Chances, chances - 1

R for language and sexual content. Yes, I know that there aren't any italics where there should be. I took after an old friend and decided I was too lazy to pick each one out and bracket it. Please, just use your fantastic imaginations and slap them where they're supposed to go (If you see any grammatical errors, they're probably meant to be there. It's part of the first-person narrative, cara).

-----

It was one of those parties where everyone seems to be having fun but nobody really is. An overturned beer bottle dripped surreptitiously into the rusted sink and the smell of cigarette smoke slunk up your nose no matter where you hid.

“Aw, c’mon, shomeun hash t’volunteer. Ish jusht a fuckin’ beer trip, for heavenshakesh.” That was my dad, sweet and sober as everyone else in the adjoining room.

Meaning, of course, not at all. Gods, when are they gonna leave? It’s been hours…

My lamenting was cut short by the voice that spoke next – it sent my head spinning, pulled the ugly linoleum out from under me, punched me in the gut all at once. He was the reason I was hiding out here in the kitchen, and the reason my whole life was about to go down the drain. I could only guess what he might do to me if we accidentally bumped into each other in an empty room. Bonus for him if it had a lock.

“Aight, aight, I’ll go. I’m prob’ly the only one here sober ‘nough to stand up, anyway.” He chuckled, those little sharp intakes of breath that scared me more than any other sound, ever. Hey, you calling me a drama queen? Just wait a sec. “Howe’er,” he said, and I set a hand on the filthy counter to steady myself. Last time he’d said however like that, I’d been forced to go with him to the liquor store and he’d almost accidentally pulled my shirt off. We were in the back of the van together, trying to drag some six packs out onto the sidewalk, and the only reason he didn’t finish was ‘cuz Dad yelled at him to hurry up and he was afraid to get caught. “I have a condition.”

My stomach shriveled up and burst into flames. Here it comes. “What’s that?” Dad said, but it was really more like Whashhat?

“Kayla should come along. She’s not drunk, so—” He was interrupted by a few funny, inebriated versions of wolf-whistles as I stepped out of the dark kitchen into the semi-lit dining room. A few of Dad’s stupid friends looked me over like I was a new species of teenage girl they’d never seen before. I pretended I hadn’t heard his dumb condition and tried to sneak out to the living room where all Mom’s friends were. At least they didn’t whistle at you or drag you off on dumb trips to liquor stores. Don’t look at him, don’t look at him, don’t look at him.

“Hey, Kayla,” Dad said, and when I turned just slightly to look at him I saw he was surrounded by empty beer bottles and entirely unshaven. I raised an eyebrow, aching to be anywhere but in that room, hoping he wasn’t going to say what I knew he would say. “Go on d’beer trip wid Uncle Briant. He needsh a pair o’ shtrong arms ecshtra to lug everyshin’ back in d’houze.”

Everyone knew I wasn’t strong, and the sober thing didn’t really matter. All Dad’s unshaven friends exchanged unintelligent glances across the table, like they were saying, But that’s not really why he wants ‘er to come.

I ground my teeth. Don’t look at him, don’t look at him. “But I—”

So busy forcing myself not to look, I hadn’t seen him stand up, come around behind me. “Aww, please, Kay-Kay?” I could feel his warm breath stirring my hair, his cold fingers playing across the back of my neck.

Dad frowned at me, like his child-fucking friend wasn’t a total creep, like I was just being a spoiled baby. There was nothing for it--I nodded slowly, and tried to ignore his hand sliding to the small of my back, propelling me from the room amidst another bout of his loathsome chuckles.

“Not so bad, huh?” he murmured in my ear as we picked our way through all the little kids. I felt his eyes go down my shirt, and wished to every god in existence that he’d simultaneously be struck by lightning, pureed in a huge blender, and squashed by a huge spiked boulder.

Hah. No such luck.

It wasn’t really fair, honestly. He’d had his eyes on all of us female kids since Dad first invited him over to drink beer and talk about girls they’d slept with. ‘S just my luck I’d ‘bloomed’ first. The others, Mom’s friend’s kids, were mostly younger than me, though I honestly don’t understand why he picked me; a ton of them are lots prettier. Maybe it was because I’m like, the riskiest one. Most of the other guys don’t give a shit about their kids, wouldn’t care if Uncle Briant got all their daughters pregnant. My dad’s different, search me why. If he knew the real reason Briant always asked me to come on trips like these, he’d shoot him dead soon as he got the chance. But the whole deal is, he doesn’t know. Dad’s totally unaware of the funny way his eyes sparkle when he sees me, the way his voice gets all smooth and oily…

I scrambled to throw all those horrible thoughts outta my mind, shuddering slightly as they paraded one last time through my head and jumped out the window. If there was one thing in the whole godsdamned world I’d thought too much, it was Why me? No point asking that now. We’d just got past the little group of gossiping, wrinkled old mums, mine included, and the closer we got to the outside world, the lower his hand seemed to slip.

There was a mirror, I knew, hanging on the wall opposite the front door, and every time I came or left the house, I would always glance once into it, like I was hoping I’d got prettier since last time. It had never worked before, honest, but this time, as I took a glance, the dark brown of my hair looked a little shinier. The scared grey eyes stuck haphazardly onto my face seemed a little bigger, and the squashed nose, almost straighter.

Briant yanked me back from my feelings of gratitude towards whatever god helped people’s faces get prettier, laughing jerkily when he saw me looking in the mirror. “You girls,” he said, “always so vain.” I pretended not to hear.

His hand closed around the doorknob, and oh gods I didn’t want to go outside, because I knew exactly what would happen. I knew where his hands would go, so fast it felt like they’d been pulled by some magnetic force. I knew where his lips would go, feverish and demanding, always so demanding. I knew that it would be dark and cold outside, but that the heat of his overexcited body would make the coldness an oven, his hands would make the darkness a blinding light, watching us.

Yeah, I can guess what your thinking. This is so fucked up. She’s fourteen and her dad’s best friend is about to screw her. Fun.

The door shut behind us, and everything got real quiet. I hid a sigh of relief in the darkness, and it didn’t tell Briant I was glad he hadn’t tried to kiss me yet.

But he hadn’t moved his hand from my back, either. It was like bad news and good news at the same time. “Y’know,” I said, tossing out a last resort I was almost sure wouldn’t work. “Y’know I don’t feel very good. D’you mind getting the beer by yourself, because I think I should go to bed.” Ohhh shit, that didn’t come out right at all. I’d pretty much said, Hey, here’s a good chance to fuck me.

“Don’t worry yourself,” Briant said, chuckling a little like he knew exactly what I was thinking. “You’ll be going to bed real soon, pumpkin.” At pumpkin, his hand just happened to slip down to my butt. We were walking towards Dad’s van, and he didn’t seem in a hurry to put it somewhere else. I suddenly wished I hadn’t decided to wear tight jeans that morning.

My heart went all weird when he helped me into the back seat – I guess I felt sort of like I was one of those dumb kids who was going to help him find his lost puppy, only they were really gonna get screwed or killed somewhere down the road instead. Stupid, stupid. Why couldn’t he have wanted one of the other girls?

I pulled the van door shut, and the sound was probably as close to a funeral bell as I was ever gonna get. Would he even bring me back this time? Maybe we’d go to some sleazy hotel where people’d look at us and think, Poor girl. She must be fucking desperate to let a guy like that buy her out.

“Kay-Kay?” he said at last, as we pulled onto the main road. My fists clenched, my eyes narrowed. What kind of douche thinks of a name like that?

“Don’t…call me…Kay-Kay,” I growled, determinedly looking out the side window. His stupid early-grey-brown hair and his dumb sneering face didn’t deserve my attention.

He was quiet. Maybe he forgot what he was gonna ask me, or maybe I scared him off with the growl. I liked to think I was intimidating when I wanted to be.

A few minutes later, we pulled up in front of the liquor store. It was a nasty little place with bright lights, sometimes even a cheap whore hanging out in front. All the other shops up and down the street were lit up in neon and had funny names like, Foarcracker’s and The Cockroach’s Hideyhole. I tried not to look too closely, ‘cause I knew I’d see drunks and other dumb people stumbling around, and when you saw them, they saw you. Hey, I was stuck in a dirty old van, Briant had forgotten to lock the doors, and there was no way to get his attention after he’d gone inside. I wasn’t about to ask one of those drunks to come over here and screw me, pretty please.

For a few minutes, I waited in the dank, smelly interior, sorta out of it, I guess. It took me a while to realize that if Briant’d left the doors unlocked, I could get out. And, well, I kind of felt like risking it that night. Either get fucked by your dad’s creepy friend, or maybe by someone hotter and less scary. Are you kidding? I took the second without the smallest thought.

The air outside was cool and cleaner, and without Briant to muck it up, it actually smelled pretty good. Well, compared to the dirty hovel I lived in, anything smelled good, looked good.

I was down the street and turning the corner before anyone even saw me. But of course the problem was somebody did see me, and the fact that I was a girl kid without disfigurements, wearing a tank top and tight jeans, did nothing to discourage them.

“Heeyyyyyyy,” said one, and he caught me by the shoulder like I was a whore he hadn’t tried yet. Sure, I ain’t no karate girl, but he got a nice elbow in the stomach for the touching thing.

“Get the fuck away from me,” I snapped, trying to keep walking as they circled around me, almost-drunk vultures. It probably wasn’t the best statement I’d made all day.

“Oh-ho-ho! She’s a mean one, eh, Bert?” He grabbed my wrist this time, I guess not scared enough by my ability to make him hurt. My whole plan of hiding out in some inn for a bit until sunup seemed less smart now that I was being harassed by drunk dudes.

“C’mere, angel,” another guy said, reached out and took a big fistful of my hair with his free hand. He jerked me backwards – ow – and I fell against him just as the first dude let go of my wrist. Man, I was so screwed. Now he had an arm over my stomach, trapping me up close so I got a nice noseful of his surprisingly expensive-smelling cologne, and the slightest trace of cigarette smoke. “Whatchoo doing tonight?”

“Not you,” I retorted, and the group of about five dudes all chuckled. Honestly, I hadn’t meant to make them laugh, but clearly that was just what I shouldn’t have done – now they seemed to like me better. I was pulled out of the main street, into one of the worse-smelling alleyways. Their grins as we disappeared into the darkness was what shot me through with just enough courage to say something. “Listen, if I don’t get back to my uncle real soon he’ll start worrying. Can we just part now, on this happy note, and you can go off to whatever strip club you were headed for anyway?” It was a lame, stuttering, mixed-up speech, and there was no way they’d fall for it. Guys around here were messed up – if they didn’t get encouragement from most girl-packs, they’d leave ‘em well enough alone, but if they saw one girl off on her own, they swooped down like hawks and did what they wanted.

“Mmm…interesting proposition, miss. Can’t say I like it, but how about we vote? Men?”

“Nah.”

“Nope.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Uh-uh.”

He chuckled, and my heart sank. There was no fucking way I was going to escape Briant just to get screwed by these guys like some cheap, pass-around whore. “Looks like we don’t have a deal, miss. Here, come back to my apartment, we’ll talk it out there, an’ you can give us more o’ those inspired speeches. Aight, men?”

A few chuckles, an all around rumble of Yeah, later, he started the short, pretty loud process of dragging me out of alleyway. Trust me, I’d just about given up hope, even with all my kicking and muffled shouting – he’d dropped his beer can and used his sweaty hand to cover my mouth – when I realized they were headed back towards the liquor store. If I got lucky…no, wait. Lucky would be Dad coming down and picking me up. Lucky would not be going to back to Briant. Out of the frying pan and into the fire, I thought, and felt plenty like it.

By the time we got to the liquor store, I was pretty much numb. I didn’t care what happened, I was fuzzy with useless adrenaline and just waiting for someone to hurt me. So what? I was cow’s meat either way. Maybe what happened next wasn’t as fortunate as I’d been hoping for, but into the fire it wasn’t.

“Merciful Norsin, Kayla, where did you go?” Briant cried, leaping out of the van quick enough to remind me he was a lot younger than I’d always thought. Sure, he was a jerk, sure he was a creep, but maybe this scare would make him forget to try anything. Hey, I could hope.

“Dude, she yours?” the guy who had his arm around my waist asked. I’d stop struggling as we left the alleyway, when he threatened to shove a knife up me, so that damned arm was the only way he had me imprisoned. Using up every bit of acting skill I had, I yanked myself from his grip and collapsed into Briant’s waiting hands, sobbing loudly about perverts and whores and how I’d just been so bored, I hadn’t meant to wander off like that. I was so sorry, Uncle Briant, I really, really was.

“Shh, Kayla, ‘s alright. We’ll go home, you don’t have to cry,” he murmured, and the hand going up and down my back was more saying Hey, let’s have sex than I’m an adult and I’m actually trying to comfort you. So long as he didn’t mean today, at this point I wasn’t complaining.

Okay, so I thought that stupid gang was gonna leave it at that. Four of them did, started off quicklike, clearly not wanting to get caught traumatizing little girls. But that creep with the nice cologne and the knife threat? As I was walking towards the car, he reached out and brushed his hand across the back of my head. He took something out of my mind, dunno how, dunno why – or I didn’t yet.

“Seeya soon, miss,” he smirked, like he knew something I didn’t, and then slipped off after his friends. Briant was too busy looking down my shirt to hear.

-----

Well, you asked for it.