New Story - With new ideas and directions to hand. I'm writing this and posting it straight onto Steemit - You can not get more exclusive than that! 43

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Please remember this story is being written and posted 'live' every day. I am writing today's episode and posting it here without benefit of a read-through, let alone an edit. I don't usually work this way and this experiment is exciting and different for me, not my normal work-ethic at all. To that end, please forgive me any typos, grammar errors and anything that you may think should have been picked up in an edit - it WILL be picked up in the edit.

I've already spoken with a publisher about getting this story published - possibly after Christmas, we'll see how it goes.

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Images from Google (licenced for reuse) and Pixabay

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Justin looked at Ash as she prepared herself to tell her harrowing story.

“You sure you want pop and not a nip of the whisky in that cupboard?”

Ash looked up and studied Justin with a hard expression on her face.

Robin did a double-take at Justin’s offer when he realised he wasn’t joking.

“What? On top of all these painkillers? I’d sleep for a week – or longer,” Ash said, shaking her head.

“When the scrapyard man dropped the junkie off at the house I’d found…” she said and looked at Robin. “You know, close to where you followed me to.”

“I…I didn’t…” Robin said, flustered that she knew.

Ash gave a little smile that said she was being patient but it would only last so long.

“Yeah, OK. I followed you,” he admitted at last.

“Yeah, I know… and thank you.”

“Have we done?” Justin said. “Come on, kid, you need some sleep and I certainly do. Let’s get this told so we’ll not be wondering about it all night.”

Ash nodded and continued.

“I went back the next day, to see if the junkie had died. He was in such a bad way when I found him at the scrapyard, he really could have gone either way and if he’d died, we wouldn’t have anything to bargain with Mr Fitz-Stanley, would we?”

“That’s true. It would have been a lot more difficult to get them in one place,” Justin said.

“Well, obviously, he didn’t die, but he was hurting and he was angry. He asked me how old I am and I told him I’m nine – ‘The same age as I was,’ he said I knew I was in trouble then. Then he told me that Mike had got his hands on him when he was just nine years old. He got horny, started rubbing his knob, but then he couldn’t get it up and he got angrier. He gave me a beating and it looks like that was his Viagra.”

A tear slipped down Ash’s face but her voice was flat and emotionless, like a robot, Robin thought. Justin knew what Ash’s brain was doing, it was shutting her off from reliving the story while some other part of her brain just narrated the sordid tale.

“When he found out I was a girl, I thought that would stop him wanting to fuck me, because… because I thought he was gay. He’s not gay. I tried to fight him off, I tried to run away but that all made him angrier and it helped him, so I just let it happen. It didn’t hurt too much because he’s got a really small knob. He told me it was bigger but the junk had shrunk it.” Ash stopped talking and started giggling.

“Shrunk his junk…” she whispered through the giggling.

It wasn’t a cheerful giggle, it was one you’d hear in a horror movie, a shrill, hysterical noise, filled with terror and insanity.

Justin caught Robin’s attention and motioned for him to sit next to her. Robin instinctively took her in his arms and rocked her like he had before.

Once she calmed down and stopped that insanity-giggle, Robin allowed her to pull back from his embrace. She sat quiet and calm while he was next to her. Justin motioned for him to move and, like that was the trigger, she started speaking again.

“I didn’t have any gear on me… just one baggie of heroin and he was mad cos he thought there should have been more. Once he’d finished… well, he didn’t finish but his hard-on went and he couldn’t get it up again, that’s when he stamped on my belly. I couldn’t breathe for ages and I thought I was going to die. He must have thought so too, cos he checked on me and shook me. I couldn’t breathe in, something was wrong. Nigel gave me the kiss of life, I think. He put his mouth on mine and blew in my mouth, hard.”

“Oh my fucking god, kid,” Justin said, his eyes wide, mouth wider, fists clenched on the arms of the chair. “You were that close…”

“To the bright light?” Ash said in a serene voice that chilled Justin to the marrow.

“Yeah…” he said in a whisper.

“Yeah, he saved my life and I should have been thankful, but he was the one that almost killed me and I didn’t feel thankful, I felt angry. Angrier than he had been when he couldn’t get it up. I could have stopped him taking that junk. It was laced with something. I heard the dealer say it should be chucked out because it could kill their customers and where was the business sense in that. The other guy didn’t chuck it out though and I didn’t think he’d miss a few baggies.”

“What the fuck are you doing hanging around dealers, kid?” Justin asked, jolting Ash from her cocooned state.

“Me? I’ve been a ‘jogger’ for a little bit. I have contacts,” she said. “That’s how I know I’m never gonna touch that stuff. It’s where I learned how to inject a junkie. Didn’t you even wonder about that?”

Justin shook his head in wonderment. The kid still surprised him.

“I let the junkie cook that contaminated heroin and I watched him inject it and I was glad, because the next time I saw him, I knew the dealer was right. That gear would kill someone and I knew it was killing that bastard.”

Ash’s brain had allowed her out of her cocoon enough to feel the effects of her anger.

Justin thought it would have broken a weaker kid, but Ash wasn’t weak. Her experiences had made her stronger than a kid should have had cause to be and it protected her. How long it would protect her for, he had no idea.