so mad as to spend his entire evenings chasing whores in the dark alleys of Hooville probably does not have regular mortal fears.

If somehow he neglected to come to this establishment, there were other hopes. She was also known peripherally at La Maison de Minuit, and at 349 Maryland, and even the Rackett, as she had done some work for them all in the past before circling back to The Hole.

She reached up and brushed her shiny black bangs back, opening her kohl-encircled eyes.

Still no new clients.

Slow night, she figured. That would ordinarily be no bother at all. In fact, her shift was ending soon. But what if...

The tin can was more than halfway in now, and whatever unease she'd felt before was quickly vanishing.

"Betty Ann Arbach," what a farce, she thought.

Who had she been, really? Some storybook princess who need only produce a litter of children, and then recede into domestic martyrdom?

That myth had long departed for Camelot. At least Backdoor Betty was real. She made her own way. She had a sense of importance. Of meaning.

A loud, guttural burst of flatulence escaped the tight space between steel and flesh as the can traveled upward still. It did not startle or embarrass her at all, nor did the scent. This was just part of the job, each sensation quite familiar to her by now.

"I wonder..." she whispered to herself. "If I could send for him directly, somehow. Without arising his suspicion..."

In addition to the tin can, Betty was now quite familiar with the glass bottle, which she lifted from its usual resting place next to her mattress and put to her lips. She swallowed a liberal dose of its bracing contents. House gin, the free kind. It wasn't terrible.

Given that she'd developed a natural talent for affecting sobriety, even in the most inebriated state, she was unworried about how she'd appear should the man arrive. Other vices, she had always steered clear of. Betty knew that her looks were her most important asset, and that one addiction too many can destroy a pretty face.

Hers remained relatively intact, save for a widening of the nose, a recession of the eyes, and a slight silvering of the hair along her temples, all of which she deemphasized with an effective use of cosmetics and dyes.

As for her figure, all the changes that had occurred since entering the Easy Hole were more notable. Chief among the differences was the progression of her prized rump. Although its bubbly shape remained virtually unaltered by time, it had since ballooned considerably in proportion, measuring nearly double that of her waist.

Not that her midsection had remained the same; there she had seen a less dramatic increase as well, her once-concave stomach now a plush muffin-top resistant to the constriction of corsets.

This precipitated a shift to her current wardrobe, which consisted of a simple red velvet skirt under which nothing but flesh dwelt. Some weight had accumulated a bit further south as well, thickening her long legs. Despite this, she could not yet qualify as Rubenesque; her height counterbalanced such an effect.

Elsewhere, rare ink could be spotted. A crude anchor-and-heart sat on her right shoulder, while a curled red devil's tail sat on her left. Down her back ran an ornate caduceus. While its intertwined sea snakes were rendered amateurishly, they still transmitted a fitting menace.

She looked up at the wall clock. 3:50 am. It was highly unlikely that the man would come for her tonight, or any man, given that the place was to shut down soon. With a sigh, she began to rise off of her can, feeling it slide from her broadly distended anus before being released with a hollow squish.

"Just as well, I'm tired now anyway," she said to herself wearily, walking barefoot over to the high heels resting by the doorway. She picked one up, fishing through the sole until she produced a small copper key.

"Let's see...how much did we make tonight, ol' Betty?" she whispered as she placed the key in a metal box hanging from the wall and turned it until the lid popped open. "Not bad..." she concluded as she lifted a mess of paper money out of the safe.

Straightening each bill in her hands, she paused to do a bit of arithmetic and then crammed her share into her small leather handbag.

The sum was relatively meager, but that was usually the case on Sunday nights and she'd already budgeted her funds to account for that. It was still enough to cover all the basics, and that's all that really mattered. The rest she placed back in the box and locked it.

As she turned to the door, she finally heard a thump on the other side.

It was not one of the recognizably rhythmic "code knocks" that indicated an authorized client. It was rapid and impatient, and it startled her greatly.

She froze and remained silent, but a moment later the knocking resumed.

She looked over at the cheap landscape painting hanging from the back wall.

Behind it lay the small pegged escape hatch leading up to the back alley. She'd only had to use it one other time in her life, during a raid. Being frequently vermin-infested, it was strictly a last resort.

"Open up!" she finally heard, the banging getting louder.

It was a man's voice, and an unfamiliar one; definitely not the owner's, who in his twilight years had grown too weak to bark and bang with such vigor.

"I said, open up," the voice insisted, adding, "We know you're in there, Arbach."

Betty's pulse began to pound.

_____________________________________________

How did they know? Could it be the press? What did they want with her?

"You have 10 seconds. This is the Charlottesville Mercy Convent, on decree of Mayor Haden. Open the door, Ms. Arbach."

The Mercy Convent? Now Betty was truly worried.

Being one of the only fully literate harlots, she'd read in the papers about the recent overreach of the church in rural districts, but in urban now as well?

She quickly looked back at the painting again. In impressionistic splotches of oil, it portrayed a drab, anonymous hillside. Garish greens and murky browns were slathered haphazardly across its brittle canvas, doing little to excite the imagination. And so it was an appropriate place to hide a passageway, as it did not particularly attract the eye.

Whoever had come for her was not planning to leave without her, and so she decided to make a run for it.

Standing on the balls of her feet, she began to hastily tiptoe over to the other end of the room. If she could just--

WHA-KA-KAK.

The door rattled cacophonously against its sturdy steel jamb.

Though this thick wooden barrier easily kept out common riffraff, this was something else. Whatever breach these men were using was certainly police-grade. Betty knew it couldn't withstand too many more collisions of this magnitude.

"A-alright! Alright!" she relented, realizing that whatever damage was being done to the property might ultimately come out of her pocket.

She rushed to the rope that operated the latch. Yanking it against the pulley, the men were finally let into the room.

"Wise choice," a patronizing, paternal voice quickly informed her from the far end of the room. "Now hold it right there, Ms. Arbach."

She looked over at the intruders.

All of them were dressed in matching white slacks and coats, their sleeves bedecked in obscure badges. They looked almost like naval officers, save for the large silver crucifixes that hung from their necks.

They were all roughly around her age, or perhaps a spot older, with severe eyes and full heads of closely-cropped hair. In their collective hands they carried a hefty, semi-mechanical battering ram.

Betty dearly wanted to scramble back towards the painting at the other end, but she hesitated. If she revealed this getaway to the men, they'd likely report its existence to others. And further, she wasn't very confident that she could escape them now. They were advancing towards her quickly, the leaden ram having just been dropped loudly to the floor.

"P-please, I don't know what you gentlemen--"

"We are here to save you, ma'am," the apparent leader said through an impossibly bushy beard. The man's tone did not communicate auspice, but rather a seething judgment. "Mayor's orders."

"What?!" Betty responded, outraged. Some old flicker of her previous, privileged self could be detected in her voice as she responded, added, "I do not need saving. And you tell Haden that--"

"That your illustrious father's estate was foreclosed years ago? Yes, Mr. Haden already knows," the bearded man interrupted, waving her defiance away. "He knows, because he seized your family's assets and property himself. Rathinger already called to congratulate him."

"Nonsense!" Betty shouted, her ordinarily pale face flashing a deeper pink.

"There is nothing nonsensical about it, Ms. Arbach. You, the sole beneficiary of your father's estate, instead decided to skip town in order to indulge in this...excursion. Quite an odd and regrettable choice given your background, but a choice all the same! Meanwhile, the Earth kept turning. And now here we are."