Chapter 2: Glänzende Ware am Straßenrand
The industrial zone at the city’s edge was a geography of abandonment. Christina’s heels clicked a hollow rhythm against the cracked asphalt of a service road, the sound swallowed by the vast, echoing silence between warehouses. The air tasted of rust, wet cement, and diesel. High above, a few surviving sodium lights buzzed and flickered, casting a jaundiced glow that made the shadows seem to twist and deepen. This was her new beat. The bars near the station had started to feel too exposed, too many potential eyes that might recognize the sharp-faced Hauptfeldwebel beneath the whore’s gloss. Out here, it was purely transactional. The men who came here came for one thing.
She stopped beneath one of the sputtering lights, the neon making the shiny black latex of her catsuit gleam like oil. She unzipped the coat she wore over it, letting it hang open. The cold bit through the thin material, hardening her nipples into pronounced points against the tight fabric. It was a calculated display. She leaned against a rusted light pole, one hand on her hip, the other casually tracing the swell of her breast. A tableau of availability.
Headlights approached, slowed. A heavy truck, its paint grimy, rumbled to a stop a few meters away. The driver’s window rolled down, a slice of warm, cab-light interior cutting into the gloom. A man’s face, beard-shadowed and tired, peered out.
She pushed off the pole and took a few steps forward, letting the coat swing open fully. “Fifty for a blowjob,” she called out, her voice steady, carrying in the quiet. “A hundred if you want to fuck me.”
The driver looked her up and down, his eyes lingering on the high gloss of the suit outlining her hips, the long boots. “Here?” he asked, his voice rough.
“Right here. Or in your cab. Your choice.” She kept her tone neutral, a salesperson stating options.
He seemed to consider it, his gaze flicking to the dark, empty lots surrounding them. The engine idled with a low growl. “Hundred,” he said finally. “Cab’s warmer.”
She nodded, a quick businesslike dip of her chin. “Cash first.”
He grunted, reaching for his wallet on the passenger seat. He counted out five crumpled twenty-euro notes and handed them through the window. She took them, the paper coarse against her fingertips, and tucked them into the inner pocket of her coat. The weight was becoming familiar, a dull anchor.
She walked to the passenger side, opened the door, and hauled herself up into the cab. The space was cramped, dominated by the massive gear shift and a dashboard cluttered with logbooks and empty energy drink cans. It smelled of stale coffee, sweat, and cheap air freshener. He’d already pushed his seat back as far as it would go, his bulk a dark shape in the driver’s seat.
“Make it quick,” he said, unbuckling his belt. “I’ve got a delivery in Bielefeld for six AM.”
No preamble. She appreciated that. She shrugged her coat off, letting it fall onto the passenger-side footwell. In the close, warm darkness of the cab, the latex suit seemed to absorb the dim light from the dashboard, turning her into a sinuous silhouette. He fumbled with his zipper, the sound loud in the confined space.
He wasn’t fully hard. She could see it as he pulled himself out—a thick, uncircumcised cock lying heavy against his thigh. Without waiting for an invitation, she slid across the narrow space between the seats, her knees pressing against the gear shift console. She didn’t touch him with her hands. She bent forward, her long black hair falling like a curtain, and took him into her mouth.
He tasted of salt and fabric and unwashed skin. She worked him with a practiced, focused intensity. Her tongue pressed flat against the underside of his shaft, then circled the head, teasing the foreskin back. She used her lips to create a tight seal, her head bobbing in a steady, rhythmic tempo. In her mind, she was back in the briefing room. Major Brandt’s voice was a drill in her skull. Unverzeihliche Nachlässigkeit. Her jaw tightened. She sucked harder, taking him deeper into her throat, ignoring the reflexive gag. Ist das der Standard? She hollowed her cheeks, the suction fierce. This was a standard. This was a procedure. In, out. Suck, swirl. A problem to be solved with mechanical precision.
The driver groaned, a deep, rumbling sound. His hands came up and tangled in her hair, not guiding, just gripping. “Fuck yeah,” he muttered, his hips pushing up off the seat. “Just like that, you slut. Take it all.”
She closed her eyes, his words bouncing off the mental armor she’d erected. Slut. Whore. Filthy bitch. They were just noises. She focused on the physical sensations: the stretch of her lips, the weight of him on her tongue, the accelerating pulse she could feel in the vein along his shaft. His grip on her hair tightened, pulling her head down harder onto him, forcing her to take him deeper. She let him, using the resistance to fuel her own detached aggression. She was servicing him, yes, but she was also conquering him. Making him grunt and twist and lose control.
“I’m gonna come, you fucking cocksucker,” he growled, his voice taut.
She increased her pace, a punishing, relentless rhythm. Her jaw ached, a bright, clean pain that was almost welcome. He swore again, a string of obscenities, and his body went rigid. His release hit the back of her throat, hot and bitter. She swallowed convulsively, once, twice, until he was spent.
She pulled back, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. He was already shoving himself back into his pants, breathing heavily. Without a word, she gathered her coat, opened the passenger door, and stepped down onto the asphalt. The cold night air was a shock, cleansing. She zipped her coat, turned, and began walking back towards the pool of flickering light without looking back. The truck’s engine roared to life behind her, and the vehicle pulled away, its red taillights disappearing into the labyrinth of warehouses.
Alone again, she leaned against the same light pole, catching her breath. The taste of him lingered, a sour film on her tongue. She spat onto the gravel. Another hundred euros. She ran the calculation in her head. The rent. The new school shoes Leyla needed. The inexplicable hole in the kitchen floor that was getting bigger. The numbers still didn’t add up, but the gap was narrowing. It was a concrete equation, and she was a variable in it.
A smaller car, a beat-up Opel, slowed this time. The window rolled down. A younger man, maybe early thirties, with nervous eyes. “Fifty?” he asked, his voice tentative.
She nodded. “Against the wall,” she said, gesturing to the rough concrete expanse of a shuttered warehouse.
He parked, got out. He was jittery, looking over his shoulder. She led him into a deeper shadow, away from the road. “Relax,” she said, her tone flat. “No one’s out here.”
He fumbled with his wallet, handed her the money. She took it, then turned and faced the wall, bracing her gloved hands against the cold concrete. “Like this,” she said over her shoulder. “Be quick.”
She heard his zipper, felt him press against her from behind. The latex of her catsuit was slick against her skin. He lifted the back of her coat, then ran his hands over the suit clinging to her ass. He was hard already, pushing his clothed erection against her. He wasn’t gentle. He grabbed her hips, yanked her back towards him, and she felt him fumbling to find his way inside her. The material of the suit was thin, the panel at her crotch just a layer of latex. He pushed her thong aside with a rough finger, then guided himself into her with a groan.
He was thinner than the last one, but he shoved into her with a frantic, desperate energy. There was no finesse, just a harsh, piston-like rhythm as he fucked her from behind against the filthy wall. His breathing was ragged in her ear. She closed her eyes, her forehead resting against the cold concrete. She detached, letting her mind drift. She thought of the feel of the banknotes in her pocket. The way Tim had barely looked at her when she’d left. The silent, judgmental weight of her empty apartment.
“God, you’re tight,” the man gasped, his thrusts becoming jerky, uneven. “Fuck, you feel so good, you dirty whore…”
His words were meaningless. She remained still, a vessel. Her own arousal was a distant, theoretical concept, buried under layers of fatigue and purpose. He came quickly, with a sharp cry, his body shuddering against hers. He pulled out, and she felt the wet warmth of his release seep through the thin latex, cooling almost instantly against her skin.
He stepped back, panting. She straightened up, adjusted her coat, and turned around. He couldn’t meet her eyes as he tucked himself away. “Danke,” he mumbled, scurrying back to his car.
The Opel’s tires crunched on gravel as it fled into the darkness, its taillights swallowed by the warehouse shadows. Christina stood for a moment, the concrete wall cold against her back through the damp latex. She adjusted the suit at her crotch, a slick, unpleasant feeling she’d grown accustomed to ignoring. The mechanical rhythm of the night was beginning to wear thin, the calculations in her head looping endlessly: rent, shoes, food, the hole in the floor. The industrial zone’s isolation, once a comfort, now felt like a trap of her own making.
She walked back to her own car, a modest, aging Golf parked in the deeper gloom beneath a broken light. The silence was absolute. She opened the driver’s door and slid inside, the familiar scent of old fast food and synthetic air freshener filling her nose. She counted the cash from her inner pocket. Two hundred and fifty euros. It was something. It wasn’t enough.
Her son Tim’s voice, a throwaway comment from weeks ago, surfaced in her memory. He’d been complaining about the ‘Komposthaufen’, a student bar around the corner from his friend’s place, where the beer was cheap and the music was too loud. “They’ll let anyone in, apparently,” he’d grumbled. A new circuit. A different kind of clientele. Younger, maybe more cash, less weary. The risk of recognition was higher, but so was the potential payoff. The thought was a spark in the hollow fatigue.
Decision made, she moved quickly. She stripped off the long black coat, the garment that transformed the latex from obscenity into suggestion. She folded it neatly and placed it on the passenger seat. The cold night air hit the suit directly, raising goosebumps on her arms and making her nipples pucker tightly against the slick material. She checked her reflection in the rearview mirror. The woman looking back was pure id: severe, gleaming black from throat to ankle, her hair a dark cascade, her eyes outlined in the remnants of yesterday’s makeup. A stark contrast to the green uniform and tight bun. Hauptfeldwebel Möller was gone.
She locked the car and walked, the sound of her boot heels on the asphalt echoing with a new, exposed finality. The student bar was only three blocks from the industrial zone, but it was a different world. The graffitied shutters of a kebab shop gave way to streetlights festooned with torn concert flyers. The thump of bass grew louder, a physical vibration in the air. The sign for ‘Komposthaufen’ was a twisted piece of rusted metal, illuminated by a single red bulb. A group of kids, students surely, huddled outside smoking, their laughter too high and frantic. They fell silent as she approached, their eyes wide, tracking her every movement as she pushed open the heavy door.
Inside was a wall of sound and heat. The air was thick with the smell of spilled beer, sweat, and clove cigarettes. Strobe lights cut through a haze of smoke, illuminating fragments of laughing faces, raised glasses, gyrating bodies on a small, crowded dance floor. She paused just inside the door, letting her eyes adjust, letting the room adjust to her. A few heads turned. Conversations stuttered. A guy in a worn band t-shirt choked on his beer, his eyes bugging out as they travelled the length of her from boots to hair. She ignored him, scanning the room with the analytical detachment of a recon patrol.
The bar was a scarred wooden slab at the back. She walked towards it, moving through the crowd with a deliberate, unhurried grace. The latex suit creaked softly with each step. Whispers followed in her wake. “Alter…” “Was ist denn das?” “Meinst du die ist echt?” She reached the bar, leaning an elbow on the sticky surface. The bartender, a young woman with a shaved head and a lip ring, stared at her, frozen with a bottle in her hand.
“Club soda. With lime,” Christina said, her voice cutting through the surrounding din.
The bartender nodded mutely, turned, and fumbled for a glass. Christina turned her back to the bar, surveying her territory. The attention was a palpable force, a current of shock, curiosity, and raw hunger. It was different from the tired assessment of the businessmen. This was electric, unstable. A young man, maybe twenty, with floppy hair and a pretentious scarf, detached himself from a group and swayed towards her. He smelled of cheap whiskey and ambition.
“Quite an… outfit,” he slurred, leaning in too close.
Christina took her drink from the bartender, sipped it, and looked at him without expression. “Fifty for a blowjob. A hundred to fuck.”
His drunk bravado faltered for a second, then hardened into a performative smirk. “Right here?”
“Back alley. Now or never.”
He glanced back at his friends, who were watching, egging him on with nods. He pulled out a worn leather wallet, clumsy in his haste, and counted out five twenties. “Hundred,” he declared, puffing out his chest.
She took the money, tucked it away, and led him through a side door marked ‘FEUERWEG’ that opened into a claustrophobic brick alley stacked with overflowing beer kegs and broken glass. The music was muffled here, just a dull throb. He pressed her against the damp wall, his hands immediately grabbing her breasts through the latex, squeezing roughly. His breath was hot and sour on her neck.
“You’re a fucking fantasy,” he mumbled, fumbling with his belt.
She didn’t respond. She pushed him back a step and dropped to her knees on the filthy ground. The cold wetness seeped through the latex at her knees instantly. He pulled his cock out. It was half-hard, average. She took him into her mouth without preamble, establishing a rapid, brutal rhythm. This was for the money in her pocket. This was for the hole in her kitchen floor.
He moaned, his hands tangling in her hair, pushing her head down. “Yeah, suck it you latex bitch, suck my fucking dick…”
She focused on the mechanics, the pressure, the way his hips began to stutter. He came fast, with a choked gasp, into her mouth. She swallowed, the taste bitter and young. She stood up, wiping her lips as he staggered back, zipping his trousers with trembling hands.
Back inside the bar, the energy had shifted. The initial shock had morphed into a dangerous curiosity. She reclaimed her spot at the bar, ordering another soda. This time, there was no hesitation. They came to her in twos and threes, a jostling queue of youthful bravado and chemical courage.
A pair of students, giggling nervously, pooled their cash for a combined fifty. She took them into the single-stall bathroom, the lock broken, the toilet filthy. One held her hair back while the other fucked her mouth, their laughter dying into grunts of concentration. She focused on the peeling poster on the door, a band she didn’t recognize.
Later, a heavier-set guy with a beard shoved two hundred euros into her hand. “I want the full thing. Everything.” He reeked of cannabis and body odor. In a storage closet reeking of mop water, he bent her over a sink, pushed the flimsy thong aside, and entered her with a rough thrust. He fucked her with a slow, grinding intensity, his fat fingers digging into the latex at her hips, his breath gusting against her neck. “Tell me you’re my slut,” he demanded. She remained silent, her face pressed against the cold stainless steel, until he finished with a groan.
The night became a blur of sensations disconnected from herself. The cold alley air. The sticky heat of the bar. The taste of different skin, different soap, different releases. The crackle of banknotes. Her body operated on a taught, automatic wire. Her mind was elsewhere, watching from a great distance. It floated above the stained sink, above the grimy wall, above the queue of eager, anonymous faces. It thought of the exact pressure needed to field-strip a standard-issue rifle. It calculated the distance to the nearest emergency exit. It wondered if Leyla had finished her homework.
A young woman, her eyes glassy from pills, approached her. “My boyfriend… he’s too shy. Will you… can we watch?” She offered a crumpled fifty.
Christina nodded. She followed them to a corner booth, partially obscured by a curtain. The boyfriend, red-faced, couldn’t look at her. Christina unzipped the front of the catsuit to her navel, exposing her breasts. She took the young man’s soft cock into her hand, stroking him to hardness while his girlfriend kissed his neck and whispered in his ear. When he was ready, Christina guided him inside her, riding him in the sticky booth with a detached, professional efficiency until he finished with a quiet sob.
The young man went limp beneath her, his soft sobs muffled against her shoulder. Christina disentangled herself, the latex making a slick, peeling sound as she stood. She zipped her suit, the motion practiced and empty. The girlfriend handed her the crumpled fifty without meeting her eyes. “Danke,” the girl whispered, already turning to comfort her boyfriend.
Christina stepped out from behind the curtain. The bar’s energy had shifted, curdling from revelry into something darker. The music pounded, but the glances thrown her way were no longer just curious. They were hungry, calculating. She felt like a slab of meat in a feeding tank. Her body ached—a deep, bruised throbbing between her legs, a raw tension in her jaw. The taste of the night, a composite of sweat, beer, and other men’s orgasms, coated her tongue.
She pushed through the crowd towards the hallway leading to the toilets, seeking a moment to rinse her mouth. The narrow corridor was choked with bodies, the air thick with the stench of urine and spilled gin. She shouldered her way through, the latex offering a strange, impersonal shield against the groping hands that reached out to stroke her ass or brush her breasts.
A thick hand clamped down on her shoulder, stopping her progress. It wasn’t a customer’s touch. It was assertive, proprietary. She turned.
The man was in his fifties, with a shaved head and a thick neck that strained against his black t-shirt. A set of keys jangled from a carabiner on his belt. This was the owner. She’d seen him earlier, watching from behind the bar, his eyes like two chips of flint.
“You’ve been busy,” he said, his voice a low growl that cut through the bass thump. He didn’t remove his hand.
Christina stared back, her face a mask of cold neutrality. “I’m a guest here. I’m not causing trouble.”
“No trouble,” he said, a smirk twisting his lips. “You’re the main attraction. I’ve had three people complain about the queue for the shitter. Because you’ve been camped in there, or the alley, or that fucking booth, draining my customers dry.” He leaned in closer; she smelled cheap aftershave and cigarette smoke. “I know exactly what you’ve been doing. And how much you’ve been making.”
She held his gaze, her mind racing. This could go badly. A scene. The police. Exposure.
He saw the calculation in her eyes and the smirk widened. “Relax. I’m not a moralist. I’m a businessman. This…” he gestured vaguely at the heaving bar, “…is a business. And you’re generating… liquidity.”
He finally removed his hand, but his presence boxed her in against the damp wall. “I have a proposition. There’s a room. At the end of this hall, past the toilets. It’s unused. Storage. I’ve been thinking about converting it. A VIP room. A mattress. Some… amenities.”
Christina said nothing, her green eyes watching him, assessing like she would a potential threat during a patrol.
“You could operate from there,” he continued, his voice dropping. “Discreet. Efficient. No more fucking in my alley where everyone can see. I’d install a proper lock. And on the wall to the hallway… I could put in a panel. Glory holes. For the shy ones. The curious ones. You wouldn’t even have to see their faces.”
The proposition hung in the fetid air. It was logic, stripped of pretense. A systemic solution.
“What’s your cut?” Her voice was flat, devoid of emotion.
“Twenty percent. Of everything you make in that room. You handle your own security, your own… supplies. I provide the space, the clientele, the discretion.” He leaned in. “Next weekend. Semester opening party. This place will be packed. Horny little shits with their first student loan installments burning holes in their pockets. All of age, naturally.”
He wasn’t asking. He was presenting the new operational parameters. Her mind clicked through the variables. Higher volume. Controlled environment. Reduced risk of random violence or exposure outside. The cut was steep, but the infrastructure had value. It was, in its own horrifying way, a promotion.
A group of laughing students shoved past them, jostling her against the wall. The owner steadied her, his hand lingering on her arm. “Well? Do you want to keep kneeling in piss out back, or do you want a business arrangement?”
The ghost of Major Brandt’s contemptuous voice echoed in her skull. Unverzeihliche Nachlässigkeit. This was not negligence. This was a tactical consolidation of resources. A field operation.
“Show me the room,” she said.
He nodded, a sharp, satisfied jerk of his head. He led her past the reeking toilets to a steel door at the corridor’s end. He unlocked it with a key from his ring. The room was small, maybe four meters by three. Concrete floor. Exposed pipes snaking across the ceiling. Boxes of napkins and cleaning supplies were stacked against one wall. A single, naked bulb hung from a wire.
“I’ll clear it out,” he said, his voice echoing in the empty space. “Get a mattress in here. A small table. A light you can dim. The wall here,” he gestured to the shared wall with the hallway, “I’ll have my guy cut the holes. Three of them. Waist height. Strong panel. They’ll be lining up.”
Christina walked to the center of the room. She could smell damp concrete and mold. In her mind’s eye, she superimposed the image: a mattress on the floor, her kneeling before a rough-cut opening in the drywall, an anonymous cock sliding through. No faces. No pleading drunk eyes. Just a transaction. A exchange of currency for friction. It was dehumanizing. It was perfect.
“Twenty percent,” she confirmed, turning to face him. “I start next Friday.”
“Good.” He tossed her a key. It was cold and heavy in her palm. “This is for the main door to the hallway. The room lock will be changed by Friday. Don’t be late. The party starts at ten.” He gave her one last, appraising look, from the gleaming toes of her boots to the disheveled cascade of her black hair. “Wear that. It’s… effective.”
He left, closing the door behind him, leaving her alone in the gray, silent box. The bass from the bar was a muted throb through the walls. She looked at the key in her hand, then at the blank wall where the holes would be. The calculations resumed, sharper now. Higher volume meant more money. More money meant fixing the floor. More money meant Leyla’s school trip. More money meant a buffer between her family and the cold nothing that always seemed just one missed payment away.
She thought of Tim, alone in his room with his computer. The shame was a cold stone in her gut, but it was distant, compartmentalized. This was logistics. This was survival. She leaned back against the cold concrete, the latex suit the only thing between her skin and the rough wall. She closed her eyes, and for a brief moment, she wasn't in a storage room. She was in her office at the barracks, reviewing a tactical map, planning a secure perimeter. This was just another perimeter to secure.
The door opened. A kid, maybe nineteen, with acne and desperate eyes, peeked in. “The… the guy said you were still available? For fifty?”
Christina opened her eyes. The moment of planning was over. The operation was live. She pushed off from the wall, her face settling into its neutral mask. “Yes. But not in here. Not yet.” She led him back into the stinking bathroom, the key to her new empire a cold, sharp weight in her clenched fist.