Emancipating Emily – Chapter 3 (Part 2)
 
 
“You know why I like Audie Murphy so much?  Cuz he’s a regular guy, like me.  Just a regular bloke who came home from the war and spoke the truth.  And the truth is they don’t give a shit about any of us.  I mean, you don’t see twenty-two folks kill themselves every damn day when they feel honored.  Do you?”
 
Douglas was a seventy-one-year-old veteran and widower. 
 
He’d heard about The River from a buddy down at the VFW.
 
“Nah, man.  It’s not like that.  These chicks really care.  It’s not just business with them.  I can’t explain it.  It’s like having a house full of girlfriends who care.  In fact, I saw Dusty the other day while I was walking through the lounge on my way to see Vicky and as soon as she saw me she asked all about Becky and the kids.  She remembered from like a month before that Raylan was sposed to get her braces off last Monday, and she asked all about it.  Stood there talking to me for like forever too.  And the sex, man.  Ooooo  boy!  Let me just tell you…  THAT shit is something entirely different.  I mean, don’t get me wrong, Becky was pretty fantastic too.  Before the divorce.  But there’s just something about these women, Doug.  I’m telling ya.  Ya gotta try it.”
 
Jake and Doug had been drinking together every Friday night since Jake’s divorce, three years prior.  But he’d missed the last four in a row, and it wasn’t until two months later on a random Monday night when they’d both just happened to stop by the VFW on a whim that Douglas had found out why.
 
“Sorry, man.  I should have called you.  I just… I just got so caught up,” Jake told him with a glow on his face Doug hadn’t seen since Jake’s bachelor party.
 
Truth be told though, Doug just wanted to find someone to cuddle with, like him and his wife used to.  With Doug being the big spoon and all. 
 
He had tried once with a chick from the internet, but that hadn’t gone too well, as there had been loads of extra fees tacked on at the last minute, and a rough looking pimp had insisted on smoking crack in a car out in front of his house the entire time.
 
Another time Douglas had asked a massage therapist he’d gotten happy-endings from before.  But the woman at the strip-mall massage parlor, who didn’t speak hardly any English, just laughed and laughed.
 
So here he was, sitting on the end of the bed like a nervous schoolboy, even though he’d been around the block with a woman more times than he ever hoped to count.
 
“He never got over the horrors,” a middle-aged woman with bright eyes and a lovely smile told Douglas lightly, as she brushed a curl of grey hair back behind his ear. 
 
“But I think he learned to live with them.”
 
At her words, the man’s eyes lit like Roman candles, like a million Roman candles.
 
“He was something else.  Wasn’t he?” the woman named Roxanne asked as she leaned forward across his lap, so that she could reach his frosty copper cup.
 
Douglas had ordered a Russian mule downstairs, while he had waited on her, and Roxanne didn’t want him to miss out on it while it was still fresh.
 
Gently, she nestled it between his two cupped hands, which shook, though from nervousness or some neurological condition Roxanne (the former housewife with three grown and one deceased children) didn’t know.
 
Nor did she care, really.  Instead, she cared about the ache in his heart.
 
“How long has she been gone?” the slightly chubby woman in the too small tracksuit asked.
 
Mind you, Douglas loved the fact Roxanne’s little pink tracksuit was a size too small. 
 
In fact, Doug absolutely loved the way the woman’s extremely large breasts flopped out of it whenever she bent over.
 
Which happened more and more, as she quickly began taking care of him without a bit of instruction.
 
First, Roxanne removed his shoes, and then his socks.  Tugging on them playfully but making quick work of it all.
 
Then, she slid a tub of steaming hot water out from under a low table which ate up half the room.
 
Douglas dipped his pale feet into the water and moaned instantly at the pleasure of it.
 
The paid companion then set about the task of washing the man’s feet, and as she massaged, she inquired all about him.
 
“She’s been gone about two years now, though it seems like just yesterday they were calling to tell me about the shooting.”
 
“My god, Douglas, your wife was shot?”
 
“Yeah, in that Lexington mall shooting.  She bled out on the scene.  I didn’t even get to say goodbye.”
 
“I’m so sorry,” the woman who had lost both of her parents just recently told him, truthfully, from one heart to another.
 
“You know, you’re nothing like I expected,” he told her as she began to methodically undress him.
 
As she worked, Roxanne washed and cleaned him with a hot towel she dipped in bowl full of steaming-hot and mildly fragrant water.
 
“Ohhhh” the man cooed as she gently massaged away every ounce of his pent-up tension.
 
Inch-by-inch Douglas could feel his shoulders falling away from his ears, until finally he couldn’t ever recall being so relaxed. 
 
Couldn’t remember much at all, for that matter. 
 
Which was okay, because soon the woman wasn’t speaking either. 
 
Soon her moist lips were racing along all of the places she had just cleaned. 
 
The expert sex-worker nudged him back onto the bed, and as he fell back onto the lush pillows, he crowed just a little - at the wonder of it all. 
 
At the splendor of it all.
 
Roxanne’s long fingernails traced lines up his chest, and her tongue raced back down each one. 
 
Setting each strip on fire - in a way he hadn’t known was still in him.
 
“There is no menu at The River,” the woman with the low and sultry voice reminded him, “as we work with your higher self here.  However, if there is something specific… that you’d like…”
 
Roxanne unzipped her tracksuit, then removed it completely, shaking out her long mahogany hair until it hung in thick rivulets all around her bare shoulders.
 
“Well,” Douglas began, after taking a second to clear his throat. 
 
“My wife used to do this thing with her tongue on the tip of my… my penis.”
 
The former housewife who was by nature an empathic intuitive, as well as an extremely sexually motivated human being, brought the man’s penis to within an inch of her red painted lips.
 
“Oh?” she asked, as she flicked her tongue, quick and teasingly, out over its head.
 
“Yeah.  She used to like to swallow too.”
 
Douglas’ smile was that of his thirteen-year-old self, back when he tried to convince Jennifer Patton to let him feel up inside her blouse.  And it was such a fun and feisty smile Roxanne couldn’t help but mimic it right back at him, right before she gobbled up his pecker.
 
“O. MY. GOD!” the old man hollered.  “What?  What is that you’re doing to me?  What?  What?  What?” his voice trailed off as he sank deeper into the softness.
 
Roxanne had only been working at The River for six months, but already she had picked up some rather fun new skills.  And Roxanne absolutely loved nothing better than getting confirmation her study time was well spent.
 
 
 

(to be cont.)
 
 
 
© Raena Exe 2023
 
 
*All characters, places, and events are completely fictional.
*All rights reserved.

Emancipating Emily – Chapter 3 (Part 1)
 
 
“You can’t come in.”
 
“What do you mean I can’t come in?”
 
“You can’t come in.”
 
“Yes, I know what you said, but this is a brothel ain’t it?  Y’all make money only after you let us in…”
 
There were three men standing on the front porch of a very respectable house.
 
The young woman at the door, however, would not budge.
 
“No one is allowed in until they’ve been vetted.”
 
“Vetted?  Vetted by who?” the man in front inquired.  He was also the biggest and loudest of the trio, as it so happens.
 
“Leave us your card and we’ll be in contact.”
 
“Pardon?” the man in back inquired in a slow Texas drawl.
 
“Do I fucking look like I carry a business card?  I mean for fuck’s sake.  What we've got here is a bunch of uppity…”
 
The man’s voice trailed off as the door slowly opened upon a very statuesque looking blonde.
 
An angry blonde, with a look in her eye that could tear through steel.
 
“This isn’t Aubrey’s.  Or the Yellow Rose, darlin,” the lithe woman in the white dress informed them, in a slow and orderly fashion.
 
“This is The River, and you only step foot in The River once you’ve been invited.”
 
The large man in front looked as if he was going to interject a point he found very relevant here, but before he could get a syllable out Emily had stepped forward, closing any distance between them, moving as lightly as a phantom might.
 
Emily traced the tip of a long fingernail down the man’s unshaven jawline.
 
“However, once you are invited… many unspeakable pleasures and treasures abound.  Now…” she began, as she moved a few fingertips over the front of his work pants.
 
“You have been very rude so far, which normally would not be tolerated in The River.  But as you are new and unaccustomed to civilization we will forgive it this one and only time.”
 
The large man in the dirty coveralls swallowed back whatever he’d been about to say, and simply said instead, “Yes ma’am”.
 
Because he was a quick learner.
 
His friend – not so much.
 
“I came all the way down here on my lunch break to get a blowjob, at the very least.  I was promised by some guy I met down at Billy’s on Grand last night.  In fact, he was spouting off to no end about how much better pussy is here.  So why don’t you step aside and let me in, so I can at least go home happy?”
 
The man’s face was nearly as oily as his hair, and there was dirt under his fingernails.
 
Emily’s upper lip curled at the offense.
 
And then she simply said, “There comes a time in every man’s life when he must choose the hill he will die upon.  Your choice is a strange one, I must admit.  But it is your choice, after all.”
 
And then she whistled.
 
A couple of large dogs came around the corner of the front porch.  They’d been sleeping by the back door, resting in the afternoon sun.
 
Neither of the dogs looked happy, and both of them were instantly keyed on the one man with his hackles raised.
 
“You realize your destiny is but one command away at this point?  And everything will be caught on camera, so there won’t be any doubt… which destiny you chose.”
 
The woman was as cool as a midwinter breeze coming off Lake Superior.
 
Even the dogs seemed not too stressed.  But all three men were suddenly sweating and backing away.
 
“If you’d like to apply for membership, please visit our website,” she told the men as they scampered back inside of the oversized truck they had arrived in.
 
“Except you,” she said pointing a long finger at the oily man full of obnoxious demands.
 
“If either Alex or Louis sniff you out again… you’re as good as dead.”
 
Emily’s smile was genuine, but full of pity and no small degree of spite.
 
But for all of that, she was still a very beautiful woman.
 
“Oh, and dears.  You should know… membership at The River is lifetime.”
 
 
 
 
 
 
(to be cont.)
 
 
 
© Raena Exe 2023
 
 
*All characters, places, and events are completely fictional.
*All rights reserved.

Emancipating Emily – Chapter 2
 
 
It was a million times easier getting into the Welshman’s lair than either of them would ever have believed.
 
So instantly both of them suspected a trap.
 
Even after they were staring face-to-face with an old, decaying man on a plastic covered sectional.
 
The old man chortled.
 
“If you’re worried about Henry don’t be.  He’s not my bodyguard if that’s what you’re thinking,” he’s just an asshole I owe some money to.  Or so at least he thinks.  He’s just waiting around to collect any cash that might turn up,” the old man said in reference to the giant dullard who had shown them in.
 
For a moment the former priest went blank, and then he remembered what the man traded in.
 
It sunk in like an oil spill.
 
The old man chortled again.
 
But when his only living student came sliding across the floor at him, he went stiff as a board.
 
Up onto the sofa next to him she crawled, as lithe as a minx, where instantly she began taking great long sniffs across his chest and throat.
 
“It’s the cancer, ain’t it?” she asked, sliding away a bit, but still crouched there next to him on the sofa.
 
“You’re dying, ain’t ya?” she questioned with a smirk that was neither here nor there.
 
The old man chortled a third time, this time bringing up some blood he wiped away with a stained bit of cloth.
 
“You were sick when you had me… last,” the former sex-slave turned torturer inquired.  “I guess I had too many other things on my mind to notice,” she retorted dryly.
 
“Where are the girls?” the former priest demanded, just as soon as he was sure Emily had said her piece.
 
The old man smiled a deadly smile, one long matched by his dull and lifeless eyes.
 
“There haven’t been any girls for a long time.  Why do you think the place looks the way it does?  This lifestyle is difficult to maintain.  Sustain… once the commodity dries up… you see… I’ve much bigger competitors now…”
 
The man had that sickly look about him plus another layer of decay that only happens to the soul, and always becomes apparent outwardly near the end.
 
“I wanted it to be you, don’t you see?  It’s the perfect end to the perfect life.  The one who got away?  Isn’t it perfect?  Don’t you see?”
 
The man in the faded slacks and threadbare button up jumped to his feet and tossed his hands into the air.
 
His bare feet were dirty and covered in uncared for callouses that were cracked and bleeding.
 
“Retirement is a bitch for pedophiles.  It’s true.  The sick do tend to feed upon themselves.”
 
Sean’s voice was thick with his Irish accent and in less than two heartbeats he was between the old man and the young woman.  His chest heaving.
 
“You come any closer to her and I will tear you apart where you stand.”
 
The old man didn’t doubt him for a second.
 
“By all means.  I had only hoped it would be her…”
 
The woman once known as Cassandra, the woman who had once taken a man hostage because she wanted him to kill her… didn’t like the irony.
 
In fact, she was not at all thrilled with anything happening at the moment.
 
“Where are your computers?  Where are your connections?  Where is this big pedophile ring we’ve all heard about?”
 
“It’s been a lie for a very long time,” the man admitted, as he walked over to the only other piece of furniture in the sparce room – a bar cart.
 
“Would either of you like a drink?” he asked, but his two visitors just stared at him as if his face had suddenly slid off.
 
“Guess not,” he remarked dryly before he turned and made himself a drink.  A stiff drink by the looks of it.
 
After he’d finished, he turned back to the two who were still standing in front of the sofa in the middle of the room.

“For a long time now I used AI to match stollen soft images from Facebook and Instagram to old footage.  It’s not that hard, really, if you have a big enough database of the hardcore stuff.  You just pop new faces on and bingo.  You can mix and match for a long time before they catch on.”
 
The man had a certain air of pride about him that made both of his visitors want to shoot him in the face.  Right then and there.
 
“But that’s all gone now.  I was raided by some Federals with some crazy initials I’ve never seen before.  They didn’t seem the least bit interested in me, but they took everything.  Absolutely everything I owned.  I skedaddled here after that, before they could change their mind and nab me too.  I’ve been sending out rumors ever since… hoping you’d come,” the sickly old man cooed in Emily’s direction.
 
“Are you expecting girls?  Is that why old coke-head Henry is sticking to the door like glue over there?” Sean asked under his breath, but with a degree of heat in his tone.
 
“Do I look like I still entertain?” the man asked, motioning to the length of him, which was just then hooking itself up to an oxygen tank.
 
Sean swallowed back a sudden burst of bile, so it was Emily who got to ask the pedophile first, “do you still think of it as entertainment?”
 
The old man chortled, for what he figured might be his very last time.
 
But the girl he had once hung like linen out to dry for over two weeks just stared back at him as though he had died a very long time ago.
 
“Then there’s nothing we need here,” she told her companion.
 
“But don’t you want to kill me?” the old man asked, almost begged really.
 
The predatory sociopath was astonished, you see, that the girl he’d let live could let him live with what he’d done to her.
 
Because he didn’t have the heart of a young girl beating within his chest.
 
No, all he had was a sad, deranged, pissed off, and entitled heart that always found every other scheming soul within a fifty-mile radius.
 
“You don’t get it, and you’ll never get it,” the girl who had regrown her own heart replied.
 
“I was alive and screaming for release from my constant pain.  You’re already dead.  And you’ve always been dead.  You’re just rotting more quickly now.  Rotting out in the open where folks can see it.”
 
And with that, the two turned and walked away.  Twenty minutes later a bomb threat called from The Welshman’s place had brought the cops who quickly arrested him on several outstanding warrants.
 
“What are you going to do with yourself now that you’ve had your revenge?”
 
Emily was glad the priest hadn’t called it justice.
 
Because justice in her case would never be possible.
 
Too much over too long had been lost.  At too high a price that only she and other little girls had paid.
 
Paid so that small men could feel big for a short time.
 
“I think I’m going to go open a brothel,” Emily remarked twelve hours later on the long car ride home, after she’d had plenty of time to ponder his question in silence.
 
They were on their way back to Austin.
 
“Really?  Why?” the former thug turned hitman turned priest turned god knows what asked in total astonishment.
 
“Yeah,” she said with a coy smile you would swear was revealing a deeply held secret.
 
“I think it’s time we found a new way of doing things.”

to be cont.)



© Raena Exe 2023

 
*All characters, places, and events are completely fictional.
*All rights reserved.

The feel of his hand supporting her lower back was having an unexpected effect on the former child sex slave, turned catholic novitiate, turned convicted kidnapper.

She wasn't used to feeling cared for, you see.  And though it was outwardly pleasant, it also gave Jane goosebumps and made her tummy do unwelcome things.

"I'm not a good dancer," she whispered into the man's ear, but he only pulled her closer, pressing his firm chest into hers, until all she could do was feel the rise and fall of his breaths.

"Just a bit longer.  We need to make our presence known.  So that we become a comfortable sight."

Jane knew the plan, but still she did not like it.  For one thing, too much depended upon the Welshman not recognizing her.

The former priest must have realized her nerves were getting the better of her, because before she knew what was happening he was sweeping her off the dance floor and out onto the bustling midnight street.

"That should be good enough for our first time," the lean man with emerald eyes breathed into her ear, as he brushed back a piece of blonde hair, which tickled her neck.

Shivering, Jane caught her bottom lip between her teeth to stop it too from trembling.  And then she said, "I'm hungry.  Can we go back to the motel?"

The former priest (and her savior) nodded and then smiled one of his 'knock you over' grins.

Twenty minutes later they were eating burritos and nachos on one of the queen sized beds which took up most of the small motel room.

"The more natural our presence is here, the fewer alarms we'll raise once we start putting our plan into action," Caleb told her with a smile, though it was a pained smile, as he knew well enough the incredible danger he was leading her into.

Jane smiled, her normal sad smile that still comforted somehow, despite how forlorn it always seemed.

"I know better than anyone what the man is capable of.  I understand what we're walking into," she told him around a rather large bite of food.

"He'll get rid of the evidence, and move again," she told him, after she had swallowed, then she stared him in the eye until the former priest was forced to turn away.

Because the evidence Jane was talking about was the four young girls rumored to be living with the Welshman.

A ghost if ever there was one, the man known only as The Welshman didn't have an actual job, or address, or social security number for that matter.  What he did have, however, was the largest child pornography distribution ring in known existence.

A dark-web feature, the man had eluded capture for the better part of thirty years simply because he was a tech genius.  That, and because he had safely hidden his true movements behind a plethora of holding companies.

He'd also been doing it since long before he took Jane, back when Sykes was still her pimp.

It was a difficult thing the former priest would confess later, sitting next to Jane and not weeping, after he'd seen the videos the Welshman had made of his time with her. 

Caleb swallowed hard and doubled his attention on the last few bites of his food-truck burrito. 

Because the last thing on earth he wanted was for Jane to realize what he'd seen.

Because no one was strong enough for that.  No one.

But he had seen it, the hours and hours of torture the young girl had sustained all in the name of 'entertainment'.

It had come up in his research when he'd been trying to locate the man.

And though he hadn't wanted to see his friend brutalized in such a way, he hadn't been able to turn away either. 

And once down that particular rabbit hole... well, all the man had been able to do was cry, and cry, and cry.  And then swear that one day justice would be hers.

Even if it was the last thing he did on this God's green earth, Caleb Mahoney (the former child thug turned hit-man, turned priest, turned hit-man once again - was going to kill the man they called The Welshman.  He was going to skin him alive - on camera - for all of his sick cohorts to witness for themselves.

As a warning - as to what's coming for them.  What's coming for them all.

"Our job is to convince his lieutenant I'm capable of supplying him with a steady supply of young girls.  It's the only way he'll let me into his compound.  Then, once I'm inside I'll find a way to get you in."

It had been Caleb's plan all along, for him to deal to The Welshman, while Jane saw to to the kids.  Because quite frankly he couldn't think of anyone better equipped to understand what those girls have gone through than the only person known to have survived. 

Of course the fact that Jane was the only known survivor of a visit to The Welshman's - well... that was another thing Caleb had to choke down whenever he thought of it.

Caleb smiled a big, confident grin at the woman, once he was capable of looking her in the eyes again, yet even though he had a gorgeous mop of auburn hair and the body of an Olympic athlete, and even though his smile was both warm and devilish, the woman who'd survived simply by learning to read people (like children's books) knew the man was much more haunted than confident.

Though Jane would never tell him so.

"The Welshman himself almost never leaves his compound but I'm told he has access to camera feeds from all of his establishments - so he sees well enough what's going on.  I've mapped out over there where most of the cameras are.  You'll need to study it, so you can avoid looking directly into any of them."

Jane snorted and then tossed a crumpled up napkin at the man's head.

"I know... but it can't be helped.  We can't have him recognize you too soon.  It's our only weak spot.  But the blonde hair and blue eyes should fool him.  God knows it fooled me."

There was an uncomfortable silence as Caleb recalled the moment Jane had first stepped out of the motel bathroom after drastically altering her appearance from her normal long dark hair and dark brown eyes to a short blonde bob and blue eyes.

For a quick second Caleb had been mortified the true length of his interests were visible through his tan khakis.

But Jane had been too busy staring at herself in the mirror to even notice.

"We'll need new names," he told her as he cleaned up after their midnight meal.

"Can I be Emily?" Jane asked immediately and in such a small voice Caleb almost didn't think she'd really asked it.

With a tilt of his head he questioned her motives.

Jane blushed a bright pink and then simply said, "she was a girl I used to know."

"Sure," the former priest turned once again hit-man said with a gentle smile.

"And what should we call me?"

"Anson, Anson Pitt," the woman now called Emily said with such a delicate smile it almost had the man swooning.

"Why Anson Pitt?" he asked, as he pushed her feet aside so that he could sit next to her on the cheap mattress.

"Well..." the suddenly coquettish woman began, "I used to know a boy named Anson.  And there's an actor I think is pretty hot with the last name Pitt.  You don't think it's too obvious do you?"

"Ummm" the former priest began, but the smile he tried to contain overtook his face and suddenly all he could do was laugh.

Or rather giggle, like a little boy to be exact.

Which at first stung the young woman with the incredibly short fuse.

But then he pulled her in and hugged her, not allowing her to pull away as was her normal reaction.

Slowly, ever so slowly, he was getting her used to trusting his touch.

"I don't think I can claim to be a Pitt, not with a straight face, love," he remarked brightly with more than a bit of an Irish accent leaking through.

"How about you be Emily Callahan, and I'll be Sean Callahan, your newlywed husband.  Sound okay?"

The woman with so many scars you'd almost think it was an intricate full-body tattoo that had simply faded over time smiled and then tilted her head to one side - mimicking back to him his own gesture.

"Sean was my younger brother, and Callahan's was always my favorite pub growing up."

Now it was the full-blooded Irishman's turn to blush a bit at the memory of where so much of his life had gone so terribly wrong.

"Married..." the woman now known as Emily inquired, kinda letting the word hang there like some fence jumping alien caught in a headlight.

"We won't have to do anything that makes you feel uncomfortable, love.  Certainly nothing more than what we did today, just a bit of dancing, maybe some hand holding," the man who had never in his life had a serious relationship told the woman who had never even dated.

Her face though was a mask of deep thought and revealed nothing of what was taking place internally.

Finally, after a very long pause, she simply remarked, "I could give you a hand-job in one of those VIP booths, or something.  That would probably make them feel a whole lot more relaxed.  Seeing us get our kinky on."

And suddenly, once again, the man who thought nothing on earth could get to him turned a crimson red, and then he coughed, and then he excused himself from the room.





(to be cont.)

© Raena Exe 2023

 
*All characters, places, and events are completely fictional.
*All rights reserved.