Public Service: Tumble Down Ch. 01

Author's Note: This story takes place about 50 years after both of the previous Public Service stories and as such it is 100% stand alone.

*****

The door to the cell slammed shut behind me, it was a sound I was going to have to get used to. They had given me ten years, ten fucking years, and for what!? A few murders? It was all bullshit anyway but they can make anything stick if they want to.

My name is Sally Cross. I was born on January the 4th, 2150 in the Scottish Republic. I was handed over to the state by my mother exactly twenty seconds after she had pushed me out of her cunt. From then on I was a ward of the state, clothed, taught, fed and watered on the taxpayers penny. Not that it fucking mattered at that point. For most people money had lost all its meaning years ago, the only things you couldn't get on a Pub Card were either illegal as all hell or so rare as to not make any difference.

When I was 18 I walked out of the foster home and never went back. Instead I went to live with my then boy/girlfriend Francis. Francis was one of the very few people who could be called rich anymore, his/hers daddy's money had bought a gender morph that made the sexual characteristics of her/his body switch back and forth over a 13 month cycle.

When I had met Francis they had been at the peak of the male cycle, still pretty feminine but with a weird looking cock dangling between his legs. When he had told me that six months down the line he would have a pussy and tits I had laughed my ass off. Hell, I only hung around to see if it was true, it just so happened that in that time I found out that I actually quite enjoyed being around Francis.

Living with him/her was pretty fun, we stayed together for three years all told. In that time I met a lot of interesting people, Francis always loved hanging around with the Art of Death nutters. Mostly because you could borrow their shit and probably never have to give it back. Since they had usually made themselves into a grizzly art piece by throwing themselves in front of a bus or off of a building in the meantime. Of course, the real reason he/she hung around with them was because no-one fucks like someone who knows they are going to die.

We figured it was because some primal part of them wanted to pass on its seed, it seemed to only really apply to the guys. I guess that does make sense, after all it's not like any of the women would be around long enough to pop out a kid. To test it I fucked one of the Art of Death nuts then francis sucked his cum out of me and spat it into a measuring jug. Then we did the same with some guy we grabbed off the street and do you know what we found? The Art of Death guy nutted a full 4 milliliters more! Now that might not sound much but to us it was a fucking revelation. We were about ready to write a paper and get that shit published, that was until we forgot what we were doing and just fucked instead.

In retrospect I should have seen what happened coming. I mean, Francis had always hung around with the Art of Death cunts along with a bunch of other weird fucks. But over time there were fewer of the rest and more of the hollow eyed suicide squad around. Francis started to spend more and more time with them, talking and planning, spending less and less time, laughing and fucking. I was too whacked out of my skull most of the time to notice or care and I didn't bat an eye when knives and guns started to appear.

I didn't even think twice when he/she set up a fucking chemistry lab in the kitchen, all I knew was the fumes gave me a fucking headache. I guess part of me must have known something was about to go shit shaped, because at some point I pocketed a little handgun Francis had got from somewhere. Three days late I would end up committing my first murder.

I always used to go out in the morning to grab some food and drinks, maybe score some drugs whilst I was out. Francis had a Credit Card that never seemed to run dry. I had the little handgun stuck in my jacket pocket and when I finally came back I found Francis stood in the center of the living room completely nude.

He was slap bang in the middle of the cycle at that point, his body was as smooth as a doll. Something about the way Francis was moving made the oddly genderless curves and lines of his body seem disturbing putting me in mind of a marionette with tangled strings. Opening his eyes he gave me a blank look, as if he was just a body without a mind, without purpose or will of its own.

Sticking my hand into my pocket I felt the reassuring hard shape of the gun. Suddenly the life seemed to return to Francis's eyes, seeming to see me for the first time as he crossed the gap between us.

"Sally!" He called out to me, his voice taking on that strangely dull yet brittle tone it always did when he was high, like broken glass in honey. "I have something wonderful to tell you my lover." He continued, throwing an arm around me, the other forcing itself down into my pants with practised ease, his fingers tracing the outline of my sex as he breathed heavily on my neck. I wanted to push him away, my instincts going nuts, trying to tell me this was not just him being high and horny. I ignored them, it wasn't unusual for him to suddenly decide he wanted to play with my body.

"You know I always wanted to be an artist," Francis mumbled into my neck before he suddenly snapped upright. The hand around my shoulder dropped to fondle my bra-less breasts through the threadbare t-shirt I wore. His finger easily finding my nipple, rolling it to full hardness with practiced ease. "Well, I think I have finally figured out my masterpiece."

This talk was hardly unusual as well, usually when he got like this it meant he would end up drawing pictures on my stomach and breasts with semen that was overflowing from my sex. His or someone else's, it didn't matter to either of us and I had become more than a little addicted to the almost religious way he would treat my body.

This time that didn't happen, as the words left his mouth a hand was suddenly around my throat, his thin claw like fingers digging in as he rammed his thumb into the center of my throat. I felt my throat starting to collapse as I was pushed against the wall. The hand that was in my pants started to painfully dig into my sex as he tried to choke the life out of me.

His arm was like a steel rod being pushed into me, I tried to twist out of his grip, my free hand lashing out. My dull fingernails left nothing but light red scratches on his arm and face. All the time I stared into the empty burning sockets that had been his eyes.

The gun in my pocket snagged on the fabric as I tried to draw it. A red mist of panic was clouding my mind as I yanked and tugged at the fucking gun. My throat was on fire as I finally, with the long tearing of fabric, tugged the gun free. I jammed the barrel into his gut and squeezed the trigger tight.

Seven hammer blows hit my eardrums in two seconds. The gun nearly bucking out of my hand as I held it to his gut. It took him a few second to react, the pressure was released on my throat as Francis staggered back holding his stomach with a look of wounded trust on his face. The rounds had made an almost straight line of bright red dots on his belly. Starting in the center going off to the left. My ears still ringing, I wasn't able to make out what he said before collapsing backwards on to the floor.

Looking down at the gun in my hand my mind raced. Francis was the son of a very rich man, and rich men don't like it when little orphan girls shoot their nutter sons dead. So I had to run and I had to go now.

Gun still in hand I headed into the bedroom to grab the few belonging I had. There I found the passed out form of one of the Death Cultists, a needle lying beside his hand where it had fallen when he passed out.

As soon as I saw him a thought of dark brilliance sparked to life in my mind. Heading back into the main room, my hearing coming back enough to make out Francis's laboured breathing on the floor. Ignoring him and the spreading circle of red around him I pulled out the small box of ammo for the gun. After a few false starts during which I managed to let the slide slam forward and nearly dropped the gun, I was able to get the magazine free and load another round into it. Slamming the magazine home I racked the slide with numb fingers and headed back to the bedroom.

Looking down at the nude passed out form on the bed I tried to picture the story I wanted the police to see. Death Cultists were all about creating a memorable tableau with their bodies. So simply sticking the gun under his chin was out.

With a flash of inspiration I went back to Francis. His eyes flickered open when I stood above him, the colour already draining from his face. Even though he had tried to kill me a scant few moments before and even though he would have done god knows what with my body. The crowd of Art of Death nutters he had hung around with had had some strange ideas about the place of sex in the "Art" they created.

Yet looking at him now it was hard to not feel the urge to call an ambulance, looking back on it now I am sure he could have survived if I had called someone. Of course that was impossible, money could buy you a lot of things but being caught with an unlicensed firearm, which for all I know could have been churned out on one of the black market 2D Printers, was not something you could wrigles out of.

With more than a little effort I pushed those thoughts down and grabbed hold of his hands. pulling his blood slick hands away from his stomach and dragging him out of the living room and into the bedroom. He hardly weighed of anything and it seemed like all the fight had gone out of him. He might as well have been dead already as I dumped him on the bed.

Looking at the two of them there I quickly flipped francis over, my stomach turning as I saw the mess those bullets had made of his back. Checking the scene against what I wanted it to say to the police I knew that something was missing.

I won't go into how I filled in that missing piece, suffice to say when the police found this little tableau they had no doubt that they were looking at a piece of art. I found a piece of paper and scribbled the words "Lust in Death" leaving it at the foot of the bed.

Despite the grisly action I took to get that effect the single action I found the most distasteful was when I cleaned the gun off and place dit in the limp hand of the drugged out idiot. He turning my head away as I jammed the gun under his chin and pulled the trigger I still struggled to hold my stomach in check. It only got harder when I looked at my handy work, the bullet had made it to his brain but along the way it had done a serious number on his face.

After wiping down everything I could I bugged out, all told I think maybe five minutes passed between my coming home and my leaving. They felt like decades each as I had tried to cover my tracks. I was a couple of streets away when the shakes hit me, I lost my breakfast as I hunched up against a alley wall, willing my body to stop shaking like a leaf. I managed to get myself back under control, eventually. When I did I kept moving, putting as much distance between myself and that Flat as I could.

The funny thing is, looking back on it now, what I did was so sloppy and poorly thought out. I was amazed that I was never caught and now I am even more amazed that that isn't even the reason I am in prison.

****

I spent the next few months keeping my head down, the last thing I wanted to do was attract the attention of the police. That meant that pretty much every place to stay and job was off the table. Hell, I couldn't even take advantage of the government support since you needed to give over your ID for that. All I had was the couple of Credsticks I had lifted from Francis's place before I left and the clothes on my back.

Luckily for me there was enough money on the Sticks to keep food in my belly but only if I avoided staying in hotels. So I ended up as the richest homeless person around.

I did eventually find a place to stay, it was a dingey block of flats. Although giving the living spaces the title of flats was giving them more credit than they deserved. It had been built back during one of the Governments that had tried to stimulate the economy by deregulating just about everything they could. The end result for the housing market had been a sudden glut of subpar building jammed into every space you could find. This place had been wedged between two sandstone tenements, about half as wide as it should've been it extended back twice as far as the buildings around it to make up for it. Adding to the rustic charm was the cheap cladding which was black with mold where it had not completely crumbled away to reveal the superstructure underneath.

Inside it didn't get any better, each room was exactly as wide as the single bed inside of it. With a single bare bulb hanging from the roof and just enough space at the end for the door to open and close. The walls were paper thin with the same black mold growing across it.

Unsurprisingly the landlord of the place was exactly the kind of guy you would expect to be running a place like that. Between his nearly perfectly spherical stomach and bald head, he looked more like an abused child's toy than an actual person. When I walked into the building he had looked me up and down with an expression that told me everything I needed to know about him. He was the kind of guy who would happily sell me into sex slavery if he thought he could get away with it and would get his use out of me first.

As much as it all made my skin crawl the place was out of the way and neither the landlord or the other tenants were going to ask too many questions about me. I figured I could make the most out of it, stay low for maybe a year or so and then try and move on with my life. It was in those months that I would hatch the plan that ultimately landed me in jail, not that I planned it that way.

No, the plan was pretty innocent actually, ever since I had stepped out into the world on my own I had drawn the eye of men and women alike. When Francis had taken me to fancy clubs and bars I had been beating suitors off with a shitty stick all night. Now, most of them were just looking for a quick suck and fuck but I knew that some wanted more. Some of them had that sad hungry look that said they wanted a princess in their lives. I had seen what could happen to girls who went with them. If they got lucky they ended up in a nice house with a dead husband. If they got unlucky they ended being tossed aside for a younger model and if they got really unlucky they ended buried under the driveway because they had the gall to burn dinner or get pregnant.

The neither the second or third option appealed but then I knew it would never happen to me. Francis was an object lesson in what happened to guys that tried that on me and besides. I had got pretty good at reading those guys, the ones who would be happy with their fists always had a way of carrying themselves. A way of reacting and watching, as if they expected someone to come at them with a knife at any moment.

I would avoid them and find the softer ones, the ones that had been so coddled by mommy that they really did buy into the dream. Once I had one of them it would be easy street. The only people that still gave a shit about monogamy where the people who actually had something to lose from bastard children popping up down the line. The rest of us poor cunts had little to lose from playing around. Hell most people did at least one stint in the Service Station at some point in their lives.

I had never done it myself and I doubted I ever would now but it was easy to see how something like that would make it hard to care. When you spend a week getting fucked for the state you start to see things in a new light.

Since I had been old enough to understand sex I had seen it as a weapon. Most of the Orphans who turned 18 and left the home ended up hanging around for a few years afterwards. Some of them had somehow managed to make it to 18 with illusions of true love and they had all wound up the same. Crying on to someone's shoulder for some true love who had promised them the world and love eternal right up until he finished wiping his cock off and then he would ghost.

There was one girl I looked up to, her name was Moira and she had turned tricks right outside the Home. I remember watching her through the window, a John would come up, they would chat and he would hand her a necklace or some other bauble. They would vanish into the alleyway and five minutes later, wiping her mouth or pulling her skirt back into place. At the end of the day she would walk around to the Pawn Shop and sell the junk she had been given and the next day the Johns would buy that exact same junk for her again. I had asked her once why they came to her, after all they could have just gone to the Service Stations and gotten it for free.

"Some guys need to feel superior to you," She had said. "They need to know that no matter how shit their lives are they are better than a whore who lets any one cum in her for a cheap necklace."

That stuck with me, for better or for worse it stuck with me and made me the woman I am today. Of course it doesn't help that my life would prove her right.

***

I managed to last in that place for almost six months, the money on the Sticks stretched pretty far when I spent most of my time sleeping. The bulk buy food paste I was eating was doing a number on my gut but it was cheap and I didn't need to cook it. The room I was in didn't have a window and I didn't want to pay any more than I had to so I would sit in the dark most of the time. Planning for the future. My thought punctuated by the sounds coming from the rooms around me, of arguments, crying and sex.

Eventually listening to the 60 year old whore in the room next to me drone out the same old tired lines to the weird fucking johns she served got to me. I headed out to buy a dress for when I would go hunting. Working through the charity shops I found a simple little red dress that was just south of my size. Trying it on I found it squeezed me in all the right places. I bought it, even though that relatively small expense worked out to about a month's worth of rent.

Looking at the money I had left I made the realisation that I either had enough money to feed myself for the next two months or pay rent, not both. As I walked back into the lobby of the building I caught site of the landlord sitting in his ratty fake leather chair. He looked at me as I walked by, doing everything short of whipping his dick out and wanking off there and then.

Back in the room I considered my options, I had enough food for a couple more days and after that I would be fucked. The only real option was to start on the prowl then and there. So, buying a three minute go on the communal shower and putting on the dress under my normal clothes, I headed out onto the town.

The first two bars I went to where a bust, I was able to bum some free snacks and a few drinks off of some men. But they all had the look of guys on the prowl for one night stands. It wasn't until the third bar, a upmarket place with a all wood finish and mood lighting out the ass, that I found someone likely.

His name was Bill and he was apparently some form of lawyer. Everything about the way he acted gave off the right vibe. The way he carefully tried to avoid any topics that might scare me off, the way he never pressured me to drink more or get closer to him. How he talked about his stable life and a million other little things that told me he was the right one. It helped that he was not too hard on the eyes or a bore to talk to. In fact, by the end of the night I was actually enjoying myself quite a lot. Which ended up getting me into a hell of a lot of trouble.