A dark Joke

MC POV

Late Evening,

It was a long day at work, collecting cans and plastic bottles to take to the recycling plant. Fighting for the scraps with every type of homeless person there is just to make 20 bucks a day.

What can you expect of a 13-year-old kid who was scammed out of the money I made and threatened to call CPS on me whenever I complained?

I will not return to that place; hell would have been a nicer place. At least living with my fuckin drunken father and getting to keep some of the money is better than handing off all of it to those foster parents, not mentioning that with my shitty luck I'll probably end up with a family that will sell my body for money.

I sighed as I looked at the 20 bucks in my hand, put a dollar in my sock and the rest in my pocket, and walked home.

God, this city is dirty. Trash littered the ground; the smell of the sewers made your eyes water; no matter how much they cleaned, it all came back; it was like a cancer that never stopped growing; people were influenced by it; crime was everywhere; just on my way home, I heard multiple gunshots and women screaming.

I usually get home safely; no one will bother a kid, especially one looking like me, with barely any meat on my bones and just enough clothes to hide my malnourished state. As if cops would care about another sad and abused kid. As long as I head straight home, I'll at least have a roof over my head. I just need to avoid the psychotic homeless and the occasional perverts, whose stares never cease to make me uncomfortable. As I walked down the road leading to our house, you could see all the telltale signs of the ghetto: the corner street guys huddling together, the working girls in clothing definitely not fitting for this season, as if a person with some ounce of common sense would come to this neighborhood, and the homeless pushing their carts up the street; they are usually the main clients of those prostitutes. Who else would sleep with a cracked-up, full-of-disease 40-year-old?

I reached our building, and the fact that the city hasn't demolished it yet is beyond my understanding. I am guessing they are hoping it collapses on top of all the crack whores, dealers, criminals, and homeless who can afford to rent one of the rooms once in a while for a bath of brown water and a bed that would put a Jackson Pollock painting to shame.

As I climbed up the stairs of our decrepit building, I was met with the usual circus of people I would usually find. Marcus asked me if I changed my mind about working for him peddling drugs, but I have seen more than my fair share of kids full of bullet holes just weeks after they started working for him, enticed by the promise of quick money.

And as usual, Hope, what a ridiculous word, one of the many crack whores in this neighborhood that time has not been kind to, offered me again her services for oral for just 5 bucks. How fucked up do you have to be to suggest something like that to a kid? She is usually never more than 10 meters away from Marcus, waiting for that once-in-a-while opportunity when Marcus uses her body when he is bored. She never comes out unscathed from those encounters. All that just for a hit of her favorite drug.

I finally reached the door of our apartment. Part of me wants to just turn around and run away, but the other part of me knows that it would be much worse for me out there. I wouldn't survive for a month on the streets.I opened the door, and the first thing I saw was a flying beer bottle heading for my face. I pray that it's at least empty, as I have learned the hard way what would happen to me if I tried to dodge it. I guess today is not my day again. The bottle, which was practically full, hit me straight, and I fell to the floor. Lights out.