Thank You For The Venom

*FIVE YEARS AGO*
“Frank, it’s okay,” my mom coos, but it’s not. It’s not o fucking kay. “When I die you can live with your aunt in,” her sentence is broken by a fit of coughing and choking. She winces afterwards.
“Mom…” I murmur. It’s not okay. The doctors said without the money we can’t pay for treatment and without treatment she’ll die, painfully. I’m fourteen years old so fuck this, I still need my mom. “I can get money mom.”
She smiles at me. Our house is freezing cold. Electricity and heating bills are not a priority when my mom is dying.
Cancer can just go fuck itself with a sword.
“Frank dear, I’m going to ask my sister to come live here, okay?” She smiles meekly. Then comes another fit of coughing steals her remaining energy and when it calms she immediately falls asleep.

Quitting school is surprisingly easy. You just don’t go. They sent out letters addressed to my mom so I just burnt them at the back of our apartment block with Ryan. He’s like seventeen and not in school either so while my mom thinks I’m in class I go out with him and try earn money. Everything is harder when you’re working class and have no references.
We did small, low paying jobs for example, packing bags in Walmart. Because we’re underage and begging for any money we get paid five dollars an hour and get no staff discount. One day Ryan gets till work. When we meet outside after an eight hour shift he shoves fifty dollars in my hand. “What?” I gasp looking at the fifty dollar bill, crumpled from belonging to someone else.
“They had loads and there were no cameras or anything, just take it you fuck and help your mom,” he says and slinks off into the back alleys. We normally walk home together but he had said he had shit to do so I guess I’ll walk home in the increasing dark back to the cheapest part of New Jersey. Growing up where I did morals weren’t top priority but fuck this still doesn’t feel right. I shove the folded deeper into my old jeans and walk faster home.
My mom is asleep when I get home. I sneak into the kitchen and fold my days’ pay into the empty jar under the sink, including the fifty. Another fifty and I’ll be able to pay for some treatment I think.
I eat a slice of toast and go to sleep only to wake up and repeat the bag packing and apply at McDonald’s for extra work because thirty five dollars is bullshit.
McDonald’s says no. I go back to Walmart and pack bags with Ryan at the till again. “I didn’t get another job,” I say between customers, “fuck being fourteen, can you get me some ID?”
Ryan laughs from the register. “You’re too fucking short, bro. Even in like five years people aren’t gonna be the age you are then.” His smirk fades when he sees my face. “But look, I think I can find you something to do.”
My eyebrows shoot up, “Yea?”
“Tell ya later,” he says and greets the customer who’s just started unloading her bags of cat food, litter and wine. It’s my neighbourhood cat lady. I’m always nice to her, no one else is, but I am and she always tops me ten dollars. It really helps me feel like I get paid.
We take a cigarette break when the shop is very calm again out the back. “So I was talking to my friend Ronnie yesterday, when you went home,” he speaks between drags, “We quit school same time only he disappeared, dark shit. Some of the lads say he winded up, others said drugs and gangs and shit. They were all right,” he grins, “but he was the danger guy, dealing and shit, and the cops new him so they pinned some murder falsely on him. He’s out now though and he can get me and “a trusted helper” work. If you want.” His grin is wide.
“What kind of work?”
“Probably dealings at first but you know, shit can get rough with gangs,” he leans close, “he’s part of Venom.”
Venom was one of the biggest drug gangs around. But it wasn’t just drugs, they do all sorts of dodgy shit. I scratch the back of my neck, “I don’t know…”
“Pay for a day would be more than like a week here,” he says, putting out his cigarette, “just an idea, I know you’d want the cash.”
We walk back in to the shop and begin what is practically slave labour, all over again. Yay for capitalism.

The way to wherever the fuck Ronnie is leading us in dark, dank and really complicated. I know a lot of back roads and lanes but Jersey is full of them. We take a few turns and suddenly we are so far from main road that I begin to feel very uncomfortable. We turn up a dark lane which is closely bordered by brick walls and the stink of overrun sewers. We’re walking faster now and Ronnie has loosened a knife in his sleeve. This doesn’t make me feel more comfortable. If Ryan is scared at all he doesn’t show it.
“Hey Ronnie,” a girl’s voice calls. I look up and standing on a balcony in lingerie and long silky shawls, three girls are smoking. I can’t tell which spoke but they’re smiling down at us. “Special reduced price if you want six in a room,” one with massive red lips smirks down, “We don’t mind if the kid doesn’t.” I feel my throat tighten. I’m fourteen but I’m short so I don’t hold the mistake against them.
Ronnie makes a horrified face and then forces on a grin, “Some other time Chandra,” he stiffens as a man appears on the other side of the road.
“Your loss!” the Chandra girl calls and all the girls turn away just as we walk beneath their balcony. What I think is a cigarette but lands next to me. On closer inspection it seems to be something a little less legal then tobacco. Smoothly Ronnie waves us behind him as the shadowed figure approaches.
“S’up Ronnie,” the dark guy says, he peers up at us through his hood. His eyes are wide but he seems stable enough to not beat the shit out of two guys and a “kid”. My eye is drawn to his arm where I see him relaxing something back into his sleeve. I decide I should get a knife.
“Hi Howard, hoe’s it hanging?” Ronnie says, visibly relaxing.
“Pretty good, got paid today,” he grins and gestures up to the balcony with his eyes. Ronnie grins and wishes him well.
When we reach the end of this substantially long lane we turn onto another. Disorientated, I feel like we’re heading back towards the main road, near the library. “Farthest away from the road I’ve been in a while,” Ryan murmurs and Ronnie laughs, adding to my sense of being completely lost.
We turn up one more lane and then Ronnie stops opposite a blank wall. “One second,” he says and sends something on his phone. A light appears in an upstairs window. A guy sticks his head out the window, cigarette in mouth. He looks at us and then drops the fire escape ladder that lands loudly a few inches from Ronnie’s feet. “Up we go,” he hums and begins the creaky ascent. I follow him and Ryan brings up the rear. Sliding in through the window after the older guy I’m hit by a thick stench of smoke, sweat and some other substance, probably an alcohol I don’t know.
The room is cramped and there is only two adjoining rooms and a door to what I assume is the hall. The whole span is lit by a dim, flickering, naked bulb in the middle. The floor is covered more in dirt than the fuzzy grey carpet. There’s a couch inhabited by two guys smoking and lying deep into their seats. They’re higher than I’ve ever seen anyone and that’s terrifying. There’s a coffee table covered in ashes and bottles. One bottle is full of ashes floating in what looks like piss. There’s a kitchen if you could call it that, that’s where three more guys are perched at the boarded up window. There’s a box full of packets of a white powder at their feet. Cocaine probably. On the counter there’s a lot of tubs and bowls that have the white powder encrusted on it. At the foot of the counter there are boxes of washing powder and talcum powder.
I feel very wrong here but try my best not to show it. “These the one’s you got?” A guy says walking forward from the window, “A kid?”
“He’s old as I was, just short,” Ronnie says looking across at me. Ronnie was fifteen nearly sixteen, according to Ryan, but I’m hardly going to confess my age. The guy looks me in the eye and I stare back. I don’t what he’s trying to find, fear? Youth? Worry? Distrust? I stare back coolly and then raise a testy eyebrow.
“Well you brought him here so fuck it. You need money is it kid?” The guy asks, blatantly scratching his balls. I nod. “We’ll ask the boss when he comes out what a guy like you can do.” He turns to Ryan, “friend o’ yours is it, Ronnie?”
Ronnie nods and takes a seat between the two high guys. One of them greets Ronnie in a vague, slurred manner. “Hey Jay,” Ronnie says and the guy smiles. “Where’s the boss anyway?”
The guy still standing in front of Ryan and I nods to a door leading off to one of the only two other rooms. The handle wriggles a tad before the door is pushed open to reveal a round, balding man in his mid-thirties dressed in only a towel. Steam enters the big room, mingling with smoke and adding to the breathing difficulty. I urge myself not to cough.
“Who are these,” the man says, words echoing through his stomach in a weird ripple.
“Hey boss,” Ronnie waves from the couch, “this is Ryan and the short one is Frank. You said you needed two more, I’ve found you two more.”
“What age is the small one even,” the “boss” says, staring at me and rubbing his stomach, and then his belly button. Shivers shake through my whole body but I try not to show it. I just stand as casually as I can pull off.
“The same age I was, only he’ll have me to keep him on track,” he raises his eyebrows teasingly at the guy who has now retreated to the window sill. “Unlike my advisers.”
“No he won’t,” the boss says abruptly, “he’s to… young looking… he can stay and mix with me while you can take the other one out for other duties. Bring ‘em back here tomorrow at two. No one works tonight, it’s a break night, it’s salsa night.” He grins and throws a tomato that was just on the table at the wall and it smashes to bits. “Yea bring them back and-” gunshots and screaming go off in the distance. The boss leans slightly toward the entry window and grins. “What was I saying? Oh just bring ‘em back and we’ll get them to work.”

Ronnie tells me that the pay here is better than at any shop. “Unless it’s some bullshit designer bitch store where you can’t come in unless half your weight is made up of jewellery.”
When I get home that night my mom is asleep on the couch with the tv still on. I gently wake her and help her to her bed.
“Work” starts as soon as we get there. Ronnie shows Ryan where to put their little white packets and then they’re gone. All the other guys who were around in the room yesterday have left. When Ronnie and Ryan leave it’s only me and the boss. “You can call me CJ or Boss.”
We stand over in the kitchen area over a giant mixing bowl. The boss makes us both wear masks so we don’t get extremely high off the raw stuff by just breathing around it. That must be why those men were all sitting by the boarded window. He makes me strip down to my vest. In the cold November weather it really pisses me off and there is no heat in the room. “Why can’t I leave my jumper on, like you?” I ask looking at the fully clothed man.
“Because I’m the boss,” he says slyly. If you could feel sounds his sound would feel like the sludge the plumber took out of the sink back home a few years ago.
As we work, me measuring precise amounts of the various white powders used to thicken out the coke, the boss stirring, I feel him move closer to me. Discomfort drives my instinct to punch him in the face wild.
I move my hand to reach a tub of chalk when he stops me by placing his hand on mine. He’s so close I can feel his breath on my neck and his body against mine. Oh god I can feel him through his pants. I think I’m going to throw up.
“I believe we shouldn’t pick and choose our laws,” he says, his voice muffled through the mask, as pressing in to me. “I break one so it would be hypocritical of me to call another one right and true. I have enough blood on my hands to not prosecute murder and violence, so why would I believe another law about something kind of the same.” He presses against me more and I feel myself shake. My stomach hurts from where the counter top edge digs into it. “You work for me, you work for all of me,” he mumbles and slides his hand away from my hand down to my crotch. “You’ll learn to get up for me. I’ll pay you more than the others. Much more. Only you can’t tell them because they’ll get jealous.”
With a swift unanticipated motion he pulls my trousers down and rubs against my grey fading underpants. My mind is racing. I need the money. I need the money but I don’t need this. I’m not a whore. The boss moans short and grabs me by my top, dragging me toward the door that wasn’t opened yesterday, tossing our masks aside.

Notes

I'm sorry if you found this harsh, the following chapters will continue with various levels of harsh content.
Thank you for reading, I'll probably post one or two more chapters to see if there's interest and if there is i'll continue with the story! Let me know what you think in the comments :)