Refractions, Episode 1: the Prism - part 3

Outside my window, our street was littered with pieces of paper and other trash, the dustbins overflowing. Most of the shops were closed and boarded over. There was a liquor store on the corner, and beside it a Seven-Eleven with a skewed sign. The sign of the “Lovecraft’s” adult shop winked on and off.
Two girls in tight tops and short stretch miniskirts paced up and down the sidewalk in front of the liquor store. They smoked and chatted. A third girl was leaning into a car by the side of the curb, her ass wrapped in leopard-pattern lycra. Then she climbed on board and the car left, the two other hookers calling after her and laughing.
The scene made me smile for its familiarity.
On my way to the living room I did a quick stop in the bathroom to take a piss. Dirty laundry scattered around, the smell of heavy-duty disinfectant. A dildo resting on a rumpled towel, together with an electric hair-curler. I chuckled at the idea of mistaking one for the other, and I dropped the butt of my second cigarette of the day in the WC.

The living room was dark, the thick curtains pulled closed, the air hazy for the second-hand smoke. My mother sat on her stuffed chair, intent on painting her toenails a bright hue of scarlet. Her other leg was stretched out, heel on the coffee table, pieces of cotton pushed between her toes. A thick gold chain rested on her ankle.

The kimono slipping down one shoulder, my mother was smoking and nursing a can of beer. On the coffee table in front of her sat a bottle of nail polish, a packet of Virginia Slims, my Marlboro Reds, a BIC lighter, a large ashtray piled up with butts and ash, a bottle of vodka with two lipstick-smeared glasses, a metal box supposedly containing cocoa, and a baroque glass bong. I sat on the sofa and poured myself a vodka. The alcohol burned down my throat, mixing with the taste of smoke in my mouth.
The breakfast of champions.
My mother stretched her leg out, now resting both heels on the coffee table. She eyed the ashtray and let her lipstick-smeared spent butt on the floor. She picked her pack of Slims and crumpled it in her hand. Empty.
“Can I borrow one of yours?” she asked.
I nodded. I let her pull one from the pack, and lit another one myself.
So I had changed, my mother had changed, our apartment had changed. The furniture was cheap, the carpets riddled with cigarette burns. There was a lot of gold and purple, and the air was heavy with the smell of stale tobacco, cheap perfume, and takeaway fried food. Ashtrays sat on almost every flat surface, spilling out ashes and crumpled butts. A tall pile of lurid DVDs boxes flanked the large flat-screen TV.
The whole world had changed. And I felt at home.

#

There was a quick rap on the door and Juliet entered without waiting for us to answer. She had changed like everything else.
“Hi girls,” she said.
She was still curvy and blonde, but that was all that remained of her old self. Big tits bouncing, hips swaying, she sashayed in, high heels clicking. She wore a blue stretch one piece top that clung to her nipples and a red mini that barely covered her twat, and black fishnets. Her high-heeled platform pumps were the same color of her top. Large earrings dangled from her earlobes, and her face was heavily made up, her lips painted a dark maroon and her eyes dramatically set out by dark eyeliner and fake eyelashes. She had undergone some obvious improvements, from pneumatic tits to plump blow-job ready lips.
She sat down on the sofa by my side with a sigh, and served herself one of my Marlboros. I lit her up. She pumped the cigarette, coughed a deep smoker cough and cursed.
She ran her hand along my thigh. She was wearing fake fingernails, long, arched and square-tipped, painted the same maroon of her plump lips.
“Are you girls busy?” she asked.
I poured her a vodka. “For you, never,” I said.
She took a sip. “Fine,” she nodded. “Do you remember Clive, my weekend john?”
My mother snickered. “The one that likes to have an audience while he fucks you?”
“That’s him,” Juliet nodded. “But it’s me fucking him, remember.”

She took another long drag, and held it in, the cigarette between two fingers by the side of her face. “Anyways, I’m doing him in about half an hour. Would one of you girls come over to my place, and watch while I, “she stressed it, “fuck him?”
I traded a glance with my mother. “What’s in it for us?”
“He’s paying one hundred extra for an audience, you get fifty.”
“Seventy-five,” my mother replied.
“C’mon, Theresa, all you have to do is sit there and watch. I’m offering you fifty bucks just to sit on your ass and jerk off, which is basically what you’d be doing here for free.”
“Clive’s too old for my tastes,” my mother said, tossing her head.
“I’ll do it,” I said, standing and squashing my cigarette in the ashtray.
Juliet patted my ass. “You are a darling.”
“And cheap,” my mother snorted.
“That’s why I’m so popular.”
We laughed.
“Time to put something on and I’ll come over,” I said.
Juliet stood, leaned over and kissed me on the lips.
“Hurry!” she said.

#

There was not a single item in my wardrobe that was not slutty or obscene. Ultra-tight jeans, vinyl trousers and minis, crop tops, stretch tube dresses, stockings, hose, a green cheongsam that was split up to my armpits, leather jackets, thigh-high boots. Violent colors, dirty slogans. And a fair share of fetish gear.
One T-shirt read “I accept candy from strangers”.
After some deliberation I opted for a crotchless black mesh bodysuit, a black vinyl miniskirt with a lot of zippers, and a white crop top that left my underboobs exposed in all their glory, and that read “Touch my tits.”
I completed the get-up with a pair of high-heeled platform pumps, black, shiny. I went to the make-up table and quickly painted my lips, black pencil around red lipstick. Dark eye makeup, and a fake mole penciled on my cheekbone. A few dozens wire bracelets on my wrists, a pair of big vulgar earrings and a clip-on ring on my nose, and I was ready.
I crossed the living room, my mother eyeing me critically. I curtsied, exposing my naked pussy.
She chuckled and lit a Virginia Slim. “Have fun, sugar!”
“You bet your ass!”
She laughed. “And remember to get paid!”
I crossed the landing and knocked on Juliet’s door, entering without waiting, just like she had done before. Her apartment was a a mirror replica of our own, but Juliet had transformed the living room into a scarlet and black fucking palace, with a king sized bed and a mirror on the ceiling, and a bed stand filled with toys for all occasions.
“In here!”
Hips swaying, I moved to the small kitchen. Juliet was sitting by her table. She gave me a nod. As I came closer, she snorted a long line of coke and threw back her head, hissing. I wet my lips, tasting my lipstick.
“Want a bump?” she said to me. She offered a rolled banknote, and poured some more dust on the mirror, making two short lines.
The small part of me that had been screaming when I woke up had been silent throughout the dressing ritual, and as I picked up the rolled fifty, that far away persona perked up with a shiver of curiosity. I bent down on the table, my tits squashed on the dirty surface. I watched my beautifully made-up face in the mirror, and then breathed the dust in, in one sharp snort.
The coke slammed into the back of my head and I was suddenly hot as fuck and invincible. “You should have told Theresa about the coke,” I grinned, handing Juliet back the rolled fifty, my heart racing.

She took another hit.
“Yeah,” she said, massaging her sinus. “The old slut would have crawled here on her nose.”
We laughed. “She would have acted as your public for free,” I nodded.
That brought Julie back to the business at hand. “Clive’s gonna be here in a few minutes,” she said. She handed me back the rolled fifty. I changed nostril and snorted a second line. I felt wonderfully alive. The universe was suddenly perfect.
“We can do it the usual way,” she said. “You wait in the bathroom, and as soon as we get it on, you come in and sit on the chair in the corner. That should help Clive get it up.”
The drug was singing in my frontal lobes. I nodded, and walked into the small bathroom. I checked my makeup in the mirror, I teased my hair, I massaged the side of my nose, and felt beautiful.