The Tale of Virginia Curtis Ch. 01

[Author note - this story will be darker than my usual, and includes themes of violence and death in addition to non-consent/reluctance. This first chapter is heavy on exposition and setting (without much in the way of graphic scenes). If you would like to skip it, there will be a recap at the beginning of the next chapter. As always - all characters are of legal age and I don't condone any of this fictional behaviour in real life. Seems self-evident, but bears repeating.]

***

"Come listen a while and I'll sing you a song..."

The tinny music rose and the musician turned the volume dial up on the saloon's makeshift piano. Conversations dimmed and voices joined in, the song spreading from table to table.

"Concerning the times -- it will not be long -- when everybody is striving to buy..."

The song was a popular one, and every customer joined in - save for a few surly regulars, who turned their back with a grunt, their fingers fitting into the well-worn dents and grooves of their pewter cups.

"And cheating each other, I cannot tell why..."

Virginia set her tray down and leaned against the wall with a sigh. She knew full well what was coming next, as the song had an unfortunately catchy rhythm. She could already see a few hands slapping thighs, and hear the thud of feet stamping in time.

"And it's hard, hard times!"

The volume rose as drink and shared misery spurred people on. Here and there a tankard was slammed down to punctuate the lyrics, and a brownish liquid spilled over and splashed to the floor.

She glanced over to Jacob, standing at the bar wiping a mug clean. He threw her a side-eye and shrugged with a wry smile, knowing full well what was going through her mind. She hated this particular song for the extra cleaning up it generated.

"From father to mother, from sister to brother, from cousin to cousin, they're cheating each other..."

The voices almost drowned out the music now. One man stood and kicked his chair back, then pushed the reinforced crate that served as a table aside with his hip to create space around him.

"Since cheating has grown to be so much the fashion, I believe to my soul it will run the whole nation, --"

The man hoisted his friend up and pulled him in close to swing around in time with the music, spilling half of his drink as they turned.

"And it's hard, hard times!"

The song carried on for a few verses, and more and more pairs stood to dance, if the uncoordinated writhing and stamping of the drunken mass could be called dancing. Here and there a drink accidentally spilled down a collar threw a spark. Jacob expertly circulated the crowd, extinguishing them with a refill before they could be fanned into full blown fights.

The tempo slowed as the saloon launched into the last verse, and Virginia pushed herself off the wall, mentally mapping her route through the room to mop up the worst of the spills.

"And there's the young man, the worst of the whole; oh, he will tell you with all of his soul, he'll tell you he loves you and for you will die, and when he's away he will swear it's a lie..."

The music stopped, and the crowd bellowed the last few words, holding the last note as long as their drunken lungs could - "and it's hard, hard times!"

Hearty laughter spread through the room, and men slapped each other on the back joyfully. Virginia couldn't repress a smile as she circulated through the room, dodging unpredictable traffic patterns as customers stumbled back to their seats. The song was powerful but fickle: it had the ability to bring a room together, bonding over strife - just as much as it could feed bitterness and bring old grudges into mind. Tonight's song had gone well; she'd much rather be wiping up moonshine than blood.

Virginia wasn't the only one benefitting from the good spirits in the room. A few women leaned over the top floor banister, their breasts threatening to pop out of their plunging necklines.

The Morning Glory wasn't just a saloon - on its own, it wasn't that profitable. The amount of free drinks Jacob had to give out to appease fights on some evenings probably wiped out any profits that might have been made that day. The top floor of the establishment provided weary travellers with a place to rest and recover from their rough travels, and human company to boot...

It was a brothel, no other word for it.

A hand landed on Virginia's ass as she ran an already sodden rag over a table. She whirled around, fist clenched around the soaked cloth.

"Want me to show you a hard time, darlin'?"

Virginia managed a closed-lipped smile through gritted teeth. Suddenly the man spun as Jacob's hand pulled his shoulder back. He leaned in and conspiratorially whispered in his ear.

"You'll find what you're looking for on the first floor," he said, looking up to the girls. There were already fewer in sight as several had retreated with clients into the bedrooms at the back of the building.

"Aw," the man pouted, before taking a final swig out of his cup. "Fine," he shrugged, then tossed his empty at Virginia dismissively.

The man's heavy footfall thudded on the stairwell, and he approached Kitty, who had cultivated her look to mirror Virginia's. It worked well, letting her take advantage of any lust Virginia might drum up on the floor but on which she steadfastly refused to follow through.

He grabbed her ass and once again murmured his pickup line. Kitty giggled at him coquettishly, then grabbed his shirtfront and guided him to a door at the back.

Virginia sighed, working out the tension from her jaw, and looked over to Jacob. "Thank you."

He smiled and shook his head. "No need, it's what I'm here for."

***

"See you tomorrow, V", Kitty waved as she walked down the stairs, buttoning up her oversized coat and pulling her hat down over her ears.

"Have a good one," Virginia replied. She watched the girl weave through the dark, empty room and out into the night. She was unrecognisable, her curves obscured by the bulky clothing and her blonde hair tucked into the hat - a necessity for working girls around these parts. While fucking a whore outside of her brothel was generally frowned upon, there was always the odd maverick or young man who didn't think the rules applied to them.

Virginia dropped a set of sheets onto the pile she was forming on the floor. After tidying up the drinking floor, she methodically visited the back rooms one by one, to strip the beds and clean up as best she could after the girls' work. It seemed even without fights and blood, she couldn't escape wiping up bodily fluids.

She was nearly done. One more room, then she could pop the sheets in the washer - an old, rickety thing that took seven hours for a single cycle and leaked at least once a week. Still, anything was better than having to wash these by hand.

Lost in thought, the sounds of pleasure reached Virginia's brain too late to stop her hand from turning the handle and pushing the door open. The girl in this room wasn't quite done, and Virginia stood frozen at the sight in front of her.

The john was a scrawny, older man with patches of wiry grey hair growing amongst a pattern of scars criss-crossing his chest. He was laying on his back, gripping the hips of the girl riding him - Cassidy, that was her name. She bounced rhythmically, her hands holding on to her breasts. Her jet-black hair cascaded down her back in two pigtails as she threw her head back.

"Oh yes, you're so big, your cock feels so good," she said, her thighs tensing as she kept up her rhythm. Virginia couldn't help her eyes sliding down Cassidy's body, and she noticed with a start that his cock was impaling her ass.

"Fill my asshole up, Daddy," she continued. The man noticed Virginia standing there and he groaned, fingers tightening over Cassidy's hips. She felt it and continued, taking it as a response to her words. "Shoot your cum in my ass, Daddy," she said, then added in a few realistic moans for good measure.

The man locked eyes with Virginia and grinned, revealing disordered teeth. Cassidy kept bouncing, and the man shuddered, grunting as he came, his eyes never leaving Virginia's who stood still, unable to tear herself away. Cassidy slowed, letting him cum inside her, milking the last few drops before sliding off and standing to the side of the bed.

She turned to pick up the man's discarded clothes and raised a questioning eyebrow as she noticed Virginia. "Right, off you go," she tossed the man his clothes. He took them, half dazed, and dressed. Virginia stood to the side to let him through the doorway, averting her eyes with a blush. She was relieved when he didn't push his luck and simply walked past with a chuckle.

"Sorry, Cass," Virginia started, "I thought you were done, I--"

"Don't worry about it", Cassidy called from behind the privacy screen she'd unfolded to get herself cleaned up. "In fact, you probably helped, he was taking fucking forever." Virginia blushed again, and heard the telltale signs of the girl cleaning the remnants of her last client out of her.

Within minutes - the girls were as fast at putting clothes on as they were taking them off - Cassidy was dressed and, like Kitty, had transformed into a different person. Removing her makeup and tying her hair up in a messy bun instead of pigtails had added a few years to her face, and she now looked to be in her mid-twenties.

"You might want to check the wall by the headboard," she advised, "I think one of them missed earlier. Have a good night, Virginia." Virginia nodded and mumbled a reply, her eyes focused on the blob of drying cum on the wall.

***

The sun was well and truly up by the time Virginia pushed her front door open, and she collapsed onto the small kitchen's single chair. Her bag dropped to the floor and spilled open, but she was too tired to care. Her eyes closed and her chin dipped forwards onto her chest.

"Hey, eat something before you sleep," a soft voice chided her. She lifted her heavy lids to see a bowl pushed towards her on the table, and smiled wearily.

"Thanks, Eli," she murmured, pushing herself up and attacking the food hungrily.

Eli smiled and grabbed his crutches, then hopped over on his single leg to pick up Virgnia's bag. "Leave it," she mumbled through a mouthful, working hard to chew through a particularly gristly bit of meat.

"Come on, let me help," Eli said. He awkwardly picked up the few parcels that had spilled from Virginia's bag, and set them on the table. He tried to balance himself with one hip against the table to open them.

Virginia sighed and stood up, then slid the chair behind him and pushed lightly on his shoulders to set him down. "At least sit down, then." She took her bowl and sat on the edge of the single bed tucked in a corner of the room. "I managed to get some seeds, but I'm not sure what they are... Marnie said they're some new crop engineered to grow better out here, sort of a cross between a potato and a carrot. I'll try to plant them next week."

She yawned and scooped the last bits of stew into her mouth, then set her bowl on the floor next to the bed. "Don't clean that up," she mumbled, pulling the cover up to her shoulders, "I'll do it later..."

Virginia rolled on to her side to face the wall. The bed creaked as Eli sat on the edge, and he gently ran a hand over her hair. Just like their mother used to do.

A wave of nostalgia hit Virginia and a lump formed in her throat. She usually managed to hold them back pretty well, but it had been a long night, and she couldn't stop the thoughts swarming her mind. The memory of the last time she saw her mother assaulted her as Eli's fingers brushed her hair.

"Why can't we come?" Virginia asked again, hating the childish whine that crept into her voice.

"You know why, they've just changed the age cut-off for the liveships," her mother replied, patiently answering the question she'd already answered dozens of times. "It's for your safety, yours and your brother's."

"But we're so close, what's two months going to change?"

Her mother smiled and took Virginia's hands in hers. "I know you've always steamed ahead, but this is one fight you won't win. You can't fool the biometric scanners. It'll be just a year until the next liveship."

"But..." Virginia trailed off. They'd been through this before. She knew her mother was right. It just didn't feel right.

"I know," her mother said, reading her thoughts. "Take care of your brother," she asked and put a hand on her daughter's cheek. "I know he's only five minutes younger, but he needs his big sister."

Virginia smiled. The truth was, she relied on her twin as much as he relied on her. She energised him, gave him courage, and he kept her grounded, kept her rational.

"Just think," her mother continued, "the second you wake up from stasis, your dad and I will be there, and we'll pick up right where we left off... except we won't be on a dying planet."

Of course, that wasn't exactly how it happened. When she'd woken up, her parents weren't there - only the blaring alarm from Eli's pod, and an overwhelmed paramedic working on her twin before strapping him to a stretcher and rushing him to the hospital.

Turns out, even the revised cut-off age for the induced stasis hadn't been cautious enough, and Eli's sixteen year old body hadn't taken well to the extended sleep. He'd woken up frail, and while he survived, he'd lost a leg and a lung in the process, and had never quite recovered his strength.

When it rains, it pours, even on other planets, and Virginia soon learned that her parents had died in an industrial accident while supervising one of their construction sites. They'd come over to build the hover-roads: large strips of metal, buried a few inches below ground, providing a basis for the electromagnetic lifts used in most modern hovercrafts.

Administration on a newly colonised planet being what it was, the inheritance paperwork had conveniently been misplaced - and Virginia and Eli began their new lives with nothing but the clothes on their back, and their allocated 40L compartment of personal belongings.

They'd landed up here, in a one-room shack on the outskirts of a town her parents' hover-roads hadn't quite reached. The town was primarily used as a waypoint by the long-distance haulers moving goods between the cities settled around the European colonisation site and the Chinese site on the other side of the planet.

Without the convenience of hover-roads, few ventured out here, and the area mostly housed society's rejects. Even with a curated list of tickets granting access to liveships only to a selected few, anywhere humans settled, they set out to create social hierarchies - and in times of strife, those at the bottom had nothing.

Virginia had been meaning to push forwards, find a larger town trying to make it big, somewhere with families so she could teach or nanny. But Eli was too weak to go further, and they'd been stuck here. They'd been here one - or was it two? - years now, and Virginia could barely keep their heads out of water.

The weight of despair and exhaustion settled over her and she sank into the bed, feeling sleep - blissful, unconscious sleep - sneak up to her. The last words she heard before she let the darkness take over were Eli's, murmured into her ear.

"Happy birthday, Virginia."

***

"I've just learned something very interesting."

Virginia nearly jumped out of her skin and whirled round. "Oh, hello Mister Simmons," she said, holding a hand to her chest to steady her thundering heart. "You damn near gave me a heart attack."

Mister Simmons strolled into the room and motioned for Virginia to carry on. She bent over to retrieve she sheet she'd let go in her fright, and continued making the bed for the evening, keeping sight of the saloon owner out of the corner of her eye.

"Did you know," he continued as he settled into the plush chair in the corner of the room, its fraying edges wispy in the afternoon light, "that out there in the cities, sitting in their ivory towers makin' laws, they lowered the age of consent?"

This was a tricky subject, and Virginia emitted a non-committal noise.

"I mean, twenty was just stupid, no clue how we were supposed to populate this planet that way, but whatever," he waved a dismissive hand. "It's eighteen, now."

"Is it," Virginia replied flatly, suddenly intent on smoothing away all creases from the sheet.

"How old are you again, Virginia?"

"I'm sixteen," she lied.

"Uh-huh," Mister Simmons continued. Virginia couldn't help but glance at him, and saw him stare intently back at her. He sat with his legs spread and his feet firmly planted in the floor, his hands crossed over his growing paunch - business had been going well, these past few months. His steely blue eyes were fixed on her, and their light colour did nothing to hide the darkness she saw flash across them.

"See, here's the thing," he said, now that he had her attention. "You've been sixteen for a while now... little Miss Virginia Baker. The thing is, I've got friends, you see. Regulars, who come here on their way to and from the big city."

Virginia took a step back, fighting the urge to rush out the door, get Eli, and run.

"I had them look you up in the central systems, see. Damnedest thing, they couldn't find a Virginia Baker." A cold sweat broke out over Virginia's back. "They did find a Virginia Curtis who looks mighty familiar."

He stood up and took a step towards Virginia. She backed away and hit the wall. Mister Simmons closed the distance between them in seconds. He wasn't particularly tall, but enough for Virginia to feel small.

"How rude of me," he murmured, "not to wish you a happy birthday... a happy nineteenth birthday."

Virginia stammered, her eyes wide. "I... I don't know... I'm just sixteen..."

Mister Simmons slammed a hand into the wall, inches from her head, and she fell silent. "Don't lie to me. You are nineteen, and you're going to start working for me."

"I already..." she started.

"You know what I mean," he snarled. "I'm getting you a dress today, and tomorrow you'll be working the first floor." He stepped back, plastered his saloon-owner smile on, and straightened his vest. "But maybe you can keep up the sixteen shit, Cass is getting less believable by the day. Hell, maybe we can even pass you off for a virgin..."

He trailed off as Virginia fought - and lost - a battle against the blood rushing to her face. She looked away and ground her teeth. Mister Simmons chortled. "Wait, wait," he said between fits of laughter. "Don't tell me you're actually a virgin?"

Her silence was confirmation enough, and he doubled over as laughter shook him again. "Oh, man, I'm going to make fucking mint tomorrow. I'll have to get you a white dress!"

He left the room without another word, still chuckling to himself. Virginia leaned against the wall and let herself sink to the floor. She rested her forehead on her knees, and for the first time in nearly two years, allowed herself to cry.

The door creaked open and she risked a glance. None of the girls should be working yet, but you never knew, and after last night, the last thing she wanted was another show. Jacob stood in the doorway. A look of concern shifted to sorrow as he spotted the tears streaking down her face.

"Virginia..." Jacob murmured.

Virginia sniffled, ran her hands over her face, wiped her nose on her sleeve, then stood. "Sorry, I'm almost done up here, then I'll go set up downstairs," she said.

"No, Virginia, stop," Jacob stepped up to lay a hand on her arm. "I saw my da walk out of here, he looked... well, I figured I should check this out. Did he...?" Jacob gritted his teeth, unable to complete his sentence.