1
Seraphina
“Here you are.”
I toss the little baggy onto the bed, next to the slumped-over form of Ben.
He doesn’t turn to me, just groans. Probably still in the throes of his last trip. But he’ll be happy when he wakes up and sees his next hit is ready. Well, not happy. But at least, he won’t beat me.
Not that he does it all that much anymore. I’ve gotten pretty good at blending into the background.
I leave Ben to sleep off his trip in the tiny room that serves as bedroom and living room, and go to the even tinier room, more like a closet really, where we keep a small fridge and a set of burner plates.
I turn on the old relic of a TV that I’ve perched precariously over the fridge, and zombie out with the news in the background. I cut the $9.99 head of broccoli I took from the Devil Grocery Store into little bits that I’ll fry with two eggs and some stale bread. A sad little meal of all-you-can-steal omelet.
As the omelet cooks, the TV drones on about the quadruple murder that’s been on the news all week. Even in a shitty town like Oakley, an entire family getting snuffed out is interesting. Especially since it has nothing to do with drugs. The Coles are as white-collar as they get around here. An ambitious politician, his wife and their two kids. All dead overnight. Not a murder-suicide, no drugs found, no theft. Weird. I was vaguely intrigued until I saw the home they lived in. One of those new little white houses on the one road in Oakley slowly being gentrified.
And when I saw the pictures of the two cute blond kids with the curls and the ribbons, the chubby guy with the clean-shaven face, the woman in the dress with the happy smile, I stopped caring altogether. They lived a life so removed from my own. I wouldhappily have lived a short life if I had lived that kind of life.
I flip the channel, annoyed, but they all seem to be talking about the same thing. Guess it’s more interesting than the usual: drugs, homelessness, gang fights.
I stop when I see Damien Wells speaking.
That’s different—or not. He seems to be delivering a eulogy at the family’s wake.
I don’t care, though, about the words coming out of his mouth. I don’t need to listen to know they’re exactly the right words for the right situation. I wouldn’t expect anything less from the most powerful man in the state, the CEO of Devil.
Still, Damien Wells has always fascinated me. I’m not exactly attracted to him, though he’s certainly conventionally handsome with his black wavy hair, chiseled features, his broad shoulders and toned forearms.
But there’s something about his eyes. They’re dark as night, and they’ve always unsettled me. Especially when he raises his head, staring straight at the TV camera, like he does now, his mouth curling into the smallest of smirks.
Yes, something’s definitely off with Damien Wells.
The camera pans to the other four Devils, but I don’t care about them. Only their luxury department store, with its aisles full of pricey perfume packages that I spend my mornings stuffing into an old beat-up backpack.
-
I turn off the TV.
The omelet is done, so I cut half of it and put it on a plate, sit at the lonely little plastic table and eat it. Not from hunger. Idon’t remember being hungry since Mama died. It’s more of an automatic thing, my body doing what’s necessary so it won’t die. Survival mode: what I excel at.
I finish, then put the rest of the omelet on the plate for Ben.
No need to get more than one plate dirty at a time.
I go back to the bed and set it down on the mattress next to him.
He groans and mutters something indecipherable. Fifteen minutes is all it took for him to shoot up the meth I got for him.
“More…” he groans.
“Not today,” I say, my voice loud and weird in my ears. I use it so infrequently.
At once he lunges out and his fist connects with my jaw. For a drug-addled loser, he hits hard, though his punches are not as bad as they used to be.
I flinch and rub my face.
“Now,” he growls.
