e-Bae

9.5

Sinful Secrets by Rye_Bread

Looking up at the stars, Thomas took another drag from his cigarette. The white smoke filtered through the abandoned park, a place that could compete with him based on the amount of dreams it crushed. The once healthy grass was now matted down into a brown mass, clumping together with litter and discarded cancer sticks like the one he was inhaling. He let the toes of his already beat-up shoes brush the ground below him, and shifted on the only semi-functional swing in the entire playground. He was shocked to find that it could actually hold his weight, but didn't want to test the rusty chains by exerting force on it.

He had no clue what he was doing here. It was past midnight, way past the scheduled time for him to make a drop to his latest client, and he had successfully got his share of the earnings. Two weeks in the business of ruining other people's lives and health and he could afford his mother's pills and be able to take her to a decent restaurant in town. Fourteen days of the guilt beginning to eat him alive. Maybe this client was the one that really got to him.

He had been standing in a dark alley near a children's library, wondering who of all people would want to exchange drugs here, only to see an annoyed mother with one child on her hip and the other with a death grip on her skirt rush in his direction. He had been completely and utterly shocked. The woman continued with her business like nothing had happened after he gave her the little baggie, but all he could think about were those kids. Her little girl had looked up at him with her thumb in her mouth and eyes wide, and then tugged her hand out of her mouth to give him a big grin showcasing her missing front two teeth, like he was a friend and not someone supplying her mother with her latest fix.

He had never felt more truly disgusted with himself.

The woman had walked away when she was done, stomping off to her car. Once her children were in, she glanced around to make sure no one was watching before popping a pill. But, Thomas was watching. And, despite never being religious at all, started praying to every single god he could think of to watch over her two unsuspecting toddlers in the back seat.

Published 8/18/14