Bonus: Meet Justin and Mya

“Krista” My name escaped his lips as a gentle moan. He was spent. My clients were often done before me, and it came as no surprise that I was left unsatisfied. I smiled politely, before rolling off the bed and redressing. He sat and reached for his wallet, counting some notes before handing them to me. “I’ll recommend you.” His face was twisted into a smirk, satisfied and still drenched in post-coital ecstasy.

“Thank you.” I replied to his comment, before seeing myself out.

My line of work isn’t something you plan for; it isn’t something little girls dream of becoming. But it’s all I know. Most people assume that prostitutes choose their work for two reasons. One because they were abused as children and so become so mentally scarred that they need to feel needed, and satisfying the unsatisfied is all that they can think of. Two is me. Drugs. A drug habit isn’t cheap, and it isn’t something I’d wish on anyone. You’re controlled by your habit, and everything you do revolves around the drug. You trust nobody, but you’ll do anything you can to get your fix. You don’t care that you look like death, haven’t showered in weeks. I try to make more money than I need for my habit, I need to, I have a son to think of.

When I get home, my housemate is asleep on the couch. She’s like me, only she doesn’t have a child. We met on Seventh, in Bridgeport's red light district, when I was fifteen and she was eighteen, we’ve looked out for each other ever since, and now we take shifts looking after Justin. You make more money at night, so we’ve worked out a system where we work every other night, and on the night’s we don’t work, we work the day. The day shifts go slowly, it picks up a little when the local businesses let out for lunch break, but other than that you’re lucky if you bring in a hundred simoleons. The only reason we do them is so there’s always someone here for Justin.

I gently shake Sasha awake, she smiles when she sees I’m home, and points to the kitchen. I can tell she’s had her share, she looks sleepy and relaxed.

“Got you one set up.” She states, drowsily. I nod and move to the kitchen. There’s a syringe already loaded for me on the counter, so I tie off my arm and inject. I sit as I gently release the tourniquet and feel the golden brown liquid course through my veins and hit my heart. I feel the beating slow, and a feeling of normality hits. All sense of guilt over what I’m doing to Justin is gone, and everything is right with the world.

I don’t know how much time has passed before I grab myself a glass of water and join Sasha in front of the TV. She tells me she fell asleep watching a documentary about a guy going to rehab to kick his heroin habit, and we laugh at the irony.

“How’s Justin?” I ask.

“He’s been an angel, as always.” She replies. My Justin is an angel. Before I fell pregnant with him, I was living with Austin. He told me he wasn't going to raise any child I had, and as 'a dirty skag head' there was no way to prove 'it' was his. I know Austin is Justin's father. I guess I chose the name Justin as a sort of hint to Austin if they ever eventually met, but now I know that's almost impossible. Finding out I had a life inside of me made me cut the heroin down to a minimum, and Sasha and I looked for an apartment, vowing to always be there for each other. We’re all each other have. Addicts don’t have supportive parents to fall back on, not usually; there are a few who do, but not us. Sasha doesn’t talk about her parents, and so I don’t ask. Mine kicked me out and all but disowned me when I was fourteen. They said they couldn't handle me any more, but I know I could never do that to Justin no matter what he did. I’ve met many people during my life since all this began, and they all have a dirty secret. You learn not to ask too many questions, especially when those questions give you information about the person that could be used against them in court. I’m not sure Sasha’s parents could, but I still won’t ask all the same.

Some days I worry about never coming home. I wonder if Sasha would stay and care for Justin if I was gone. There was recently a spree of missing prostitutes, and Sasha and I had to cut back on hours, it just isn’t as safe out there as it used to be. I’ve tried to quit the drugs, and I’m going to do it properly soon. Last time, I went cold turkey. Sasha bought me coke and speed to get me through, but the draw was too big. It’s just too easy to get hold of heroin in Bridgeport. I’ve thought about moving, but I don’t think Sasha would come with me. I want a better life for Justin. He’ll be starting school next year, and that means he’ll be mixing with people like me.

*~*

When the investigators collected the body, they didn’t care. Nobody cares about people like us. I wish that I’d got home before Justin. I was supposed to, but my dealer was messing me around and made me wait on that corner for an hour. When I made it back to the house, he was sitting on the overgrown lawn, white as a sheet. He was staring off into the distance, and even though I was fiending, I could tell something bad had happened. He wouldn’t talk to me, and when I put my arm around him, he pushed away and walked off down the street. I was torn between going after him and investigating the house. I could see the front window was broken, completely cleared. Like someone had thrown something through to break it, and then pulled the remaining glass out to gain access. I knew Sasha was in there, but I didn’t want to prove it to myself. I didn’t want it to be true.

It all happened so fast after that. The investigators arrested me. They said I wasn’t under suspicion, but they had evidence of my soliciting and drug use around a minor. They said they were willing to let me go if I would talk. I refused at first. I knew exactly who had done this, and I wasn’t about to meet the same fate as my best friend, but they offered me witness protection. In a quiet countryside town, with a good school for Justin to attend. Eventually I complied, and before I knew it Justin and I were ushered back to the house and were hastily packing what we could before boarding a bus set for Winchester.

*~*

My mum has a new name. Mya Hope. They said it would be too confusing for me to change my name, so I’ve stayed Farrow for now. I can’t help but hate her for this, even though she didn’t pull the trigger, she bought this situation into our lives, and my ‘aunt’ Sasha is dead because of it. I’ve had to leave all my friends behind, everyone I ever knew, without even saying goodbye! Tom Farley was having a pool party this weekend at his grandparents loft, I bet they have a great time without me.

I took a wander around this town yesterday. I only saw about four people, all middle-aged, and all rich-looking. We don’t fit in here. This place is so upmarket that even the stupid trailer park is hidden behind rows of perfectly trimmed conifers. I doubt anyone even knows we’re here. I didn’t see any kids at all, even though I hung around the park for a while. The park was right next to the school, and it’s tiny. My old school was four floors, plain grey concrete with black asphalt surrounding it, and this new one looks like a log cabin made by the damn pioneers! I'm surprised they even have electricity out here in the backside of nowhere.

I go out for another walk. My mum is trying to find some way of making money here, because there’s no way this town would have enough of a dark side to need her ‘services’ enough to fund her habits. She keeps saying she’ll quit, but I don’t think she’ll ever manage it.

I end up back at the park, and play on the swings by myself. There’s a blonde girl about my age arguing with who I assume to be her older sister. They look like try-hards. Wearing designer clothes, but they don’t look rich. I wonder if they got those clothes from the back of a truck, like my mum does?

I continue watching the ‘blonde family drama’ as a woman I assume to be the mother comes out of the hut (which I assume contains toilets) to tell them off. The three of them look like clones or something, and I’m shocked when a brown-haired man comes out behind the mother carrying an equally brown-haired toddler. Boy, I think. I take a wild guess and say he’s the step-father and the toddler is a half-sibling to the blonde girls. I follow them with my eyes as they make their way over to the lake to have a picnic, and notice another girl about my age is now sitting on the bench. She looks about as lost and lonely as I feel, so I go over to try and make my first friend.

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The first part of this, I wrote a few months ago. I have many short stories half-written, and as I started typing backstory I remembered it. So I changed the names and edited it a little to suit my needs. Easy!
For those of you who are lucky enough to have not been exposed to drugs before, here's some information about heroin, which Mya/Krista was using in that first part. The kind of thing I imagined her on last chapter, was mephedrone (known around here as 'M-cat') and alcohol, but the late stages where she was coming down from the 'cat'.