I know the girls do this stuff. I’ve walked in on it four or five times over the last few months since I started working at Crystal Lake, and I don’t know why seeing Sunshine sucking the guy’s cock makes me pause with shock. Maybe it’s the look in his eyes—almost bored, like he can’t wait for it to be over—or maybe it’s that Raven’s taking off her top and getting down on her knees and joining in, sloppily licking his shaft as she takes him into her mouth, her big lips wrapped around his tip. His dick’s big and it stretches out her mouth as Sunshine starts to lick his balls, and the guy grunts once—before looking up and meeting my eye.
Time stops. I can’t move my legs. Raven’s working his tip, sucking hard and fast, and Sunshine’s happily licking at his balls and shaft, and the guy’s looking at me with a curious frown, and some voice in the back of my head’s telling me to run away, run away, he’s going to hurt me if I don’t get the fuck out, but I can’t move my legs. He’s a predator, a beast, a monster from the darkest forests, the kind of creature that only exists in stories and fairytales, except this one has been reborn into the gigantic body of a deadly man that apparently needs two gorgeous strippers to pleasure his massive cock.
He gestures at me. “Drink.”
That breaks me from my stupor. I hurry over and lower the tray as Sunshine glances up. She grins and strokes the guy’s shaft while Raven sucks him faster, bobbing up and down with a surprising grace, and I wonder where the hell she learned to do that—I feel a momentary spark of jealousy at her technique. They don’t even hesitate when I get close since this is just part of their job, after all, and I’ve seen both of them doing stuff like this before though never at the same time.
The guy takes the drink. He tosses a folded-up fifty-dollar bill onto the tray and my heart races wildly as I straighten, about to leave, but I can’t stop staring as he brings the glass to his lips and takes a long drink.
Time stops. The earth ceases its rotation. I can’t pick up my legs because they don’t work anymore. I stare at his full lips as he licks them and swallows, and he frown’s ever so slightly, looking at the glass with a curious expression, and I’m positive he knows what I did and I’m about to be caught and killed in the most brutally horrible way imaginable, he’s going to rip off my skin and make me eat it all and only when I’m suffering peak levels of agony will he finally put a bullet in my head—except Sunshine seizes the moment and takes the guy’s cock all the way into her throat which elicits a surprised grunt from his masculine mouth, and it’s like the drink’s totally forgotten. He takes another long sip and I turn, hurrying out of there like my life depends on it.
Because it does.
I shove the fifty into my waistband with the empty plastic baggie and stand outside of the door with the tray against my chest, breathing hard, freaking out. More sweat stipples my skin despite the fact that I’m basically naked and the air conditioning is pumping hard.
Never in a million years did I picture myself in an outfit like this working at a strip club like Crystal Lake, but here I am, doing things I would’ve said were impossible a year ago, all because my life came to an end ten months back and I’m still dead, barely more than a walking shell of the girl I used to be, and she’s never, ever coming back.
Which is why I can take these risks: even if I fake it and end up murdered, just another dead girl for some podcast to investigate, it won’t really matter because the girl I once was, the girl with some semblance of naivete still intact, with some innocence and purity and all that good-girl bullshit, that girl’s long gone.
Normally right about now, I’d go check on my other rooms, and I can’t risk looking too suspicious, so I force myself to go through the motions. I take orders, fetch drinks, and time slips past: five minutes, ten, fifteen. Finally, twenty minutes after first poking my head into room three and handing over that drink, I’m in the hallway with anxiety coursing through my body like teeny tiny little sledgehammers in my veins when Raven comes stumbling out with a wild and terrified look on her face.
She runs over to me, her top clutched against her breasts, and she grabs my arm with her free hand. “Gracie, Jesus fuck, you gotta come quick. I think he’s dead.”