Gray pea-soup rolled over beaten cobblestone streets which were slathered in horse manure. Gas lamps parted the darkness at the corners, where a number of prostitutes plied their trade under the cover of night. Sometimes a lone man would wander their way, though they always needed to stay wary of patrolmen.
But three of these streetwalkers were quite unlike their peers. Adagio Dazzle, Aria Blaze, and Sonata Dusk were banished from their homeland of Equestria for their crimes by Starswirl the Bearded, cast into this grim reality. Was it intentional to send them to this hellish place, or simply a tragic accident?
Adagio decided it didn't matter. Philosophy was for bored men blessed with the luxury of spare time to kill. For the sisters it was simply survival at any cost. Garbed in the most elaborate dresses they could afford, lacy numbers that clung attractively to their shapes, they posed for the onlookers who passed.
The Dazzlings had always taken pride in their appearance. It came naturally to a siren, after all. But out of the threesome she was particularly vain, rolling fingernails through her puffy orange curls. They could always become some gentleman's mistress, which would make them legalized whores in her eyes, thus her stubborn vanity simply wouldn't allow it. Being rented by a man was one thing, but to let one own them?
Some days were so bad she almost broke down and prayed to Celestia and Luna for forgiveness. She'd look upon the sun and the moon, remembering the hated sisters who'd condemned them to this nightmare existence.
Sonata beamed wide despite how the color had started to go out of her eyes. Bending over, she bared her ample cleavage, heavy breasts nearly spilling free. "Are you interested, sir?" Clops sounded from horses that drew the coach, parting the miasma as the driver hurried on without looking their way. She frowned.
"Bastard," muttered Aria between gritted teeth. She was the most slender of the troika, lithe and well-toned. However, she'd started to look a tad skeletal, pretending she wasn't hungry and skipping meals so her siblings could eat. She was used to it; she was their enforcer whenever men tried to take advantage of them. "Damn industrialization putting us out of work. I'm so tired of selling our bloody cunts to make ends meet!"
"Language," cried Sonata who covered her ears.
"What, you're okay with spreading your pussy but not talking about it?" Aria snarled and kicked a tattered newspaper that littered the sidewalk. "Give me a fucking break!"
"At least I haven't had to take it up the ass lately," mused Adagio who massaged her posterior.
With a shrug Aria said, "I'd rather. Not risk of pregnancy. Still have to worry about diseases, though!"
"How crude! People will think we're monsters," replied Sonata.
"Aren't we? We were sirens in Equestria, after all." Aria pulled on one of her pigtails while she studied her nails. "Why shouldn't we act like monsters? We'd just be staying true to ourselves!"
Adagio chewed on her lower lip. "Should have pawned our amulets for far more." After they'd been let go from the few legitimate jobs they could find, they'd been forced to get rid of their prized trinkets just to survive. Unlike in Equestria females were simply treated like commodities to be married off like cattle here.
Couldn't this society see it was these very conditions that led so many to a life of crime?
"I'm so hungry," whined Sonata who squeezed her belly. She'd had little choice but to toss her latest miscarriage into a dirty body of water, her insides aching weeks later, and a bloody mess still running between her thighs at times. She'd cleaned herself obsessively, afraid she'd turn away potential customers.
"This is our lot," reminded Adagio who stood with arms crossed, dark circles beneath her eyes. As the most cautious of the three she'd retained her looks and health the best; but she couldn't help but feel guilty when she looked at them. She was the eldest, like a mother to them, and she'd failed them terribly.
Forcing a smile, she coyly raised her black skirts, exposing a comely leg garbed in garters, stockings, and heels. She'd usually take a mark by the hand with a giggle, led him into a dirty alley, and let him have his way with her until he was satisfied. There was no love or romance in the couplings, not that she expected any. It was simply business and she tried to take pride in her attempts to satisfy their carnal needs.
"It's slow today." Aria pursed her lips and paced. She was usually the least popular of the trio, although certainly had her takers, some due to her more nubile frame and the childish way she wore her hair in pigtails, others because some men actually liked the verbal and sometimes physical abuse she'd occasionally hurl their way. They each accepted their role; Adagio the brains, Sonata the sex kitten, and she the muscle.
By contrast the bubbly and voluptuous Sonata was usually the first to be picked up, but one look at the ruined mess of her crotch now usually sent men running, if the odor she tried to hide with perfumes didn't get them first. She'd desperately hidden it from the others, but it was obvious she'd broken one of their rules by accident, and contracted some sort of venereal disease from on of the countless men she'd spread her legs for.
Desperate to increase her earnings, she'd agreed to take a number of rowdy men at once, no doubt one of them passing on his affliction. She'd quietly cry herself to sleep whenever they weren't paying attention, ashamed that she'd messed up so bad, that she'd been unfortunate enough to be born braindead and spacey.
She leaned upon a building for support, hazy when she stumbling forward. "I...feel a little..." She crumpled over and landed with a thud on the sidewalk.
"Sister!" The duo spoke as one and were immediately kneeling at her side.
Aria seized and shook her. Her form was limp in her thin arms. "Damn it." She smacked her hard across the face. "Wake up." She started to cry despite her snarl, shaking her more violently. "Wake up!"
Laying an index finger on a vein, Adagio's eyes watered as she slowly shook her head. "She's gone. That will be our fates too, if we can't rustle up some food soon." She forced herself to be cold and practical again. She'd finally lost one of them despite all their sacrifices. She wasn't about to lose Aria, too!
Pausing to lift Sonata's dress up, she saw the hanging, discolored and messy slab of her vulva. No doubt the result of a bad infection. "Throw her body in the river. We're moving on."
"Sorry, Sonata." Lifting the corpse, Aria carried it through the swirling mists, making certain she wasn't spotted, and after a short jaunt she stopped on a bridge. "You deserved better. We all do."
With a final kiss on her temple, a tear falling on her now ashen face, she dropped the surprisingly light carcass. It sailed down into the running waters below, where it disappeared with a splash.
She'd had to play clean up a number of times. Other criminals who'd assaulted them with knives, one of which she still kept on her person, a drunken man who'd beaten Sonata and tried to sodomize her while refusing to pay, a broken bottle in his fat arm which Aria had turned on him, stabbing him repeatedly in the crotch.
"I can't take this anymore! Starswirl's worse than we ever were! We don't deserve this!"
However, Aria's reverie was cut short when a silhouette materialized in the fog. "Oi there," called a uniformed officer who flashed a hand-held lantern in her direction. "What you up to, girl?"
"Piss off, copper!" They'd adopted some of the slang since they'd been banished here, but their old lingo still slipped through, usually in stressful times like these. In truth she couldn't remember the last time she wasn't seriously embittered with the world.
"What's that?" He spotted Sonata's cadaver floating to the surface.
"Shit." Fight-or-flight? Hearing him creep closer, she slid a deft hand under her skirt, a frilled garter holding a hidden blade she kept on hand in case of such an emergency. She started to hastily walk away, heels clipping on the cobblestone, when a rough hand seized her spindly arm. She reacted instinctively.
A knife flashed in the shadows with a glint. A red cloud erupted in the air.
While elsewhere Adagio tried to patiently await her sister's return. Maybe she should have gone with her, but she needed to ply her trade in hopes she'd be able to feed them both. While not quite up to their youngest sister's ample curves, hers were still quite supple, and she slowly tossed her bright orange curls with a grin.
Eventually she had a taker. Leading him off the streets with a sly wink, she stopped between a couple of buildings, lined with bits of filth. The walls were smudged and stank from urine and vomit.
Her client was a rotund fellow with a bushy mustache. Hastily undoing his breeches, she stroked his member to full mast, sensing he wanted a quickie. He'd thrust some coins in her small purse, and pulled one of her tits from her top, roughly circling it with his palm. "Mmm. Don't hold back now," she whispered meeting his gaze.
Lifting her dress up, he pulled down her undergarments and tossed them aside, revealing the curly bush below. He lifted her by the thighs, pressing her bare posterior upon smudged bricks. She wrapped her arms around him when he pushed into her, settling into a quick rhythm as he met her pouty lips.
It didn't take long before he finished. He paid her extra for letting him finish inside, awkwardly thanked her, and left. She used a napkin to wipe her slit and tossed the trash. Usually she insisted they ejaculate on her instead, but they needed the extra earnings, and the contraceptives she'd bought on the black market had held up so far. She popped one of the pills, hoping it wasn't a placebo and that she'd simply been lucky so far.
Lucky? She reminded herself what had happened to them. Sonata wasn't coming back.
Clicks sounded from heels. She tensed, prepared for a possible fight. Was it another streetwalker?
"Adagio," choked out Aria who hobbled towards her, draped on the brickwork for support. Crimson trailed down, a hand clutched at a stab wound. It had been a short scuffle, probably more an accident than anything, when he'd wrestled with and turned the bloodied knife on her. "Got the...bastard cop...too..."
"Sister!" Her limp form crumpled, and forced Adagio into a seated position, cradling the dying woman in her lap. "Just hold on. I'll take care of things, like I always do." She tore strips from her outfit, applying pressure to the injury. Suddenly, Aria's hand seized her wrist, still quite firm despite how slack the rest of her felt.
"It's okay, Dagi. We always...held you back." Glazed-over eyes slowly closed.
"Aria...don't leave me." She wiped a trickle of blood from their middle sister's still warm lips.
She stayed with her until Aria's body grew cold. She continued to stroke her twintails, letting down her guard for once and allowing herself to weep. Half-blinded she stared at the pale yellow moon, reminded of the home they'd forever lost. "It's all pointless." She emptied her purse, coins clinking and rolling into a gutter.
Without the only people who cared about her she saw no reason to continue. She cursed Starswirl with a string of profanities which would've made Aria proud, breaking into broken laughter despite her tears.
It didn't matter if it was a cruel punishment or a simple accident which cursed them to this fate.
Sometime the next morning she turned herself into the police, her dress bloodied and tattered, confessing she was responsible for the murders Aria committed. This scandal was soon all the rage in the newspapers, the city gossiping about her horrific crimes, like she was the female heir to Jack the Ripper.
Certainly the idea bemused her. It's exactly the sort of title Aria would have relished.
After a short trial she was found guilty and sentenced to execution by hanging. The few who might have come to her defense were either society's fellow vermin or important men who wouldn't risk their reputations.
Were Starswirl, Celestia, and Luna watching from Equestria even now, laughing at their fates? No, she doubted they even spared a thought for them. They were just another set of petty villains who'd been dealt justice.
Yet she died with a small smile on her face, even when the rope tightened around her neck and her feet kicked helpless before a baying mob, certain she'd finally be reunited with her sisters.
Author's Note
Not sure how accurate I depicted the setting, but I was going for the typical pulpy cliches. Partially inspired after reading Scarlet in Gaslight, hence the title. (No vampires here, though!)
