Stalker Problems - Chapter 6 - Handsy Hassan
It was a good thing we left early, because this spa was not easy to find.
As we got closer, all the store signs changed from English to.
..I don't really know what. Korean? Swahili? Arabic? Probably all three of those with ten others mixed in. Street vendors held up various cooked meats and shouted things at us. I wasn’t sure if the yelling or the combination of smells was more disturbing.
It reminded me of that time I tried to cook curry without a recipe and nearly burnt my kitchen down.
I’d never been to this part of town before. And I was glad Chastity was with me.
Eventually we looked up a street view on our phones and tried to match it to what we were seeing. The door that Google Maps pointed us to was wedged between a Middle Eastern restaurant and some eye doctor's office. The only marking on the door was a small yellow sign with Arabic writing.
"Are you sure you want to go in there?" I asked. I was all into trying new things. But getting murdered wasn’t on my list. And I didn’t care what the Yelp reviews said. This whole place was sketchy, not just Hassan.
Chastity didn't answer. She just opened the door and walked in.
She owes me big time for this one, I thought as I followed her through the door and up a flight of stairs.
I didn’t have my fire extinguisher yet, but I did have mace.
I rummaged around in my purse. Got it. We pushed through a curtain of beads and suddenly it felt like we had been transported to Morocco.
"Welcome to the Shifting Sands Spa," said an attractive middle-aged woman standing behind the counter.
At least, I thought that was what she said.
As promised in the Yelp reviews, her accent was so thick that it was nearly impossible to understand.
And based on the abundance of bath salts displayed on the wall behind her, the bit about upselling us had been true as well.
I just stared at the woman. Talking to strangers wasn't my strong suit. My mom had done too good of a job teaching me about stranger danger. But the woman didn’t seem dangerous. I dropped the mace back into my purse.
"Hi," said Chastity. "We're here for our 3 o'clock massages."
The lady said something I didn't understand. I zoned out during the rest of their conversation. Something about the sweet smell of cinnamon in the air was very distracting. And soothing. God, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt so relaxed.
Eventually, Chastity reached into my purse and fished out the black envelope.
That got things moving in the right direction, and a second later I had a clipboard in my hands with a release form.
"Fill this out," said Chastity.
"No. Only you," said the woman, pointing at Chastity.
Finally something I can understand. But why only Chastity? I needed a form too. I wanted to tell them all about my Penicillin allergy and my strong aversion to Hassan pounding my ass for 90 minutes.
"Why don't I get one of those?" I asked.
"No idea," said Chastity.
"Follow me," said the woman.
I looked to Chastity for help.
"Go ahead," she said. "I'll be right here the whole time. Well, not exactly right here. I'll be in a room with Hassan. Apparently he had a last-minute cancellation!" Her face lit up.
"I wonder why." I would have said more, but the woman grabbed my arm and pulled me through an archway into a tiled hallway.
The rooms we passed were all small but well decorated.
The thought of having a stranger massage my naked body in one of them made me sweat a moderate amount, which was less than the buckets of sweat I would have expected my armpits to be expelling in such a situation.
Who could say why...maybe it was the cinnamon in the air.
Or my clinical strength antiperspirant. Ha, I wish.
I didn't have clinical strength antiperspirant.
I'd always wanted it, but it was too expensive, so I’d never taken the plunge.
I forgot all about my sweaty pits when we got to my room, though. Because instead of being one of those tiny murder rooms, it was a massive indoor pool surrounded by brightly colored arches.
Oh God. Are they going to make me get naked in a public bath?
That hit all my fears. Germs, public nudity (which was like public speaking only even more mortifying).
..there were probably even centipedes crawling around the edges.
And there were no clocks, so I could easily end up being late for the next part of my appointment.
See? All the fears. Kind of like all the feels, only awful.
The woman started speaking again. I tried my best to listen, but it was still unintelligible.
After she left I decided that she had told me to get naked, lie on the massage bed off to the side of the pool, and put a towel over my ass.
But who really knew. She could have just as easily told me to definitely not get naked.
Which would lead to a rather awkward encounter with the masseuse.
Or masseur. Oh God, what if Hassan sneaks in here and grabs my ass?
Before I could change my mind, I stripped off my clothes, lay on the massage table, and hid my entire body under the towel.
Then I thought twice and folded it down so that it only covered my ass.
And then I rethought everything and decided I had lost my mind and needed to get dressed immediately.
But I’d waited too long to back out now.
The masseuse would be here any minute, so if I stood up and tried to get dressed, they might walk in on me fully nude.
I bit the inside of my lip. I just needed to pretend getting a massage was on my list. Then I could cross it off and move on with my life.
A life that would not involve any public nudity or bad parts of town.
It was a good thing I stayed put, because a second later the masseuse walked in.
She had olive skin and long, thick dark hair.
God, I wish my hair was that thick. For whatever reason, my crazy red hair was also the thinnest in the world.
Even though it reached all the way down my back, when I put it up in a bun it practically disappeared into a marble.
Okay, maybe not that small. More like a really big marble. Or half a full-grown gerbil.
"Good afternoon, I'm Amira," she said. Her accent wasn't as extreme as the receptionist’s. "I'll be taking care of you this afternoon. If you need anything at all, just ask."
"Hi, I'm Ash." I reached out to shake her hand, but immediately realized that doing so exposed both of my breasts.
Fuck my life. I pulled back and lay flat on my stomach.
"Sorry, didn't mean to be rude. Or show you my boobs.
I was just going to shake your hand and then I realized I was flashing you so I stopped. " I gave an awkward laugh.
Mercifully, she ignored my awkwardness. "Today we'll be starting with a facial, so I need you to turn over. You can cover yourself with the towel if you'd like."
If I'd like? Do some people that come here just lie here completely naked during a facial? What the hell is wrong with society? Or… the Society. Did only people from the Society come here?
Amira turned away while I rolled over, pulling the towel up to my neck for good measure.
"Okay, ready," I said when I was all covered.
"Just lean back and relax." She put fresh cucumbers on my eyes and dribbled some oil on my shoulders.
Then she started massaging. At first her touch made me tense, but little by little, the tension melted away.
.. God, I was so sleepy. Vodka hangovers made it hard to sleep.
But now I was finally vodka-free. I yawned.
I could actually get used to getting massages. They were so relaxing…
Suddenly, I woke up to searing pain right above my vagina.
"What the fuck?!" I screamed. My eyes shot open and I tossed the cucumbers on the floor.
Amira was still massaging my neck while two other women dressed in masseuse clothes stood by my legs.
One of them was holding a strip of cloth covered in little red hairs.
I was completely naked, and the pain was them waxing my freaking vagina.
The pain was worse than the embarrassment though, and that was saying something. Ow.
Amira pressed behind my ears to try to relax me. "It's okay," she said. "That was the most painful part. The rest is not as bad."
I covered my breasts with one hand and my vagina with the other. "Who said you could wax me?" Oh God, how do I get out of this? Where had my towel gone? It hurts so fucking bad!
"Part of the Society Special. Just sit back and relax."
That was easier said than done, especially when I was bare-ass naked while two women yanked the hair off my privates with hot wax.
If this was Liz's idea, this is fucking weird.
And totally out of character for her. A massage would have been expensive enough, but a waxing during a facial?
That must have been at least like $200. Liz would never splurge for that. Maybe it was...
"Ow!" I yelled again as they pulled off two more strips of hair.
I did a quick calculation to decide what would be less awkward.
My options were to either lie there completely naked while two strangers waxed my privates or jump off the massage table and run out of the place screaming with some kind of strange half waxed hoo-ha.
Somehow, lying there naked was the lesser of those two evils.
And anyway, I was already in too deep. They were already half done.
I decided to at least use the experience to try to get more info about the mysterious letters.
I kept my hands on my breasts, even though any sense of modesty was way out the window.
"Do you have a copy of the charges for today?
I want to make sure my billing address is correct. "
"Sorry, I do not understand," said Amira. Her accent suddenly sounded thicker.
"What can you tell me about the Society?"
Amira just stared at me blankly.
Maybe I'm dreaming , I thought. Yes, that was it. I had to be dreaming. Because no spa would put a customer to sleep and then start waxing their vag without permission. This was all just a bad dream. That explains everything.
Yes, it was a weird dream. But whatever.
There was probably a perfectly normal explanation for it.
Was getting a Hollywood wax subconsciously my deepest desire?
If it was, I blamed it on the trophy wives at my spin class.
They were always perfectly smooth - not a stray hair to be found in that locker room.
I didn’t think that was it, though. It was more likely that the wax was just preparing me for my real deepest desire: my stalker.
Any minute now he’d walk through the door and we’d bathe together in the pool.
And it would definitely be germ and centipede free.
And I’d straddle him under that water and…
"Turn over please," said Amira.
I opened my eyes and looked down. My vag was all smooth. Well, kind of. It looked the way I imagined a chicken would look if it was freshly plucked and very sunburnt. Thank God the wax is over.
I flipped over and eagerly awaited the arrival of my stalker in my dreamlike state. Instead, I got hot wax slathered all up in my ass. It surprisingly didn't hurt very much when they tore the strips away.
"All done," said Amira. "See, not so bad." The women all left the room.
Is this when my Stalker appears? Or maybe Hassan.
Oh God. Not Hassan. My dream was quickly turning into a nightmare.
I hopped off the table and pulled on my clothes.
I’d had enough. Dream or not, I was getting the hell out of here.
I needed to give this place a zero-star review.
At least they never got a chance to upsell me on bath salts, because I couldn’t afford anything in this place.
Chastity was waiting for me in the reception area.
"How was it?" she asked, her face flushed with excitement. "If yours was half as good as mine..."
"Let's get out of here," I said. Apparently it wasn’t a dream.
"That bad, huh? Next time you'll have to get Hassan. Hey, what happened to your arm?"
"My arm?"
"Yeah." Chastity pointed at my arm. There was a Band-Aid on the inside of my elbow with a little dot of blood right in the center. It looked like I had gotten a shot. Or given blood.
What the hell did they do to me while I was asleep?