AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Rosa Negra
NEVE
No one likes to witness a murder.
The rolling shutters on the third floor slide down the length of the window and crash against the couple inches of tile, sounding off an alert: Trouble brews on Pink Street, and not the kind that plagues the normally busy streets of this hipster town. From the glass pane on the door, I study what little I could see. Not a dealer, not a hooker, not a drunk in sight.
In a matter of seconds, another shutter plummets, echoing down the street. Then another, and another, and another, until the Juliet balconies of every building are firmly shut, like the eyelids of a fearful child.
I should probably call the cops, but snitches don’t get stitches around here. They get gone — disappear like the other girls with no questions asked.
Fear keeps people quiet, keeps the dead silent and the streets alive. Drawing attention to the missing won’t do much but decrease traffic and cash flow, so thePetalas Perdidasremain just that — lost.
Townies call the missing, Petals. Mostly because the girls end up on this street when dreams of success fade — when options run out and they’re forced to bloom in the dark. Most of the Lost Petals didn’t have papers, they were here illegally. Kind of like me.
Locals a few towns over —in the good parts of the city— call it easy money, but getting paid under the table, going unnoticed by the officials... that’s not a business strategy. It’s survival. It’s no paper trail. No trouble. The missing are only noticed because they’re one of us.
The clock on the cash register reads four in the morning.A perfect time to disappear,I think to myself as I drop my bag at the entrance, dead tired and starving.
Usually, I’d be asleep for over an hour by now, but I got called into work a night shift at my part-time job. I’m not proud of it, not even by a smidge, but it puts food in my belly. Junk food, mostly. Dropping out of school, came with losing my housing, my student visa — losing any chance at a normal job.
Broke-ass people can’t afford plane tickets out of here, not that home was an option when my family wanted nothing to do with me. When they decided to start deducting love for every mess up I made.
Not being able to eradicate my stutter.Minus five percent.
Getting involved in a sex scandal at sixteen.Minus ten percent.
Being labeled a slut in my conservative small town.Minus thirty percent.
Not being able to get into a good college.Minus twenty percent.
Leaving the country to pursue my dreams.Minus ten percent.
By the time I arrived in Europe, they already loved me less—saw measless. As a waste of good genes, IQ, space. Wanting to stand on my own two feet and earn my way through life was less shameful then being a freak, as my mother not-so eloquently puts it.
Stand, I did, at eighteen.
Then I tripped, fell, broke myself along the same path I chose. And when it was all over, I got dragged along the asphalt and had no one left to love me. No one left to care what happened — except me.
With no money, no place to lay my head, and no options, I took the only offer available: work at a sex shop, selling toys and dick mugs. In exchange, I live in the nice apartment above the place rent-free, all utilities included and furnished. To stock the fridge and put clothes on my body, however, I work at a bar down the road during the early shift. Not the best pay, not the most dignifying place, but there’s no travel cost.
And I need every cent for—
A knock comes at the shop’s door. Soft at first, urgent and harsh the second time around. I freeze near the table with the titty shot glasses and the branded wooden spoons. This country’s smack paddle finds its way into my hand, but my clear plastic platform stilettos would be far better weapons. Pointier and heavier. Capable of knocking out a bloke if necessary, but they’d take ten minutes to unstrap. Two if I cut the laces.
And these damn shoes are expensive to replace.
Perfectly still, I wait for another knock, wooden spoon no longer in hand. Whipping someone with wood, from my limited experience, gets them excited, not freaks them out.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
It may be the cops. I should open the door.
No, I should most definitely run... and hide... upstairs, before whoever it is slices me open like a pig in theMatança (The Pig Killing).
I exhale slowly and get my nerves in check. Mama Rosa, the owner of this place and the only friend I had, taught me how to recognize a trigger and get ahead of it: Do something in reverse, like count the alphabet backward.
I can do that.
