Melanie was a whore. She had no illusions about her status. She wasn't a call girl and by no stretch of the imagination could she describe herself as an escort. No, she was a common street hooker who plied her trade round the red light district of Manchester. Ten quid for a blow job, thirty quid for straight sex. Anything else was extra, but she didn't get many extras these days. Life on the streets was hard and over the five years she had been on the game her looks had started to go and her body wasn't as fresh and firm as it used to be. That was why she had jumped at the chance of this trick tonight.
Now, laying there on the back seat of his Mercedes, as he fumbled her knickers down in the dark, she wasn't so sure that this had been one of her better ideas. She was beginning to think he was a bit creepy. He'd looked OK when he pulled up beside her on the street corner where she was touting for business and promised her fifty pounds. He'd been as good as his word, coughing up the cash as soon as she got in the car. She'd thought the black cape with the scarlet lining, the snow white dress shirt and the bow tie were a little over the top but what the hell? It was Halloween after all and he looked like a gent who was worth a few quid, even if he did seem to have a hangup about vampires. Anyway who was she to argue. He was probably on his way home from a fancy dress party and whoever he was she couldn't afford to be fussy. With rent to pay and a hundred pound a day crack habit to finance she needed all the business she could get. Beggars can't be choosers she thought as her knickers finally plopped onto the floor to join her four inch red stilettos.
How the hell had she sunk this low, she asked herself, as she looked down on the full head of iron grey hair between her wide spread legs. God! She hoped he only wanted a straight fuck. Wham bam thank you mam, knickers on and back out on the street to look for her next trick in twenty minutes if she was lucky and fifty quid richer. Two more tonight would see her covered for tomorrow but she'd have to be out again tomorrow night. She wanted a night off, but the monkey on her back wouldn't let her. It was an insistent bastard and she could never seem to get far enough ahead of the game to take a break. John, her loser of a boyfriend had a lot to answer for. For the last six months she had been paying for his habit as well as her own and his beer and cigarettes, while he sat at home in the grimy three room flat that was all they could afford, swilling cheap wine and beer and getting wasted with his mates, unemployed and unemployable, sending her out to work the streets because he was too fucking idle to even look for a job.
