The following is only fiction--a twisted look into a dismal future where lingerie modeling shops and escort services, adult stores and strip clubs are ordinanced and zoned out of existence.

"The Last Stop"

It's a slow drip Monday. The shift's useless, numbing events filter through my mind like old coffee grounds straining to make another cup . . . of her. Cold. Weak. Dead November sky. Thick, bulbous gray clouds fellate my limp existence. Like a pen that's run out of ink, I scratch myself raw against blank paper . . . trying to figure it out. Solve the crime. That is, after all, my job.

Since the city zoned and ordinanced all the sex shops out of business, I've been busy scratching my balls and trying to get lucky with a dealer named Alicia. Works out of Washington. She's a blackjack dealer, not a drug dealer. I don't know why, but girls who do heroin never deal . . . just wind up bobbin' the knob to get by. As a vice cop lookin' to get lucky, it's not a good idea to accept favors from the people you're trying to bust. "Prostitution is a crime, after all." That was the first thing that fat lieutenant said when I got kicked down from homicide. And started sleepwalking through my job, till she happened.

I shut off the tape recorder--statement I took about Big John Ricky, one of the new breed pimp daddy monsters that had stepped in and taken over after all the jack shacks and escort services went tits up. Now we were back to havin' pimps and street trade--floating crack and cum houses on wheels. The fuckin' customers hang out at the bus stops now. Pimp and his girl roll up and take you away. Johns got smarter about knowing if you're cops. I mean, how many cops know how to act like the bitch sittin' next to him is his property. We've got so much sensitivity training shoved down our dry, croaking throats, I can't even flirt with a female officer without my nuts tightening up like they're in a vice. Yeah, vice. That's me now. Playin' that tape, over and over, till the knot comes all the way undone in my stomach. Feel it growin' down my leg. And then . . .

She came on to me more than once. Only 'cause JR wanted to hook me up with her knob bobbin' skills so he'd have something on me. Thick red lips. Black orgasm. She only gave me the statement as a way of having sex with me. She knew I'd get off on it. Hell, she could tell, back in the coffee room so there weren't any other eyes and ears. 4:00 AM. Cocks comin' and goin' in her dirty mouth all night. Her throat was raspy from all the cigarettes and cum. She knew I'd never play that tape for anyone, and I'd let her beautiful bony ass go.

I gotta admit, I liked the way she worked me. But what I really wanted was to be the one, the only one, who could work her. Nightstick up that stick mama's ass while she swallows Big JR. And then she kisses me. Who the fuck am I gonna tell that one to? The chaplain? The shrink? My ex-wife? Play the tape again. Confess it all to my fist. And give her another tribute. Down where they found her. JR didn't kill her. She just had the courage to ask, to give in to everything she secretly wanted. A way out. A way home.

Sex and death. They always find a way to get next to each other. Down here by the tracks,

The first time he pulled off his belt and put the worn black leather to my ass, I came so hard I lost control for a sec'--trickle of warm pee shot down my thigh and wet the big nasty bulge in his pants. One slow blink later, his pants were off, down at his ankles. My ass was still so warm you could grill meat on it. He slapped my drooling mouth so hard I saw stars. Then he grabbed me under my jaw with one hand, held my hair in his other hand, and fed me that new pimp daddy dick. I slipped two fingers into myself while he rammed that big, puffy helmet into my tonsils. I came again while he ejaculated directly down my throat. Barely had to swallow. 'That's how you suck dick,' he said, then tossed me aside.

I crawled up into his lap like a little girl. He smoked. Didn't say a word. Didn't push me off, either. Finally, he began stroking my hair. My eyes got wet. Without knowing if I was sad, glad or bad, I squeezed

Because that girl's dead now. Found in a dead ho's place--stolen car abandoned by the tracks. Strangled. Half naked. Welt marks on her tight little ass. No signs of struggle or sex. Just dead. Almost peaceful look on her face. Like she came just before she died. Tox screen showed up 'H' but not enough to make a fuss. She just had a good ol' regular buzz goin'.

And Big JR was the prime suspect. I'd skipped from vice back to homicide. Or at least I was straddling the fence, listening to her in my car one more time, in the dark down by the tracks. Snake in the grass slidin' down my leg. A fucking snuff tape, that's what it was like, hearing her dying devotion to JR. Wondering how I could pin it on him. No signs of struggle; that was the hard part, more ways than one. Like she wanted it that way, surrendered to it,

Do you wanna date? Can still hear her, first time I caught her act by a motor hotel, asking me for change for the phone. Hell, she knew I was a cop, knew I wasn't gonna arrest her by the hungry look in my sleepless red eyes.

Time off. That's what I'll do. This one got to me, I'll say. She got to me. Ruined me for anyone but her--someone who's willing to go all the way. Sitting at the last stop, wondering where you jump to from here. She knows. And she ain't tellin'.