Worth

I can't believe I found this! I thought it was gone forever. It's not very good, but I wrote it a long time ago for someone . Ah, nostalgia. This is my first Dez and Lia story. Dez (sometimes called Carmilla or Carmella) and Lia (sometimes called Kit) are reoccurring characters in my writing. 

Once upon a time there was a very pretty girl whose hair was made of gold.  Though she was more beautiful than any queen, the girl came from the poorest family in San Quirico, a tiny town outside of Florence. Signora Guinizelli, knowing that she would eventually be forced to give up her youngest daughter, named her child Desideria.

Signor and Signora Guinizelli and their four daughters scraped by on vegetables and bread crusts. Sometimes Signora Guinizelli would refuse to eat so that her daughters would have more food.  The oldest Guinizelli daughter, Graziana, would soon reach her fourteenth birthday, and Signor Guinizelli had arranged for her to marry a boy from a family much more wealthy than the Guinizellis.   This family took an interest in Graziana because she was so beautiful and pure, but Signor Guinizelli still had to promise the family a dowry of 200 gold pieces.  Though they had been saving money for their daughter’s dowry since before she was born, two weeks before Graziana was supposed to be married, the Guinizellis still only had 75 gold pieces for her dowry. 

One night, Desideria awoke to the sound of her father crying.  “Papa, what can I do to stop your tears?” she asked.

“My darling Desideria, there is nothing that you can do. We are poor, and we shall always be poor. I want give my girls a better life, but this will never be so. No one will marry you without a proper dowry.”

“It will be alright, Papa.  I do not wish to marry.  Give my dowry to Graziana.”

“Bambina, we have no money for you to marry.  We have barely the money for your sisters.”

“Sell me then.  If I will not marry, then sell me to the brothel and use the money so my sisters may live happily.”

“Oh, Desideria, that is not what you want.  There must be some other way to make gold.”

Signor Guinizelli tucked his youngest daughter into bed, telling her that she should not be the one to worry about dowries. 

But days passed and still the Guinizellis could not earn 200 gold pieces. If Graziana was to marry, the Guinizellis would have to give their youngest daughter to the brothel.  Signora Guinizelli begged Desideria not to go, but the ten-year-old girl’s desire for her sisters to be happy was too great to remain at home. 

The day before Graziana was to be wed, Signor Guinizelli brought his youngest daughter to Florence where the brothels were busy and paid well.  He exchanged her for 800 gold pieces, enough money for all three of Desideria’s sisters to have decent dowries.

Living in the brothel was very different than Desideria’s home life. The brothel was the size of what Desideria had thought a castle might look like.  The life of a whore was much more glamorous than Desideria had ever imagined.  She was provided her own bed and a new dress to replace the rags that she had grown up wearing.  Every day, the girls in the brothel were given lessons on how to become charming and appealing women.  They were taught to read and write and were instructed on how to speak like a lady.  Meals were also provided and instructions on proper dining etiquette regularly administered. 

Though Desideria missed her family greatly, she felt that she had made the right choice and decided to make the best of the life that she had chosen for herself.  Desideria learned quickly and soon became one of the brothel’s most polished young ladies. 

Though many of the other girls at the brothel were jealous of how the men preferred Desideria, she managed to make one very close friend in a girl named Lia.  Lia was three years older than Desideria and had been at the brothel since the age of eight.  However, her experience did not show.  The customers of the brothel repulsed Lia.  When a john would come in looking for a date, all of the working girls would line up, standing in their most seductive poses, except for Lia, who would hunch over and pick at her teeth and do whatever else she could think of to make herself appear undesirable.  As hard as she tried, Lia’s exquisite beauty was difficult to overlook.  She often faked illnesses and exaggerated the length of her monthly bleeding in order to get out of sleeping with the vile men who paid for her. 

When Lia first saw Desideria, she saw her world change.  Lia charmed her way into the naïve girl’s heart right away. 

“You’re a lovely one,” she said. “What’s your name?”

“Thank you.  I am Desideria Isabella Guinizelli.”

“Desideria Isabella Guinizelli? That name is much too big for such a little girl.”

Desideria blushed.  “It means ‘longing.’”

“From now on you will be my little Dez.  How do you like that?” A provocative grin spread across Lia’s face.

Eyes narrowing, Desideria mirrored Lia’s smile. “And what do I call you, dama?”

“You call me God.”

From then on, Lia and Dez were inseparable.  They spent so much time together that it eventually became hard to tell them apart.  When johns would come into the brothel, they would always stand together, one alluringly caressing the other.  If a john chose Lia, which he often did, Lia would plead shamelessly for him to take Dez, as well.  The moment a sorry customer pointed at Lia and murmured the word “her,” she would exclaim, “Are you mad?  You would choose me over my beautiful sister, Desideria?  Ah, you must be mad sir, or perhaps you do not think that you could handle a woman as charming as my sister? Oh, but I assure you sir, you can handle women so charming as both of us, and you will.”

And the john would always accept Lia’s challenge. 

Lia, Dez, and the john would go off together, and Lia would charm him with conversation for as long as possible, in order to put off what she knew was inevitable.  Lia could talk for hours about nothing and keep the conversation interesting, but eventually the john would sigh and begin to undress himself or lunge at his paid company, as if the desire had suddenly become too much to bear. 

Typically, Desideria handled the intercourse because Lia made it clear that she found it grotesque.  Dez never liked doing it, either, but she made herself do it in order to spare Lia. Dez would put on a smile and sink her hips down into him, whoever he was, as Lia sat behind him and breathed salacious lies into his ear.  Though the process usually didn’t take long, to Lia and Dez, it seemed to last an eternity, but they persisted with their routine.  Prostitution was the life that they had chosen, and there were no other option but to persist.

Word spread about the twin whores of Florence, and soon Lia and Dez had men lining up for a chance with the two of them together.  They got away with charging double what they would normally charge and then triple, then tenfold.  Many men proposed to them, but the two golden-haired beauties would only laugh at the thought. 

Every night after they finished work, Dez and Lia would go back to the room that they shared.  Dez had sewn their mattresses together so that they could sleep together every night on a bed the size of a queen’s.  The two slipped into bed, and Lia wrapped her body around Desideria’s, whispering “Ti amo, Piccolina, ti amo,” until they both fell asleep. 

One evening, a particularly large man came into the brothel; he had a thick accent, one from somewhere far away.  When the man approached the girls for a date, Dez tried to turn him down, saying that they were done for the day, but when Lia saw the large bag of gold that he carried, she could not resist.  Lia persuaded Dez with a few easy words, and they soon left with the man.

Once the three of them were alone, Lia began talking, but the man was interested.  She tried speaking of several different subjects and eventually resorted to saying things that a proper lady would not dare say, but this john only became frustrated as she continued to speak.  The man quickly became so incensed with Lia’s babbling that he lurched out of his chair, scooping her up with one arm and slapping a heavy hand over her mouth.  Dez instinctively jumped onto the john’s back, fiercely scratching at his eyes and tearing at his hair, but he threw her off with little effort.  The man pushed Lia against the wall, ripping the skirt of her dress to get to what he had paid for.  Dez shrieked, begging the john to take her instead, but he forced himself inside Lia harder with each of Dez’s screams.  Dez lunged at the man’s head, forcing her long, polished fingernails into his eyes.  Bellowing in excruciating pain, the john turned away from Lia and began swinging blindly at the whore who had taken his vision.  Lia let her body slip down the wall and onto the floor as Desideria darted from one corner of the room to the next, only evading the john’s grasp by a matter of inches.

Lia was dizzy with shock.  She wanted to give in to the black dancing in her head and let her body go limp, but she could not.  Her eyes narrowed on the bag of coins on the table in the middle of the room.  What was a bag of gold worth to her now?  What had it ever been worth—a new dress, bottle of perfume, a ruby necklace?  The pay for watching the woman she loved be torn open, used up, cast aside, again and again, what was it all for? How had she not realized sooner?

Lia forced herself to stand and then moved gingerly towards the bag of gold pieces.  She pushed her body up on top of the table and strained to pick up the heavy bag of gold.  Lia caught her piccolina’s eye, and Dez dashed toward the table, the john following close behind. Lia promptly lifted the bag above her head and smashed it down onto the man’s giant skull as he brushed by her.  Thousands of coins hit the ground in a shower around the john as he fell to the ground unconscious. 

Desideria rushed to help Lia down from the table, catching her in a tight embrace as she descended. 

“Lia, are you alright? I’m so sorry… What will we do?” Dez murmured. 

Lia answered slowly.  “We must leave and we must never look back.”

Lia started for the door, but Dez pulled her back in.  “What about all of the gold?”

“Piccolina, the gold is worth nothing.  You are mine, and I need you more than I need anything that can be bought with this gold.”

“But, Lia, I can be bought with this gold.”

Lia brushed her lips against her lover’s, and breathed, “Not anymore,” before kissing her softly.

Lia and Desideria ran back to their room and gathered up all of the valuable things that they could find.  After they left, they never set foot in another brothel for the rest of their lives.  Lia cut her hair and sold her dresses for modest men’s clothing. After travelling for hundreds of miles, the pair decided to settle in a quiet town in France.  Desideria and Lia, now going by the name of Leopoldo, purchased a small cottage in a secluded part of town where the other villagers never bothered them.  Other than attending church and going to the market, Lia and Dez kept to themselves in their humble cottage, loving and appreciating the worth of their love happily ever after.