Queen Media Collective

“Please know Jude. I had true feelings for you.”

Jewel was speaking into the phone but the words fell on deaf ears as she heard the phone hang up. She knew it wasn’t going to be long before Jude would be knocking at her doorstep. Immediately, Jewel began packing up her bags, shoveling as many of her belongings in her bag as she could.

As Jewel was packing, Jude was getting himself prepared to leave and pursue his lost love.

“Janet, you ready to make a house call?”

“Sure, let’s take care of all of this. She never loved you anyway.”

Janet and Jude packed up the bat and all the things they used to punish Ryan for his act of betrayal and left the scene with Ryan’s body still sprawled out on the floor and blood still fresh from the wound at the back of his head. He lay there unconscious, presumed to be dead by Janet and Jude.

Back at Jewel’s apartment, she finally got all her clothes and close belongings packed in her bag and got out the door. The next stop for her was a familiar place for her:  the Holiday Inn. Both Jude and Ryan were in love with Jewel, but they also both spent a lot of money on her. While both were blowing their money on her and she was treating them like kings, she was also treating other men and women like kings and queens. The Holiday Inn was where she made her money in San Diego. Jude and Ryan knew her as Jewel, but to everyone else she was known as Desire.

Jewel had a rough life as Desire that not all were aware of. She grew up in a home with her mother, sister and any other strange gentlemen her mother had in their home. She never knew her father, so each man that came through the home she shared with her mom and sister grew her view of men a little more. Unfortunately, those views were not that good as she was abused by some of these men and her mother was not deterring these men from doing what they did to her. As Jewel grew up in San Diego, she was raped by some of these men and as she got into her teens, some of these men would use her for money, having her on the streets as opposed to being in school. And her mother would be right there, telling her and her sister, whose name was Seona, that they needed this money and they needed to do what was asked of them. School was out but being in the streets selling their bodies and stealing was in.

Seona and Desire were close in age, only separated by a year, but they were different in actions. Desire followed orders but Seona was the feisty one of the two. Seona consistently fought back, which ended up in black eyes, broken bones and stiff punishments from the multiple men and her mother. After the pain, Seona would comply but it wasn’t because she wanted to. She just did not want to endure anymore pain. Both her and Desire would post at specific corners, posing as grown women and being pimped by any man their mother brought home.

Along with Desire and Seona, there were other women that would go in and out of their mothers’ house, as they were part of the teams these random men would assemble. With each pimp that rolled through, their mother’s words would ring loudly in their ears.

“If it doesn’t make dollars, it doesn’t make sense. Now get out there and make us some money.”

The crazy thing is her mother would never see a dime, always letting the man in her life at the time handle all the money. What would eventually happen in each instance is the block would get hot and these men would head out of San Diego with their money and all the ladies except for Desire and Seona. This cycle would continue until Desire and Seona were 19 years old and had been running the streets and selling their bodies for a while. Then one summer day, their paths in life would change.

“Come here,” said Texas Slim as he called for Jewel.

“Yes sir,” said Desire. “What can I do for you?”

“I need you to take care of one of my clients that specifically asked for you. He may be a little rough, but you’re a tough girl. You can take it.”

Desire was nervous and she did not want to do what was asked of her. Seona saw it all over her face and unlike Jewel, she would mention that to Texas Slim.

“She doesn’t want to do this Slim,” said Seona.

At that point, Slim adjusted his cowboy hat to fix his eyes on Seona and he got out of his chair. Texas Slim may not have weighed that much, but he surely was tall, standing every bit of 6’5″. As he came towards, Seona, he towered over her and said, “Desire is going and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

As soon as Slim said that, he smiled at Seona as if to say there was nothing she could do to stop his reign.

Seona, of course, did not like it and instead of fighting back with her words, she decided she was going to take a swing at Texas Slim. Seona would hit Slim in his back, but the hit would do nothing but make him angry.

“Is that all you got little girl?” said Texas Slim with a sly grin on his face.

He would slap Seona and send her flying to the floor. Seona, at that point, was scared she was going to endure another beating at the hands of another man of her mother’s. She scrambled to get off the floor and she ran into the bathroom of the house. Slim would hit the door over and over again, telling Seona she had better open the door or there was trouble waiting.

While he was banging on the door, Seona was scrambling to look for a weapon to protect herself against the likes of Texas Slim until she finally found one.

Slim had been dragging his feet fixing the toilet in the bathroom and he had left his tools in the bathroom. As Seona went through his tools, she found a huge hammer sitting right there in his toolbox. Slim may have been a slim man, but he was stronger than he looked and he was breaking down the door even more with each shoulder thrust into it. As he was continuing that thrust, Seona grasped the hammer and stood in the bathtub, which was directly behind the door when it opened.

After a few shoulder thrusts, Slim was able to break down the door and as he peered in the door, he noticed the shower curtain closed behind the door. As he opened the curtain, Seona was there and prepared and she swung the hammer, hitting him square in the middle of his head two times, and drawing blood. The hits stunned Slim and Seona wasn’t letting up. She continued to hit him over and over again as he fell to the floor in the blood that was profusely falling from his head.

Eventually, Slim lay in the bathroom floor dead as Desire ran in to see the carnage Seona had left.

“No one talks to me or my little sister that way,” Seona said as she dropped the hammer.

Her clothes were decorated in red blood but she stood victorious over Slim, as she had taken out one of the men that had punished her and Desire all their lives.

Their mother heard all the commotion and finally made it in the bathroom.

“You’re going to pay for this Seona,” she yelled. “Slim made us money. You’re going to pay.”

Their mother would call the police right then and there and Seona was frantically panicking. With time of the essence, Seona rushed out of the bathroom, pushing her mother to the side, and gathered some clothes to get out of the house.

“Desire, please get out of here. Make something better of yourself. This life is not for you.”

And just like that, Seona vanished into thin air, never to be seen by Desire again.

Desire would eventually become Jewel, as she would leave the house, get her GED and make something of herself. At hard times though, she would reprise her former name to entertain former clients from her past that still were interested in her services.

The Holiday Inn had been there for years and was a spot her and Seona would turn tricks out of in her past and was also a place she turned tricks at more recently. It was a familiar place for her.

Jewel would finally make it to the hotel after all the reminiscing on her drive there. She got to the front desk and grabbed her customary room key, which was to room 333. As she got the key, she went upstairs and laid down, finally thinking she was away from any danger.

As Jewel was finally asleep for the night, Jude made it to her apartment and found it abandoned.

“We must have just missed her Janet, but I know where she is,” said Jude.

While Jude was with Jewel, he noticed she would sneak out at night sometimes when he was sleep beside her. One night, he got up and followed her and noticed she was checking in to a hotel. He would follow her a few times and was about to confront her when things happened with Ryan and he ended up in Mexico.

“Let’s go the Holiday Inn. It’s ten minutes east of here,” said Jude.

Janet and Jude pulled up to the Holiday Inn and noticed Jewel’s car sitting in the parking lot. The pair went straight to the front desk and began to ask questions.

“Was there a Jewel that checked in here at this hotel?” asked Jude.

The desk manager shook his head no. Then Jude asked another question.

“Did anyone check in within the last thirty minutes?” Jude said as he flashed his gun he had sitting tucked in his waist.

The desk manager, scared beyond belief, gave the room number of a woman that just recently checked in to Jude. Jude thanked him and then told him that if he called the police, he would be seeing that gun a little closer than he just saw it as he left the front desk.

Jude and Janet headed to room 333, ready to get this woman who had wronged Jude in his eyes. Jude would kick in the door and yell, “You tried to run Jewel, but I got you now.”

Jewel, frightened by the sight of Jude, scrambled to get away as she tried to make it to the bathroom to lock herself to no avail.

Janet was able to grab her, but as she did, she noticed the person she was grabbing.

“Desire?”