Exploited Escape- Grester

Chapter Three

Chester's POV

Purity comes in bursts, sections of replenishing the soul through the form of burning away the memories, a shower to kill any guilt. I often stay there for hours, letting the boiling water crash into my broken scarred body and burn it slightly. It felt good, it felt like I was burning away the events of the day; letting the guilt and pain frazzle and evaporate from my body. It wasn't washing away the memories or the pain from my mind but it was a start to fixing my broken self.

Because it isn't always in the night that the darkness comes. It isn't always the night when I am used and abused, it isn't always the night when I'm exploited and sometimes the daylight isn't so bright. Sometimes my job isn't all sex, sometimes I have to lie through my teeth, to pretend that I am so besotted and head-over-heels in love with a certain woman or man for hours and hours. To me, this is a thousand times worse than any kind of sexual harassment.

Because I have to pretend to a stranger that I am infatuated by their presence, that I am what they are searching for and I have come to rescue them. I watch their faces enlighten and I can feel the hope rush through them. They know that this is a one day deal, that tomorrow they will wake up alone but I see the faces of the young girls that searched for my company for someone to hold their hand and I see how at then end of the day they don't want me to leave. They cling onto my hand, tell me not to go,they say we have something special. But I've had something 'special' with every girl I escort.

I have done it enough times to know that it isn't 'special', its the opposite. Its traumatising.

I buy her coffee, I hold her hand, I call her beautiful and I treat her like a princess. The day ends and my lips touch hers; my body remaining cold. Her hands travel up my shirt and I wince as her icy fingers brush over my abs. She begins to tug at the rim of my shirt and in an attempt to pull it over my head I place my hands overs hers and stop her. She pulls away, sticking out her bottom lip and pouting as she calls me a tease and reaches into her bag.

There's times where I think perhaps I shouldn't stop the girls, where I feel as if it would make me forget, but nothing can make you forget, not this. So I kiss her passionately as she pulls out an envelope and hands me a sum of money. My throat still tightens every time. My hands shake as the dollars reach my hand, it feels like dirt and I can't wash it off. It feels like there is mud on my skin and it's burning into my flesh.

I leave and she leaves. And I go back to the place I have called home. I throw the filthy envelope of my crushed dignity at my mother and slump up the stairs. I watch her flick through the money, tutting under her breath. Not enough she says, not doing enough and not earning enough. More, you have to take it further. I cannot, not to the girls who just need saving.

I sit back on my bed and watch the pain flood through me, I can almost see the guilt and hatred for myself condemn my body and I'm encircled in a world I can't escape. I hear her making her way up the wooden stairs and the knob of my door twists .

"How many?" I ask, although I don't want to know, I want to jump out the window and run far far away but that is impossible. Sex is all I know, charming and alluring, making money out of the poor; I can do that. But living in the unknown, that's an unachievable dream.

"Three." She states, her voice harsh and blunt. Three, three girls tonight to use and ditch. The words roll off of her tongue like she does this every day, which she does, like it's nothing, which it isn't.

"And tomorrow?" The thought of a new day sickens me to the stomach and I'm pretty sure it will never get easier.

"A day off." She smugly smiles and heads out the door, slamming it behind her.

I get 'days off' every now and then but they aren't really days off at all. I am still exploited and sold but to what my mother would call the 'weak ones'.

They're not weak at all, they're lost and need to be found. I'm just not their saviour.