Flawed

by Francette Phal

  Flawed

  Francette Phal

  Flawed

  Copyright 2014 Francette Phal

  Smashwords Edition

  First Edition 2014

  Smashwords Edition License Notes

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  Cover Design by Kari Ayashi http://www.covertocoverdesigns.com/

  Edited by Marilyn Medina, http://eagleeyereads.weebly.com/

  Ebook Formatting by White Hot Ebook Formatting

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Other Titles

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Acknowledgements

  Books by Francette Phal

  Standalones:

  Monster

  The Concubine; Letters to my king

  The Butcher Series:

  Flawed (The Butcher series, Book 1)

  The Bet Series:

  Beautiful Disaster (The Bet, Book 1)

  Redemption (The Bet, Book 2)

  Undone (The Bet Book 3)

  Dedicated to:

  My husband:

  You’ve been the most constant thing in my life, your love and undying support has been essential in making me the woman I am today. I love you so much more than words can ever express. Thank you for listening to me rant about my plots and characters.

  WARNING:

  Please proceed with caution. This book is very dark. It is intended for mature audiences. There are large amounts of profanity, sexually explicit scenes (Dubious consent) mutilation and many other themes that may offend. If you choose to proceed it is strongly suggested you keep an open mind and allow yourself this intense and gritty reading experience. Thank you for welcoming these characters into your mind for a while, enjoy the journey!

  Chapter One

  Lacey

  Sordid words echo off the sullied walls of the motel room, a disjointed symphony of grunts and groans as he labors for release. The sourness of his breath, the hot wet beads of his sweat, and the unrelenting grip of his fingernails burrowing painfully into my skin is all too familiar—a necessary evil of the oldest profession in the world. With his mouth poised at my ear, he whispers words meant to turn me on, and I arch my back, rotate my hips, and drive back against his cock to show that I enjoy his dirty little words. He likes it when I do that, pays a little extra when I play the bitch in heat. He smacks my ass to get me going, a precursor to his release, and I smile thinly. I send a silent thanks to the prostitute gods that it’s almost over. He’s done in a short countdown, filling the condom, and I’m out of the shadow of his collapsing weight. He lands in an unceremonious heap across the bed in an attempt to catch his breath.

  “You were amazing, baby,” he pants, raising his head slightly to look at me. “As usual.” He grins and drops his head back on the bed with a great sigh.

  “Glad you enjoyed yourself,” I reply tonelessly, twisting my arms to fasten my bra strap. I slip on my threadbare T-shirt and shimmy into a black mini skirt that hides very little from the outside world. Stepping into the pair of black and white low tops, I feel the wad of cash pushing back against my toes, a clear indication that it’s been a good night. Keeping my earnings in my shoe is a great hiding place because it’s probably the last place anyone would look if I ever got mugged.

  “I’m out of here,” I say as a farewell, grabbing the two hundred-dollar bills on the nightstand on my way out of the cheap motel room.

  ***

  I walk down the silent streets, the worn leather jacket I purchased from the thrift shop a block from the dilapidated building I called home barely keeping me warm from the frigid November air. But then, I’ve never minded the cold. The distant sound of sirens puts an extra rush in my step, needing to get home. The sooner, the better. More so, because the neighborhood isn’t safe. It’s overrun by the scourge of society. A cesspool of vagrants, junkies, dealers, pimps, and women of my profession litter the cracked sidewalks, each one holding a corner like real estate while peddling wares better left untouched. I’m not judging. I’m the last person to ever judge these people.

  I ignore the whistles but remain vigilant to my surroundings. Doing otherwise is guaranteed to get me attacked or worse, killed. Instinct has me reaching inside the left pocket of my jacket, and I grip my pocketknife a little tighter. I’ve used it more times than I’ve ever wanted to, but in my line of work it’s always a matter of life and death. And I value my life far more than theirs. Some johns wanted to fuck and run, while others, the meaner ones, tended to use fists when things didn’t go exactly their way. The knife didn’t even the playing field, but it upped my survival rate by a lot.

  Sunday evening and the Blue Hill Ave bus stop is empty. Thank God. I claim a seat on the long, metal bench that’s been tagged one too many times, and it feels like a block of ice beneath my ass. The streets are quiet for the time being, but that doesn’t mean it’s safe. In the park across from where I’m sitting, barely lit by street lamps, one can be sure that there are dealers and addicts conducting business beneath their shared blanket of shadows. I don’t stare for too long. There’s no knowing who’s staring back. Attracting the wrong attention is the last thing I want to do, especially dressed in my current getup. So I focus on my phone instead. I have over a dozen missed calls. They’re all from potential clients. A listen to the voicemail is filled with their throaty voices, with offers of a good time, each one propositioning me.

  Send me an ass pic. Let me see your tits. Send me a pic of your pussy. How much for a blow job? How much to fuck you? Do you take it up the ass? Are you into fetishes? Blah! Blah! Blah! They are all from the ad I posted online, on a private website introduced to me by one of my johns. It’s a good site for the most part, but it’s still a pain in the ass vetting the serious ones from the ones doing it just to rub one off from my voice. It’s happened one too many times. But I have serious johns. Granted, there’s only two of them, but they pay well. The downside is that I don’t see
them often, which meant I had to settle for the cheapskates. I reply to a few potential prospects, attaching a few pictures of me in a provocative outfit. That works. Now, family.

  It should have worried me that Dante hasn’t called to check in, but my older brother is absentminded that way. So I dial his number and no surprise, it goes straight to his voicemail. While leaving him a very brief message to call me back, I spot the 696A bus off in the distance, slowly making its way to me. I board, pay my fare, and walk down the center aisle to the back of the bus, not missing for a moment the varying looks I receive from the bus’ occupants.

  The women judge, while the men leer. I keep my eyes forward while tilting my head up a little higher. It’s my ‘I-don’t-give-two-flying-fucks-what-you-think-of-me’ look. I’ve mastered it some time ago, using it whenever I felt judged, but nowhere more so than when I was at school, where it was an absolute must. The looks don’t faze me. I know I am not the torn fishnet stockings, the worn black low tops, or even the skirt that’s designed to reveal more than it conceals. I am not the tattered leather jacket that hides my flimsy shirt underneath. I am not the clothes I wear. What I am is a high school senior who needs to haul her ass home and finish the truckload of homework that’s waiting for me.

  Four advance placement classes is no joke. I don’t know how I manage to pull an A average in each class, but it sure as hell isn’t easy. But then again, this is yet another necessary evil. I have quite a few of those in my life. I want to go to college and my aspiration for higher education isn’t going to pay for itself. I’ve applied for a bunch of scholarships, but those aren’t a guarantee. Grants can only get me so far. And sure, there are student loans, but I am determined to owe as little to government as I can, and for that to happen I need my own money. My goals, my dreams, are not going to happen working part-time at a grocery store or a fast food restaurant for minimum wage. So what it comes down to is distributing my assets for some cold hard cash. It’s temporary. Medical school is my end game, and it will be attained only by my sweat, blood, and tears. It’s the only way I know how to live.

  I have learned not to depend on anyone else for my well-being but myself. My brother, the dreamer, Mr. Let’s-Find-a-Get-Rich-Quick-Scheme is as unreliable as our mother, whose drug addiction has only grown worse over the years. Nowadays, nothing matters more than her high. Not even us. Her constant search of that high, be it from heroin, coke, or meth, is the fuel that feeds my nightmares. There’s that one particular memory of when I was fourteen when she’d left me alone with one of her tricks. It’s not a fond memory. And most of the time I can bury it beneath the earth of my mind and not think about it at all. But other times, like now for instance, when my mental road blocks are weakened by fatigue, that memory pops up and makes it impossible for me to overlook it.

  He never has a face. He’s simply a shadowed figure with pervasive hands and a horrible stench that is now embedded in the memory itself. He had been just another trick. They always came, took what they wanted, and left either drugs or money. The money had become less common. He was supposed to have done the same. But he’d lingered, my mother hadn’t noticed. It hadn’t taken long before she was blitzed out of her brain and then he’d pounced. A lion on an unsuspecting rabbit, I hadn’t stood a chance. He raped me. Held me down on the stained carpet in our living room and sodomized me. I don’t remember whether I cried or screamed, or both, or neither, but I know it had lasted twenty minutes because while he’d held me down, the side of my face pressed to the ground, my eyes had been on the cracked, black clock with the white hands on our living room wall. Twenty minutes of him moving inside me, my virgin blood his lubricant before it ended.

  “Such sweet-ass cherry.” He had left me with that and walked out the door with my childhood. Dante had found me. He’d cried tears I don’t remember shedding, all the while ranting at our oblivious mother.

  That feeling, the impression of that moment, was now an oil-slicked stain on my psyche. Many nights were lost because of that memory. But really, who needed sleep these days? I sure as hell didn’t.

  By the time the bus makes its stop, I am one of the last two people to get off. I’m not going to sleep tonight. There is a physics report due tomorrow first period and Mrs. Delaney is a giant bitch-fest waiting to happen if I don’t hand that paper in. Delaney has always had it in for me for reasons that I couldn’t quite figure out. But I’ve learned to bite my tongue and play nice, I wasn’t about to jeopardize my GPA just for a moment of snapping back. No matter how awesome it would be.

  Chapter Two

  Lacey

  Home is a two-bedroom apartment in Forest Corner. Dante moved out a year ago when he turned eighteen so I took over his room. He comes by to visit every now and again, says it’s to check on us, but I know it’s to hit me up for money. Money he either doesn’t know I earn on my back or chooses to ignore because it’s easier for him. I want to hope for the former but the pessimist in me knows it’s more than likely the latter. Dante is just as needy as our mother. He’s the big brother in all physical aspects, but mentally he’s way younger than me. Can’t tell you how much it sucks to take on the role of big sister, personal ATM machine, and occasional mother. But then, if not me, than who?

  The first thing I notice when I step inside our apartment is the odor of stale, bitter air. It’s a stomach-turning bouquet of vomit, sex, and sweat. The place is a mess. I control my breathing pattern as I step further inside, short, shallow breaths so that I don’t inhale too much of the stench. I know my mother ransacked the place in search of money. Dante calls first when he needs money, so I know this isn’t his handiwork. There is a trail of clothes on the floor with overdue bills mixed in the fray, shoes, and furniture strewn around haphazardly.

  “Mom,” I call, stooping down to pick up items along the way. The apartment isn’t that big. From the entrance to where I’m currently standing in the living room it’s one large open space with the kitchen in one corner and the bedrooms in the other, separated by a bathroom. We don’t have a lot. Hell, we had next to nothing. The apartment is bare for the most part. The furniture is a threadbare couch we picked up from the curbside when we were kids. And a coffee table that wobbles because one of the legs has a noticeable crack in it the stands as our only furniture. We don’t own electronics.

  We had a TV once, picked up once again from our favorite street corner, but it stopped working three years ago and Dante tossed it. The only decent thing about the entire place was the large, acrylic African painting my mother purchased from a flea market some years back. When she’d been sober. Time has yellowed the painting, the features of the black woman carrying her infant child on her back with a decorated cloth was faded now, barely recognizable, just like the woman who had once purchased it.

  “Mom!” There are dishes in the sink. And just as a reminder of who runs our little shit hole apartment, a fat roach scurries along the countertop with three of its family members trailing close behind. I can’t even scrounge up a morsel of disgust. I’m so used to this.

  I hear noises from the back room and unhurriedly make my way over, unsure of what I’ll find, but I can guess pretty quickly it won’t be anything worth seeing. The door to the bedroom I once shared with my mother gapes partially open, making it possible for me to get an eyeful of Carla Dent hard at work on her knees. Her lips firmly wrapped around the cock of her latest trick. It’s pretty clear now why she didn’t answer when I called. Like the roaches, the mess, and the fucking odor in the air that now coats my tongue like a film of skin, this is yet another thing I have become used to. I turn away silently to return to the mess in the living room.

  I can’t deal with the mess. Disorganization is a huge pet peeve, and I can’t do anything else until everything is in its proper place. So homework takes a backseat for the time being while I begin cleaning. To drown out the noises of squeaking bedsprings, moans, and grunts accompanied by slapping flesh, I hum a song my mother used to sing to me when I was younger. It
was one of the few rare treasures Dante and I had of her. We used to sing it quite frequently when we needed to cheer each other up.

  Some twenty minutes later, Carla and her john emerge from the bedroom. The john is a Latino man who is a little too round and a little too greasy as he brings a hand up to his forehead to wipe away the extra sheen. He has the decency to look embarrassed when his dark eyes land on me. My mother on the other hand, fails to share in his discomfort. She’s in a pair of panties and nothing else, failing to cover up the rest of her nude, emaciated form despite having a shirt in her right hand. She holds out her left hand expectantly however, and it’s a total letdown to me when drugs rather than money are exchanged. A small, tightly-wrapped grayish-white ball of cellophane is placed in her bony hand before the john takes his exit. I follow, locking the door behind him soon after he leaves.

  “Where the fuck have you been?” Carla grumbles when I return, struggling into the shirt I recognize as mine.

  “I was working,” I state, desensitized to the image of her cutting up the gray, powdery substance on the coffee table and going to town seconds later with a nose that has been destroyed by years of abuse.

  “What happened here...?”

  She shrugs her skeletal shoulders. “I was looking for money. The fat fuck landlord wants us out of here.”

  Shit! We’re behind two months on rent and David, our landlord, isn’t going to give us another break. There have been too many incidences with my mother and her pimp. Domestic abuse calls. We’re lucky he even allowed us to remain this long. God. It never fucking stops. Sighing in agitation, I rake a hand through my curls and quickly try to add up the amount of cash I have on me. I can probably talk to David again, see if I can pay the backup rent and negotiate something to get caught up in the meantime. Fat chance. But I’ve worked with lesser odds. “I’ll take care of it.” I always take care of it. “How much money do you have?” It’s stupid of me to even ask when I already know what the answer will be.