The ladies of the Longpork Hotel knew what it meant when you were summoned by Ramon. The hotel had a very distinct pecking order. The madam of the house was Ramon's employee. Liz was the head working girl directly under her. They were the only two who could give orders. Ramon was the one who gave them orders.
Technically they were independent contractors hired by Madam and Liz. It worked well on paper. Ramon did not need prostitution. It wasn't one of those Judeo-Christian things where you viewed it as sinful. It was just that he didn't feel the need for it. He understood that others had the need and that's why he kept them at the hotel.
But that wasn't the only reason he kept them here at the hotel. Originally the hotel never had girls working in it. Its original name had been the Long Plains Hotel. After the long fields of waving grass between the Rockies and the Kansas border.
Ramon tried to run the business on the up and up. He kept everything clean, no hooking, no johns, no cave in the ground. It was just a simple place to stay. After everything he remembered from the war, he wanted a simple life.
That hadn't lasted long though. Business for a normal hotel was slow, especially when you could travel a little further up the mountains and find what you wanted. And that was what the tired men wanted, a bed warmed by a woman. Most of these men had never married and probably never would. They were as wild as the mountains they had just crossed and they were as unforgiving as well.
The first girl to work at his hotel was dead now. She was the reason that he offered them protection now. He was telling the story in his office now to one of the girls as a warning.
The first girl had stopped for the night and rented a room. Ramon didn't know that the man she was staying the night with wasn't her husband. Thinking back now, he should have known. At the time he didn't pry into customer affairs because he wanted to stay in business. If you got too nosey you chased off clients.
That night the man had decided he had a grudge with the girl. He wanted out of paying for what he considered sub-standard service. Ramon had laid in his room and ignored the fight as long as he could. He remembered his own married days and knew how hard it was to avoid fights while taking long trips. You were tired, and sore, and really just wanted to sleep.
The fight had escalated beyond words when Ramon heard the first object fly across the room. Ramon had laid in bed and clenched the covers in his fists trying to wait out the fight. He counted down from thirty and hoped for the noise to subside. When a couple got in this kind of fight it either turned bad real quick or they backed off before it got there.
When he made his way down to zero he sighed and listened to the arguing through the wooden floors. The voices were still angry but things had stopped flying. He gave out a sigh of relief seconds before he heard a scream and thud that shook the dust from the wood above his bed.
A mix of anger and concern drove Ramon out of bed as he threw his covers off of his body and put his feet into his boots as quickly as he could. He debated grabbing his service pistol from the desk in his office but decided against it. If there really was a fight and they grabbed it, that could become a liability very quickly.
Ramon raced out of the room as fast as he could while the screaming got louder. They must have heard the sound of his boots running across the wooden floors because the tempo of the fight changed. The sounds of screaming stopped only to be replaced by the sound of scraping and scuffing across the floor.
Ramon's startled earts heard that change and bolted up the stairs even faster. He skipped steps where he could, he didn't want to trip running up his own stairs.
When he got to the door he could hear the faint gurgle of someone struggling for air. He debated grabbing his keys for a split second before making the judgment to just kick it in. He had more doors in storage, but he didn't want anyone to die in his hotel just yet.
The door flew in as Ramon put all his weight into one swift kick. The flimsy wood and nails couldn't hold up against the man. Splinters of wood flew through the air and startled the two people inside.
The large man was naked and straddling a struggling woman. The agressor looked up when the door flew in violently. Ramon stood in the doorway in his worn-out bedclothes and boots like some kind of demon from a child's nightmares. The light from the hallway hid the look on his face.
Ramon stared at the large dirty man with disgust while he surveyed the scene. He had his legs on either side of the woman frame. His hands were on her throat as she scratched at his arms. He outweighed her by nearly 100 pounds and she couldn't seem to get herself out of his grasp.
She rolled her head and eyes up at Ramon. The last thing she saw before passing out was the silhouette of Ramon as he walked into the room. She had bruises and cuts across her head and torso and small pools of blood forming under and around her. The man looked up at Ramon and screamed. His mind was devoured by his own rage. He was so far gone that he didn't have time to think about the fact that it was now a fair fight.
The first time that his brain really started to stop and assess the situation was when Ramon kicked him in the head.
Bells rang through the man's head as his vision blacked out for a few minutes. He shook his head as the pain in his jaw and ear blossomed. Ramon had put the steel toe of his boot right into the side of the man's face. Ramon knew that if he could break his jaw, he would get his attention and he might loosen his grip on the woman.
Ramon regretted not having his pistol in the seconds after the kick.
The man sat upright and grabbed his head struggling to get a hold of the pain. He let out a scream of rage and pain as he reached over to check for blood and stop the ringing in his ears. Ramon used that opening to grab one of the man's arms.
Ramon remembered his old military training and grabbed one of the man's arms. He pulled up on it and pivoted his body as he pulled it over his shoulder. He put his foot solidly underneath him and then stood up as fast as he could.
The man felt his arm break as the elbow shattered. His shoulder did everything it could to keep from coming out of the socket. The aggressor reached his other arm out wildly to grab anything he could to stabilize himself as his body lurched up. He tried to stand and lost his balance in the process.
Ramon then used the momentum of the pull to take two forward steps as fast as he could. The two men sped up. The large naked man couldn't think long enough to compensate for the sudden change in direction. Ramon used the speed to his advantage as he bent at his waist. He pulled the man's arm down and felt him fall forward onto his back and slide forward.
When he was on his back and still moving Ramon released one hand, grabbed the man under his armpit, and jumped as hard as he could. The force brought the man off his feet as Ramon tugged with all his power. He wasn't a champion bodybuilder or a judo master but his frame told the tale of years of hard labor after the war. He might not look big but he had sinewy lean muscle.
The man fell forward across Ramon's body and then slammed into the wall. The wind escaped with a puff as he slammed into the wall and then slid down onto his head. His vision turned brown at the edges as he gasped to get air into his lungs. Eventually his eyes faded and glossed over as his brain shut down.
Ramon gave him a kick to the head for good measure, and to make sure that he didn't respond. Satisfied that the man wasn't going to put up any kind of fight Ramon turned around and found the woman on the floor.
Ramon was no stranger to violence. He was no stranger to gore either. Everyone his age had been conscripted into the war. You fought for someone, even if it wasn't something you believed in. But this wasn't war. This was flat out abuse and attempted murder. The woman fough for breath through ragged gasps. Ramon worried about a punctured lung from the sounds of her breathing.
He checked for a pulse and found a very weak one. Basic medical training kicked in as he made sure she didn't have anything that would keep him from moving her. The first rule was always to get the victim out of danger. And the man now laying against the wall was a clear danger. Ramon scooped her small battered frame up from the floor and brought her downstairs and put her on the bar.
Ramon rushed to the bar and grabbed the pure grain alcohol from the counter and poured it over her to disinfect the wounds. She winced in pain. It was the only sign that she was still alive at this point. Ramon was worried about her bleeding out before he could get her cared for.
The problem with his hotel was that it was the last one before you got out of Kansas. This also meant that it wasn't in a proper town. He was isolated, so even if he yelled for help, no one would hear it. The last land-line phone had gone out of service years ago. He remembered the old 911 and silently regretted not having a ham radio. If he was going to have a chance to save this woman's life he had to start trying now.
Ramon ran to his room and grabbed an old green bag from his closet. He ran to his desk and grabbed his service pistol from the top drawer and tucked it into the bag. He wasn't thinking about being careful at this point and was making messes everywhere he went. He didn't care about the things he was dropping on the floor right now.
Ramon ran back to the woman and began to do everything he could for her. Her ragged breath gurgled as she started to take fewer deep breaths. Ramon looked for major cuts that might say she had been stabbed and found none. Bruises were forming across her whole body though at an alarming rate. He felt her ribs and found two broken on one side and more than he could count on the other. He removed one small syringe from his bag and pulled the plunger out of the tube. He felt between the ribs and found the right place as he punctured her rib cage.
If there was bleeding inside her body he needed to give her a chance to relieve that pressure. The pop of her chest cavity told him all he needed to know and blood began to trickle out. Her breathing increased after the pressure had somewhere to go besides around her lungs. This meant she was bleeding internally and he might have bought her just a little bit of time.
Just as Ramon was getting ready to pick her up and put her in his own bed a sound from behind him triggered his already heightened senses. The fight or flight mentality and adrenaline hadn't worn off yet.
A wooden board on the stairs creaked behind him. The three of them were the only occupants that night so Ramon knew who it was. The business was slow tonight and would be even word got out that a hooker died in his hotel.
Ramon slid his hand into the bag and grabbed the pistol before rapidly turning around. The man was holding his head in one hand and a gun in the other as he tried to quietly slink down the stairs. As their eyes locked the man's rage burned through the dark of his pupils.
When the man locked eyes with Ramon he saw nothing. That eerie kind of nothing that comes from someone who isn't even shocked anymore. The kind of that tells you there is no regret of any kind laying inside the body of the owner of them.
Ramon didn't even stop to hesitate. As soon as he had some kind of shot he took it. The man wasn't fully down the stairs when he pulled the trigger. The first shot tore through his upper leg. It gave out on him as he stumbled in surprise and then fell to the first landing. The next shot was only a second later. The man had landed in a sitting position with his back against the wall. Ramon sighted down the barrel quickly and killed him with one bullet through the chest. The man's eyes glowed with hate and surprise just before the light faded for one last time.
The sound of the blast faded from Ramon's ears only to be replaced by the sound of the gun skittering down the steps to the floor. Ramon put his own gun down feeling sure that they were both safe now. He wasn't worried about neighbors hearing the shots anyway, he had none.
Ramon fought to save the young woman but it was an uphill battle. She lived for a few days longer but he couldn't stop the internal bleeding. She regained conscientiousness in the days after the ordeal. All Ramon could do was manage the pain and hope for a miracle at this point.
She laid in his bed and he cared for her as best as he could. He prayed inside for a guest to come so he could send them for help. He knew if he left she would die quickly without constant care.
The two sat in his bedroom and talked out the last of her time. She told him about her past and why she worked this way to survive. She told him stories of the girls she had met along the way who were treated as nothing more than meat for the men they saw. He had told her stories about his life and he realized they had more in common than he thought.
Over time the conversations started to slow down as she faded in and out. She would close her eyes and wake up minutes or hours later. A fever started forming slowly inside her as the infection took hold in her body.
She died in his bed just one day before another guest showed up at the hotel.
Ramon met the man at the door, haggard and without sleep. He sent him off for the nearest town as quickly as he walked through the door. It was that week when Ramon realized if he was going to survive he needed more business.
He decided it was better to keep the place busy, it made sure he had people to help him when he needed it and would keep lonely working girls from being attacked. And the best way to do that was to allow the girls to work in his hotel. They kept the guests coming, and he could keep them safe by keeping the place full. It was the night that set the hotel on the path it was now.
He sighed as he finished telling the story of the hotel's origin. He was seated behind his desk leaning back and staring at the ceiling. Liz was leaning across the old couch that lined the wall opposite the door, her eyes looked at the photos on the wall. She had heard this story before.
Telilah was sitting uneasily in her chair. She knew she was here for a reason, but she didn't know what the grisly story had to do with it. She resisted the urge to turn around and look at the bedroom behind her.
"So we need to talk about what I do to protect all of you." Ramon leaned forward in his chair and locked eyes with her. "And what you are going to do to make that easier for me."