You know how I keep saying that one of these days I'm going to do something good for one of those poor kids I see out on the street all the time? Well man, I did something and I'm regretting it.
I was coming home after working third shift. I was tired, looked like shit, probably smelled like chemicals and grease. I saw this girl on the doorstep to my apartment building, bawling her little eyes out. She had short dyed-red hair, a bullring through her nose and a stud in her bottom lip. If it weren't for the fucking metal, I'd say she had a cute face. She must have been all of, I don't know, twenty-one at the most. I say to her, "Hon, are you all okay?"
"Does it look like I'm fucking okay," she said. I said to her that she didn't look okay, and that if she would like, I could help her out. "And just why should I trust you?" she said. Man, the girl is like a bad shot of whisky, bitter all the way down, you know?
"Well, you shouldn't," I said, "but if you want food, a shower and a place to crash, and someone to talk to, I'm right upstairs. Hey, I don't want shit; just trying to be a nice guy."
"Whatever," she said. Sure enough, just as I had reached my apartment door, I heard her walk into the building. She asked, "You aren't a druggie are you?" I was like, no. She nodded and followed me in.
I said to her "So, what's the big deal?" She said that she didn't want to talk about it. Like a fucking moth to a flame she went to my little girl's porcelain doll. I didn't freak out or nothing, I was cool. "Uh, What's your name, darling?" I say to her.
"Mercy," she said, rubbing her grubby fingers all over the damn doll. "Is this yours?" she asks.
Is it mine? It's in my goddamn apartment, right? So I say to her "It was my little girl's."
"Was?" she asks.
So I say - I say, "Yeah. My little girl died at the age of two." Then she gives me the 'you would have been a good father' number, like I haven't heard that a thousand times. I was okay though, I didn't freak out.
I was making bacon, eggs, you know, the usual. So I say "Your name isn't Mercy, is it? You don't look like a Mercy to me."
She turns and looks at me and says, "Nope, don't look like a Mercy - but that's what you'll know me as."
I'm making food and she's being all quiet and all. Finally, she bursts out with "Fine, I'll tell you what happened to me."
I was like "Uh, okay." Then she tells me of how she's a runaway and how she was using her body as rent money. Fucking sucks to think a girl like that has such low self-esteem to do that to herself. Her body isn't a supermodel's, she's got a bit of a belly and small tits, but she still isn't the worst looking chick I've ever seen. She doesn't seem like half a bad person, either.
But then she tells me, and she's crying while she's telling me this, that this guy wanted to use her for a gang bang, let six of his buddies go at her while he video tapes the shit. I would have liked to have fucking flipped out on this asshole! What *man* does that to any woman? She did it. She says she did it only to keep a roof over her head, but required that they didn't slip it in her ass and they all had to wear condoms. None of them wore a condom, and the fourth guy fucked her ass. And when she told them to stop, they just held her down and continued to go at her. That shit went down four days ago. She had been living on the streets until I met her.
I told her "You know, you can stay here until you get yourself up on your feet, and if you need someone to bash those fucking bastards' faces in, I know a few guys."
She was like "No, I just want to forget about the whole thing. Thank you."
So I put the food down in front of her and she not even touching the stuff, which bothers me, you know - after cooking all that food for it to go to waste. So I crack open a Bud and I ask "Is there something wrong with the food?" She just says that she's not hungry. I'm like, okay, and I begin to finish what she started. Fuck it, I'm not going to let that food go to waste.
And she looks at me and gives a little smile. I smile back and then, boom - she takes off her shirt. I'm said, "Uh, hon, what are you doing?"
She says back, "I'm going to fuck you," and she's taking off her pants.