The Next Episode

The acrid smell of dry smoke wafted from the open shutters of the house, staining the air a dim greyish white. Behind the shutters hid a darkness that no one wanted to speak about, but everyone knew, the elephant shoved in a cupboard by the general consensus of the town. The building was concrete and mortar, nothing but another factory block in a row of drab grey prefabricated building blocks, the only visible life on the streets one of the several strays that ducked in and out of the tall uncut weeds, sneaking into the shadows at every twitch. Inside the building, a boy and girl lay next to each other, both in a similar state of confusion, and both virtually unaware of the others presence. Between them lay an improvised bong, with the smoldering ashes of a few grams sunk into the bottom of the melting bottle. Around them lay hundreds of similar devices, rubbish strewn all on the grey concrete floor. The boy stirred for a second, life coming to his glassy eyes. He got up, looked at the girl, and with a dull, disgusting grin, reached over to her. His hand slipped under her shirt, groping upwards, towards her skinny chest. She felt his touch, tried to get up, then slumped back down onto the ground, moaning softly in fear. Tears silently began to run down her cheeks, dripping down the side of her face onto the dust.
"Please...no.."
The boy ignored her quiet plea. This wasn't the first time, and he knew she wouldn't resist, no matter what she said. This was a daily ritual, and one he enjoyed very much, getting high and having sex day in day out. She'd always pretend to forget this happened when she saw him, she'd hide herself in a state of denial. But she always came back for more, more of the precious white smoke, and she'd always pay well. She'd pretend to be going out with friends, but she really went out to smoke weed. Every single day. And he was fine with that. But every time he saw her, every time she looked away with a pained expression, something inside him hurt. Something made him want to change this cycle of hurt, of draining from each other, of taking from each other. Something in him wanted more than this primal relationship of give and take, something that gave him a deeper connection. But he didn't know what he wanted. He never had. Because all his life, the only love he'd ever had was on the end of a fist. And like the girl, he had kept coming back for more.
The girl blinked in surprise. The boy's hand had stopped, and his touch had left her skin.
"What are you doing?" she said in a dulled, hoarse voice
"I'm so sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I can't... I'm so sorry. This was all a mistake. I, I did this to you. Just... get out. Please."
"W..What?"
"GET OUT! Now..."
His voice tapered off into a chilling silence. She got up, grabbed her bag off the dusty floor and ran off. She had gotten what she had wanted, and the shutters slammed with the wind of her passage, turning the last rays of light into a pool of shadows like the boy's hopelessness.
The girl fled into the streets, running towards her home, a jacket wrapped around her to hide her shame. She was seventeen, tall and blonde, but so skinny, almost like a model except for the fact that she appeared to be wasting away. If you heard her name, you wouldn't think she was anything extraordinary, just another Jessica. She wasn't particularly smart, fit, popular, beautiful, funny, nice, or anything positive really. Everything she tried to do went wrong. Everyone she once was friends with had turned on her. She had once been all those things, the 'perfect' girl, but she found herself struggling to keep it up, simply because it wasn't her. Her inner demons had begun to creep out of the cage of her willpower, and the inner darkness had soaked into her very being, twisting her into a husk of her former self. She'd always known about the boy, about what he'd did, but she'd always thought herself better than him. What a joke. She was nothing, worthless in anyone's eyes, a stain upon the very world. She'd be better off dying, but she wasn't brave enough to do even that. Even her own parents hated her very existence, and she suspected they prayed that she'd off herself to remove the financial burden she'd become. She'd lost everything, and now she'd even lost the boy's companionship, however unwelcome and forced it had been. What did she have left? She was so tired of it all, but she'd keep going, simply because she knew nothing else.
The wire door rattled shut as she entered home, empty as usual. Her parents were out working. She slipped upstairs, into her room, slumped back into her bed and shut her eyes. Contrary to her exhausted body, her mind simply wouldn't stop racing. She knew she was useless, pointless, worth virtually nothing. Death seemed to be knocking on her door, telling her to come to him, the only place where she could stop hurting people with her existence. She looked at her wrist, at the blue-green cords running through them. She imagined blood dripping from them, the act of slitting them slowly, hopefully finally doing something right. She imagined her vision going black, her thoughts stopping. She imagined the letter she'd write. Who would she write it to? Who would care? The cold wind chilled her to the very bone and she curled up under her duvet. Tears started leaking from the corners of her eyes and she squeezed them shut, trying not to cry as she wallowed in her self hate.
This was always the most difficult part of his day. Going home was always dangerous no matter the circumstances, but coming back with bloodshot eyes and a breath that stank of weed was like asking for a beating. To circumvent the pain and suffering he'd go through, he'd smoked enough weed to numb his senses. However, this also completely incapacitated him and he staggered into home to meet a fist slamming into his chest.
"WHERE THE FUCKING HELL DO YOU THINK YOU'RE GOING?" a gruff voice yelled at him.
Before letting him speak, the man, his father, roughly grabbed him by the collar and shoved him against the wall. Squirming desperately, the boy tried to resist, but his dad slugged him several times in the gut, where no one would notice, before kicking him in the groin. He slumped down to the ground, eyes teary and hearing dull.
"Fucking.......waste....kill...faggot...."
His father strode off into the depths of his house, returning to his den, while he hobbled to his room, clutching his gut. He'd have to scrounge some food without his father noticing, or starve. His day had only begun to go downhill.
The sun rose on another cold day, a pale, watery yellow soaking into the grey earth. She crawled out of her duvet with her eyes sore and bloodshot from the combination of weed and crying. After downing a cup of water, she felt a little better, but the pain in her mind stayed in her chest, the last thing to have not left her. She remembered what had happened yesterday and she slumped back into bed, reluctant to get up for school. She sat staring at the clock, watching it tick the seconds away, without really noticing the time. What was the point? The world wouldn't even notice her missing, just another waste of a life. The hours ticked by her as she slept fitfully through the day, until a knocking came at her door.
"Jessica!"
She kept her silence, the darkness in her telling her that honestly, no one wanted to hear her speak. The voice shouted again, louder, more anxious. It was wordless, and it hurt her ears. Shut up. SHUT UP! She screamed into her sheets, her muffled voice drowning into painful sobs. Was it her mom, her dad? Maybe they'd finally given up on her. Maybe she was going to the loony bin. Fuck them. Fuck all that. Her life was all she had fucking left, she wouldn't let them take it. Crawling out of bed, she looked out of her window, stared through the glass into the golden-red rays of the sunset, and finally she made up her mind. Shoving through her window door, she dropped heavily onto her ankle, landing unevenly on the ground. Wincing but not crying out, she hobbled off through the waist-length grass and began to run. Running through the streets, her hair picking up in the wind. Running into the world that would engulf her existence, and hopefully she would run into her end, the final catalyst to the final reaction in her life
She'd not been back to school for a month. He didn't even notice the time pass, but he was starting to feel something, a fear of sorts, different to his fear of going home, but infinitely more painful. Where was she? Was she just avoiding him? You know what, fuck her. She was just a slut for him, sucking his dick while sucking the weed smoke from his mouth. Who cares what happened to her. Did he? No way... No, she was nothing to him. He got through each day on this mantra, pretending to be fine, taking every blow from his father with good grace, absorbing every shout from a teacher without any pain on his face. His life would continue, with or without her. He strolled through the shopping centre, unruly hair hidden behind a black hoodie. If someone saw his bloodshot eyes, they always flinched and looked away. He knew he looked insane. He probably was. But who gave a shit at this point. He'd sunk so far, why not sink further? Actually, perhaps if his dad hadn't been so fucked up, so angry and aggressive, maybe he'd be alright. He'd be like that kid over there, grinning with his friends, messing around. He definitely wouldn't be hiding from his dad in the shopping center.
He flinched. A bunched up ponytail, ragged blonde, a skinny body and a skinnier waist. Was that Jessica? The girl turned to look at a shop window and her face came into view. It was gaunt and tired, but it wasn't Jessica's face. She noticed him staring, looked down and hurried away. What the hell was wrong with him? He'd sworn off of her, sworn to get rid of any connection between them. How could they have one? How could he do that to her?
She shivered in the cold. It had been surprisingly easy to find food and shelter in the city, just in the shadier parts. She'd been having the shakes after a week without a toke, but food only needed her to stand on a street corner in the right place. She'd found a few "friends", people like her. She didn't know them and they didn't know her, but that was the rule with these kind of things. They'd helped her a bit, at least with the practical side, but she knew that no one could help with the hollowness in her heart. Their eyes told her that they'd also tried. And failed.
Her clothes were dirty. Not for the first time she wished she had brought a change of clothes, but she'd probably just borrow some while dry cleaning them. She slipped through the crowd of drunks and barmen. It had been Saturday yesterday, and many people were nursing aching hangovers. For her though, Saturdays were her work day, the day she made the real money. Soon she'd have a few thousand, enough to perhaps rent a room in a shithole motel. It would still be better than bedhopping.
A man's eyes pierced through the grey light of the morning, achingly familiar in their brown depths, and she was reminded of where she'd left, only so recently.
She'd begun to make a habit of slipping into the library in her less active hours, finding a few hours of quiet respite under the fluorescent lights. The act of touching those clean white pages, reading those crisply printed words, they almost made her feel normal again, like she was back at home reading. She'd been reading the crime section more and more, scouring the shelves for stories on rape, murder, the torture of unfortunate women. Not for the first time, she wondered if her next customer would make her the next nameless prostitute on the evening news. Somewhere inside her, she wanted that. She wanted to die. She wanted to suffer for her sins. She wanted to scream, to show her pain. But if she did, she'd lose her customers.
It had been two months since she'd disappeared. There had been an assembly about it, the principal's voice dripping with faked concern. Around him, everyone laughed at the crazy girl's disappearance. Rumors spread. She'd become a biker's girl, got knocked up, she'd sold herself to a Nigerian prince, just because "she was that dumb". Silently, he imagined for himself what could have happened to her. Had she been murdered? Would they find her dead body floating one day? Had she just up and left? Had she been kidnapped? Maybe she'd just run from him, tried to escape his control. He himself stayed silent, just watched as her old friends went through the six degrees of separation, watched as they went from knowing her everything to barely remembering her face. He watched as everyone slowly forgot about her, and his eyes and mind soon dulled too, dulled to the memory of her voice and face.
5 years later
He'd gotten through the worst, he thought to himself. By some stroke of luck, a teacher called home to ask about the repeated injuries and absences he had, and it had all wound up in the cops coming to arrest his dad. He'd spent a year in stasis in the social system, waiting for a foster family to find him, until one day he found that he was 18; free from it all. He was his own man now. He'd forget everything that'd ever happened. His past would just become a shadow of his present. And he kept thinking that when he walked into the bar and saw her leaning over the counter, sunken face watching as he approached. He kept thinking it when she called his name, but couldn't deny it when the tears began to fall. And he most definitely couldn't deny it when he felt the same rush as they touched. For better or for worse, they'd changed, but for a single moment, it felt like nothing had ever happened.