by Renard, Loki
Again her words are a lash to sting my ego.
“Vicious, you can’t expect me to sit here and take this shit.”
“Oh hush,” Coco laughs. “It’s just my way.”
Her way of being a bitter bitch, maybe. She’s not even old. Maybe thirty or something, and she’s acting like I walked in here in diapers.
“We’ll dye it dark. Like your mister over there,” she says with a finality I don’t care for, picking up her scissors at the same time.
“He’s not my mister. He’s my employer. I don’t want dark hair. I don’t want a cut. Just gimme a wig and…”
“KITTY!” Vicious thunders my name suddenly.
I startle in the chair, making Coco pull her scissors away just in time to avoid accidentally jabbing my spine or jugular.
“That’s enough,” Vicious lectures. “Ms Shantay is an excellent stylist, and you will show her respect.”
I feel chastened and small, like a little girl who just got told off by daddy in front of a grown up. This dynamic between Vicious and I is hard to adjust to. It’s sexual, but not intimate. It’s controlling, but not close. I’m his, but he still doesn’t know me, not really.
Sitting in the chair quietly, I hear the snip of the scissors and feel the strands of hair being set free. It will grow back, I tell myself as I try to hold back tears. I hate haircuts. Vicious wouldn’t understand. The man has the emotional intelligence of a rock.
I endure an hour or so of sitting there sullenly, watching my hair disappear and then having the remainder of it wrapped into foils. I say nothing whatsoever. I listen to Coco’s jabbering going on over my head.
“So I said, look, mister if you’re going to put that in me, I’m going to need at least a hundred extra to refresh my lady glove afterwards, you know what I’m saying?” She cackles and wheels me back over to the wash basin to rinse the color out.
Hair drying follows, warm air blowing unfamiliar dark strands all around my face.
“There! All done!”
I open my eyes and see myself sitting there with deep brown hair, cut into a long layered bob around my face. I liked the blonde. I had fun with it. It drew some attention to me, but not the kind of attention where anyone noticed who I really was. It was perfect. Now I look like I’m ready to start as an intern at a small family firm.
“Thanks. I hate it. “
There is a dramatic gasp. “Whaaat!? You hate it!?”
“It’s perfect,” Vicious says, giving me a dark glare. “And you’re going to pay for your rudeness when this is done, Kitty.”
I really do hate it. Not because it’s a bad cut. It looks good. It looks neat. It looks controlled. It looks… it looks too much like Vicious. Not that we look like the same person, but we look like the same kind of thing. Maybe that doesn’t even make sense, but it’s as if he reached out and transformed me into one of his little pawns.
“You hate it!” Coco flails dramatically. “I do my best, you know. It’s not easy running my own business. It’s not easy being a strong, independent woman who don’t need no man. It’s not easy fighting Marxism on my period! It’s not easy!”
For a second, I’m not sure if she’s serious. Then the moment passes, and I’m still not sure.
Vicious doesn’t seem concerned in the slightest. Coco’s rant continues.
“If you hate it, you hate it. I mean, I can’t make you like it. I can’t tie you down and feed you good taste until you realize this is so much better than that generic blonde fuck me Jesus cracked out whore on the street two dollar make me holler, look you had.”
“What was so wrong with it?”
“Oh nothing,” she says rolling her eyes. “It was fine, totally fine - if you like looking like Fabio’s inbred horse daughter fuck toy.”
I splutter, half-outraged, half-amused. What the fuck is this woman on, and how do I get it?
“My father left when I was two and my mother ran off with a lawnmower salesman. Maybe if they’d loved me, you’d like your hair better,” she flails.
“I… uh…” I don’t know how to respond to that. I look over at Vicious, who is sitting there, seemingly unaffected by this flamboyant rant.
“Maybe I should quit hairdressing and just work in a factory making fake cream snacks for diabetic puppies. Maybe I should join the foreign legion and style some far flung country. Maybe I should go to Africa, become a warlord, sell the Amazon river to Amazon for bottling and just call it a day!” She drops her scissors and bursts into floods of completely dry tears, her shoulders shaking as she sobs into her hands.
“I mean, it’s okay… it’s no… it’s nice. I do like it. I was just looking at it wrong, like, I mean, I don’t know what looks good on me,” I start stammering, breaking into her emotional tirade with one of my own. “My mother and father left me in a fire station, so I know what that’s like.”
She looks up at me. “Oh my god! Did they come back for you?”
“Nope. I was raised by one of the firemen. He taught me the ways of fire, but made me promise I’d only use them for good, not evil.”
Two can play at this game of non sequitirs.
“That is such a sweet story!” Coco squeals, immediately happier.
It is. It’s also a total fucking lie. My parents are retired and living in Florida. My dad was a dentist. My mother was what they call a homemaker, but what I call a Xanax addict. They had me late in life and I don’t hear from them much anymore. They seem relieved to be rid of the burden of having had a child, if I’m honest. I was an eighteen year long mistake they are doing their very best to forget.
Vicious makes a snorting sound nearby. He seems to know everything about me, I’m sure he knows I just told a lie, though I don’t know how much he knows about the truth.
“You and me, we gotta stick together,” she declares brightening. “You ever need anything, you call Coco, okay? I mean anything, girl. I mean, you need a box of chicken nuggets at three in the morning and I will bring them to you, baby.”
Just like that, the emotional storm has passed. The mood has swung. We’re good again.
“It’s time to get you into some clothes that work for you, sweetie. You’ve got a nice little body there!”
The whirlwind ensues once more. Coco grabs me out of the chair, twirling me like Mary Poppins and thrusts me behind a dressing screen where a rack of clothing awaits.
“Hm. Okay. No. That makes your tits look like cannons,” she says. “A breast-line should be soft and forgiving, not the Korean Demilitarized zone.”
I have no idea what she’s saying, and in the end I stop trying. Half an hour of prodding and poking and endless wardrobe changes later, she pins me down in a chair, applies enough cosmetics to cover a small village, then parades me in front of Vicious.
“Very nice work,” Vicious smiles. “Very nice.”
“She’s adorable,” Coco exclaims. “You better keep her close, or she’s going to be stolen. You know what they do to girls like this out on those streets.” She lowers her voice to the loudest whisper possible. “THEY PAY FOR THE SEX WITH THEM.”
This woman’s connection with reality may be somewhat tenuous, but her work is impeccable. When I look in the mirror, I am speechless.
My hair is sleek and shiny and the shape of it seems to change my face entirely. I’m not wearing my usual colored contacts, so my eyes are the non-descript gray I used to loathe, but with this hair color, they pop in a way they never used to.
The makeup, which I’m pretty sure I’ll never replicate on my own, subtly sculpts my face to the point I look like an entirely different person. The clothes aren’t too bad either. I like the leather bolero jacket, and the pants are fitting enough to almost be like my favorite attire, leggings, but with a denser fabric. My feet are clad in flat boots which rise all the way to my knees, dark buckles all the way up the outsides. I look… awesome.
“Wow.”
“You like it?” Coco is hovering nearby, wringing her hands.
> “I love it… but I’m never going to be able to do this twice.”
“Yes you will. I’ll show you! You can come back here every day until you know how to transform into a beautiful peacock… hen.. whatever.. cock you can do cock if you want,” she beams. “I do cock all the time.”
I bet she does.
“All part of your education,” Vicious drawls.
“My education?” I look at him askance. “What education?”
He quirks a brow. “What do you think you’re receiving from me, Kitty?”
“Beatings?” I shrug.
“I’m educating you,” he says, stretching his limbs as he stands. “I’m making sure that your talent has some capacity for success. You do remember the little incident the first test I gave you?”
Of course I remember. He sent me on a delivery. There were dozens of undercover cops waiting for me when I got there. Then he told me I failed the job because I was arrested, which is what tends to happen when people fuck you over and call the cops on you.
“The one where you set me up to fail?”
“I set you up. You failed all on your own, sweetheart.”
“You two are SO CUTE!” Coco squeals. “I just want to grind the two of you up and sprinkle you over my cereal!”
“Thank you for your work, Ms Shantay,” Vicious says. “I’ll send Kitty here tomorrow for her first lesson. Let me know if she gives you any trouble.”
“I. literally. cannot. wait!” Coco gives us a squealing farewell.
I leave her place bemused, not sure how to feel. Her energy is a rollercoaster I couldn’t help but ride, and now I am back alone with Vicious, I feel him calm and stern and grounding.
“So what’s next?”
Vicious checks his watch. “What is next is you are going back to the apartment. I have some business to attend to. Check in with Slick when you get there.”
“Why?”
“So I know where you are.”
“Why don’t you just put a tracking collar on me. Then you’ll always know where I am.”
“Not a bad idea,” he says, his lips thinning. “Now get.”
I’ve tested him enough for one day, so I do as I’m told. My new look makes me feel good about myself. I look badass. I feel badass. I don’t need to cross Vicious and learn that I’m not even remotely badass in that shocking way he has of bringing me down all the pegs that there are.
“No more ride shares,” he says, changing his mind as I pull my phone out to order one. “They’re too risky. I’ll drop you home.”
“Why are they risky?”
“I have to keep reminding you that your life is in danger,” he sighs. “Reducing your exposure to people you don’t know is key. Those apps are essentially a service to call a murderer directly to your location.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s not what they are.”
He opens the door to his car. Vicious never seems to use the same vehicle twice, but he can’t have endless cars, surely. The first time I met him he was driving a white SUV. This is a black Lincoln town car, complete with driver who sits there, wears a hat, and says nothing.
“Get in.”
I get in the car. He gets in after me and once again I am trapped with him in an enclosed space. His energy washes over me, sets up little eddies in my nervous system. I don’t know if I am glad to be with him, or mad to be with him. Both. I feel such a push and a pull for this man. The attraction is intense, but so is the humiliation and at times, the hate. It’s not him I hate. It’s the fact I know I am dependent on him, and without his help, I wouldn’t make it another forty eight hours in this city.
“You do look good,” he compliments me as the driver pulls away. There’s a certain roughness in his voice which makes me quiver between my thighs. That was no idle compliment. That was a statement charged with desire.
There’s hunger in his eyes, the heat we both feel and yet somehow keep denying. Or, he does. I give in every time he touches me. Vicious makes my body come alive, my mind race.
In this confined space, our chemistry ignites.
He reaches across the space between us, caresses my cheek and curls his fingers around the back of my head. He pulls me close.
We’ve never kissed.
I want to kiss.
His eyes capture mine and for a moment I feel the pull of the intimacy that isn’t ours. He’s made me cum, but it was always for his own ends. It was a lesson, a way to break me down. He wields my erotic drive like a weapon against me. Now his lips dance close to my mouth, just barely avoiding brushing mine.
“You look very, very good,” he purrs. “It’s a pity I have business to attend to. You be a good girl today and I’ll see about a reward.”
He’s never rewarded me for anything. This is new territory, just like his kiss would be.
“What kind of reward?” I breathe the question.
His hand slides from the back of my head and he sits up straighter, drawing away from me, his height making me small.
“If you’re a good girl, you’ll find out,” He flashes that bright green wink at me and I melt.
3
The apartment is empty when I he drops me off. Blaze is gone. Slick is too. I’m alone in Vicious’ ornate lair. I wander around. I sit down. I get up. I get a drink. I grab a snack. I wander around again. There’s not a lot to do here. I could watch television, but who does that anymore? I could sit here and wait for Vicious to come back, discover what he does for good girls.
I can’t even imagine him being nice. When I search my mind for something nice he’s done, it’s limited. He’s whipped me. He’s spanked my pussy. He’s belted my ass, but he’s never kissed me or hugged me. He pecked me on the lips once, when I told him I’d be his. That’s the closest he’s ever gotten to affection. We sleep in the same bed, but he doesn’t hold me. He keeps me close and at arm’s length at the same time.
I sit there, and I think about Vicious. What I know about him, what I don’t know about him. The latter column is much, much larger than the former.
What I knew before meeting Vicious was all reputation and rumor. I know he’s powerful. I know he has influence on both sides of the law. I know he knows more about being devious, underhanded, and manipulative than most people. Maybe more than anyone. And I know he seems to think I’m worth saving from the consequences of my own poor decisions.
People, un-named people, want me dead, and it’s because I took a shitty job that ended up killing other un-named people. I thought I could make a living couriering illicit materials around the city and get rich in the process. I was sort of right. I got kind of rich, but I spent most of it on stupid shit, and now I’m here, the ward and sexual plaything of a man I know next to nothing about.
My hunger for him is matched with my hunger for information. I know there has to be info here. Info about him. Info about me. I’ve explored the apartment before and found I can go pretty much everywhere in it but one room that’s locked. He says it’s his office, and of course he says I’m not allowed in it.
Sometimes I wonder why he took me. He said he wanted me to work for him as a courier, but he could use anyone for that. It could be a pretext, but Vicious doesn’t need to bother with pretexts. He seems to think I’m talented, but so far the only talent I’ve demonstrated has been pissing him off and almost getting myself killed.
He isn’t completely wrong though. I do have some talents. One of them is lock picking.
I sit on the couch and I look at that locked door for a very long time. Vicious will know if I open his office. No matter how good I am, how smooth I make it, somehow, he’ll know. I’m almost certain of it. That won’t qualify as good. No reward for me.
On the other hand, Vicious’ reward is less than likely to feel rewarding, and knowing what’s really going on might be worth it. He won’t tell me who exactly died the day I made that delivery. He won’t tell me who is working through the city killing the people I used to work for. He won’t tell me anything use
ful, and I’m tired of the information diet he has me on.
Fuck it. I’m going in. I might not have much time, but I can bump a lock quickly. If I get caught, he’s probably going to punish me again. I’m facing another belting. Or something worse. His whip, maybe. I haven’t tasted that lately…
Oh hell. Am I doing this because I want him to hurt me? That’s fucked up. I need to get a grip on myself. I need to be a normal person and avoid pain instead of letting my fascination with it draw me back to bad decisions over and over again.
As I’m thinking these thoughts, I find myself on my knees beside the office door, two slim pieces of metal in my fingers. He let me bring my picks with me when he grabbed me out of my apartment, leaving the assassin who’d come for me lying dead on the bedroom floor. He didn’t even check what it was I brought with me. At least, not that I saw. He probably does know I have these. He seems to know everything else. I don’t even know what happened to the body. Or my apartment. I should probably know those things, but in one short week, I’ve abdicated interest in my life and given it up to him.
The pins inside the lock bounce off my pick as I slip them up into place one at a time. I used to practice this in my late teens. I downloaded a manual online and I sat in my room messing with old locks I found down at the reclamation yard. My parents said I should go out with my friends, but that summer I was between friends.
That last click is so satisfying. I just love it when the lock turns. The door swings open and suddenly I’m looking into Vicious’ sanctum. It’s a lot more empty than I thought it would be. The office has a desk, which is empty. Shelves, which are empty. I thought there would be books and computers and files and all sorts of information, but there’s fucking nothing.
“What the fuck…” I whisper to myself.
Getting to my feet, I slip into the room and check the desk drawers. They’re empty. A closer look confirms my initial suspicions. This room has been cleared. Here and there, I can see places where things have been taken off the shelves, light rings of dust. This must have been his office at some point, but he’s cleaned it out. Maybe he didn’t think it was secure anymore. Given I’m in here, I guess it wasn’t.
