Deadly Beautiful. by Vivian Vargas (little readers .txt) 📖

to do magic. For a second, I jumped, frightened that she was going to put some nasty hex on me, but she seemed to keep her cool. Her long blonde hair on the other hand, was curling and uncurling on its own, like Medusa’s snakes. I was afraid that she was going to turn locks of her hair into snakes and have them bite me. But she didn’t.
“He is not the type of man you might think he is. Don’t be a teenage fool. Believe me.” She said. At ‘believe me’ her voice turned a little somber, and I instantly wondered if something went on between them that I should know about. But then she turned her back to me and continued mopping the floor, sweeping it left and right, slowly walking away from me. Her footsteps left a morbid imprint in my mind, an imprint that warned me, a warning I refused to accept.

****
Okay, to sum it all up instead of making it into one long sad sob story, which I don’t fucking need right now, I should have listened to Sasha. George won my heart, pretended he loved me, got me hooked on heroin, and then used my addiction to heroin as a basis so I can go out and whore myself. George controlled my fucking life. And like some fucking dog that rolled in mud, he treated me like shit. At first it was lovey dopey. Oh, believe me, it was as though for a moment I was actually Cinderella. He sugar-daddied me. He got me out that damned hotel and let me move in his flat. His flat wasn’t much better than the hotel, with all the fucking roaches and stuff, but he did manage bought me nice things and gave me good food to eat. He treated me like a queen. I gave myself to him willingly, like a mopey little dog obeying her master. Isn’t that a bloody fairy tale?
My first taste of heroin was like nothing I have ever done before. I have smoked a dud of weed every now and then with some acquaintances behind the school gym and actually liked the high, but taking a kiss of the lady was nothing I have ever experienced. It felt like fire pulsing through my body, burning every single fucking cell in me. It was more than a high. I was soaring out of this world. I felt like the heroin grabbed me by my feet and lifted me out to the atmosphere. I was abandoning all of my problems for that time when I was high. All my past problems, because when I was with George, I felt like I had none.
Until one day he brought a web cam and logged on to some naughty internet site that depicts live sex. I was so high I didn’t quite register what he was doing. He positioned me right in front of the camera and fucked me doggy style, meanwhile I stared at the lab top screen. I saw me, high as hell. I saw a very stupid, stupid girl, exposed and exploited for all the horny fuckers and perverted, twisted minds out there to see.
That accelerated into a horrible situation. Other men saw us having sex and then decided they wanted a piece of me too. Could I say no? Every time one came over and I acted uncomfortable, George who shake a bag of heroin under my nose and say, “You would do it because you love me.”
What’s love got to do with it? I just wanted the goddamn heroin.

****
I could try to describe all I wanted what it felt like to shoot up. But I would fail.
Its not a pretty thing. I would poke myself endlessly to find a good vein. Bleed all over the damn place. When I find a good, which could be anywhere, I would pop my skin. Continue popping it, to get the lady into my bloodstream quicker. Sometimes the trip wouldn’t be like midday stroll I aim for. Sometimes, it goes straight to my head and destroys everything. I would feel like world war three is happening inside my skull. I would weep and cry or rage and break things. Or curl up in the corner, feeling like every single thought that has ever swam through my mind is recollecting itself, buzzing like a swarm of bees.
I knew I never really loved George. I only loved the heroin. And I did anything for it. I let George become abusive towards me. I let him use me as a punching bag when things just went wrong. I let him bring john after john to the crib. I would go outside when he wanted me to go out and pick up guys on the street. I would give him sixty percent of my pay and use the other forty to ruin myself with drugs, drugs, and more drugs.
Because I was so fucking insecure. I lacked self-confidence. I did not control myself, so I let others control me. Because I was everything I told myself long ago that I would not be in the future.
So its kind of a good thing that I am here now, in jail. Maybe they will help me get myself back together again. I briefly wondered if I would get that job back at the hotel. I was doing pretty good there, wasn’t I? I had all that money- no wait, that money was long gone, spent on heroin. So I would have to start over again somewhere else. I was definitely not going back home. There was no place for me to go. I hoped that Sasha would forgive me, my only friend. I betrayed her, I realized now. I haven’t even talked to her since that day I told her that George seemed to be interested in me. It could have been the other way around too –she hasn’t talked to me. We simply did not look for each other like we used too. After I left that hotel, my life has been nothing but heroin. The lady did not let me think of anything else.
I could not help but think: Sasha must have known. She must have known he was a bastard pimp. She must have known the things that he did to girls, or else she would have not tried to warn me what he was.
Sasha must have been me once upon a time.

****
I did not go to jail, like I have thought I would be. Nor did they let me out. The Scotland Yard told me that I was going to spend some time in a Child Youth Help center. They contacted my mother, and told her everything. She was investigated informally. Why has she not filed a missing person’s report since I ran away? Why did she not care? They gathered a warrant to search her flat and found bags of meth and cocaine, and they are charging her for child neglect and unlawful possession of narcotics. Like mother like daughter. She has to be in court to hear her sentence the same day I will be shoved in rehab. They put Ralph in jail for the endangerment of a child’s welfare, no court, no bloody questions asked.
The Child Youth Help center was jail. It felt no different to me. Shitty food, dirty bathrooms, hard beds, endless chores, tough bitches who all went through similar problems like me. I was no calmer here than I was in the holding cell. I was to stay for a few days until I am to go to rehab for my heroin addiction, but a few days felt like months.
A day before I went to jail, I had a surprise visitor. It was someone that I was not prepared to see after all this time. I could not do it, stare at her across the table like this, pity and guilt on her face. I could not even be in her presence. I felt like I was going to explode right there, like some goddamned ticking time bomb. Explode into a million pieces and spray all my blood and brain and guts all over her.
It was Sasha. She cut her blonde hair even shorter, making her eyes look bigger and her cheekbones more pronounced. She was dressed in cargo shorts and a small white tee-shirt. With her ambiguous looks and her skinny long body, I could not help but notice that she looked like a boy.
“I told you so.” She murmured. There was no emotion to that voice. Just reason. And truth. Nothing but it. I did not say anything. I just stared at her. I stared at her for so long and hard that my eyes started to water. She glared back, but it did not seem she needed to blink the way my eyes did.
She grabbed my arm. I did not fight it when she trailed her long thin finger up the white of my flesh, where all the needle scars were. There were tears in her eyes. She then pulled up her sleeve too. There was nothing on her skin. Her skin was a pale as a baby’s bottom. Perfect. Untainted by the lady. But she bent low and kissed my arm, dripping her tears on me.
When she looked up, her eyes were silver. Not tainted with silver, but completely silver. Shining, like a full moon. She did not wipe the tears off. She left them there. She got up, her entire bony frame shuddering with grief.
She left me here, with her tears on my arm. I did not clean them off either. I left them there until it dried up.


***************
Morgan.

Today was my birthday. I was eighteen now. When I woke up in the morning, I opened my eyes, and the pale morning sunlight shined through my tinted windows. I did not feel like my soul was in my body. The fingers that I moved did not feel like it was from my hand. The skin on my face could not have been mines. The breast that rose up and down gently with every gulp of air I took could not have been happening to me. I could not help but feel vaguely confused. Everything felt oddly different, like the air I breathed was tainted. Could it be tainted with the idea that today was the last day that I was going to be human? Today was the last day that I was going to be sick with cancer. After tomorrow, I was going to be a vampire. I just hoped that Liam remembered his promise. I hoped that he would not turn his word against me. I put everything that was ever dear to me in the line so that he can keep his word and transform me into a vampire.
I would die today. I will not see the morning after tomorrow. My family would find me dead in my bed and wail over me. I wonder what my dead body would look like. I wondered what a dead body, settling into vampire form, would look like. Would they notice? Would I twitch or convulse because I wasn’t really truly dead? Would I scream when they bury me in a coffin? Will I shriek in terror when I wake up to the smells of rotted earth and flesh, and total complete darkness? Will Liam hear my cries?
Lying in this bed made me suppose that this was probably the next to last time I will ever have the chance to sleep on my comfortable Egyptian silk covers, the one that Sue had sown me a long time ago. They smelled of her, her motherly scent, of the only mother that I could have possibly known. I would miss Sue dearly.