Employee Two

All characters in this story are at least eighteen years old if they watch or engage in sexual acts. All sexual acts in this story are consensual. Any description of a character under the age of eighteen is for character development only.

EMPLOYEE TWO

Sometimes life has a plan for you that has nothing to do with the life you envisioned for yourself.

This is my story...

When I was eleven, my dad tragically passed away. It was never fully explained to me, while I was a child, what happened to him. I remember the police showing up at the door just before I was to be in bed that evening. I was in my room getting ready for bed when I saw the headlights of a couple cars pull up to the house. I watched them walk to the door and within minutes, Mom was wailing. I ran out to see what was going on and found my brother already there.

At sixteen, he was nearly the spitting image of our father. He had somewhat long, dark hair that reminded me of a skater or even a surfer despite him being neither. He was neither muscular nor a stick figure of a man. In every respect, he was dismissed as an unambitious person who wouldn't make much of himself.

He was holding Mom as they finished briefly telling them what happened. When I showed up, they quickly stopped talking. Mom had Dylan take me back to bed and he stayed in my room with me. He kept me calm and tried his best to answer my questions as best he could until I fell asleep. When he first began speaking to me, he was monotone and emotionless. He was distant and I knew something affected him beyond my immediate comprehension. He must have noticed my observation and quickly reverted to the caring brother I always knew him to be.

When I woke up in the morning, he was gone, and Mom was sitting on the couch. She was an emotional wreck. When she saw me, she motioned quickly for me to come to her. I didn't know what happened at that point, but I was upset that she was in that state. At the time, she explained that my father had been killed. I asked questions but all she kept telling me was that she didn't know. When I asked where my brother was, she also told me she didn't know.

I wasn't close with my father, but I was upset nonetheless about what happened. I was more upset that my brother left us. He left Mom when she was at her lowest and she left me without a man in my life to protect me. I looked to my dad to keep me safe at home, but my brother looked after me out in the world.

After a few months, things in the house settled down but my brother never returned. Mom told me one day that she suspected he got angry and ran away. Whenever I asked about him, she told me that it seemed he went out to find his own way in the world. I missed him terribly at first. As time went on, I grew to resent him for leaving us. Mom managed to eventually find herself and all her attention was then on me.

She had nothing to worry about with me, though. I was a star student in my first year of high school. My plans would have me graduating a year early and she was so proud of me. Just when I thought my life was headed in the direction that I always wanted it to go, my brother called our house one day. I cried into the phone, sometimes yelling at him, and begging for him to come home. He always told me he couldn't but never told me why. He promised me that he wasn't gone forever, and things needed to be worked out before we could meet again.

He would call occasionally and talk to me, and he would tell me how proud he was of me. I would ask him why he left me, and he'd always change the subject. When I cried and begged for an answer, he told me I was too young to learn about life in that way. I didn't know what he meant but the more he kept saying it, the more I wanted to know what he knew. Regardless, I moved on with my life without him.

Things were going according to plan leading up to my junior year of high school. Mom tried to warn me that I was putting too much on my plate, but I had tunnel vision. I was so set on graduating early that it didn't sink in that an entire year's worth of Advanced Placement and college level courses would be too much for me. She tried explaining that I didn't need all those credits to graduate when I planned. She tried so hard to pull the reins and protect me from my own motivation, but I wasn't having it. Until then, it was always quality over quantity but somewhere between my sophomore and junior years, those wires got crossed.

I ended up dropping out of a single AP class due to imminent failure, but because I needed at least a single credit in that subject, I was forced to move to a less advanced version. It was that series of events which brought me in contact with a boy name Jerry. I had never bothered dating as I made reading and studying my entire world. Jerry was an average kid with average goals. He had no ambition to speak of, either. In every measurable way I could imagine, we should never have gotten together. It was the attention he gave me and the way he showed me off to his friends. My mom and brother were both proud of me because of my intelligence and goals. He was proud of me for everything else.

Despite counseling from Mom and the few friends I had, I continued to date Jerry well into my first year in college. We were both eighteen and as I was walking around on campus, he was moving from class to class still in high school. I was at the community college simply bridging a few gaps before I moved out of state to attend a prestigious university I had been accepted into. They made no requirement for me to obtain extra credits but my guidance counselor in high school suggested them while I wait.

I should not have waited.

I should have ditched Jerry and went straight to the university. Jerry had finally worn me down. Kissing and making out never bothered me. It was when he got roaming hands that I put a stop to things. One night, he said all the right things and I let him skip the roaming hands part and we had sex. For me, it was the first time. I don't think I could say the same for him. I was very much ashamed of myself for letting every moment of that night happen the way it did. It was like we had transported ourselves back to the 1950's. He had me in his car, without a condom and paid no attention to my needs at all. I told him not to finish inside me, but he did anyway. I yelled at him for doing that, but he told me it was next to impossible for me to get pregnant the first time I had sex with someone.

There I was, though, two months later crying in the bathroom staring at a positive pregnancy test.

I practically gave up on all my dreams at that moment. I called Jerry later that night told him I wanted to see him. He happily agreed. As it turned out, he was hoping I had gotten over what he did. We left home after he picked me up in his car and I intended to tell him about him being a father and letting him have me again. I figured there was no harm anymore since the damage had already been done. I was being naïve yet again.

As soon as I pulled the test out, he turned cold. He didn't touch me at all the rest of the evening and hurried everything we did. I recognized his intention to abandon me right away, but I thought I could lure him in if I offered sex. I leaned against the door and opened my shirt, exposing my breasts to him. He looked at me briefly and when he didn't act, I raised my skirt to show him I wasn't wearing panties. Instead of pulling me into the backseat of the car as I grew to genuinely desire in that moment, he started the car and drove me home. I was humiliated.

He dropped me off at home and never called or came by to see me again. When I tried calling him, it seemed his entire household was screening his calls. Mom said I should just give up trying to make him be involved. I knew I disappointed her as well as myself. I felt like I was falling into the rut of teenage pregnancy that plagued the suburbs I lived in. I felt like the grasp I had on my future had all but slipped away.

I would have called that a lesson learned and dealt with life as it were, but I'm not as smart as I once thought. After Clint was born, I met a man. Long story short, I found myself crying in the bathroom of my single-wide trailer nearly a year after I first had sex with him. I hoped maybe that he was better than Jerry, but I had no such luck. He ran away just as fast, and I was left delivering a baby girl seven months later.

I was in my early twenties, only high school educated with two children, struggling to make rent every month and no husband. I learned a lot in school. I just never learned about the real world. I found out Jerry ended up in college and my daughter's father moved overseas. In four short years I went from a plan for a brilliant life to practically being the stereotypical, moo-moo wearing trailer trash mother of two bastards. I never gave up hope completely, though.

I never sunk to drugs or alcohol. I kept my family dressed the best that our money could responsibly afford. I worked the best jobs I could find, only quitting one when the next best opportunity came around. Mom watched the kids while I worked and helped them reach their important milestones. It seems I did learn my lesson until I was fired. I was told it was no fault of my own by economic factors dictated that the company could not support the labor force they employed, and decisions came down from the top on who to let go.

I was lost again.

It seemed I was never meant to catch a break in life. I felt myself giving up one evening while visiting Mom when my brother called the house. Mom picked it up and they talked for about as short a time as I ever saw them before handing the phone over to me. I told him everything that was happening and how much I was trying to redeem myself for all the bad choices I made. I needed so bad for him to tell me he was still proud of me. When I didn't get that, I moved to further my personal agenda.

Mom had mentioned once in passing that my brother was running a business. I had dismissed it at the time since I had just gotten into a new job. Since I was at my lowest and I thought nothing was below me at that point, I would ask him about it. My greatest hope was that he could swoop in and save my little family.

"You run a business, don't you?"

I noticed Mom look up at me briefly in surprise but then changed her demeanor when she saw I had my eyes on her as I spoke to my brother.

"I do," he said with some hesitation.

"I'm a hard worker, Dylan. I could be of value to you. Do you have a position there that I could fill?" I ask.

He sighed loudly into the phone and told me in a recognizable tone, "You don't want to work for me, Kacey."

"How do you know? I don't even know what you do!"

"Christ," he muttered.

There was an awkward silence and he continued.

"I'm in the business of selling women for sex, Kacey. Do you want to do that? Huh?"

Mom was shaking her head.

"I take money from men and send women to fuck them. Is that clear enough for you?"

I couldn't understand at that moment why he was so angry with me. It was the first time he ever used language like that with me. It was the first time I ever heard such vitriol come out of his voice.

"Dylan, I—"

"You know," he said, sounding as if he was developing an idea in his head, "you might look good in a short little skirt. My clients would love you," he told me. "So, how about it, Kacey. Wanna come work for me?"

I thought what he said prior to that question was all sarcasm and anger. He sounded like he was seriously asking me to work for him. I didn't say anything. I refused to believe he was suggesting I be a whore for him. I had become angry and resentful.

"Don't talk to me ever again," I whispered angrily into the phone and hung up.

I instantly regretted saying that to him but what he proposed wasn't possible for me. I would have rather been homeless on the streets, begging for food than do what he suggested.

I told Mom what he said, and she shook her head again.

"It's not a world you should be in anyway, Kacey. You're beautiful, talented and despite what you may think, you have a future ahead of you that you can be proud of."

Her words affected me. Part of me was appreciative that she still thought so highly of me. The other part of me saw it as a challenge. I had always been a little rebellious in my endeavors and as much as the thought of proving her wrong tempted me, I had to think about my children. At my core, I was still upset.

I sat on the couch as my children napped wondering if that was how the world saw my worth.

Two poor decisions and the world seemed to think whoring was the best it could offer me, I thought.

I resolved to once again pick myself up, dust myself off, stop feeling sorry for myself, and chase the dreams I was so close to achieving earlier in my youth. I sat with Mom that night and set a baseline for myself. I set my minimum standards and announced my goals. I went about writing down how I intended to achieve those goals having given Mom the job of poking holes in my plans. It took a while, a few slices of cold pizza, and almost a whole bottle of wine but I was finally done. I had direction once again.

***

I sucked at goals.

I had gotten literally nowhere in the years since I sat at that table and rebuilt my confidence from scratch. I could have pointed my finger at everyone and everything else but at the end of the day, it boiled down to me giving in to a horny young boy name named Jerry. I hated Jerry. I was twenty-nine years old, and Jerry had, in my head, become the man who ruined my life. Clint and Lilly weren't so young anymore and as they grew, the resources needed to raise them properly also grew. I needed money and I was fast out of ideas. It wasn't hard getting money, per se. It was keeping the money coming in. The jobs I got never lasted long as all the jobs someone might label as a career job that they could retire from were all skilled trades or white-collar diploma jobs.

Dylan, I thought.

Well, it wasn't him I was thinking of initially. The idea of trades and white-collar jobs had gotten me thinking to my history lessons from school.

What are the oldest professions? I asked myself.

I wrote them all down in a notepad one night. The nerd in me went literal on this topic. Farming, building, hunting, etc. are all classic examples of old professions. They required skills. Those are the trades of today. Then, I thought about practicing professions, the true professionals. Lawyers, apothecaries or doctors, etc. are the white-collar jobs that needed degrees and such. None of those would work for me as I had no skills, nor did I have a college diploma. I couldn't keep enough savings to facilitate either of those things, so the only thing left was to take that common phrase and dive into the colloquial meaning.

Prostitution.

I balked at the idea many years before and even dismissed my brother from my life over the idea. I had nothing left. I had no money in my pockets, barely any clothes on my back and children who weren't too far away from going without meals. I need to think about the prospect of such a career. It was illegal, didn't favor the worker, offered no benefits and the income was spotty at best. I'd heard of high-class hookers but figured they were only in big cities like New York or Los Angeles. We were in the suburbs of a several medium sized cities.

I didn't even know where to begin. I decided my first step into figuring out if it was right for me was to try and contact my brother. I tried calling him using the last number I had for him.

"Hello?" a woman on the other side said.

"Um, Hi! I was looking for Dylan?"

"I think you have the wrong number, dear."

"Oh, I'm so sorry! Bye!"

It was embarrassing that I thought he would actually be there. My continued ignorance of the real world was making me out to be a fool. I nearly gave up on it all as my next step was going to see if I could find some hookers on the streets of the city and see if they knew Dylan. If they did, the odds of them telling me was probably not good. I didn't know what else I could do except call Mom and see if she knew. I deemed it a logical step since I cut him out of my life, Mom did not.

"Hey, Mom. I was curious if you had Dylan's number. The last number I had for him doesn't work," I asked as soon as she answered her phone.

She rustled around and seemed to hesitate in answering my question. When she finally responded, it seemed a stall tactic and nothing more.

"Why do you want his phone number, Kacey?"

She sounded like she was suspicious of me, or rather my motives.

"Mom, I have my reasons and I think it would be better if you just didn't ask me questions like that."

"I just asked you," she said.

I sighed heavily into the phone and rolled my eyes. It was bad enough I sighed. Had she seen me roll my eyes at her, I would have been slapped across the face.

"I just want the number, Mom."

"Kacey," she sighed into the phone, "this is not a bell you can un-ring. It's a whole different world that once you're in, you can never truly leave behind. I know you think you've got nothing left but—"

"Tell me, Mom," I said, interrupting her little pep speech. "If I'm so wrong, where else can I go? Who else can I turn to?"

"I'm just sayin' that maybe think about it before you call him."

She didn't have to tell me that I might regret what I find down that path. I knew from her little speech that she knew what I was going to learn if I kept searching. I asked for the number again, seeing no other choice.

"Remember this moment, my love. I want you to remember that I tried to keep you away from this type of life. I really did. It may not have seemed like it sometimes, but I did."

I had no idea what she was going on about.

"Mom, you did a lot for me, and I will always appreciate that. It has come to the point where I have to choose to be a failure and homeless or abandon the world that clearly isn't interested in throwing me a bone for one that might. If it brings me into the sewers of humanity, so be it."

My own words failed to make me realize the gravity of the decision I was about to make. Mom gave me his number and told me one last time to think it through.

"Mom, would you have done this for me if it came to it?" I asked quietly into the phone.

"Yes," she said without hesitation.

"I'll let you know how it goes. Love you."

"I love you, too," she replied before hanging up.

I tossed the phone on the counter and carried out my nightly duties with my children. Once they were in bed, I went to get the phone and call my brother. I stared at the piece of paper that I wrote the number down and wondered what his feelings were about me since I asked him to never call me again. I went through all the possibilities and decided that it didn't matter. I was going to call and work with whatever happens.

"Yeah," Dylan answered as if he were too busy to be bothered with a phone call.

There was tapping sounds like he was using a keyboard and the occasional shuffling of papers.

"Dylan?"

The sounds stopped suddenly but he didn't immediately respond. It took him a few moments before he managed to guess who I was.

"Kacey?" he asked.

His tone suggested he was curious if it was really me but also very much amused that I reached out to him after all the years that had passed. I couldn't read his voice enough to determine if he was, had been or even was still resentful of the last thing I told him.

"Yes, it's me."

My own tone was a mix of apprehension and happiness that I was able to hear his voice after all that time.

"I'd ask how you are, but I have a sneaking suspicion that you're calling me for a reason and I suspect that reason has something to do with the last conversation we had, yes?" he said aggressively.