Going to Work

Harriett pushed through the broken chain link fence and entered the deserted lobby of the twenty-story McCarthy building. Once a jewel of Detroit, the building now sat broken and silent, a concrete and steel monolith of a long-vanished prosperous twentieth century.

She looked around, tried to ignore the acrid smells of rotting garbage and rodent piss, and spied the staircase. Harriet adjusted her backpack, tightened the laces on her broken-in JordanXT sneakers, then headed to the 8th floor in a measured jog.

Probably should have avoided that chocolate croissant at lunch. Ah well, this'll save me a trip to the gym tonight.

2nd floor. She was already sweating, even in the coolness of the afternoon autumn air. Harriet shifted her backpack from right to left shoulder. Need to go through this pack; probably stuff in there I haven't used for months.

3rd floor. She stopped, whipped sweat off her face, hope it didn't smear her mascara. Should have carried a sports bra and shorts to change into. These sweatpants and t-shirt are too much.

"You are such a beautiful thirty-two-year-old woman," her mother had said earlier that day, sitting in their four-bedroom apartment facing the Detroit River. "Your dear departed father could never see your true beauty, but I always could."

"Thanks, Ma." Dear departed father. If I believed in hell, that predatory asshole would be roasting there right now.

And beautiful? She didn't feel beautiful. One of the scars from the IED ran a faint jagged line from her left ear to mouth. More than one asshole had called her the Joker from those stupid Batman movies.

And more than one person had learned Harriet had no patience for assholes.

"Where are you going?" her mom asked.

"To work, Ma." She'd had this conversation what, a hundred times? At least a hundred times.

"You could quit, you know."

Harriet spread her arms wide. "Who's going to pay for all this? It's not cheap living the way we do."

Ma pouted. "I don't like what you do."

"Sometimes I don't like it either." Which was a lie, because Harriet did. What did that make her? She didn't care.

"Do they ever say anything to you? The men?"

"Sometimes it's women, Ma."

Her Mother's face crunched in disgust. "Don't say that! It's bad enough what you do with men, but with women?"

"It doesn't matter to me, Ma. Men or women; the money is the same."

4th floor. A rat in the corner, gnawing on a half-eaten leather boot.

Harriet feigned a kick. The rat moved and she kicked again, a perfect shot, a crushing blow. The rat twitched, then stayed still, blood running out of its ears and mouth.

Life and death. Always just a heartbeat apart.

5th floor. Breathing faster now. Definitely needed more aerobic workouts. Harriett supposed she could have blamed the shrapnel in her ass that caused pain with every step she took, but didn't. Blame had long since left her vocabulary.

6th floor. Heart racing, thighs aching. Two more to go.

Push it, girl. Time to bring home the bacon.

Finally. The 8th floor.

Room 801. Next to the stairwell. The client will be waiting. That's what her employer had said.

Of course they will be waiting. What else would they be doing?

Harriett opened the door.

It was an old office, devoid of furniture except for a high back leather chair and the man sitting in it. Light from the late afternoon sun snaked through broken windows, illuminated the man's naked body. He was middle-aged, pale skin, bulging veins on weight-lifter arms, genitals fully shaved. Probably paid good bucks to get the junk waxed just for tonight.

Harriett walked to him. Leather straps around his chest, ankles, and wrists held him securely.

Why always leather? Do all these people request leather? What happened to old-fashioned rope and plastic zip ties?

The man smiled, showing off Hollywood white teeth. He had a high forehead, aquiline nose, dimpled chin. Not bad looking in a sleaze-bag kind of way.

"Damn, looks like you got a great body," he said, sizing Harriett up and down like a butcher checking out a prime side of beef. He squinted, starred at her face. "What's with the scar? It kind of makes you look like—"

Harriett's hand shot out, a quick blow to the man's throat. Not hard enough to bust his trachea, but enough to get his attention.

He coughed, gagged, finally caught his breath and laughed in delight. "Damn," he exclaimed in a a raspy voice, "the guys from the service that brought me up here and tied me up said you were the best dominatrix in town, and I do believe they're right!" He jerked around on the chair like an excited schoolboy waiting for the recess bell. "What's next? You going to flog me? Whip me?"

"Something like that."

He licked his lips. "Well go ahead—take off your clothes so we can start this party!"

Harriett sighed. They said this time they were going to tell the client how this works. Which they obviously didn't. She sat cross-legged on the floor with her backpack in front, got out an iPad and a stylus pen, turned it on and pulled up PDF documents.

"What we're going to do next is have you sign these forms." She held out the iPad for him to read. What was that smell? Did she forget to put on deodorant? She was definitely off her game tonight.

The man's eyes opened wide while reading the files. His face changed, like in a werewolf movie, the softness replaced by hard lines, furrows cutting his brow, lips moving from a smile to snarling.

"What the fuck is this?" he spat. "I paid damn good money to have fun tonight, not for some stupid split-tail to try and blackmail me out of my money!"

Harriett hit him in the throat again.

"Now, Mr.—" she looked a the PDF doc—"Valenetti, we are about done talking here, so I need you to sign these documents. Now."

"Or what?" He sneered, shook his head. "Do you know who I am? Do you know what I can have done to you with just one phone call?"

If I had a thousand dollars for every person that asked me 'do you know who I am,' me and Ma could move to the Caymans and leave all this bullshit behind. "No, Mr. Valenetti, I don't know who you are, and to tell you the truth, I don't care."

"Then c'mon, honey, give me your best shot. "He jutted out his chin in a show of false bravado. "I've been beaten up by a helluva lot tougher assholes than you."

Harriett sighed. "I'm not going to beat you up."

"No?" A slight change of cadence in the voice, betraying some underlying small hope. "What are you going to do then?"

Harriett pulled an ankle-length black latex apron and a clear plastic face shield from the backpack and laid them on the floor. She then stood up and removed all her clothes, put them in her backpack.

Valenetti laughed, a hearty guffaw echoing in the empty room. "Damn, girl—you are good! You had me going there with all that blackmail shit." He shifted in the chair. "So, what's first on the BDSM menu? Flogging? Caning? A nice deep sounding?"

All of them. So stupid.

Harriett put on the apron and face mask. From the backpack she extracted bolt cutters, a heavy-headed ball-peen hammer, a staple gun, and three surgical scalpels.

"Since you've decided not to sign the documents, I'm first going to cut off your toes and smash your ankles and kneecaps into bloody dust. If you still haven't signed, I'll remove your testicles and penis and staple them to your forehead. Then I'll take pictures, send them to your family and friends, before proceeding to skin you from neck to pelvis."

Valenetti lower lip fluttered. "Okay, this is too fucking weird, even for me. I want you to cut me loose right now!"

Harriett snipped off Valenetti's distal joint of his right great toe. Blood from the medial plantar artery squirted rhythmically in time to his frantically beating heart. He screamed, a high-pitched wail.

Ear plugs. I forgot ear plugs.

After using the bolt cutters on the next toe joint, Valenetti quit sobbing long enough to let her know he was ready to sign.

"I'm really glad this didn't take all night," Harriett said after sending the signed documents off to her employer. "It makes it so much easier for both of us."

"You're going to let me go now, right?" Valenetti squeaked, tears streaking down his face. "I did what you wanted. Just cut me loose and I promise not too—"

Harriett hit him for the third time in the throat, this time not holding back, shivering with delight at the feel and sound of his trachea cracking.

"Let you go?" She grabbed the bolt cutters and jammed them to the base of his shriveled penis. "No, Mr. Valenetti, I'm not going to let you go. My employer has gotten what they wanted. Now I get what I want."