The Procuress

Dita Robson smiled to herself as the hum of the Provencial motorway gave way to the harsh buzz of the pre-Lyon hardtop. The Mercedes camper, although tatty looking outside, was humming along as sweetly as a nut. And so it should, considering the amount of money she spent on maintaining its mechanics. In her trade it didn’t do to find yourself stranded at the side of the road. A single woman alone soon attracted unwanted attention, either from those who wished her harm or, worse in some ways, from those who wanted to protect her from such harm.

She was a very attractive girl. She’d known that for a very long time, in fact she had noticed the stares and the leers long before she had understood their meaning. At 25 she stood just a little over 5 feet high in her stockinged feet and was as thin and waif-like as a pre-adolescent boy. Her hair was long and was tied and slung, almost carelessly, over one shoulder. Her dark, almost black, eyes smouldered in her cafe au lait face over a button-like nose. But it was her smile that captivated. It was like the sun rising and searing with a fury that took the lucky observer’s breath away. For some reason her quarter West Indian appearance gave her an added soupcon of innocence that belied any evil intent that may lurk in her heart.

Just as well, because evil certainly lurked within her. Deep, resonant evil, that manifested itself by her desire to inflict overwhelming horror on her fellow creatures.

To understand why, one had to look back to her childhood, in particular, her days spent in the boarding school in England. It was a very unhappy time, full of loneliness and longing for her father, who was always away building a bridge or a road in some far-flung outpost of the world and who occasionally surfaced, like one of the white knights in her romantic stories – all white flashing teeth and masculine power – to sweep her off her feet. Both figuratively and literally.

And for a little while she was both happy and whole. Then, almost as suddenly as he appeared, he was gone again. Leaving her alone with her thoughts and her aching longing for him.

She made no friends at school. She was too shy, too diffident for the hurley-burley of the girls’ dorm. So when the announcement came that her father had died in a rock-fall somewhere in central Asia and that she was going to have to leave, it came like a rock being taken off of her chest. The relief at leaving was so powerful, although tinged with a bitter underscoring at her overwhelming loss.

The last few days at school were uneventful in her eyes.

To others, they represented an opportunity not to be missed. Lorraine Coulter, head of hockey, had watched her with amused contempt. Dita represented everything that Lorraine hated. She was smart, she was pretty and above all she had a touch of the tar-brush. Lorraine’s father had been passed over for promotion because one of his staff had screamed racial discrimination and her father had been censured.

The fact that it was almost certainly true didn’t merit an entry in Lorraine’s book, just the fact that it had happened. In her eyes a wog had stopped her getting the new brood mare she had crazed after and that was enough to damn all dusky skinned people for ever.

Dita was the only one who fit the bill in the school so she became the butt of Lorraine’s ire.

Once the announcement was made in assembly that Dita was leaving, on a clear November morn Lorraine started plotting. Now was her chance to both cement her position in the school pecking order, and to pay a little bit back to a representative of the race she hated.

Lorraine was everything Dita was not. She was tall, willowy, very blond and blue eyed. She was also fairly dumb, whereas Dita was extremely bright, creating another festering sore in her mind. The only thing the two girls had in common was that they were both extraordinarily beautiful.

The date of Dita’s departure, or to be more specific the day that the last lot of money from her father ran out, was in late December. The plan was that she was to quietly slip away and stay in a hotel close to the train station on her last night. This was primarily because her train left so early in the morning and the headmistress didn’t want the other girls disturbed on a school night.

Once she was away from the school, in Lorraine’s eyes, she was fair game and so she plotted accordingly.

And so it happened that as Dita settled down for the night her door burst open and a sinister group of dimly beheld figures crowded into the narrow bedroom. There were at least 4 girls and two local boys, big dumb ham-bones, with low brows and thick curling lips. Before she could react the girls had thrown back the bedclothes and had torn her night-dress from her body. Lorraine stuffed pieces of the Wincyette into Dita’s mouth and another girl tied torn strips around her head to stop her screaming.

Dita’s most vivid memory of that night was the invective that Lorraine poured into her ear, while the girls held her spread wide and the boys plundered her virginity.

After it was over, and the grinning boys had left, Lorraine told her that she and the other girls had alibis and the boys were farm boys and could never be traced. So Dita would have a hard time proving that they were involved.

Dita cried herself to sleep that night, her innocence shattered and her faith in her fellow man at its nadir. Like a trace chemical added to a solution the incident created a change in her makeup. It was subtle and it was barely showed, but it was there. For the first time in her life, hate made its presence felt and it burned in the pit of her stomach like acid.

Her only living relative, her mother having died when she was very young, was a distant cousin who lived in Paris. She was married to a Moroccan and lived in a very poor area close to the Barbes-Rochecauart metro station in the 18th Arrondissement. It was a violent neighbourhood where human life was held in low esteem and where the career options for girls consisted of poorly paid factory work, prostitution or marriage, none of which held any appeal to her.

Her sudden descent from the cold gentility of a girl’s school into the harsh streets forged her character in iron, as she learned to survive. She soon came to the attention of the procurers who ran the little brothels, masquerading as hotels, around the Rue de la Charbonniere, where girls worked 15 hour days serving up to 120 men a day. For owners of such grind houses a constant supply of fresh meat was vital and her open beauty and exquisite body would serve as a magnet for their seedy clientele.

The attempted snatch proved to be a turning point in her life. Jean-Paul Charriere, a hard brutal man ran one such hotel and he saw in Dita a source of profit beyond avarice. So he sent his henchmen to fetch her in. They set about her as she returned from her part time cleaning job. Four strong, fit young men should have proved more than a match for such a small girl, except that this was where an X factor entered the equation. X was the introduction of a small, wizened Indonesian woman of indeterminate years. She saw the attempted kidnap and waded in.

Dita cowered in terror as the woman launched herself onto the men. The fight, if it could be called that, was over in seconds. There were four casualties, none of whom were killed but they might have felt, at the time, that that was a preferable option.

The Indonesian woman, meanwhile, barely worked up a sweat.

She took the gibbering girl home and soon became like an adopted mother to her. Dita’s cousin was relieved that she had moved out and it was only her husband that had shown any emotion at her departure. And that was only because he was entertaining various offers for her and now his chances of enrichment were thwarted.

The Indonesian woman took Dita in to her crowded apartment and gave her all the love and attention that had passed her by during her childhood. She taught her to cook exquisite food and, more importantly, how to defend herself. This was no spiritual martial art like Tae Kwando or Kung fu. This was Serak, a brutal no holds barred fighting style that came out of the jungles of Indonesia and was designed to kill and maim. It was hard, it was brutal and it worked. There were no weight or size advantages to be had. It worked on leverage and movement. It was fast, furious and efficient.

It was perfect for her.

Before long Dita’s confidence started to grow. Now she was worth something in her own eyes. Now she could take her place at the top table of life with panache. The gangsters still tried to capture her, but they all met with stubborn resistance and the ever mounting hospital bills finally sent the message that she wasn’t to be messed with.

Life dealt her another bitter blow shortly before her 21st birthday when the old lady died. She left Dita her apartment in her will along with all her worldly goods. She lived there for a couple of months but was becoming increasingly lonely when fate intervened yet again. This time it was in the form of a Corsican named Henri. He was a thin, beak-nosed man with the winged tattoo on his forearm denoting the mark of an ex-foreign legion paratrooper. He had served in virtually every hot spot in the world and was a tempered and refined fighter. They met at a gym where she was working out one day. He saw her practicing her djuru and challenged her to a friendly spar. He was an accomplished kick boxer and so he tried to go for her head only she wasn’t there. She was of course but she used his power and weight to undermine him and he found himself flat on his back. He got angry and attacked her again and again only to be repulsed each time. Finally he gave in.

He’d met the girl of his dreams.

Later they drank coffee together and she found out that Henri worked for one of the procurers as a security guard. It was debatable whether he was there to protect the unfortunate girls or whether his real job was to ensure that they stayed both submissive and working. Not that it bothered her. Her mind was working furiously and revenge was at hand.

They became an item shortly afterwards. Both had cause to marvel at each other as they performed incredible sexual gymnastics in the seedy squalor of his apartment in one of the ‘hotels’. To her mind it seemed to add an extra piquancy to their lovemaking that, only a few feet away, an imprisoned girl was forced to service endless streams of men. She could hear the buzzers sounding every six minutes signalling that the client’s time was up and that she must yield up her loins, yet again, to another of the pushing cursing crowd of horny men.

Her thoughts clarified and became brittle-bright in her mind.

She sold the apartment and bought the camper van from an impoverished German hippie. It cost every penny of her endowment to furnish the van for its new task and to ensure the running gear was clean and smoothly efficient. Her preparations took months, but she was willing to wait. To make sure it was perfect. Revenge surely was a dish best eaten cold.

Finally she was ready and she asked Henri if he could arrange a meeting with his boss. He turned out to be the fish-hearted Jean-Paul Charriere himself. True to his nature and the lure of the franc he listened to her proposal as she laid it out, metaphorically, before him. He only interrupted occasionally to ask a pertinent question. Finally he smiled. It was a rare gesture and it boded no good. But it spoke volumes.

He liked her. He liked her style. And he liked what she had to offer, especially as it was not going to cost him much in terms of capital nor risk.

Dita spent a few weeks in England observing the prospect. When she was ready she called Henri who travelled overland with the van.

The snatch was surprisingly easy. A startled horse in a clearing in the woods and a dazed young woman found herself drugged and secreted in a hidden compartment in the depths of the van. It was one of six such compartments, all cunningly disguised.

Henri flew back to Paris to arrange the reception as Dita drove back alone.

Lorraine’s first night in the Parisian brothel was the depths of a nightmare, a nightmare from which she would never return.

She was forcibly stripped and tied to a stained mattress. Her wrists were tied together above her head, a single rope securing them to the steel bed frame. Dita had tied her legs slightly open. Just enough to give her the feeling that she could close them and to allow her enough movement to make her client’s pleasure complete.

Lorraine started her first night by screaming at Dita, hate shining in her eyes like fire as Dita sat watching impassively from the shadows. Her anger gave way to fear which in turn gave way to burbling self pity as man after man plunged between her legs. Throughout it all Dita sat impassively, ignoring both the early invective and the later heartfelt pleading. Eighty men used Lorraine’s body on that first night.

Finally it was over and she lay supine, her body covered in red splotches and her crotch oozing sperm. Even condoms were to be denied to her. Dita stood up, her first movement in hours, and approached the girl.

“You had it easy tonight,” she said, her voice taut with suppressed malice.

“Tomorrow you start your proper work. Your quota has been set at 120 men per night. If you fail to meet your quota you will be beaten.”

She stared down at the horrified blond.

“I want you to remember two things. The first is that you will never, ever make love to a white man again. In future all your lovers will be black. And secondly,” here she smiled nastily,

“That each time someone fucks you I get 1 franc.”

She reached down and touched the blond between her legs.

“So I intend to keep this thing working hard and making me a rich woman.”

With that she threw back her head and laughed. Really laughed, like she hadn’t laughed since before the night she had left her school.

After her mirth had subsided, which took a long time as each tearful entreaty from the dishevelled girl on the bed brought forth fresh peals of laughter, she turned and left the room leaving the “No! No! Please No’s….” behind her.

Jean-Paul Charriere was delighted. He was sure that Lorraine was going to prove to be a very busy and profitable addition to his stable. He complimented Dita on her acquisition then gently raised the prospect of her carving a living out of supplying the endless needs of his organisation. She was subtle, she was smart and she didn’t attract the sort of attention that his men seemed to.

Thus two new careers were born. To ensure that Lorraine was cemented as much as possible into her unwanted career, Dita made a video showing Lorraine taking on endless numbers of black men. She sent a copy to Lorraine’s father and her fianc‚, Charles Fahrquar. Even in the unlikely event of her escaping she doubted that she would find a warm welcome at her family’s hearth again. Some things are just never forgiven in upper class England and what she was doing was undoubtedly one of them.

Especially in light of the fact that she had clearly orgasmed whilst doing it.

It added a certain flavour to Dita’s happiness when she explained all this to Lorraine, just before the brothel doors opened for the night. It was a holiday and Lorraine’s quota was likely to be 150 North Africans. Dita wanted her to have something to chew on while she worked.

To help her through the night.

The procurements had been surprisingly easy. Young girls were very susceptible to the blandishments of a young woman, particularly in light of the fact that men had been built up into ogres. The ‘all men are rapists’ view taken by certain rabid feminists had skewed girl’s viewpoints into the myth that only women were to be trusted.

Dita found that she was, at once, both good at the job and thoroughly at home. She hated white women and enjoyed debasing them the way she had been debased so long ago. Her misogyny was targeted purely at white women, though. She would never put any one with a dark skin in peril. In her twisted way she saw herself as some kind of avenger righting the wrongs of centuries of racial persecution.

Her first targets were the girls who had been there ‘that night’. She had only recognised two of them, Lorraine being one and a girl called Amber the other.

Poor little Amber.

Being stripped and caned cannot be much fun. But there was a choice and the choice was to reveal her compatriots in crime. There were, to Dita’s surprise, three others and she carefully noted their details, as Henri wielded the cane with remarkable ferocity.

Afterwards she allowed Henri to deflower the girl, while she sat impassively by.

Sometime later Sarah, Tracey and Marienne joined Jean-Paul Charriere’s unhappy band of toilers.

Each girl merited an evening with Dita, identical in every respect to that which she had played out with Lorraine. An explanation, anger, howls, tears, lachrymose pleadings, laughter, revenge.

It was always the same.

Afterwards Dita felt clean and whole again. Purged. Pure. Able to breath fresh air. Then came others.

Lots of others.

Feeding the machine which ground relentlessly on. Always there were more insatiable males, always a call for soft yielding terrified meat.

50,000 francs was her standard price for a teenager. It wasn’t a huge amount but it sufficed. Money was not her prime object, it just oiled the wheels and allowed her to live the life she chose to live.

She gave up hunting in England when the customs officials started to take an undue interest in her. They suspected her of bringing in drugs, but it was only a matter of time before they put two and two together and got wise to the steady stream of missing teenagers.

So she diverted her operation to the south of France. The drawback to this was that these girls spoke French, whereas the British seldom did. The problem was that these new girls could beg the ‘users’ for help. In one instance it led to a brothel being closed down. Fortunately Jean-Paul Charriere’s bribes and kickbacks came into their own when he received a phone call three hours before the actual raid. So all the Police found were a bunch of toothless hags well past their sell by date. Of the fresh faced young girls there was no sign.

All the same it was a worry.

The solution was blindingly simple.

There is a large contingency of expatriot English living in and around Provence and it was these that became her target.

Just the like the girl she had trussed up in the rear of her camper van. A sixteen year old sun-bather who was naive enough to offer a pretty coloured girl some help in finding her way.

“Will you tell me where I am on the map I have in the van? It will only take a minute.”

That minute promised to last a lifetime.

It never failed to make Dita smile.

There was very little to make Dita smile these days. Henri had passed out of her life over a year since, snuffed out like a candle by a crazed junkie with a notched butterfly knife and a 1,000 franc a day habit. Dita came very close to weeping that day.

She decided to cruise off the road in order to refuel and to grab a cup of coffee. She always enjoyed these truck stops, chatting and flirting with the long distance truck drivers as her captives moaned and writhed silently in their bonds. Hidden from view, plugged and purged. Rigid in terror.

And so it was this day, except that now, an unexpected twist added itself.

While she was in the toilet she was approached by a distressed German girl, with a sorry tale to tell. She’d fallen out with her boyfriend who had dumped her here. Could Dita please take her to the nearest railway station? Would it be too much trouble?

“Not for someone as beautiful as you,” thought Dita.

“No problem at all,” said Dita.

The girl spoke very little French but could manage passable English, so they were able to converse as they hit the hardtop again on the long haul to Paris. Gerte, the German girl, was around 25 or so, a couple of months older than Dita herself and pleasant company once her initial misery was overcome.

Dita was a skilled and erudite companion and before long the German girl was giggling happily with her new friend.

She was indeed 25 and came from a little village near Hamburg. She’d met her boyfriend a couple of years ago and was swept off her feet by his obvious wealth and his rugged good looks. The fact that she was a rather stunning girl hardly seemed to have crossed her mind. They had rowed about some look that a Polish Truck Driver had given her and she had ended up getting dumped. Now she intended to find her own way back home and to make him feel both guilty and afraid for her.

Dita enjoyed her constant waffling. It helped make the journey pass quicker. She had no real intention of adding the girl to Jean-Paul’s stable. Her efforts over the last few months had been extraordinarily successful and now every one of Jean-Paul’s mattresses was profitably covered.

Except one. And that one’s occupant was safely ensconced in the back of her camper, communing silently with a large buzzing dildo.

Then she got the call on her mobile.

And Gerte’s life took a turn for the worst.

There seemed to be no reason to alarm the girl who was, in any event, rather good company. For a farm girl she was rather bright and her knowledge of a range of diverse subjects was prodigious.

It was such a shame that it was all to be wasted.

So Dita kept her in the cab all the way into Paris as she allowed the girl the last bit of intellectual stimuli she would get in a very long time.

It took three of Jean-Paul’s toughest guards to hustle the poor girl inside towards her new position.

Today was a holiday.

The girl didn’t realise the significance but Dita did. It was a tough way to start a new life. For a split second Dita felt sorry for her, then the feeling passed, like any other feelings of humanity that she may have harboured long, long ago.

The second girl was far more malleable offering no resistance to the harbingers of her fate.

What made this trip special was at this moment sitting in a silver Mercedes just along the street from her battered camper. The piercing blue eyes glinted meanly as they surveyed the tiny girl swinging herself into the cab of her van.

He followed her out of Paris back the way she had come. While they drove he barked out a series of orders on his mobile phone.

Exactly one week later, Dita never really understood what hit her as she stepped out of her van at the campsite.

One moment she was going across to the shower block and then the blinding flash followed by darkness.

She awoke naked and bound hand and foot on board a sea going vessel of some description. Her holes were filled with buzzing rubber intrusions. With a blinding clarity she understood what was to happen to her.

Unlike most of her captives she knew her fate.

She tried to piece together where she had stumbled. Then she remembered the silver Mercedes and she suddenly understood. Gerte’s boyfriend!

“He must be very well connected to be able to organise this,” was her thought.

She was not afraid, she knew what was coming. They’d have to keep her tied down of course, but what did that matter?

She lay and thought about the hundreds of girls that she had led into the life. She especially thought about Lorraine. Pale, bruised Lorraine and the many thousands of francs she had earned, that nestled in that Swiss Bank account. She was working still but her customer list was down, they preferred the young, beautiful girls to the used up whores.

Dita smiled grimly to herself. The circle of revenge was complete.

Now she must pay.

“It seems very fair somehow,” was her last rational thought before the fragile skin of her sanity cracked and she fell through into total madness.