Using thepromptfoundry’s Ominous October list.
Doing a double to catch up! The inhuman proportions here are Aloysha, friend Skrim’s large, beautiful son who I am borrowing here, in his Chicago Spirit OC version.
CWs for prostitution, graphic description of contemplating murder
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At the southern end of Chicago’s Loop, the glitz of one of America’s greatest shopping districts becomes the seedy red lights of cathouses and burlesque theaters.
Aloysha has become familiar with this area. Alma always chooses him when she needs messages sent her. There’s nowhere in Chicago that’s so tough people will readily start trouble with him. And if they do, he’ll be the one to finish it.
His task is done and he’s walking down the west side of South Michigan Street when he hears a woman’s voice screaming for help.
Up ahead, he sees it. On the other side of the street, a man is trying to force her into a crumbling, boarded-up building. “Keep the money, just let me go!” she pleads, and then screams again, “Help! Someone help me!”
She’s a hooker. No one is coming to help her.
Aloysha crosses the street.
Her eyes widen first. And then the man freezes in his tracks as almost seven feet and over 300 pounds of Russian man seizes him around the neck and lifts till his toes just barely touch the ground.
He understands well enough what’s happening here. This man was trying to kidnap this woman. He thought since she was a prostitute, he should be entitled to make her do whatever he liked, to do with her as he pleased. Terror is a stink on her to Aloysha’s empathy, so strong it’s wiping her mind clean. And this man…
A cesspool of fear, self-pity, and entitlement. If Aloysha lets him go, he’ll go right back to what he was doing.
Very nearly, Aloysha clenches his hand to end the problem on the spot. It would make the city a better place. The only thing that stops him is remembering that if the man belongs to a gang, Al could cause trouble for his own employers.
Sawteeth might call it good. But Aloysha doesn’t want to repay hospitality with inconvenience.
He sets the man down. “Give her the money,” he grates, not trying to sound polite or measured. “And then go.”
The man has pissed himself. In jerky motions, he pulls out and throws down everything he has in his pockets, and then turns and runs.
Al watches him long enough to make sure he’ll stay away, and then turns back to the woman. She hasn’t run. She’s still so terrified her feet are frozen.
When he looks at her, she jerks in place and then lunges forward to grab his arm. He begins to shift, thinking it’s an attack, but it isn’t. She clings to him and begins sobbing.
After a second, he lifts his other hand to pat her on the back. “He is gone,” he says awkwardly. “You are safe.”
This makes her cry harder. Her hands tighten with panic that he might leave her alone, so he pats her again and waits. Sometimes relief does this to people.
He can feel her emotions. But he can’t imagine what it’s like, really. No one ever came to rescue him. The only one who tried, died of it. He can’t imagine how it would feel for someone to turn up out of nowhere and protect him from being made into a thing, a weapon in someone else’s hands. But he knows how it felt when they didn’t.
Aloysha stays where he is.
After a little while, she manages to pull herself together enough to let him go and stoop to retrieve her attacker’s wallet. With expert fingers she rifles through it and pulls all the money in there to squirrel it into her own pockets, then tosses the empty wallet to the ground.
“Motherfucker,” she growls, and then hiccups with another sob that she catches on the back of a lace-gloved hand. She looks up at him with her puffy red-rimmed eyes, and holds out a bill.
He shakes his head.
Her lips flatten. Her eyes drop. It’s not embarrassment; her shoulders shake with another suppressed sob. “It must be nice.” Her voice is watery with held-back tears. “Being like you. Big and strong enough to just…kill those bastards for…” She kicks the man’s wallet hard enough to send it flying.
Her rage clots in her throat. Aloysha can grasp the disgusting texture of it: sodden and well-worn, and reeking of the street—shit and futility. It’s made of ashen clumps of fear, and self-hatred at not being able to do more. Not having the power, the will to kill.
He would have crushed that man’s throat. Felt the vertebrae crackle and collapse. Felt the trachea crumple, the blood vessels pop, the gurgle of a man cut off from air. He would have done it and then gone on with his day. Just like has so many times before, and will again.
He shakes his head. “It isn’t nice.” They’re something alike, he understands, professional killers and prostitutes. They both sell their bodies—and something more than their bodies too. Little pieces of themselves. “I think it might be better to be like you.”
She grunts in response, that sound he’s found humans in every language make when they’ve hit a place where words end. Their eyes meet, and he sees that she understands what he means. She hadn’t missed that he had nearly killed that man after all. She…appreciates it. And despite her words, she appreciates that he didn’t.
She looks at him again. “Would you…like to come to my place?”
He shakes his head again. “No money.”
“No, I don’t mean…” She tucks a lock of hair behind her ear, and smiles a little. “Just…the old-fashioned way. You’re handsome, you know?”
She feels safe with him.
He stopped to help her when she needed it. They shared a moment of humanity together. Her desire is a pleasant warmth, inviting him to stay by it with her for a little longer.
A moment of connection, with another stranger who understands. He feels safe with her too, he discovers.
He nods and offers her his arm to lead the way.
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