Bond By The Vampire's Blood

2 Rejected

“Please, Darren …” Sasha whimpered.

Darren, towering above her, the bag still in his hand, the sneer on his face half grin, half expression of disgust. She could see this excited him, plain as day. To her surprise, she found that she couldn’t blame him for it. Sasha knew the aphrodisiac of power. Hadn’t she played with it for years before, outside of those dimly lit bars that lined the city streets?

“You were a bad girl,” Darren growled. Sasha repeated his words, agreed with him, petulant, her breath hitching. But now the tears were drying. She thought she knew how best to resolve this. Was her lower limp trembling just a bit more than necessary? Were her eyes just a bit bigger?

“I was a bad girl,” Sasha said again, and arched her back, drawing out the words like warm honey on her tongue.

Pain flashed across her face, sudden, explosive, unexpected. Sasha recoiled from the blow. Darren’s expert delivery rarely left marks, but it hurt no less than any other slap.

“Don’t play that s**t with me, girl.”

Sasha looked up at him, sniffling. The slap had brought fresh tears to her eyes, and she blinked them away.

“Say you’re sorry and mean it.” Darren looked down at her like a dark king, and Sasha realized that this had been just another in a long series of lessons. Darren was in control. Darren was the boss. Darren was God, dispensing pleasure and pain at his whim.

“I’m sorry, Darren.” Sasha meant it. No tears, now. No hysterics. Just rapid breathing, clenched teeth. The need was a tight ball in her stomach. She tried not to look at the h****n. She tried to look at the windows, the clock on the desk, anything else. Again and again, her eyes returned to the bag.

“Take it and get out.” Darren tossed the bag into a corner and turned to his ledgers. Sasha scrambled after it on all fours, like the dog Darren had trained her to be. By the time she was out the door, shouting some hurried, half-meant words of appreciation after her, Darren had forgotten entirely about her.

Her roommate’s name was Molly. The girl had been in the business for fourteen months, a fact that repulsed Sasha whenever she gave it even a moment’s thought. Molly was a sweet, honest, quiet girl. She had become wrapped up with the wrong people. These people had led her to h****n, and h****n had led her to Darren. Darren had led her to the clients, of which there were many. Molly was an absolute premium, the Rolls Royce of Darren’s line of w****s. Even after fourteen months, she was still the youngest girl in his service; only twelve. Her work earned more in a weekend than most earned in a month.

Sasha believed she didn’t think about this, but looking at the bags under Molly’s eyes on a Sunday morning when the little girl returned, tired and often bruised, to shoot up and go to sleep, was like a physical force hammering on her. They’d shared a sister-like relationship at first, but Sasha had been forced to establish some distance after a nightmarish group job they’d been ordered to perform. This had happened occasionally since, and perhaps the most horrifying thing about the events was how Sasha had become inured to them.

She and Molly were popular, as individuals and as a group. Sasha, with her large eyes, upturned nose, and small breasts, could pass for much younger than she really was. She received the clients who wanted to f**k a twelve-year-old, but who still retained some sort of conscience, some semblance of a soul. Molly’s clients, as far as Sasha could gather, had no soul at all.

Sweetlips, big blue eyes, long brown hair tucked back in a ponytail, Molly was swinging her legs over the edge of her bed, watching Sasha. Her client had backed out tonight, but as he’d pre-paid, Darren had treated Molly to a night off. She had absolutely nothing to do and this, compared to her normal nights, was bliss.

Sasha cooked the h****n, pulled down her pants, and pushed away her underwear, exposing the joint between thigh and pelvis. She still shot up here, a remnant of the days when she’d hoped to escape, the days when she was still concerned about needle tracks. She had no qualms about exposing herself in front of Molly. How could she? Molly, in turn, registered no expression of disturbance or concern as Sasha slid the needle into her skin, pressed the plunger, set the syringe on the dresser.

The effect of the fix was near-instantaneous, as always. First the burst of pleasure, warm and pulsing like an o****m. Vision blurred, muscles relaxing, Sasha seemed to float off into a cloud of euphoria. She lay back on the bed, hands crossed behind her head, and heard Molly speak as if from the end of a long tunnel.

“I saw the baggie in the trash. Did you steal Cindy’s s**t again?”

Stupid b***h leaves it out, what does she expect? Sasha thought. She didn’t need to answer Molly. The question was rhetorical.

“You’re going to hurt yourself.” The concern in Molly’s voice was lovely in its innocence. Sasha drew in a shuddery breath, happy to let the drugs do their work. Caring was pain. Apathy was bliss.

“No one gonna miss me when I’m gone,” she told Molly, still looking up at the ceiling.

“I’ll miss you.”

Sasha smiled. Of course, Molly would miss her … until the drugs and the pain and the sheer horror of their life took her, too. Assuming Molly outlived her in the first place.

Sasha dozed.

***

Descent and rebirth. In April of the previous year, Sasha had decided to take a walk, an innocent enough beginning to this disgusting end. She was not a foolish girl. She knew better than to wander down the wrong streets at the wrong hour. Broad daylight and known streets seemed safe enough.

She had spent the last few months in a homeless shelter, unsure of what to do next. Slowly, though, she was learning new ways of making a living. She was not always proud of herself; there was no glory in shoplifting, no beauty in fishing wallets from people’s pockets, no redemption in breaking into apartments. But she survived, and as her skills in these areas grew, so did the sum of money Rhes held for her; deposit for a new apartment. He didn’t know where she obtained it, never asked, probably tried not to think about it. Sasha never volunteered the information. She was ashamed, though she had no real idea what shame was at the time. The real shame would come later.

Walking in the city, watching the men in the ethnic groceries unload their trucks, the women chattering in their exotic languages, children playing hopscotch in the street. The sights, smells, and sounds of New York were all about her, and Sasha enjoyed them as she always had. She felt no fear of the city, nor any of the constricting claustrophobia it inspired in so many others. Sasha loved New York because it was like her. It made no excuses for itself, hid nothing of its nature. New York was the sum of its many, many components, and yet so much more.

A common, garden-variety mugging was all it had taken to send her spiraling down into a life of alternating horror and numbness. A grab from an alleyway, the click of a gun, a grunted threat. Sasha would have given them money if she had money to give. Would have given it happily. She knew now she could live without it. She had no illusions of bravery. When someone pointed a gun at your head and demanded your money, you gave it to him.

She had nothing, not even pocket change. A pack of cigarettes, a lighter, a wallet with a wide selection of fake IDs … these were her possessions. Her attackers were unenthusiastic. They decided that her body would serve as an acceptable form of currency.

If Sasha had known the eventual outcome, she would’ve let them ravage her. Would’ve simply laid back and let it happen. If she’d known where her cries for help would land her, she would’ve suffered this singular violation in silence. One night to salvage the rest of her life. She didn’t know, couldn’t know, and her cries brought her saviors, and her saviors brought damnation.

Sasha young girls, brandishing a gun they didn’t even know how to use, successfully chased the Sasha men away. Sasha lay in the alley, battered, bleeding, clothes torn from her body. She was slipping rapidly into unconsciousness, but she tried to tell them to take her to Sid’s. Tried to tell them about Rhes and Sarah, her friends. They would help her.

Sasha couldn’t make any sounds. She’d used up her voice calling for help. She heard a name: “Darren.” Then, darkness.

Memories like crumpled Polaroids, floating in a muddy pool. Blackness, floating, a flash of light, a voice asking her name, asking about her parents. So gentle, this voice. She told the truth. Why shouldn’t she? Her mother was dead, her father gone. No parents for Sasha, only the street.

The sharp sting of a needle, and then gentle bliss, descending, back into warm darkness.

By the time her wounds had healed, and she was capable of getting out of bed, Sasha was fully addicted to the h****n Darren brought her once a day.

Days passed. Escape. Why not? The h****n already held her in an iron grip, but h****n was in ready supply. She would not submit to Darren’s ownership, would not accept him as her source of the drug. She would not let him own her as he owned those other girls.

She left him in the subway. Sliding onto the train, darting out from between the doors just as they closed, laughing and cursing as his angry face slid away. People all around her not looking, a New York practice perfected to an art form. Sasha stole food and drink from a news-stand, ran from subway cops, still laughing.

Withdrawal came, and Sasha was horrified by how quickly her willpower dissolved under that onslaught of pain and need. Unable to steal enough to get what she needed, she had found a dealer and paid for the h****n with the same currency Darren had initially proposed. The irony of this was not lost on her as she lay there, burning from fever, the pain of withdrawal lancing through her, and let this strange man thrust into her again and again.

When it was done, she felt sick and defiled, but could not stop herself from asking for a fix. The dealer gave her a needle and disappeared to obtain the rest of what she had paid for. Sasha shot up, nodded, dozed, unaware that she was doing so.

Thumps on the stairs, the door kicked in, Darren’s face, raging, screaming, dragging her by the hair down the stairs, naked, jagged splinters embedding themselves deep within her thighs. Wailing as the car sped back to the apartments, shrieking as she was dragged into them and thrown into Darren’s office. There, Darren had beat her in a manner both savage and methodical, using a leather belt wrapped around his fist, beginning with her legs and moving up her naked body. Twice had Sasha managed to get to her feet and run for the door. Both times Darren had caught her, stronger and faster than this weak and strung-out girl. He had punched her in the stomach, threw her back into the corner, continued to hit her with the belt.

Finally, lying on the floor, naked and sobbing, unable to move, she’d learned what the small scar he’d burned into the webbing between her left thumb and forefinger meant. It was Darren’s mark, known to the other pimps and dealers, and they understood that returning one of his girls would be worth more to them than keeping her for themselves.

Sasha was trapped, branded like cattle, and there was not a dealer in the world (or at least, the scope of that which made up her world) who would sell to her. If Sasha wanted the h****n – and within hours, she knew, the need inside of her would be a ball of fire racing through her veins – she would have to earn it.

She went out on the corner that very night, still bruised and aching, and stood on the corner with the other girls until one of the strange men in their dark cars finally pointed at her, and she went with him to a nearby motel. Later, in the early hours of the morning, she lay on the floor of the shower, knees pulled nearly to her chin, arms wrapped around her calves, and let the hot water wash away salty, bitter tears.