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The bulb flickered and hissed, casting shadows through
Sue’s room. A rag of a curtain hung over a window that was more cardboard than
glass. Light glittered on the ice forming under the window.
The sagging bed stank of every man she ever had in
here. Benny sat in the corner with his knees against his chest. He smiled in
understanding and sympathy.
The last john had gone, now. Finally. Sue shivered but
not from the dampness.
“I’m hurting,” she whispered to the bashful kid
in the corner. Funny, but he was actually blushing. And naked. Sue whispered a
small moan over the pain in her stomach. Too many men in too little time, but JJ
blew every blue-back dollar. Lazy as he was, he still could at least do the
pimping, but no, he was too afraid of the street lords.
Sue glanced up at where the last one liked to hang an
upside-down cross over the bed. That one was a strange bird. Tattoos all over
his body, the blond hair silken but short. He claimed to be a satanic priest.
Lord knew he was cold enough. He wasn’t all that big in body or otherwise, but
when he used her, it hurt, drawing blood, even with the extra thick condoms.
And he terrified JJ.
“Got no more spine than a jellyfish at the Aquarium.
“But,” she muttered, “that’s more than I got.”
Eyes bleak, Sue shivered.
The spook took her, used her, and departed as if it
were some unpleasant duty.
Rain cut through the iced-over window to reveal a full
moon. Her gaze strayed to the ragged curtain. Every full moon the spook came.
Once a month her mother’s dying screams came back to haunt her while he took
his ride to hell and gone.
It was unnerving that this one man could tear her from
a cool, unemotional detachment.
The man was her very first after they moved north. He
and JJ set things up with the cops and nobody interfered until Harrison got a
burr up his ass. But, somebody spooked Harrison into letting her go.
The dude came into one of the worse neighborhoods in
America and nobody touched him or his car. A spook. One hand crept to the
starved muscle of her stomach. A child. Might be the spook’s. The timing was
right and condoms weren’t perfect.
Sue reached for the green shard of glass that almost
frightened McMasters into the ICU. It reflected dead eyes. It lay glittering
over her wrist, an emerald of immense and utterly worthless beauty. A tiny drop
of blood oozed out, a ruby against the emerald.
A small, lonely smile shivered on her face.
One push. A small push and a thin edge of pain. Then
she could rest. No more JJ. No more Harrison or the spook or drunken beatings.
Wasn’t an eternity in Hell worth losing the creep? It was the third leading
cause of death in this part of town, right after OD and murder. Who would fault
her? One push and her body would go to the city dump to become compost or maybe
cat food. Nothing was wasted these days.
Her gaze strayed to the ceiling. Stiff curls of
greenish paint arched downward. Behind that lay crumbling plasterboard and damp
rot.
God?
It just seems so right.
Her soul filled with a glow of peace.
©2003 StoriesByEmail.com
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