Grudge Match

by Jessica Gadziala

  The oldest profession in the world, right?

  Yeah, that was a chalky, nauseating pill to swallow.

  You know, the first time you realized what your mom was.

  A crack whore.

  A literal crack whore.

  She sucked and fucked for drug money, for the small bit of food money, for the bills.

  And, as I learned when I came home from school to find her on all fours on the living room floor, her tits out, her hair in his hands, getting pounded by the landlord - she sucked and fucked for rent as well.

  Maybe to make it even worse, when she saw me, she didn't try to cover up, she didn't tell him to stop, or tell me to leave.

  No.

  She greeted me like she did every day, like we were going to have a motherfucking polite conversation while some guy's cock was inside her.

  The anger that night was explosive enough for me to punch a hole in a wall and break two of the metacarpal bones in my hand. For the first time.

  Rent 'paid,' she went out and didn't come home for two days. When she did, she was so fucked up she could barely walk.

  I found her passed out in the tub an hour later, water sloshing over the sides, slumped down enough that she very likely would have drowned.

  I would say I hate to admit this part, but that would imply regret or remorse on my part.

  But I didn't call for help.

  I didn't even bother to pull her out of the tub.

  I reached in, turned off the water, opened the drain, and left her.

  There was only so fucking much I could take.

  And when you spent half your life raising your goddamn self, your bond with your mother wasn't exactly what it should have maybe been.

  When I was younger and she was high, I used to bask in that brilliant glow, that sunny day in a world of darkness, letting it warm me up, wanting that to be the mother I got to have all the time. Willing it to happen.

  But I learned.

  Oh, I learned

  Over.

  And over.

  And fucking over again.

  The darkness always followed.

  It was better never to feel the warmth on your skin at all. It only made it that much darker, that much colder when it was gone.

  So when I was a teen and she was high, I stayed away. I locked my bedroom door. I left out the fire escape.

  Because I soon realized, that wasn't my mom.

  My mom wasn't that happy-go-lucky woman full of hopes and dreams.

  That was the drugs.

  My mom was the woman who when I once walked past an alley on my way home one night had a cock in her ass and one in her mouth, and a third man standing beside waiting his turn.

  My mother was darkness and hopelessness and desperation.

  And that, well, it made for a hard person to love.

  If I even had any of that emotion left in me.

  I was fifteen when I came home from school one afternoon to find her sitting up against a wall in the living room, a pipe shattered on the floor beside her, an empty baggy half-sticking out of her pocket.

  I didn't even need to walk over to know.

  It was right there, plain as day.

  Her wide open unblinking eyes were looking out the window.

  And her chest wasn't moving.

  Dead.

  Horribly enough, my first thought was That took a lot longer than I expected.

  Crack whores didn't often get quite so long a life expectancy. Not with the severity of her habit. Not with how many unwrapped dicks had been inside her.

  She had a long life, all things considered.

  As for me, well, I stood there for a long moment in that shitty apartment with my dead mother's corpse, wondering what the hell was to be done.

  If I called the cops and stayed, I would be dragged off to a group home that I wouldn't leave until I was nineteen when they would toss me out on the streets like a piece of garbage with no way to get along in the world.

  And that, well, was the best case.

  There was also the chance of being bounced from home to home, dealing with 'moms' who were in it for the check to fund their own habits or, worse yet, the genuine ones, the ones who wanted to fix me.

  There was no fixing me.

  I was scattered pieces across time.

  A little bit left in that living room the night of the bent blinds. Some more when I realized my mom was an addict. The last bit when I realized she was a prostitute too.

  There was no finding those pieces and gluing them back together.

  I wouldn't have let them try anyway.

  Soon they would have gotten sick of me punching things, breaking shit, raging out, and would send me back with tears in their eyes like I was their failure.

  I wasn't their failure.

  I was my mother's failure.

  That was all.

  And she was dead.

  There was no fixing that.

  "Tammy, you ready to pay your rent, woman?" the landlord's voice called, sounding way too jazzed up about fucking a woman who didn't have much of a choice in the matter.

  "Unless you're into corpses," I told him as he moved toward the doorway, "you might want to take your cock to one of the other whores in the building."

  "Well, shit," he said, exhaling hard. "What a waste of a good-looking woman. And a decent pussy too, considering."

  That should have pissed me off.

  Or disgusted me.

  But there was simply nothing to be felt right then.

  "Well, you owe me rent, boy," he announced.

  "I don't have anything." Hell, my ass didn't even have lunch money. The school had to fund me. Thankfully, they did. Otherwise, I would have spent a lot more of my childhood hungry. At least I got one decent meal a day.

  "Yeah, and I don't fuck boys," he said, something odd in his tone making my stomach twist, something that said maybe he didn't, but possibly that he knew someone who did.

  Was that going to be my fate?

  What a cruel fucking twist in the world.

  "Little old though," he said, something that shouldn't have, but totally did make a rush of relief course through me. "Though, I maybe have an idea," he said, going to reach out toward me.

  I raised an arm, knocking the hand out of the way. "Keep your fucking hands off me, asshole," I growled with all the authority a fifteen-year-old boy could possess.

  "Hey hey," he said, smiling, apparently liking something about my outburst, which I had a feeling didn't bode well for me. "He's got anger issues too. Even better. Walt is going to like that."

  "Who the fuck is Walt?"

  "He's gonna be your new owner."

  My stomach plummeted at that.

  See, I grew up in a shitty area. I had a crack whore for a mother. I passed endless dealers and prostitutes on the street on my way home from school. I saw the gambling, the gang turf wars, the seedy underbelly that exists in every town in every county in every state in the country.

  There were things that happened that would keep people awake at night.

  There were men - and occasionally women - who could, quite literally, steal, brand, bring you to heel, and fucking own you. It happened every day.

  One more news story of a young girl gone missing meant one more sex slave to be shot up with drugs and fucked by endless men.

  One more healthy young man never heard from again, beaten, drugged, shipped overseas, and sold into slave labor.

  It happened.

  It happened often.

  And it was, apparently, happening to me.

  Whoever the fuck Walt was, I knew I needed to stay as far as fuck away from him as possible.

  Except even as the thought formed, there was a sharp pain to the button of my chin.

  And everything went black.

  --

  I woke up to the smell of must.

  You know the smell.

  Of cement and airlessness and wet.

  Hell, I had maybe only ever
been in one in my life, but I could detect the scent of a basement in under five seconds after regaining consciousness.

  My mouth felt weird, fuzzy, dry, almost unfamiliar. I had to rake my tongue against the roof of my mouth and my gums for a long moment before they started feeling normal again.

  I couldn't say for sure, but I had a sneaking suspicion that I wasn't just dehydrated.

  I had been drugged.

  Even as I thought it, I noticed the strange weighted sensation of my limbs, the way I had to focus to make them move, much like you'd have to do when they fell asleep.

  It was another five minutes before I could get on my feet, noticing that my shoes were gone, finding that perhaps the strangest of all. They were fucking dollar-store shoes. Who the fuck would want them?

  I ran my hand along the wall to keep me grounded, the room too dark to see, and I really didn't want to fall into whatever disgustingness that there might have been on the floor. When I made my way to the window, I found it barred. The kind of thick that meant there was no getting out.

  On a growl, I kept following the wall.

  And ended up kicking something.

  No.

  Someone.

  "Fucking watch it," the voice demanded, sounding half-asleep.

  "Who are you?" I asked, voice a desperate plea, not even giving a fuck if it made me sound weak. "Where am I? Why am I here?"

  "Christ," another voice said, maybe slightly older, but not by much, just enough that it had settled into the deep timbre of manhood while mine still cracked on occasion. "Another fucking one," he went on. There was shuffling then a whoosh and a flick of light. He had matches. And, it seemed, a hurricane lantern. He lit the wick and turned to look at me.

  I had been right.

  He was older, but not by much. Maybe seventeen, closing in on eighteen with black hair, light green eyes, and a face half-swollen with bruises.

  "Another what?" I demanded, hands curling into fists, something this kid didn't miss. His eyes went there, a brow raising slightly, before his gaze found mine again.

  "Another dog."

  "What the fuck is that supposed to mean?" I asked, hearing more shuffling, seeing more guys around my age rousing from sleep, looking at me, nothing in their blank eyes but a mild curiosity.

  "Welcome to Walt's team," he said, voice chilling. "You will spend the next few years getting the ever-loving shit kicked out of you, eating plain food, and sleeping on a cold, damp floor so Walt's pockets can keep getting fatter. I'm Miller; this is Wozniak, Beckett, Cohen, Delaney, and Adler. Who are you?"

  I was pretty sure names like Miller, Wozniak, Beckett, Cohen, Delaney, and Adler were not first names.

  So I had to ditch mine too.

  And that was the day I stopped being Ross.

  And I became Ward.

  "Has a nice ring to it too. Walt will like announcing that shit."

  "Who will I be fighting?" I asked, looking around, figuring that if there were even a chance of escape, these guys would have found it by now. So I was truly stuck. It was better not to focus on shit like getting out and, instead, find out how I could survive within.

  "We fight one another," Miller explained, shrugging. "This," he said, pointing to his face, "was Delaney two nights ago."

  We had to fight one another?

  How the fuck were we expected to live together, but then brutalize people we had to start imagining as friends. Or at least as close as the situation would allow.

  "And if I say no?"

  This time, Delaney spoke up. He moved in closer to the light, allowing me to see he was closer to Miller's age - tall, blond, dark-eyed, mostly unscathed.

  "You don't want to know what happens when you refuse," he said, shaking his head, something dead in his tone, something haunted in his eyes.

  "Just fucking tell 'em," another voice chimed in, younger, more my age, with an accent I couldn't place since I had never been fucking anywhere, a thin build, long brown hair, and gray eyes. Adler. "What good is it going to do for him to see it for himself? That worked out real good for the last one, eh, Delaney?"

  Something about his anger made my stomach drop, knowing somehow that whatever had him riled was something I did, in fact, need to know.

  "Tell me," I demanded, looking at Adler, chin lifted. I could take it.

  "Walt likes his fighters real obedient. And when ya don't do what he says. And the new bloods like to refuse. All fucking bravado, thinking ya are in any kind of control. Yeah, he gets in a pissy mood. And he brings out something he calls The Discipliner."

  Shit.

  I swallowed hard, trying to convince my stomach to stay steel. "What is The Discipliner?"

  "A bat. Just a garden variety backyard bat. Except he don't use it for hitting balls. And, no, if you're thinking it, he don't use it for breaking bones neither."

  Shit shit shit.

  "Just fucking tell him," another voice said from the back, "so I can get back to sleep already."

  "He likes to strap ya down and shove it up yer arse. Right there for the whole audience to see, laughing while ya scream. Then he pulls it out, and has ya thrown back down here where, if you're lucky, ya live. But almost nobody is lucky 'round here. So ya die. In a pile of yer own blood and shit, begging for yer mommy."

  Jesus fucking Christ.

  I swallowed hard, glad that the bile that eased its way up my throat managed to get choked back.

  "How long have you been here?" I asked next, finding maybe his brutal honesty off-putting even as jaded as I was.

  "'Bout a year. Give or take a few months. Miller here is the lucky one. He's 'bout to age out, ain't ya, Miller?"

  "Age out?"

  "His audience likes to keep it young, y'know? Old fucking perverted fucks," Adler went on. "Soon as ya start getting too much hair on yer chest, he boots ya."

  "He just lets you go?" I asked, not comprehending why he would do that when someone could obviously point fingers.

  "Ya think we are still in the city, Ward? Please. Fucking Cohen over there is from Montana, ain't ya, Cohen? Corn-fed fucker. And Delaney was from California. They take us from anywhere, drug us, and we wake up here. And we ain't got not one fucking clue where here is neither."

  "How did you know I was from the city then?"

  "Ya got that city kid rough look to ya. And that accent. City boy born and raised. What happened? Ran away from home with nowhere to stay, and got picked up?"

  It was sharing circle time, apparently.

  "Mom OD'd. The landlord sold me to pay the back rent."

  "Ah, tale as old as time, that one," Adler said, a goddamn thirty-year-old trapped in a fifteen-year-old body. "But anyway, yeah. We get drugged again when we're too old, shipped off somewhere, likely waking up as confused as ever. He don't kill us. He ain't shy 'bout that. Would do it right in front of us. So he just gets rid of us when we served our purpose. Something to look forward to, eh? Be sure to send us a fucking postcard, Miller," he called, moving away from me to drop back down on his spot on the floor, on top of a pile of what looked like clothes scooped together as a mattress.

  "On the one hand, we do at least get fed," Cohen offered, sighing. "Need to keep our strength up so we can really go at each other. Guess it's one silver lining."

  I looked over at Adler, finding him rolling his eyes and shooting me a smirk, clearly not a fan of Cohen's softer attitude.

  "Yeah, Cohen. Lots of silver linings in this here hellhole. Go to fucking sleep. Dream of the days when ya were able to eat yer corn and fuck yer sheep."

  "You're a fucking asshole, Adler," Cohen shot.

  "Yep," Adler agreed. "But this asshole is gonna be able to stay sane until he ages up. Yer ass is halfway to bonkers already. Crying when ya think no one can hear ya. Been here a year, Cohen. Mommy ain't coming. Accept reality."

  Accept reality.

  Somehow, that resonated.

  Adler didn't strike me as a kid who sat idly by and let shit happen to him, so if he was s
aying the only thing that you could do was survive until you aged out, then I was going to go ahead and take that advice.

  I was going to survive.

  I was going to stay sane.

  I was going to get strong.

  And I was going to age out.

  Well, that was the plan anyway.

  --

  I met Walt three days later. That's how long we were kept down there.

  When the sun rose the morning after I woke up in the basement, the space became clearer. Just a basement of, likely, an old restaurant judging by the pile of milk crates piled in a corner. There was, thankfully, one bathroom to the end, but it only had a toilet and a sink.

  "Like the fucking Hilton, eh, Ward?" Adler asked, coming in to take a piss while I did my best to scrub some of the dirt off my arms and face.

  Aside from the bathroom, the barred window, the milk crates, and the seven piles of clothes, there was nothing else around.

  "That's you," Miller told me when he caught me staring at the unoccupied pile of clothes. "Don't worry," he said, seeming to sense my hesitance. "He didn't die there. And you are going to need clothes. Gets cold as fuck down here in the winter."

  "How long have you been here?"

  Delaney snorted, asking me what year it was.

  "Four years," he concluded, nodding. "Almost eighteen. Would have been on my way to fucking college by now," he added before walking off, then not speaking to anyone for the next two days.

  Pasts, I quickly found, were usually sore spots.

  Even Adler, the cynic, the asshole, but also somehow the most charismatic of the group, didn't talk about where he came from, didn't talk about his life before, didn't ever mention what he wished he were doing instead of being trapped in a cold, stinking basement where he was forced to fight if he didn't want to be sodomized with a bat or killed.

  There weren't, as Cohen's half-sane brain wanted him to believe, any silver linings.

  There was no joy.

  No hope.

  Just survival.

  Just biding time to age out, even though not one of us knew what that would mean.

  Twice a day, the door would open, and yet another egg crate would be pushed inside, filled almost to the top with plates and bowls. The food was bland as fuck, but filling. Plain chicken, potatoes, and peas were a favorite. They must have bought that shit in bulk.