Strangler was so pleased with me, he was going to use me regularly at the apartment for the other rich men. Tonight Paul will take me to that place again, and I will spend hours making myself look pretty for them.
Day 56
Every night I have the same nightmare. I am trapped in a coffin, buried alive underground. I can actually smell the peat in the ground and feel the cold earth permeate my bones so I am shivering. There are insects crawling over my skin. Cockroaches and spiders. Then the rats come later and gnaw on my skin.
When I bang on the wooden lid, trying to tell someone I am trapped, I hear my mother calling me.
‘Elena, where are you?’ she cries.
And even though I am just below her, a few feet underground, she cannot hear me.
My nails scrape against the sides of the coffin, and I kick it with my feet, but I cannot get out.
After I wake up in a cold sweat, my skin itches uncontrollably and I cannot get back to sleep.
Day 57
I have a new customer who did not want to have sex with me. I do not know if this is some kind of loyalty test that Paul has conjured up so he knows he can trust me, or if it is something else.
The man is called Jamie. He was my first customer tonight at the massage parlour, and I could tell he was nervous. He would hardly look me in the eye. He reminds me of Stefan in some small way. Not the way he looks, but how he holds himself. It seems like there is something gentle about him.
I asked him what he wanted and he did not seem to understand me.
‘What would you like me to do for you?’ I said to him.
His eyebrows furrowed slightly, as if I was trying to trick him. ‘Look…er…I’ve never done this kind of thing before. I just want to talk,’ he said.
‘Talk?’ I repeated. I thought I had misheard him because this has never happened before.
‘Yes. And I want to hold you,’ he said.
So we laid on the bed together and he held me in his arms, chest to chest, his chin resting on the top of my head. He told me how his wife died a year ago from a sudden brain haemorrhage. It has been hard for him, coping without her. He misses her in his arms at night, and I know how he feels, because he makes me think about Stefan again. He said he has been lonely, and he needs to get comfort from someone.
So I stroked his back gently and let him talk about her, trying to give him all the comfort I could. It is much better than being raped.
Day 59
I spend a lot of time at Paul’s Millionaires’ Club apartment now.
One of the men likes two girls at a time. One of them wants me to dress like a school girl. One of them likes me to wear a certain perfume. One of them likes me to whip him.
Most of the rich men treat me better than the men in the massage parlour, and I am grateful for that. The only exception is the Strangler.
Day 65
Jamie came to see me again. This time he paid for three hours of my time, but he still did not want sex. It was the same as before, lying on the bed in each other’s arms as he talked about his wife.
It made me think of Stefan when he told me they were childhood sweethearts. After going their separate ways to university, they lost touch with each other, but met up by chance a few years later and got married when they were twenty-five. Although they had no children, they had been trying for a baby for the last four years. One day she was there, the next she was gone. Her life disappeared in a puff of smoke. I can relate to that.
I discovered he is thirty-five years old and has a cat called Whiskers.
For the first time ever, a man has asked me why I do this job. I get the feeling he thinks this is my choice. Do people really think every prostitute turns to this life because they are nymphomaniacs? Because it is their number one career choice? Do they honestly think some women and girls aspire to be a sex slave whore like they aspire to be a pop star? I wish the world would wake up.
I was aching to tell him the truth, but I