You’re a shit person.
“Mommy has a boyfriend.” Fisher scoffs. His dark, greasy hair falls into his face as he shifts, straightening his spine. Fisher’s easily six-foot. Scars across his throat and face show signs of the dangerous life he loved to lead. Dark eyes, soulless and deep, hold me in their cold embrace.
“So, get the money from him then,” I counter, moving forward a couple steps. The asshole behind me leans in, inhaling my hair. Fucking creep.
“Sorry.” Fisher waves his knife between my mother and the hallway. “Had a boyfriend.” He tips his head toward the hallway to my mother’s bedroom.
More sniffles from the useless woman on the couch.
“He got brave—and that got him dead.” The man behind me chuckles, closing the space between us again, his index finger stroking down my bare arm. Shrugging him off, I glower at him over my shoulder. My heart thunders at Fisher’s statement. There’s a dead man in the other room. Mother is witness to it, and now I fucking am too. We’re fucked.
“She always did pick the dumb ones.” I motion a dismissive hand her way, trying to play unaffected, that it’s not shocking and terrifying information that they’ve killed her boyfriend. “I’ll get you the rest of what she owes,” I offer. The sad truth is: Fisher isn’t her only dealer. She started mixing drugs to counteract them, taking uppers to stop the downers and vice versa. It’s a dangerous and expensive addiction she has no desire to kick.
“You see,” Fisher says, shaking his head, moving toward me, “she’s been promising that for weeks, and my patience and charity has run out.”
“I’m not her. You can trust me.”
He licks his lips, coming to a standstill right in front of me.
“Can I?” He lifts a strand of my hair with the edge of the blade.
“Have I not come through all the times before this?” I always pay. If I didn’t, she wouldn’t be breathing right now.
“Maybe there’s another way you can pay off her debt.” His lips kick up into a smirk, and my stomach drops. Ice injects into my veins, chasing a web of goosebumps over my flesh.
“I’m not sucking your dick, Fisher.” I stand firm, chin up, arms folded. The prick behind me groans, salacious and menacing in the same breath.
“As enticing as that thought is, it’s something else.” Fisher drops his hand, clasping them in front of his crotch, the blade dangling there.
“I’ll do it.” My mother stands up, bopping her head up and down, waving her arm around. She looks like a bobblehead, her skinny frame wasting away, her skin and teeth rotting from the drugs. Once upon a time, she was a beauty envied by women and wanted by men. Now, she looks like a Halloween decoration put out to scare kids.
“The blow job or the job?” Fisher quirks a brow, looking over his shoulder at her. The asshole behind me chuckles, his hand stroking across my ass.
“Either, or both, just let me live,” Mother pipes up, the tears long forgotten. She’s such a selfish bitch. She didn’t even say “us”—let us live. Does she not see the fucking mess she’s gotten me into?
“No one can give a ten grand blow job, especially not a strung-out bitch. And you’re too fucked up, so sit your skinny ass down or go lay down with your boyfriend.” She’s not too stupid to misunderstand that threat. She cowers, sitting back on the couch.
Squeezing my eyes closed, I ask, “What’s the job?”
I’m in a shitty bar in the middle of nowhere. I have to serve one damn drink. That’s it. Easy. It won’t clear my mother’s debt, but it will extend the time to pay it, and that will have to do. The alternative is him killing her and probably me because I’d be a witness to it. “So, remember, the barman will give you the drink and tell you who to serve it to,” Fisher informs me, his hand clasping my jaw. The way he’s looking at me makes me feel icky. His touch is intimate. His gaze holds affection, possession.
“Fine.” Why they need me for this, I don’t know.
“We can’t risk being there and spooking this motherfucker. You’ll be dropped off and I’ll pick you up once the job is done. You’ll be safe. I won’t let nothing bad happen to you.”
He is the bad and it’s already happening, can he not see that?
“Who is the guy?”
Stroking his palm down my cheek, he smiles. Wrinkles pinch his eyes. “Don’t ask questions. You just do as you’re told, okay?”
“Okay.”
The bar is disgusting, filthy, stinks of piss, and there’s not a straight-eyed person in here. Even the barman looks drunk. I’m waiting out back in a small kitchen area, trying not to breathe in the pungent air when one of the workers comes through.