Chapter 4- Smoke In Her Lungs
645 Words
The second night was harder.
Not because the clients were crueler - though some were - or because the heels dug deeper into her blisters, or because her body ached from dancing for men who didn’t look her in the eye. It was harder because now she knew. She knew what it felt like to sell parts of yourself for safety. To walk off stage and leave pieces of your soul behind under strobe lights and cigarette ash. She knew the price of obedience now.
And she wasn’t sure if she could afford to keep paying.
The velvet Rope didn’t get brighter in daylight - it just got quieter.
During the day, the women became shadows in oversized T-shirts, scrubbing makeup from their faces like war paint after a battle. The smell of coffee replaced whiskey. The laughter, when it came, was thinner.
Faith sat at the vanity, brushing her fingers over the rim of a cracked mirror. Her reflection stared back with unfamiliar eyes - dark-ringed, haunted, a little sharper than yesterday.
Fatima entered, carrying two cups. She set one beside Faith without speaking.
“You gonna last?” she finally asked.
Faith sipped. The coffee was bitter, burned. It tasted real.
“I don’t know.” she said.
Fatima chuckled. “That’s the answer.”
She sat on the counter, legs crossed, cigarette unlit between her fingers like a habit she hadn’t kicked yet.
“You look around long enough, you’ll see what this place is. Girls come in thinking it’s just for now - something temporary. Something to survive. But the walls don’t let you forget.”
Faith tilted her head. “Forget what?”
“That you’ve already been chosen.”
Fatima lit the cigarette and exhaled smoke that smelled like endings.
That night, Faith didn’t flinch.
She didn’t smile, either. Not unless it served a purpose. She learned to read the men:
The talkers wanted attention,
The touchers wanted to control something,
The quiet ones were the most dangerous - watching, calculating, waiting for the right moment to turn fantasy into something sharp.
She watched them the way predators watch prey - not with fear, but with hunger. Some nights, she made more money than the veterans. Not because she was the best dancer. Not because she flirted better. But because she knew how to mirror what men wanted - let them see what they needed to see, hear what they needed to believe.
She became a reflection. A mask made of firelight and lipstick.
And behind it, her real face grew colder.
A man called Rhino - fat, rich, always sweating - tried to grab her hard that night. She smiled, leaned into his ear and whispered something low. Fatima never asked what she said. But she watched Rhino leave red-faced and muttering.
“That was bold.” Fatima said later.
“No,” Faith replied. “It was smart.”
In the weeks that followed, Faith became a student of pain.
She listened when girls whispered about regulars who paid more to be cruel. She memorized who tipped, who followed, who stared too long when the lights came up. She watched how Silas moved - when he yelled, when he smiled, who he favored.
She learned something new every night. How to stretch time. How to disappear in a room full of eyes. How to lock her fear in a box and speak only when it served her. She was building something inside her - something sharp.
Not a weapon.
A crown.
One night, she caught her reflection again in the dressing room mirror. This time, she didn’t look away.
The girl with soft eyes and hollow ribs was still in there, somewhere, buried beneath mascara and muscle memory. But the girl who stared back? She looked dangerous.
And for the first time - Faith didn;t hate her.
- Writer
