THE BED.

Today is a Monday. That means it’s Sarah’s turn. She is a screamer. Most of them just do their business, shuffle around on top of me, and let the customer be done with it. Sarah, on the other hand, puts real effort into the thing. She talks dirty to them, she moans and encourages. And she is fat. My legs creak and complain, but she pays no attention to them. She just rides away.

The room reeks of sex. I wish they’d clean it once in a while.

My world is under three meters long, and about four meters wide. Next to me is an old, rotten desk where most customers leave their wallets, watches and fee on. Sometimes the owners bring in candles to provide an appropriate mood to the cold clay walls, the stone-cold floor and the rusty metal door, but they’ve been doing that less and less ever since that bed two rooms away from me caught fire. Music creeps into the room from time to time, but I don’t know where it comes from. It’s mostly slow ballads, played in guitar, that don’t draw too much attention on themselves, and don’t even manage to silence the grunts, whispers and heavy breathing. Tomorrow will be a Tuesday, and that means Jenna’s up.

She’s fairly new, compared to the others. She’s also younger. Must be seventeen, or so. The first couple of weeks I felt her whimper and sob, as the thrusts turned harder and harder, but she’s learning fairly quick. Now she saves the tears for later. She counts the money. She screams with my pillow pressed against her face. Her tiny fist punches the wall until it bleeds. Three weeks ago a customer turned crazy on poor, little Jenna. He grabbed her neck, struck her mouth, called her a fucking whore, a dirty bitch, and I could feel her struggle, I could hear her plead, and when the others came in, and grabbed the customer and dragged him away, I could feel her shaking. Now she keeps a knife in the desk, right next to the wallets and watches.

Wednesday is a good day. Tania barely uses me. She claws on the wall and she kneels on the floor, but she never actually lays down on me. That’s always nice. Thursday, for some reason, is always a slow day. It’s not that Fiona is unattractive, it’s just that people don’t seem to want to get laid on Thursdays. And the ones that do are almost always young, and scared. They sit in the border of my mattress and mumble, and all Fiona has to do is touch their leg for it to be over. Fiona I like because she replaced this old woman called Gloria, who used to light up a circle of fire around me to “keep the spirits away.”

I think Gloria died.

I call Friday and Saturday the drunkards’ day. The customers speak incoherencies and collapse on top of me. Then Danielle and Colleen climb up their numb bodies, and do what is necessary. The real problem comes later, when they have to carry them out. They’ve vomited on me at least half a dozen times too. It should annoy me, but I guess I’m used to it. I find it a bit funny, actually. Danielle starts cursing and complaining, and Colleen even tries to slap the men around. And when night ends, the owners come and strip me naked. They clean the sheets.

And Sunday we rest. No one comes over. I get to enjoy the peace that fills up the room, that leaves me alone with my thoughts. The peace that keeps away blubbering customers and fat, screaming prostitutes. The peace that lets me picture myself outside these walls, in some spotless room where a child cuddles with her mother on top of me, a room where a child is read stories and kissed on the forehead every night. The peace that lets me picture a life where I didn’t know that today is a Monday. And that Monday means Sarah.