Chapter Seventeen

                                    

                                          
A.N. A warning here: this chapter may be hard to read. This is basically where the book swirls into an even darker and more disturbing place than before. I'm feeling like I'm in a very empty and lost place right now and it translates into my writing so I hope you like it, or I suppose, I hope you enjoy the experience whether it's good or bad.  
                          
Keep it together, xoxo, Clay.
                          
"I'm drawn to bad romances."
                          
-Lady Gaga
                          
♔ Chapter Seventeen ♔
                          
The air tonight was dank and clouded, with mist clotting the skies as far as the eye could see. I was standing on the same corner that I did most nights, waiting patiently in the darkness for something fortunate to come along. I'd seen a few guys early in the night, bustling down the street half-drunk and stupid. They were arm-in-arm, about four or five of them.
                          
By the time they were passing me, I turned away, hiding myself deeper into the shadows of the alley I leaned into. I was constantly on the look out, nowadays, for danger. And it often came in brutish groups like theirs. So I hid away and let them limp down the road, until they became smaller and smaller, and finally vanished into the nothingness of the night.
                          
Not many people came by after them. This was just one of those dreary parts of down, the places that you should never really go to unless you knew how to defend yourself. Lined with walls and old buildings of brown and grey bricks, the entire street carried on for miles like a knife jutting through the bottom side - the lawless side - of Penzance.
                          
This singular street, bathed in the disgusting orange glow of the shuttering lamp-posts and dotted with all kinds of illegal activities, was known around here as the Junkyard. It was where all the town's trash magically ended up. Prostitutes, rent boys, a few drug dealers poking around every once in a while. They'd housed themselves up here after all the huge copper and tin factories closed down decades ago. The old shells of factories lined every street, windows boarded over and doors latched shut with rusting metal. There used to be a few pubs around here too, but they all spiraled into inevitable bankruptcy and were one by one burned to the ground. The crumbling, charred buildings still stood all around the Junkyard.
                          
The only real building that managed to stay afloat around here was at the very tip of the Junkyard, bordering on the motorway back into civilisation. A small McDonald's, with it's luminescent yellow signage sparking up the whole northern edge of the street. And somewhere near the McDonalds, halfway up the motorway that lead back into Penzance, was a grotty old hotel called the Charleston. Once upon a time, it must have been a grand Victorian thing, but now it had wasted away, and that was usually where paying customers liked to take you, if they could afford it. Most of the time, though, I'd just lead them down into the back alley that I stood at, crouch down behind the bins, and I'd get to work.
                          
I shivered at the thought, but that was how things worked around here now, when you did what I did for a living. There wasn't a silver lining to the job, either, I'd recently realised. I'd told myself that it was better than what my life used to be, but it had only gotten worse. Nothing I'd done for the last year had been remotely good for me. I wouldn't eat for huge gaps of time, if they wanted bareback I'd only charge a few pounds higher than usual. I made myself sick. And now I was just getting sicker.
                          
Within the first few days of this new lifestyle, after I'd been backed into a corner and beaten up by guys who saw me as an easy target, I learned the truth about this kind of job. Skins had found me sitting there, crying and all over the place. He handed me his jacket after mine had been stolen, and sat down beside me, patting me gently on the back. I didn't look at him, though, I felt too disgusted and vulnerable already.