17. Abel

This whole apartment smells like meth. It’s seeped into the walls, in the patchy, stained carpet.

Hell, it’s even adhering to my grimy skin.

I resist the urge to gag again as I scratch at my arm, smearing around the dirt and oils that are caked on from days of sitting in my own filth. There’s no water here—not even to drink. My throat rolls, and the contraction of muscles only makes the pain worse.

“You okay?” I rasp as I lean over to push my face into Mo’s neck. She doesn’t move at the pressure of my touch. It makes my blood run cold.

She’s so young—too young to know better.

“Mo, wake up.” I nudge her shoulder, hating the way her bones creak. “Come on,” I plead, mostly to myself, but I never raise my voice an octave above a hushed whisper. Sound bounces off the walls in this apartment, like they’re as hollow as my heart.

She finally startles awake, whipping her head around in disorientation. I hush her, running my hand down her thick, matted hair. “You’re okay. It’s just me.”

“What’s wrong?” she asks so quietly, I have to read her lips in the dim, yellow light bleeding from the kitchen. I shift around on the hard, lumpy carpet, and the inevitable jostle to my new bruises induces a fresh twinge. Mo’s eyes crinkle in a way no child’s should.

She’s too good for this.

“Nothing. Just wanted to talk,” I tell her, which is true. But I also, selfishly, don’t want to be alone.

“Are they back yet?” She blinks sleepily.

“Yes.”

Mo stiffens, clutching at me with too-small fingers. “Where are they?”

“Their room.” I hold my breath, knowing what she’s gonna ask next, hating the very words before they’re ever spoken. For even being thought.

“Are they…” She chokes a little.

With a gentle sigh, I pull her against me, bone against bone. Harsh but oddly comforting. Just having another person to touch without the threat of malice.

“Yes.”

“So,” her throat clicks with a swallow, “they’re gonna?—”

“Yes, Mo.” I cut her off, hating that’s where our first thoughts take us. I’ve been here for two months. Mo, only three weeks.

Honestly, it’s fucking baffling how many bad people slip through the cracks in the system. It’s broken beyond repair. Too many kids, not enough good people willing to take on the responsibility. Because we’re only ever seen as broken and unfixable. And when that little assumption is beaten into someone, it becomes fact.

And I was forced to mold into the very thing I was taught to be. My only mercy is my ability to morph their depravity into something I can take advantage of. Something I control outside of this ugly loneliness.

So, I choose to allow it because this way, it becomes my decision and not an action against my will.

Mo trembles against me, teeth chattering. The heavy clacking is far too loud, so I shove my hand against her jaw to snap it shut. The vibrations travel through me, radiating down my forearm. And that’s how we stay, with my arms wrapped around her until the tell-tale creak of the bedroom door opening forces us apart.

Mo’s eyes widen, tears welling, bottom lip quivering. I kiss the tip of her dirty nose and pet her head.

“It’s okay,” I tell her sincerely. “Lie down. Pretend to sleep—you’re good at it.” I push against her, forcing her back down where she curls into a ball, her head tucked into the crook of her elbow, face buried in the nasty carpet—but it’s better than the alternative.

I drag the thin, shabby blanket over her, leaving none for myself because I won’t need it. “Just close your eyes, baby. I’ll be back before you wake up.”

“Abel,” she whimpers. It makes my cold, dead heart thump once. “I… I’m sorry,” she chokes out.

Fuck.

“Hey. Don’t be. I’ll always protect you, okay? Just sleep. Dream of… rainbows and unicorns and shit. I’ll meet you there in a bit.” She gives me a small, tired smile before I toss the blanket over her head, blocking her from sight.

Just like she’s learned, she goes utterly still, shoulders barely shifting with each hesitant breath she takes.

Maybe she’ll make it.

I really hope she does.

“Get the fuck in here,” a raspy voice, one formed from years of smoking two packs a day, rakes down my spine.

It takes every ounce of energy I have left to force myself to stand. I sway as the room spins, eyes squinting as colorful spots flash in and out, burned with yellowed walls and stained glass.

Fingers bite into my forearm, adding more bruises to the ones already there. My teeth sink into my tongue as I bite back a groan, forcing it down along with my vexation.

It’s either me or Mo.

And I’ll always choose to protect her.

Besides, it seems like their friends prefer the twink boy over any girl.

It’s bitter, my resentment. Not just for Mitch and Amy—my new caregivers for who knows how long—but for all of them. Those from the past and whoever will come in the future.

For the system I’m trapped in and this broken fucking world.

“There he is,” a voice leers as I step into their smoke-infested room. Two glass pipes lie on the bed along with scraps of foil and a mini torch lighter. Ashtrays, filled to the brim with butts, crowd in the center and on two small tables. Yellow clings to what I’m sure were once white walls—the ceiling, too.

I’ve stared at that ceiling a lot. I know every bump and groove, the detail of each brown water stain. But as I watch Allen—at least, I think that’s his name; there are so many, they all blur together—unbuckle his pants before I’m more than a foot inside the room, I know what he wants instead.

My legs take me to him without thinking, without feeling, and I drop to my knees and place my hands on my thighs. Digging my nails in extra deep, I straighten my spine, open my mouth, and close my fucking eyes.

Colorful shapes and lines dance behind my closed lids as a putrid lump of flesh enters my mouth. I draw my focus to the abstract patterns, working them into geometry, pondering which one is an acute angle before it disappears into the next.

Oh, parallel lines. Has to be a parallelogram.

Is that one a… what’s it called? A heptagon. Fuck. It disappeared. But that one… those are definitely acute angles, but the other is obtuse. Ah, yep. Definitely an obtuse triangle.

My hair is snatched, and I’m jerked back, spine cracking from the force. I heave, resisting the urge to spew as a booted foot lands somewhere near my groin.

“Get the fuck out of here.”

I don’t even realize I’m swallowing semen until some drips from between my parted lips as I crawl my way over the gritty carpet. Once the door slams shut behind me, I push to my feet and lean against the wall, willing the blood to leave my half-hard dick.

I can’t even remember when that started happening… my body just taking over like that. Like I actually fucking like it.

But maybe I fucking do—who knows. It’s been so long and has happened too much. It’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s conditioned.

Sparks of their erratic conversation bleed through the cardboard door—and none of it makes fucking sense as it pings all over the place. Talking about drugs, then of FBI agents stalking them, preparing to ambush. Their plans to jump someone. Wires the government has planted in the T.V. and in the fucking walls.

It’s so chaotic, it makes my head hurt more than it already does.

When something hard knocks against the wall, I jolt, scurrying back into the living room where all is quiet.

My half-smile is wobbly but genuine as I find Mo exactly as I left her, curled up so small and innocent.

I’d do it a thousand times just to protect her.

My knees creak, throbbing just below the bone as I drop down beside her with my back to the wall. With my eyes staring forward, I catch my soiled reflection in the glass door of the stove. The vague form that stares back at me is unrecognizable. Dirty and ugly and decayed. Everything I am, right on display.

I hate the bitter taste stuck in the back of my throat, the awful smell clinging to the both of us. I hate I have to make a choice—and that I can never choose me.

It’s not her fault. It’s not mine either. We’re just damned to survive in a life we were forced into. One of malice and hate, abuse and torture.

Some don’t make it. And those that do are never the same, coming out the other side angrier, splintered, and severed. Unrecognizable as something human. Something so far from purity.

And even though I’m not out yet—still cinched in the center of it all—I’m already dirtier. Nastier. Taking each new splintered piece and molding it into the vile person I am at my rotten core.

My tragedies have made me.

And I’m a fucking abomination.