"Who do you want me to be?"

I keep my legs spread and my head turned to the side, like I normally do.

“Nngg...nngg… are you… nggg... enjoying it….?” he pants and wheezes the words out. Is it my total silence that gave him his first clue? Or is it the way my body stays completely motionless as he lays on top of me, rocking his hips back and forth, his elbows grinding into the squeaking springs of a hard, broken mattress?

I don’t answer his question, but he doesn’t seem to mind. I stay still. I keep my legs spread. I keep my head to one side. I stare at the same grey blotch on the plaster wall where someone has clumsily painted over a scuff using a completely different shade of white. It’s funny, I think, I don’t understand why someone would do that. It’s such a bad job, how could someone be so annoyed with a scuff to paint over it, but also not care that the paint is such a different colour?

The mattress squeaks faster. I bet he came here because he thought this was all going to be so, so sexy.

What was he expecting? I wonder if he thought we’d be surrounded by soft satin pillows, a bowl of strawberries covered in chocolate on the night stand, maybe peruse shelves on the wall filled with exotic toys, whips and chains and feathers to tease each other with.

I wonder if he wanted to have giggling conversation with a bright, bubbly little sex bunny who couldn’t wait to get him into bed. Who stroked her collar bone delicately as she curled her hips and showed off her plump ass and spilling breasts in expensive lingerie and begged him to take her, to plunge his perfect cock inside her want-starved body.

Is that what you’re here for, asshole? Is that what you expect to find in a brothel?

Squeak, squeak, squeak.

And then silence.

His body sinks on top of mine, warm breath expanding over my ear as he sighs. I stretch my neck further away, keeping my eyes on the painted smears of grey on the wall. I’d guess he is something between forty five and sixty years old. His skin is mottled, and starting to sag, he has beige-grey hair that’s thinning so that I can see his scalp. His body is thin, with a protruding beer gut. I don’t know what time it is exactly, but I think he has come straight from work, he is not unclean, but on top of the day’s sweat I can smell a strong cologne, as if recently applied.

Slowly he climbs off of me, allowing me to arch my hips upward and turn my legs to hang over the bed, I sit up and work quickly, lifting a wet-wipe, covering myself and pushing it all out into my cupped hand. Once it’s gone, I fold it over and use a second wipe to clean around myself as thoroughly as possible. And then a third to get rid of the nasty scum from my hands.

“I’m sorry, I thought I’d have more time, but I really need to go.”

I turn, he is already dressing. Fumbling as he drags his trousers up his legs. They are so quick to run away after they cum. Shame probably. Hitting them hard after they ejaculate. When they are hard and full of anticipation they don’t keep their eyes open. But when they’ve cum, they see more of the room, turn their nose up at the ugliness of it all, and recoil at the metal blind that’s stuck permanently down over the window. No wedding ring on this one though, a ring often makes them more likely to run.

“It’s because you’re so beautiful. That’s why it was so quick, I promise to last longer next time. If you want to see me again that is, I hope you do. I very much want to see you again, Sabrina.”

I shrug. His eyes scan around the room, quickly searching for anything he has missed, terrified to leave a shred of evidence that he was ever here. Satisfied that his keys and wallet are secure, he retreats through the door, bowing his head awkwardly at Cyrus, my guard, and making his final escape downstairs and onto the busy street.

The brothel is a small apartment squatting on top of a takeaway shop, the whole place stinks of fried chicken. The shop is squashed between a boarded up betting shop and another fast food counter, with a sign that looks so similar you might mistake them for one large restaurant. It’s a busy high street somewhere in London, but I don’t know how close it is to the city. I can’t see any of the tall buildings when I am outside for any reason, which isn’t often.

There are four rooms to the apartment and a squat bathroom everyone must share, three bedrooms, all the same, connected by a thin corridor, and a larger kitchen and living space that sits at the back of the property overlooking a car park for the block. The living space is where Viktor sits, always on his phone or laptop. Always working. The bedrooms are used for us to work, and when we are not working we stay close to Viktor, or we sleep together in one of the rooms, or Viktor or Cyrus has us sleep with them.

Viktor always sits at his small desk, surrounded by mobile phones, an overflowing ashtray, and never without a glass of vodka or whiskey beside him. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him touch a glass of water. Viktor is Russian, but other than that I know very little about him. He cares about money and nothing else. But whoever he works for he is afraid of. I know that. He tries hard not to show it, masking his fear with a constant anger about him. Usually he directs it towards us, but sometimes he will throw his rage at Cyrus. I have to be careful and hide my delight when Viktor explodes at Cyrus.

Sabrina, the asshole called me. It’s not my name, but it’s what he sees. Perhaps that’s all you see too.

It’s one of Viktor’s tricks. Men think they like to choose, they like to pick from a long menu. But they don’t ever care, they are just hungry for a whore. Viktor knows how to create a wide net to catch as many fish as possible.

Viktor has us all take lots of photos, changing our underwear and throwing a different sheet up behind us for a background. He makes us put our hair in different styles, and is careful to hide a part of our faces so our identities can be replicated many times over. He puts our pictures up on every website he can find, gives us new names, copies the text for our different profiles, our biographies, interests etc. should the website even bother to list them.

We all love sex of course, especially sex with lots of different, interesting men, we don’t care about ethnicity or cock size, that’s always important. We love to have anal sex, we love to give blowjobs and describe ourselves as wild, adventurous and unafraid to explore anything kinky. Our favourite things to do when we are not fucking is to eat junk food, watch old movies or sports and play video games. I suppose that’s the formula for the perfect whore. Perhaps all men really want is to fuck teenage boys with the body of a teenage girls.

When one website disappears, two more spring up to replace it. And so Viktor mashes his fat, stubby fingers on his laptop, recreating Sabrina, Jessica, Erica, Jasmine, Bella, Sonya, Tanya and Sophie and Cara and on and on he goes until there is no menu left where the men can’t find the girl of their dreams.

And they are all us. Who cares if Jessica isn’t available, you can have Sonya instead. Oh, you wanted the blonde? Well sorry, can’t do it, but here’s a fiery Greek if you still wanted to fuck, so what’s it going to be? What does it matter? Money is money, and a whore is a whore.

Viktor runs three of us. Athena, Stella and me.

When I arrived here, it was just Athena. A Greek goddess in chains for almighty King Zeus, and Mount Olympus apparently sits on a flat above a chicken shop. She could truly be a goddess too. Tall and broad shouldered, with thick, dark curls that cascade down her slender back. Her cat like eyes are a warm chocolate brown, and her body curves down into a perfect hourglass. She has light Mediterranean skin, marked only by a beauty spot on her left hip. She is the sort of girl that could wear anything, in any style and own it effortlessly. She’d look casually cool in a baggy jeans and a grungy hoodie, or she could throw a ballgown over her back and instantly become royalty.

Not that Athena wears hoodies or ballgowns. We wear lingerie.

Keeping us naked or near enough probably makes it easier for Viktor, he doesn’t need to see us as anything other than what we are to him, and it ensures we aren’t hiding anything.

Athena is a stolen girl. While it’s rare for us to be free enough to talk, there have been quiet times where we’ve shared little fragments of our pasts I know she moved here from Greece when she was 21, she was working with a visa but there were problems and so she moved to a new city where she found work in a nursing home which didn’t require documents. She doesn’t know who told Viktor about her, but she suspects it was her landlady. She was taken right off the street. In broad daylight if you can believe it. Nobody cared. A happy, ordinary twenty-something girl just attacked, beaten, shoved into a car and it didn’t matter. Now she is here.

I pick up another two wet wipes, scrubbing my arms, chest, down the sides of my neck and around my genitals again to clean up as much of the man as I possibly can. I slide my panties back up my legs and throw the stuffed bunch of wipes into the small bin in the room. Cyrus already has the door open and is waiting to march me back through to the main room.

His hand wraps around my upper arm and he pulls me tightly.

“You use too many of those.” he sneers, gesturing to the wipes.

I look him dead in the eye. “I made him cum like a horse.”

“Liar, you don’t think I hear you? You were a corpse in there. If you were mine, I would-”

“Well it’s a good thing I’m not fucking yours then!” I wrench my arm free of his grip, moving quickly to the living room, knowing that Cyrus won’t follow, he has to stay in the corridor until Stella is finished with her customer.

The too familiar room greets me with the stale smell of smoke, Athena is on the couch, clad in lace-red, her body leaning forward into the embrace of a standing Viktor, his hand stroking her hair to soothe her. I watch carefully, seeing a whole side of Athena’s face is red and swollen.

“Don’t just stand there, Big Mouth. Get ice!” Viktor points to the kitchen and I quickly scrape together a clump of frozen mulch from the drawers of the freezer, bundling it up in a dishcloth and returning to the couch to take over.

I sit with my legs underneath me, holding the ice-pack up to Athena’s face, careful not to be too firm, but it makes her wince anyway. I ease the weight and let Athena’s hand come up to take over, allowing her to apply the right pressure as she presses the pack gently to her face.

“Let me see.” I have her open her mouth. It’s not too bloody, but one of her teeth is loose. The bastard obviously hit her hard, but must have skimmed her cheek instead of clocking her directly in the face. I didn’t hear anything while I was in my room, so whatever happened was obviously fast and over quickly.

Viktor is already back at his desk, looking at his laptop, lighting another cigarette. Now that I am here to take over, he longer needs to pretend with sweet, soft words of consolation. Not that Athena would be fooled by them. Stella would, but Athena understands.

“She should see a dentist.” I assert from the couch to an uninterested Viktor.

“She will be fine, just a bruise is all, don’t be worried your face will heal and you still be pretty.”

Athena and I look at each other, she gives me sign to leave the topic alone. After all, it’s just one punch to the face. It’s not something we should be so accustomed to, but we are, and it’s not worth it. I take another look at her mouth, using the end of the towel to wipe the red away from her chin.

“Some alcohol then, it will clean the tooth and it won’t get infected that way.” I pick my words carefully.

Clearly annoyed, but unable to argue the point, Viktor shoves his little chair back and makes a showy display of putting out a glass and filling it with vodka, like we are taking him away from much more important business.

“Here.” the glass is shoved into Athena’s hand. “Can I get you ladies anything else?” Viktor stands over us, his mock impression of a waiter not disguising the edge in his temper. I flinch in anticipation but he doesn’t strike. We shake our heads and he goes back. Viktor is an imposing figure, average height but thick and hairy all over. His belly sometimes makes him look fat, but it’s hard as stone. He keeps his hair razor short and his beard fills his entire face. He sits back down, his tracksuit jacket open over a sweat stained tshirt and heavy jeans, glugging down another vodka for himself and lighting a second cigarette in the same motion as he stubs out the first.

We wait like that, in silence, Athena swilling vodka around her mouth in slow sips, me waiting for the phones to ring. Viktor always passes it over to me when it does. It’s a well rehearsed routine now, I know how to instruct the callers when they are close, and men much prefer to hear a woman’s voice, it makes them less likely to lose confidence maybe. And I am English, which makes things easier.

After a few minutes, we hear the heavy door slam, shortly afterwards Stella and Cyrus return to the main room. Stella sees Athena and immediately rushes over to the couch.

“Oh no, what happened?” she asks clumsily in her Russian accent, naive concern painted across her frowning face.

Athena looks at me coldly. Stella has only been here a short while, it’s hard to track our days here, but I think it can’t be longer than one month. At first I thought she was just simple, but in time we figured out she isn’t right in the head. I do pity her, I can only imagine what fucked-up life she has lived to react the way she does, but at the same time her stupidity is infuriating.

“Nothing to worry about, it’s just a bad bruise, okay. Come here.”

I whisper and invite Stella to sit beside me quietly, freeing Athena from having to address the obvious question. Stella is just wearing pale grey underwear, a hideously juvenile teddy bear pattern on their front. Her name here is Baby. Just like mine is Big Mouth. And Athena is the Greek.

It’s no secret why men want to book time with Stella. She is 19, slight as a schoolgirl, short and skinny with a flat chest that only amplifies their sick desire. My skin crawled when she first arrived and she posed for Viktor’s pictures. He even had her stick a baby’s dummy in her mouth for a few of them. Her blonde hair is always up in pigtails, and her ignorant way of perceiving the world enhances the childish character she is forced to play.

“Can I have a vodka?”

Stella sees the glass in Athena’s hand and immediately turns to Cyrus. He gives her a broad smile and pours out a glass. I watch them both carefully, trying to work out what has changed between them, and it’s then I realise Stella is wearing a black leather collar.

Viktor notices it at the same time.

“What is that?” he challenges Cyrus, not letting him pick up the drink he’s just poured.

“I told you, it’s better don’t you think. We should get the same for the Greek and the Mouth.” Cyrus says with a shrug, lifting the glass despite Viktor’s protest and handing it to Stella who takes a greedy sip and shows off her neck to the rest of the room as if it were an expensive necklace.

“And I told you no. I don’t like them, take it off!” Viktor points his finger at Stella. She immediately grasps at the collar, shaking her head.

“But Cyrus gave it to me! I deserve it! I made us a big tip, so why can’t I keep it?”

I can feel my body reach away from Stella’s side, knowing that Cyrus will be no protection if Viktor gets up and punishes her display of disobedience, but instead the new information is what catches Viktor’s attention. He is on his feet, towering above Cyrus. Cyrus is not a short man, but next to Viktor anyone looks small. He is slim but muscular, dark skin, a full head of curly hair and a well groomed beard under his chin. His arms are littered with tattoos and he wears silver jewellery.

The conversation between them is tense but quick. Cyrus surrenders the money he was obviously trying to steal, Viktor calls Cyrus some offensive names in multiple languages. While I can’t be sure, I am near certain every one is a racist insult on account of Cyrus’ Arabian heritage.

Stella seems painfully unaware that she has displeased Cyrus by revealing the money, but knows something is wrong as she removes the collar, Cyrus puts it in his pocket, muttering that perhaps Stella should be the one called Big Mouth as she shrinks back into the sofa, hiding her vodka at her side for fear that too will taken away.

I suppose the only story left to share is mine. But I can’t right now, the phone is ringing.