text: Cinderella’s Big Score – A Fairy Tale
  
  It just wasn’t fair that I wouldn’t be able. Everybody else could go. I was going to have my photos done for the Skepchick calendar.
  
  Neil DeGrasse Tyson was going to be there.
  
  Dr. PZ was going to be there.
  
  A was going to be there. I wanted to see A the most. I’ve got a little crush on A. I wanted to be naked in front of her. I wanted her to see me, and despair. I wanted to possess that which is A.
  
  When the Economic Incentive was announced, I thought I had it all worked out. It was coming, and I was going.
  
  Only it didn’t, and I couldn’t. Kate and I had worked on finances for days, but it just wasn’t going to happen without that check, and in the meantime, day to day stuff popped up. Even if the check did come, I’d be spending it on tires.
  
  I never got to go to any of the good parties, and the IRS screwing up our check really ripped the carpet out from under me. I’d be home scrubbing floors instead of naked with Kate while A was watching.
  
  I said I’d have done anything to go. Anything at all.
  
  “Anything?” Kate asked.
  
  Uh-oh.
  
  It’s not that I have a problem with doing it for money. What two consenting adults do is their own damned business, and nobody else’s. But it’s against the law, and I’d never done it for money.
  
  “You said you’d do anything. It’s good money. We can make enough for both of us to go.”
  
  “I know. It’s just…”
  
  “It’s just what? Dirty? Immoral?”
  
  “Illegal.”
  
  “So? Fuck ’em.”
  
  “What if we get caught?”
  
  “Stop whining. Get in the shower, I’ll be there in a minute.”
  
  I did as I was told, because I didn’t want to look like a wuss. Besides, shower sex with Kate always made me feel better about everything. I let the hot water pound hard into the back of my neck while I waited. I was thinking about what she had planned, and how I’d even go about finding a customer or two. It’s not like you can just go advertise in the paper.
  
  Kate stepped in after about ten minutes, by which time I was beginning to prune. I stepped toward her, but she pushed me away.
  
  “Not today. You’ve got a long night ahead of you, and you can’t be worn out before you start.”
  
  “Tonight? That was fast! I’m not even sure I want to do this.”
  
  “Too late now. We have company coming, and you’re working.”
  
  “Kate, I think we should talk about it first.”
  
  For the first time since we’ve been together, Kate slapped me in anger. She slapped me hard, right across the face. Hard enough that it hurt my neck.
  
  “Oh no you don’t, you little bitch. You said ‘anything’. I made commitments for you. Commitments to Marines. I gave my word, and you are going to fuck every single one of them as many times as they want you to.”
  
  “Kate! What the fuck is wrong with you?”
  
  I don’t really remember much after that. Having my face slammed into the tile wall was so completely unexpected that I think the very idea of it put me further into shock than the impact ever could have. I remember being on my back at the bottom of the shower at one point, trying desperately to breathe past the water running into my face. Kate held one of my ankles high in the air roughly while she directed the spray of the WaterPic deep inside of each of my lower orifices.
  
  “It won’t do to have them complaining about the smell. Those animals probably won’t even notice, but let’s be sure, shall we?”
  
  I just wanted to wake up. I couldn’t wake up. This had to be some horrible nightmare. It wasn’t.
  
  Kate, the incredible, wonderful Love of my life, had gone insane, and I was about to be rented out against my will like a horse in a stable. I was still dazed and confused, and my head pounded the rhythm of my heartbeat so hard I was sure it would explode. I could barely squirm enough to avoid drowning.
  
  Kate just cursed at me for wiggling, and continued by scrubbing at my body with the nail brush.
  
  “Shit, this thing is too small.” She dropped my leg and threw the brush across the bathroom, and stormed out of the shower, and out the door. Before I could manage to do anything more than get into a sitting position, she stomped back in, clutching the scrub brush we use on the kitchen linoleum.
  
  “Kate…”
  
  “If I have to bruise you, it’s going to look like shit in the Calendar. Shut the fuck up and do what I tell you. I’m already going to have to do something about your face. If you’re lucky, it’ll heal in time by itself.”
  
  I was still too stunned to fight back. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t reason. I was just stuck on “why?”
  
  Kate finished abusing me with the scrub brush, leaving all of my skin red and angry. I was beginning to come around a little more, but still wasn’t with it enough to put up any meaningful resistance. I allowed her to dress me in her favorite black lace teddy, the one she reserved for nights when it was just we two. I wore it for nobody else but her. It had always been special. It had always been only ours.
  
  Looking over her shoulder while she savagely yanked fishnet stockings onto my legs, I zoned out, my eyesight homing in on the red light of the webcam on the desk computer, but not seeing anything in this world really. I just could not wrap my head around what was going on. I had a complete mental shutdown, and could not force a re-boot.
  
  Kate spun me around to tidy up the laces in the back of my teddy, I absently gazed out the window, wishing to be the squirrels chasing each other up the big pine tree in the yard. I averted my gaze quickly when the reflected light from the back neighbor’s roof caught the sun and flashed painfully in my eye. Kate caught my jerking head motion and whirled me back around, snatching my chin to bring us nose to nose.
  
  There was pain in her eyes.
  
  For just a moment, she flicked her eyes over my shoulder to see what I was avoiding, brought them back to mine, and then decked me with a vicious right handed slap. What the hell did I do wrong that time? It wasn’t like I was trying to signal the neighbor guy on his roof. There’s no way he’d even be able to see me anyway, from so far away- not unless he’d been staring directly in our window with binoculars at that precise moment. As she yanked me back to my feet by the hair of my head, I faded back out, staring over her shoulder again, straight through the webcam’s blazing red eye.
  
  The doorbell rang.
  
  Kate grabbed my chin again, and brought our noses back together.
  
  “Don’t you say one fucking word out of the way, pig. Get in the bed where you belong, and do just what they tell you to.” Her eyes indicated the bed, as if I’d forgotten where it had been.
  
  She snapped around and briskly exited the room, after shoving me down on the bed.
  
  Oddly, the only thing I could focus on was the red eye of the web cam and the idiot neighbor on his roof in the 95 degree heat. As insane as it was, they were the only two pieces of reality with which I could connect.
  
  I didn’t know what had gotten into Kate, what had gone so absolutely crazy in her head to bring this on, but for one brief moment, all I wanted was to die. I’d just take Kate’s K-Bar from between the matresses and…
  
  I was awake and fully aware. Some fucking body had finally switched on the light, and I was no longer in the dark. As quietly and as casually as I could, I stripped off the teddy, and nonchalantly flung it across the room. It landed over on the desk somewhere, and I didn’t dare to check if my aim was true.
  
  I slipped into bed on my bare belly, and dropped one arm over the edge of the bed. I closed my eyes, and waited.
  
  I heard Kate telling someone that she’d beaten the hell out of me, and that I’d offer little resistance.
  
  “I was hoping for a little spunk,” came a man’s reply. It was deep and husky, dripping with sadistic evil.
  
  -Oh you have no idea- I thought.
  
  It sounded like there were two others in the living room. I suppose they were waiting their turn with me.
  
  Evil guy groused a bit, but I heard him fish around and then came the sound of paper shuffling. He was making payment.
  
  The doorbell again.
  
  One of the waiters must have opened it, and there was some discussion that I couldn’t catch.
  
  “She’s in here, you’ll have to wait your turn,” came Kate’s voice as the door clicked closed.
  
  Evil guy unzipped. “You like it in the ass, bitch?”
  
  I moaned incoherently.
  
  I could already smell him. He had a disgusting body odor. Sweat laced with something dead, I think. It nearly gagged me as he mounted the bed and straddled my bare ass.
  
  Yelling and cursing came from the living room, one voice at a time silenced simultaneously with a thud and the clack of metal sliding against metal.
  
  Stinky had turned to look over his shoulder, and it saved his life. My slash across his throat missed the jugular, but I have an awesome backhand. Years of tennis lessons. Only the hilt protruded from his ribcage.
  
  He was dead before his fat smelly ass hit the floor. At least he hadn’t bothered to take off his shirt.
  
  The door flung open and Kate came crashing through, automatic in both hands.
  
  “So the silencer works good?” I asked.
  
  “You give the best Christmas presents, Lover.” She halted there. She searched for the words.
  
  “You didn’t have a choice, Kate. You’re forgiven. I love you.”
  
  “When did you know?”
  
  “The webcam and the guy on the roof. I didn’t get your eye signals at first.”
  
  “They were going to kill you.”
  
  “I know. But they didn’t. You saved me.”
  
  “You saved yourself, Janie. I nearly got you killed. They said they would shoot you.”
  
  I smiled a little.
  
  “So. How much?” I might as well ask what they were willing to pay. It was an ego thing.
  
  The best of this week’s blogs by the bloggers who blog them. Highlighting the top 3 posts as chosen by Sugasm participants. Want in Sugasm #136? Submit a link to your best post of the week using this …
  
  The best of this week’s blogs by the bloggers who blog them. Highlighting the top 3 posts as chosen by Sugasm participants. Want in Sugasm #136? Submit a link to your best post of the week using this …