Theo the Street Kid and the Extraordinary Competition

Chapter 9 - The Rattlesnake Gang Rules

The touristy Lakeside district was the place where the three biggest lakes of the Kingdom all converged.
It was also the place where penny-pinching backpackers stayed in cheap hostels, where brothels housed both male and female prostitutes who sold their bodies to the highest bidders, where all kinds of drugs were sold at incredibly affordable prices.
And it had been Theo and Wolfie's place of employment for the past few months.
Under the sweltering sun, Theo and Wolfie and other street kids would badger and pester the rich tourists until they felt sorry enough for them to buy overpriced poor-quality bracelets.
A few months earlier, they had been recruited when a man named Munah approached them, offering them $2 a day if they met their daily quota of selling twenty bracelets to tourists.
$2 didn't go very far in the Kingdom of Egalisia, but it was still steady income and better than nothing and so, they accepted the offers.
And they've come to regret it ever since.
Because the job offer came with a price.
If they didn't sell at least twenty a day, there would be consequences.
Very bad consequences.
On this particular day, the Lakeside was teeming with tourists.
Munah, the twenty year-old ringleader with a bandana, assembled the ragtag team together for his usual pep talk in the alleyway.
"Alright, guys," said Munah, scratching his faint outline of a moustache. "These rich tourists are loaded. You gotta pile on the sympathy factor here and get them to buy as many of these expensive pieces of crap as possible."
He held up the shoddily-made bracelets. "Whoever sells the least...well, you know what'll happen to them..."
He punched his fist into his palm, then pointed to five tall buff twenty-year olds standing behind him, each clutching a baseball bat.
These were the members of the Rattlesnake Gang, so called because all the members wore bandanas with a stitching of a rattlesnake.
They were a young street gang, a budding, aspiring mafia-to-be. Extortion, blackmail, drug-dealing, petty theft, exploiting street kids - they weren't above any of that.
And Theo and Wolfie and a bunch of other kids worked for them.
Theo gulped.
Munah wasn't kidding about the violent consequences.
Many a street kid had been beaten for not selling enough.
Theo inspected the motley workers.
There were five of them reporting for work that day: Theo, Wolfie, a ten year-old boy whose mother had broken his leg in order to look more pathetic while begging on the streets, an eleven year-old girl who lost an arm in an accident while working in a garment factory, and a seven-year old boy with really bad teeth and a constant hacking cough.
The ones that were disabled or lost limbs or were sick garnered the most sympathy from gullible tourists, so they were the ones that made the most money and therefore, didn't get beaten by the Rattlesnake Gang.
The ones without obvious deformities, like Theo and Wolfie, sold the least number of bracelets and therefore, received the bulk of the beatings from the gang.
They always fought back, but that always left them with aches and bruises.
The two of them had thought about leaving the gang and their extortionist ways, but it was their only source of income. And if they left, the gang might hunt them down and force them to get back to work.
They knew they were virtually slaves for the gang, but such was life in the Kingdom.
"Alright," shouted Munah. "Get to work!"
Each kid took a stack of bracelets and began to head toward the tourists that were dining at restaurants by the lakes.
Theo and Wolfie watched as the three more pathetic-looking kids went up to the tourists and sold bracelet after bracelet.
Jealous, Theo looked on as his co-workers bantered and joked with the tourists.
Neither he nor Wolfie got along with those three kids.
All three were distrustful and unfriendly. All three were wise street kids who knew what it took to survive. Trusting others, especially strangers, was usually a big mistake. At first, they behaved like abused puppies, but difficult situations on the streets turned them into tough young adults.
Theo looked at Wolfie. "Alright, let's just get this over with."
Wolfie yawned. "I'm still tired."
"We can rest at another NGO tonight," said Theo.
She reluctantly followed Theo to a group of wealthy-looking tourists at a bar. They were chugging beers and laughing loudly.
"Would you like to buy a bracelet? Good souvenir," said Theo.
The group immediately stopped laughing and grew serious.
A man with a beard scowled. "No, go away!"
Another man wearing a baseball cap shooed them away. "Scram, kids!"
A woman with a ponytail said to her companions, "Don't be so mean, guys. They're just poor street kids."
Then, she turned to Theo. "How much is it?"
"$10," Theo replied.
She frowned. "That's a complete rip-off."
Of course it was.
Everyone knew that.
The worst part was that the Rattlesnake Gang pocketed $8 or 80% commission of each bracelet sold.
It was completely unfair to the street kids.
They were being exploited.
It was a scam and a complete rip-off to both the tourists and the kids.
The only ones who benefitted were the Rattlesnake Gang.
Wrinkling her nose, the woman pointed at Wolfie. "Ew, what are those rashes on her arms?"
Neither Theo nor Wolfie responded.
The woman said, "I think you kids should run along now."
Dejected and hungry, Theo and Wolfie tried a few other groups of tourists, but they were turned away again and again.
At this rate, they were going to get beaten again.
Maybe their approach had been wrong.
Maybe they shouldn't have asked the tourists to buy the bracelets right away.
Maybe they should have bantered and joked with the tourists, sang a little song or did a little dance.
But it was too late.
They had run out of tourists.
The only ones left had either already rejected them or bought bracelets from the other street kids.
"Uh oh," said Theo, realizing what would happen if they returned to the Rattlesnake Gang to face the music.
"Maybe we not go back," said Wolfie. "Maybe we just run away."
As he thought about his dilemma, Theo spied a teacher instructing a female student from a textbook at a nearby table.
He felt a pang of jealousy.
Why should that girl receive an education and not me? he thought.
A short while later, the female student gave the teacher some money and they parted ways.
At the next table over, Theo saw a familiar sight.
A ten-year old local girl was sitting on the lap of an older foreign man. The man was wearing an open Hawaiian shirt that exposed his beer belly and hairy chest. They were drinking expensive wine and eating fancy dishes.
The hairy older man was at least five or six times the young girl's age. He looked fifty or sixty years, old enough to be her grandfather.
And he blatantly had his hands cupped on her butt and breasts.
And none of the restaurant staff or other customers even batted an eye.
Theo knew these men were either sex tourists (visitors to the Kingdom) or sexpats (foreign expats who lived in the Kingdom).
These were wealthy men from more developed nations who visited or lived in the Kingdom to take advantage of the poverty and to exploit the impoverished children who couldn't afford basic necessities and so, had to offer their companionship and bodies to rich pedophiles.
Money talks, Theo thought. You wave some dollars around and everyone is eager to do your bidding and you're treated like royalty. But if you have no money, then they treat you like a dog. You get nothing. No food, no shelter, no education. You're not even human. There is no dignity at all.
Wolfie shook him out of his thoughts. "They're coming."
The other three street kids had already given the Rattlesnake Gang their 80% cut and now, Munah and his goons were coming towards Theo and Wolfie for their cut.
The Rattlesnake Gang ruled through fear and intimidation, but this time, Theo decided he wasn't going to let them do that.
He was going to stand his ground.
Besides, he had his magic whistle now.
Maybe the figure in white would appear and protect him again.
Bravely, he stood there, ready to duke it out.
But when the gang members took out knives, Theo grew scared.
At that moment though, his whistle began to glow.
Theo became excited.
He would be saved somehow.
From the other direction, also armed with knives, another group of scruffy teenagers was marching toward the Rattlesnake Gang.
This group wore red bandanas with images of red vipers and had their own group of pathetic-looking street kids following closely behind.
It was the Red Viper Gang, a rival street gang that had recently been encroaching on the Rattlesnake Gang's territory.
Theo mouthed a silent thanks to his lucky whistle.
The timing had been perfect.
Munah's attention turned from Theo and Wolfie to his dangerous rivals.
"I'm in charge here!" he yelled at the Red Viper Gang. "And this is our turf!"
"It's ours now," said the leader of the Red Viper Gang. "And we're not gonna share."
"Then this means war," announced Munah.
Theo was so glad there was going to be a gang war over the most lucrative turf in Lotus Hill.
In the chaos and confusion, he and Wolfie could slip away unnoticed, without being beaten for not selling enough bracelets.
Theo turned to Woflie. "Alright, let's go. Let's never come back here again. We'll find another way to make money. I'd rather beg on the streets than work for the Rattlesnake Gang again."
Chucking the cheap bracelets onto the ground, they dashed away.
Theo snuck a glance behind him.
The two rival gangs were brandishing their knives and baseball bats as they prepared to clash in the alleyway.
"Thank the Universe," Theo breathed out.
He vowed never to work for such crooks again.