For instance, because the Naggians have to consume blood to survive, that’s actually one of their favorite flavors for foods, too. And let me tell you, Naggian blood flavored noodles are trulynasty. They have this intensely bitter, metallic taste that fills your mouth and takes forever to get rid of. Zero out of ten,cannotrecommend. But you can generally tell when anything is blood-flavored because the packaging is dark blue, which is the color of Naggian blood.
So that’s my hole—that’s the whole thing. I’d been living there, in cramped, third world conditions, for the entire time I’d been on O’nagga Nine. Despite all the things I had scavenged to brighten it up, it was a horrible, depressing place.
I knew if I gave in and started selling my ass as well as my blood, I could probably afford a much nicer hole. Maybe I could even get an ion shower of my own and a hotplate that hadtwoworking burners and a mattress that wasn’t stuffed with hay and didn’t smell like urine.
Yeah, I knew all that, but I still couldn’t bring myself to actually do the deed. It wasn’t just my pride, either—it was the way I felt about Naggian men—or really, about men and sex in general.
See, I’ve never enjoyed sex very much. Or to tell the truth and shame the devil, as my Granny always said—I’ve never enjoyed it atall. Even when I was back home on Earth, spreading my wings in college and trying new things, I just couldn’t seem to find a man who pushed my buttons.
At first, I told myself my sexual dysfunction was due to all the guilt I was carrying from my strict Baptist upbringing, but eventually I had to acknowledge that maybe sex just wasn’t for me. I mean, I could do it—it didn’thurtme or anything—but it didn’tdoanything for me either. I felt absolutely nothing when I was with a man—it was like I was wrapped in some protective insulation that no man I had ever been with could get through.
It was incredibly disappointing for me—especially considering how much my Mama wanted grandbabies. I was my parents’ only daughter and they desperately wanted me to “settle down with a nice boy” and start pumping out the babies. Mama actually cried when I told her I was going into grad school.
“Now you’ll spend all your time getting that fancy degree and you’llneversettle down!” she wailed.
I had tried to comfort her, but the truth was, she was probably right. I had no wish to settle down with some man I didn’t even love. And how could I fall in love if I was never sexually attracted to any man? Come to that, I wasn’t sexually attracted to women, either. I was basically asexual.
By grad school I decided to give up on trying to find someone and just concentrate on my dissertation. Then after that, I could teach at a university somewhere and eventually make tenure—academia, I thought, would be my whole life, since a husband and babies weren’t in the picture.
But once I ended up on O’nagga Nine, I found that my lack of a sex drive was a serious impediment to being a sex worker. It was hard to act sexy and enticing while showing men my wrists when I wanted nothing to do with them. And taking that next step from selling my blood to actually selling my body seemed impossible and more than a little repulsive.
So I stayed in my dingy little hole and made the most of things, hoping and praying to someday find a way back to Earth. It was the only option available to me.
That morning I fumbled for the half-eaten tube of nutritional paste and found there was less of it than I had thought—I must have eaten more than I had meant to the night before. I got sohungryhere, though! Being in the constant, biting cold worked up quite an appetite and I craved soups and stews and rich, fatty meals—none of which I could get, of course. The nutritional pastedidhave a high fat content, but that only meant that it had a slimy consistency and left a greasy film on my tongue. It was definitely subsistence food and nothing more.
I squeezed what was left of the tube directly into my mouth and swallowed with a disgusted shiver, trying not to taste it. Though it was awful, it served a purpose—not only could a very little bit of it keep you going for a long time, but it was also filled with blood-builders and iron supplements. Without it, I would have died of anemia long ago, considering how many men I had biting me every day to drink my blood.
I looked at my face in the rusty metal mirror I’d gotten third-hand from another Blood Whore and touched up my makeup. This consisted of extremely cheap blush and lipstick that could be gotten for half a cred chip each at the bargain market.
I had no need to get dressed—I was still wearing the same clothes I’d had on the day before because I had slept in them. The nights were fantastically cruel on O’nagga Nine and I usually had a terrible time getting warm enough to even fall asleep. It didn’t help that there was a vent directly over the lumpy mattress that I didn’t dare to close. If I did, I could die of Carbon Monoxide poisoning, since the door to the hole was air-tight and there was no other form of ventilation. So rather than getting undressed for bed, I usually put on everything I owned before climbing onto the lumpy, smelly mattress.
Of course, the new coat I’d gotten from Elli had helped allay the cold somewhat. It kept me warm enough that I could drift off in a few minutes instead of a few hours spent with my body clenched tight as a fist on the bed, shivering. I was grateful for its warmth though even with the thick fur, I still felt constantly cold. Being a Florida girl, I just didn’t think I would ever get used to the constant freezing temperatures here on O’nagga Nine.
To finish my morning routine, I rinsed my mouth with a swig of water from my jug and chewed a tiny strip of denti-moss. The moss was bright purple and grew on the walls of most of the tunnels. It had antibacterial properties and a faint, minty flavor. It was also the main form of oral hygiene on O’nagga Nine.
Since the Naggians all had such long, white fangs and never seemed to have to go to the dentist, I figured it was good enough for me too, and so far at least, I hadn’t had any tooth pain or cavities. It was possibly the only good thing about the whole damn planet.
Well, it was time for another day. I pushed up the sleeves of my coat to compare my arms, trying to decide which one was in better shape. But honestly, they both looked awful. All up and down the undersides of my forearms were bite marks and bruises. The bruises were the spots where Naggian customers had gripped my arms while they shoved their fangs into a vein—they showed up as dark purple and blue marks on my light brown skin and were painful to touch.
Still, as much as my arms ached, there was no way I was letting prospective customers have access to either my neck or my inner thigh—which were the two preferred spots for biting with Naggian men. See, blood isn’t just nourishment for them. When they bite a woman, it arouses them sexually and they tend to get kind of rough. I was afraid if I let one of them bite my neck, he’d go crazy and rip my throat out!
And as for biting my inner thigh, well that was a no-go for obvious reasons. I didn’t want some customer getting the wrong idea and deciding that sex was on the menu as well as blood. Besides, in order to allow that kind of access, I’d have to let a customer into my hole—thigh biting was forbidden in public. Naggians even had a polite euphemism for it—“drinking from the lower fount” was what they called it. And there was no way I was letting some strange alien man into the place where I lived and lifting my skirt for him.
Deciding that my right wrist and forearm were marginally better than the left, I pushed open the door to my hole, ready to do another day’s work…only to be greeted with the grinning face of my pimp, R’xs.
FOUR
NATALIE
“All right now, Natalie, what’s this I hear about you not giving the customers what they want?” R’xs demanded, giving me a wide grin which showed his long, yellow fangs. There was zero humor in that grin—it was the most threatening expression I’d ever seen and it scared the pee out of me.
My eyes flickered up and down the tunnel, looking to see if there was any help—but of course there wasn’t. The Naggians don’t really have a police department—they come from a strictly stratified society where everyone stays in his or her place and that went double for the lowest of the low, which happened to be me. Nobody was going to care if R’xs beat me up or cut my face off with a knife—I was just ahsh’fruxBlood Whore—lower than the dirt beneath their feet.
I started to close the door on him but R’xs was too quick for me—and much stronger than I was too. He slammed the door of my hole against the wall of the tunnel and beckoned for me to come out.
“I…I don’t know what you’re talking about, R’xs,” I said through numb lips, as I reluctantly exited my hole. “I always give the customers blood when they ask for it. I mean, that’s my whole job—to sell them my blood, right?”
“Wrong, girly.” R’xs’s frightening yellow grin widened even further. “Because I’ve heard fromseveralcustomers lately who said they wanted to buy and you weren’t selling.”