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- Story Listed as: Fiction For Adults
- Theme: Mystery
- Subject: Horror / Scary
- Published: 12/21/2015
Uncaging the sin city bird
Born 1981, M, from Agartala, Tripura, India‘You give me honey, and I shall give you money’… it was the plain ideology I was taught after being short-listed for the industry that I never dreamt of entering in lifetime at the age of seventeen. Born to be the fifth child and the cutest girl among the seven siblings in the family I was named ‘Dalisay’, meaning ‘pure’ in Tagalog at the Chocolate Hills of Philippines where a house ran on paltry income of seven hundred pesos by my father. It could be an adequate description to provide the economic background of the family where a father struggle his entire life to earn his survival along with the responsibility of a wife and raising six daughters and a son. So, access to good education was always a secondary factor for us with many other primary aspects crippling our livelihoods with seasonal casualties in this part of the world. However, I was one the most adored girls at my village since childhood due to best looks I possessed, despite belonging to a socially backward family in the impoverished land. And, it was roughly at the age of fourteen during early teenage when cupid struck me with charming appearance of a sixteen years old lad Crisanto, whose family moved to our village then. I was usually a girl of shying nature, but it did not meant about lacking secret feelings to be an admirer of others. Yes, it was simply not the delightful looks of him that kept pulling me towards his admiration, as Crisanto’s skills in football had made him an appealing figure among the young village boys in a short span of time. Thus, it was quite natural for a many teenager girls in the village to have made him their heartthrobs secretly alike me.
Every evening and during the morning hours of Sundays have become a routine task for the friendly girls of our age group to gather near the football ground to watch the game, giggle and share gossips about their dream heroes. In spite of being in the group I was usually a silent listener of the others and quiet liker of my dream boy Crisanto as he displayed his prowess over the ball and the game. Certainly, a latent feeling was surely developing in my heart for him, though we had no communication between us. It took more than a month and I cannot precisely mention the date when his sight first caught me gripping the football in awe being seated outside the ground boundaries among other girls that missed the goalpost to slip into my hands accidentally. It placed me in an awful situation when I threw the ball back to the boys into the ground and discovered all of my friends had disappeared from the spectators’ spot by then. The submissive nature of mine did discord the overall circumstance of the day that had disallowed me to visit the football ground since then. It would be untrue to state that I have totally erased Crisanto from my living heartbeats. But my natural ego had distanced myself from the early teenage fantasies of a girl, till shouldering responsibilities of a family disconnected me from my native place and move to Manila seeking job.
Life had to come across tumultuous hurdles for initial ten months when my educational qualification had tested my moral values against the grueling urban lifestyles after landing on the country’s national capital. The promise made to my parents to serve them with monetary help every month from distance land had put me through unethical conditions where I had to give in my morality by opting for sin city as the best source of earning hefty money with minimum education. Razzmatazz of city life gradually made me aware of the sexual charisma I possess to seduce men, by choosing to enter illegitimate online stripper industry. The job was risky with fixed hours allotted to a single girl with a webcam inside a closed private chamber logged onto websites where customers make online payment to an agent stripper in US Dollars being charged on a stipulated rate per minute. I simply needed to remember my login ID and password to hit the ‘Enter’ button to start my login time daily. The rest depends on my seductiveness to hook up to visiting customers and changing them to payee customers against my ID. I was growing confident about the job profile after earning handsome wages and also receiving high appreciations from the business head of the local centre, despite the immorality of the work. I have not given the clarified explanations about my job to my family, but certainly felt my parents to be overjoyed by receiving 2000 pesos every month as a contribution from their Dalisay. But never had a hint of progressing lurking danger in spite of becoming smarter to get accustomed to Manila.
It was never clearly defined to my business head because I usually made good business through a Canadian customer who had never disclosed his age to me. And a time appeared when we decided of a secret date together at one of the grand hotels in the city. I just knew him by the name of Mr. Hardin and had never had a glimpse of his face either, when he typed through Internet-Relay-Chat that he is in Philippines capital for a vacation with a desire to meet me personally. He also asked for my mobile number which I have typed back to him in reply spontaneously without having a second thought over it. The appointed time was 7 PM on the weekday of Friday, where I preferred to reach half-an-hour prior to the time. It took me by surprise on entering the restaurant of the hotel with a glance over the waiter to rekindle a long lost love of mine. Yes, the host Mr. Hardin is a stranger to me, but someone whom I have failed to express my deep feelings has reappeared as the waiter of the place. He asked my name to get a reply, ‘I’m Dalisay, and is a guest of Mr. Hardin’.
No sooner did he usher me to the table booked by Mr. Hardin. After I was seated on the chair, he politely asked me ‘May I be more at your service Madam?’ For a moment I remained quiet and replied, ‘Do you mind if I ask you a question?’ This has placed him in an awkward position for a moment, but bound to his service etiquette he said, ‘Yes, certainly’. ‘Look, I’ve no qualms about the ambience of your restaurant. I just wanted to know, are you Crisanto from the Chocolate Hills?’ was my question in a flurry. I observed him remain quiet, but as a keen observant of him always his polished nod did not skip my sight. Suddenly the SMS tone of text message in my mobile phone disturbed the rewinding love. I pressed the view button to read ‘Darling… I’ll be in the restaurant in 5 minutes – Hardin’. I really had not much to share with Crisanto looking on the present social status of mine as I completed reading the message to realize shame behind my profession for the first time in life, which was blinded by money till today.
A hard pat on my shoulder from the back with somebody’s palm broke the hangover of romantic memories reshaping in my mind about Crisanto back in the village three years ago. I turned behind to see a middle-aged man with his hand extended towards me for handshake with verbal introduction, ‘Hello baby… I’m Mr. Hardin’. I replied back with a smile, ‘Hi, how are you? Nice meeting you.’ Yes, he looked like a Western man to me, but his age and looks developed a sense of guilt thinking about the moments I shared with him over the webcam. Certainly, I have never felt of a day back in life when my inner voice had several questions to answer when I leave this place today. Because it appeared to be a rendezvous with men of two different natures – Meeting with my dream boy/man Crisanto and also meeting a person who looked more like a sugar daddy to me with the named identity of Mr. Hardin. I stayed quiet when Crisanto reappeared to perform his duties to take dinner order from Hardin. Mr. Hardin ordered a bottle of champagne with supper for both of us. My conversation with Hardin had made me discover that he is a businessman living in Vancouver; he is aged forty-six and is divorced person, if I rely entirely on his talked words. It was hard for me to grab his accent due to the educational drawbacks of mine, despite the glamorous looks I have put up with the best dress in my stock. I chose a white Polka printed Top with Batwing sleeves and a pair of navy blue jeans to wear during that specific occasion. I was hesitant but cannot deny Hardin’s request to attend his room for a dance before I leave. Somehow, I sensed cautiousness of Crisanto towards me due to two probable reasons: Firstly, he was accustomed to Mr. Hardin’s nature and secondly, our roots from the same village cannot let his nature do away with the situation wholly.
Persuaded by further invitation of Hardin, I accompanied him to his hotel room stepping into the unseen danger that never arose in my nightmares.
Once the door was locked from inside and the music was played I never thought of viewing the ugliness in a man. If Hardin had not been a customer of mine, then I would have looked up to him as a fatherly person. But, the next hour inside the hotel room shall remain as one of my traumatic moments in lifetime. I never expected anyone apart from Crisanto in my dream to have come so closely to me physically, though I have sold my moral values virtually over the Internet. He hold my palm and invited me to sit on the sofa inside the cuisine and switched on the TV pressing on the remote controller button. ‘Honey… let us watch a movie tonight.’
Immediately I sniffed certain wrong motive playing in Hardin’s mind when the TV started displaying women wearing lingerie on beach. It forced me to become annoyed over him for the first time, as I pulled my palm backwards to let loose of his grip. But slipping out of his clutch was a tough task because he had planned intentions of making love with me. His touch of hands on my body was growingly intolerable and I remembered grasping a wooden flower vase placed nearby to hit hard on the forehead of Hardin to release myself from the monster. And rushed to unlock the door to flee from the place, but fainted from shock when faced the gun point of cops on the doorway.
Opening the eyelids the first word that uttered out of my mouth was ‘Crisanto!’ ‘Yes, you’re in hospital right now. And please relax Dalisay,’ replied my dream man dressed in police uniform. ‘I know time and situation have departed us since village days. But I believed that God shall reunite us someday, if our momentary love remains as enduring memories occupying some space in our heart. Dalisay, neither you nor I have expressed our deepest feelings while living at Chocolate Hills. I have deliberately suppressed my identity inside the hotel because you can see why I did so,’ were the words of Crisanto followed by a deep sigh. Tears rolled down my eyes when I spoke… ‘but Crisanto you will not love me if you know my profession’. ‘I know what you do and how you were intentionally trapped into it Dalisay’. Truly, professions cannot dither childhood love with crime facts were revealed to me gradually when Crisanto narrated the story of my cyberspace sin city life in Manila in flashbacks.
The Interpol and the Philippines police have always remained pinned to curtail such illicit online businesses that are accessed by customers from many countries worldwide. Today Philippines government is proud of Crisanto, a NISA officer who has pointed her childhood love Dalisay working as an agent at one of online stripper websites. The crime branch with help of Interpol have detected the main business head of this website Mr. Robin Jackson alias Mr. Hardin and presented good business records for Dalisay by Crisanto’s appearance in the private chamber as paid customer of hers to make a good friend with her without strip shows under an alias name ‘Roger’ that even she cannot deny later. Jackson/Hardin actually intended to kill her on that specific night inside the hotel room because he had already sniffed certain danger signs developing into his business. He discovered Dalisay giving him the best business with minimum stripping while secretly monitoring the taped records of the agents. Innocently Dalisay had shared the message of meeting Mr. Hardin for a dinner at the hotel a day before in friendly chats with Roger that helped the cops track an essential clue to catch the master criminal and save an innocent village girl who stepped on the lane of dirty world to earn her livelihood. And her inner voice has answered in voice to confess every truth of her life that also assisted the cops to raid the place from where the illegal business gets ran in the city and take several other innocent agents like her to police custody.
Uncaging the sin city bird(Shibabrata Sen Chaudhury)
‘You give me honey, and I shall give you money’… it was the plain ideology I was taught after being short-listed for the industry that I never dreamt of entering in lifetime at the age of seventeen. Born to be the fifth child and the cutest girl among the seven siblings in the family I was named ‘Dalisay’, meaning ‘pure’ in Tagalog at the Chocolate Hills of Philippines where a house ran on paltry income of seven hundred pesos by my father. It could be an adequate description to provide the economic background of the family where a father struggle his entire life to earn his survival along with the responsibility of a wife and raising six daughters and a son. So, access to good education was always a secondary factor for us with many other primary aspects crippling our livelihoods with seasonal casualties in this part of the world. However, I was one the most adored girls at my village since childhood due to best looks I possessed, despite belonging to a socially backward family in the impoverished land. And, it was roughly at the age of fourteen during early teenage when cupid struck me with charming appearance of a sixteen years old lad Crisanto, whose family moved to our village then. I was usually a girl of shying nature, but it did not meant about lacking secret feelings to be an admirer of others. Yes, it was simply not the delightful looks of him that kept pulling me towards his admiration, as Crisanto’s skills in football had made him an appealing figure among the young village boys in a short span of time. Thus, it was quite natural for a many teenager girls in the village to have made him their heartthrobs secretly alike me.
Every evening and during the morning hours of Sundays have become a routine task for the friendly girls of our age group to gather near the football ground to watch the game, giggle and share gossips about their dream heroes. In spite of being in the group I was usually a silent listener of the others and quiet liker of my dream boy Crisanto as he displayed his prowess over the ball and the game. Certainly, a latent feeling was surely developing in my heart for him, though we had no communication between us. It took more than a month and I cannot precisely mention the date when his sight first caught me gripping the football in awe being seated outside the ground boundaries among other girls that missed the goalpost to slip into my hands accidentally. It placed me in an awful situation when I threw the ball back to the boys into the ground and discovered all of my friends had disappeared from the spectators’ spot by then. The submissive nature of mine did discord the overall circumstance of the day that had disallowed me to visit the football ground since then. It would be untrue to state that I have totally erased Crisanto from my living heartbeats. But my natural ego had distanced myself from the early teenage fantasies of a girl, till shouldering responsibilities of a family disconnected me from my native place and move to Manila seeking job.
Life had to come across tumultuous hurdles for initial ten months when my educational qualification had tested my moral values against the grueling urban lifestyles after landing on the country’s national capital. The promise made to my parents to serve them with monetary help every month from distance land had put me through unethical conditions where I had to give in my morality by opting for sin city as the best source of earning hefty money with minimum education. Razzmatazz of city life gradually made me aware of the sexual charisma I possess to seduce men, by choosing to enter illegitimate online stripper industry. The job was risky with fixed hours allotted to a single girl with a webcam inside a closed private chamber logged onto websites where customers make online payment to an agent stripper in US Dollars being charged on a stipulated rate per minute. I simply needed to remember my login ID and password to hit the ‘Enter’ button to start my login time daily. The rest depends on my seductiveness to hook up to visiting customers and changing them to payee customers against my ID. I was growing confident about the job profile after earning handsome wages and also receiving high appreciations from the business head of the local centre, despite the immorality of the work. I have not given the clarified explanations about my job to my family, but certainly felt my parents to be overjoyed by receiving 2000 pesos every month as a contribution from their Dalisay. But never had a hint of progressing lurking danger in spite of becoming smarter to get accustomed to Manila.
It was never clearly defined to my business head because I usually made good business through a Canadian customer who had never disclosed his age to me. And a time appeared when we decided of a secret date together at one of the grand hotels in the city. I just knew him by the name of Mr. Hardin and had never had a glimpse of his face either, when he typed through Internet-Relay-Chat that he is in Philippines capital for a vacation with a desire to meet me personally. He also asked for my mobile number which I have typed back to him in reply spontaneously without having a second thought over it. The appointed time was 7 PM on the weekday of Friday, where I preferred to reach half-an-hour prior to the time. It took me by surprise on entering the restaurant of the hotel with a glance over the waiter to rekindle a long lost love of mine. Yes, the host Mr. Hardin is a stranger to me, but someone whom I have failed to express my deep feelings has reappeared as the waiter of the place. He asked my name to get a reply, ‘I’m Dalisay, and is a guest of Mr. Hardin’.
No sooner did he usher me to the table booked by Mr. Hardin. After I was seated on the chair, he politely asked me ‘May I be more at your service Madam?’ For a moment I remained quiet and replied, ‘Do you mind if I ask you a question?’ This has placed him in an awkward position for a moment, but bound to his service etiquette he said, ‘Yes, certainly’. ‘Look, I’ve no qualms about the ambience of your restaurant. I just wanted to know, are you Crisanto from the Chocolate Hills?’ was my question in a flurry. I observed him remain quiet, but as a keen observant of him always his polished nod did not skip my sight. Suddenly the SMS tone of text message in my mobile phone disturbed the rewinding love. I pressed the view button to read ‘Darling… I’ll be in the restaurant in 5 minutes – Hardin’. I really had not much to share with Crisanto looking on the present social status of mine as I completed reading the message to realize shame behind my profession for the first time in life, which was blinded by money till today.
A hard pat on my shoulder from the back with somebody’s palm broke the hangover of romantic memories reshaping in my mind about Crisanto back in the village three years ago. I turned behind to see a middle-aged man with his hand extended towards me for handshake with verbal introduction, ‘Hello baby… I’m Mr. Hardin’. I replied back with a smile, ‘Hi, how are you? Nice meeting you.’ Yes, he looked like a Western man to me, but his age and looks developed a sense of guilt thinking about the moments I shared with him over the webcam. Certainly, I have never felt of a day back in life when my inner voice had several questions to answer when I leave this place today. Because it appeared to be a rendezvous with men of two different natures – Meeting with my dream boy/man Crisanto and also meeting a person who looked more like a sugar daddy to me with the named identity of Mr. Hardin. I stayed quiet when Crisanto reappeared to perform his duties to take dinner order from Hardin. Mr. Hardin ordered a bottle of champagne with supper for both of us. My conversation with Hardin had made me discover that he is a businessman living in Vancouver; he is aged forty-six and is divorced person, if I rely entirely on his talked words. It was hard for me to grab his accent due to the educational drawbacks of mine, despite the glamorous looks I have put up with the best dress in my stock. I chose a white Polka printed Top with Batwing sleeves and a pair of navy blue jeans to wear during that specific occasion. I was hesitant but cannot deny Hardin’s request to attend his room for a dance before I leave. Somehow, I sensed cautiousness of Crisanto towards me due to two probable reasons: Firstly, he was accustomed to Mr. Hardin’s nature and secondly, our roots from the same village cannot let his nature do away with the situation wholly.
Persuaded by further invitation of Hardin, I accompanied him to his hotel room stepping into the unseen danger that never arose in my nightmares.
Once the door was locked from inside and the music was played I never thought of viewing the ugliness in a man. If Hardin had not been a customer of mine, then I would have looked up to him as a fatherly person. But, the next hour inside the hotel room shall remain as one of my traumatic moments in lifetime. I never expected anyone apart from Crisanto in my dream to have come so closely to me physically, though I have sold my moral values virtually over the Internet. He hold my palm and invited me to sit on the sofa inside the cuisine and switched on the TV pressing on the remote controller button. ‘Honey… let us watch a movie tonight.’
Immediately I sniffed certain wrong motive playing in Hardin’s mind when the TV started displaying women wearing lingerie on beach. It forced me to become annoyed over him for the first time, as I pulled my palm backwards to let loose of his grip. But slipping out of his clutch was a tough task because he had planned intentions of making love with me. His touch of hands on my body was growingly intolerable and I remembered grasping a wooden flower vase placed nearby to hit hard on the forehead of Hardin to release myself from the monster. And rushed to unlock the door to flee from the place, but fainted from shock when faced the gun point of cops on the doorway.
Opening the eyelids the first word that uttered out of my mouth was ‘Crisanto!’ ‘Yes, you’re in hospital right now. And please relax Dalisay,’ replied my dream man dressed in police uniform. ‘I know time and situation have departed us since village days. But I believed that God shall reunite us someday, if our momentary love remains as enduring memories occupying some space in our heart. Dalisay, neither you nor I have expressed our deepest feelings while living at Chocolate Hills. I have deliberately suppressed my identity inside the hotel because you can see why I did so,’ were the words of Crisanto followed by a deep sigh. Tears rolled down my eyes when I spoke… ‘but Crisanto you will not love me if you know my profession’. ‘I know what you do and how you were intentionally trapped into it Dalisay’. Truly, professions cannot dither childhood love with crime facts were revealed to me gradually when Crisanto narrated the story of my cyberspace sin city life in Manila in flashbacks.
The Interpol and the Philippines police have always remained pinned to curtail such illicit online businesses that are accessed by customers from many countries worldwide. Today Philippines government is proud of Crisanto, a NISA officer who has pointed her childhood love Dalisay working as an agent at one of online stripper websites. The crime branch with help of Interpol have detected the main business head of this website Mr. Robin Jackson alias Mr. Hardin and presented good business records for Dalisay by Crisanto’s appearance in the private chamber as paid customer of hers to make a good friend with her without strip shows under an alias name ‘Roger’ that even she cannot deny later. Jackson/Hardin actually intended to kill her on that specific night inside the hotel room because he had already sniffed certain danger signs developing into his business. He discovered Dalisay giving him the best business with minimum stripping while secretly monitoring the taped records of the agents. Innocently Dalisay had shared the message of meeting Mr. Hardin for a dinner at the hotel a day before in friendly chats with Roger that helped the cops track an essential clue to catch the master criminal and save an innocent village girl who stepped on the lane of dirty world to earn her livelihood. And her inner voice has answered in voice to confess every truth of her life that also assisted the cops to raid the place from where the illegal business gets ran in the city and take several other innocent agents like her to police custody.
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