Milestone.
Her eighteenth birthday represented a milestone, they said.
Some fucking milestone, she thought.
Time to move out, time to enter 'mainstream society', outgrown the care system, yadda yadda. What the fuck did she know about mainstream society? She'd been in care since she was ten, courtesy of an alcoholic mother and an abusive father. Now, since hitting her 'milestone', she was out. Twelve months in a shithole supervised house with four other misfits - 'assisted transition' they called it - then she was on her own.
If that wasn't frightening, she didn't know what was.
She drifted reluctantly up the last flight of stairs, sucking heavily on a smoke. It stank of piss, the brick walls marked with graffiti, no light working as usual; the moonlight was bright enough. Curtis's door was half open. Not ajar, just the bottom of it was busted where the police had put his door in the last time and Housing hadn't fixed it. Standing before it on the landing she was nervous and anxious all over again. Her stomach was jumping. She sucked smoke into her chest - stubbed the butt out on the sill of the open window - unconsciously rubbing her cheek where he'd hit her.
Shit. She didn't want to go through with it.
Almost as if the door was working against her, as if it had heard her thoughts and wanted to thwart her, it swung open. Curtis stood in the frame, looking back over his shoulder into the flat, his cafe latte skin partially hidden beneath a white muscle vest and blue sweat pants, hair shaven into swirling patterns close to the scalp. His head swung around, bad skin and stubble, and he saw her, jumping slightly at her proximity. In that brief moment she saw bloodshot eyes, smelt weed from the flat, on him.
"Fuck Taylor, what the fuck you doin' stood out here?" he said, voice a little slurred, looking around suspiciously. "You're fuckin' late."
"Hey Curtis, good to see you, too," she said, trying for cool, managing lippy. Her heart was hammering.
He glared at her before standing back to let her in. For a moment she hesitated, thought about backing out, backing off. Shit, where was she going to go?
She brushed past him into the filthy flat, passing through the tattered hall with its smell of damp plaster, its peeling walls, into the lounge. Here the smell of rot was overwhelmed by the fug of cigarette smoke, cannabis, body odour. A massive television took up one wall, fake black leather furniture the other three - squeezing the archway leading into the kitchen into a narrow walkway. A sick looking rubber plant, which doubled as a communal ashtray, stood forlorn in the corner and a low coffee table with a glass top, filthy with discarded butts, home to an overflowing ashtray, lay in the centre of the room. It was too warm.
Ryan slouched discarded in the armchair. Big, muscular, pale skin dotted with freckles, shaven head - spliff in one hand, bottle of beer in the other, raised in brief greeting as she entered. A girl in jeans and purple tee-shirt was sat on the sofa. Young - no older than fourteen, she thought - pale, thin, hair in a tight ponytail dyed black and gold, drinking from a bottle. The girl looked back at her with frightened, lost eyes - so disconcertingly like a mirror from the past that Taylor found herself staring. She shivered, picked up a bottle of beer from the table, flicked the top off with the dirty opener, swallowed a big slug of the warm liquid.
"Taylor! You're fuckin' late..." Curtis said from the doorway, emphasising every word in his thick 'street' accent, holding his scarred arm out in an invitation for her to leave that way. "He's waitin', in the bedroom - fuckin' get on with it will you?"
"Alright, Curtis," she said, her eyes on the girl. She wasn't much older than Taylor'd been when Curtis got his claws into her. "Just need a beer, before, you know..."
"Fuck, Taylor - you are one stupid bitch," he said angrily, his eyes flashing.
She read the signs.
"Okay, okay, I'm going, alright." She took another slug of beer, struggling to swallow it quickly.
"Just remember, the price is eighty. I told him you were still seventeen, got it?"
"Yeah, I got it." Another slug; she really needed the fuzziness of an early stage drunk.
She put the nearly empty bottle down on the glass of the coffee table, dumped her puffa jacket on the empty chair and twisted around Curtis towards the hall. He grabbed her face as she passed, his fingers digging painfully into her cheeks.
"Just remember, you fucking work for me," he said. "What he wants, you do, got it?"
She nodded, her face trapped.
"I said, have you fuckin' got it?"
"Yeah, Curtis, I got it, I got it."
"Good."
He let her go and she hurried into the grubby hallway, ducking into the bathroom as she passed. The toilet was filthy, stained with shit and piss, the plastic flooring yellowed and peeling. Gingerly she lowered herself into a crouch above the seat, emptied her bladder. Washed her hands in freezing water - a frightened, pale face staring back from the cracked mirror above the sink. at least the bruise on her cheek had almost faded. There was no towel so she shook her hands off and wiped them on her jeans.
The door to the bedroom was closed, white painted plywood marked with bootmarks - left by the police or one of Curtis's friends. She stalled, what was the etiquette in this situation? Should she knock? Despite her nerves, perhaps because of them, she almost giggled at that. Almost, but she could feel Curtis's eyes on her back and she knew it was only a matter of moments before he lost it with her. She turned the handle and pushed it open a little way, its bottom hissing on the surface of the carpet.
The bedroom stank like something had died in it. It was usually stale, musty, but this was new - a foul miasma filled with an icy menace that made her want to turn and run. If it wasn't for the feel of Curtis's baleful glare on her back she might have done just that. There was something forbidding about the room, something that hadn't been there before - even when Curtis had dragged her in there screaming and crying. She shuddered.
The room was dark even with a little light from the hallway leaking around the opened door, the moon visible as a silver shadow on the fabric of the drapes. She could sense his presence, the warmth of another person, the sound of his breathing, small noises as he shifted on the bed.
"Uh... Hi, hello," she said, nervous, peering around the door.
"You're late," the voice said, slow, cultured. There was an accent but it was unfamiliar, not local - not like most of the men Curtis had got to fuck her.
"Sorry, uh..." She struggled to think of an excuse, failed. "Sorry."
"Come in, then. Let's not waste more time, shall we," he said. She heard him shifting on the bed, still hidden in shadow. It was as if the darkness clung to him, she thought, as if he somehow repelled light.
"Right. Yeah, of course." She entered the room, pushing the door closed behind her, suddenly light blind in the dark. "Uh, what..."
"Come here, girl."
Frightened, heart hammering in her chest, she crossed to the bed. It wasn't her first time, Curtis had made her fuck her first man years before, pimping her illegally and profitably - for him; she never saw a penny other than the 'gifts' she got given - but it was her first time as a 'professional' in her own right. At eighteen she was too old for Curtis's 'friends', had to make her own way. Another milestone?
Gradually her eyes adjusted to the dim light, details emerging from the darkness - the cheap wardrobe, chest of drawers, the surfaces strewn with Curtis's shit, the shape of the bed against the wall beneath the window - the man still a mystery, bathed in shadow.
"Take them off."
"What?"
"Your clothes. Take them off."
"Right, okay." She turned around, looking for inspiration, somewhere to hang her clothes.
For a while she stood still, feeling as if she was teetering on the brink of a long fall. Finally, reluctantly, with shaking hands she pulled her vest top over her head, discarding it on the already cluttered top of the chest of drawers. Unbuttoned her jeans, pushing them down - stumbling over her boots as she tried to remove them - sat on the bed to kick them off.
She had worn her best underwear - choked off a nervous giggle at that - a black lacy bra and panties. For a moment she sat on the bed, frightened to go further, frightened to stop. All of a sudden she felt like crying, like running away.
"Come on, girl," he said. "I haven't got all night."
She jumped, swallowed her fear. Forced herself to unfasten her bra - oh, God, her hands were really shaking - letting it slide along her arms and fall to the floor, her tits bouncing free. She lifted her ass off the bed, sliding her panties down onto the floor, took a deep breath, felt sick, dizzy.
