Noxious

4 | things i wanna do

Charly 

I sat on the half-finished cement wall with a bottle of alcohol in my right hand and a smoldering cigarette in my left hand. It looked like it would rain today, everything was fucking grey and bland. I hated it. 

I took another swig from the bottle. I honestly had no idea what it was, I just found it on the floor this morning. Someone had had it but now it was mine, that's how things worked around this abandoned building. I winced slightly as my arm resisted movement with pain. I shook it out slightly, although it did little to help. 

"Didn't you just get out of the hospital?" 

I had forgotten someone sat with me. It happened a lot around here, I guess you could call us ghosts. We were just a group of misfits trying to fit in but half the time we weren't mentally here. Most of us were homeless, and the rest of us hated to go home. 

I looked at the boy who was around my age. Dylan was his name.

Sometimes, I would wonder about the stories of other people. Today wasn't one of those days. I was very aware he had been hanging around quite a bit more the past few weeks. "Yeah, and?" I grumbled at him. 

"Looks broken," He commented on my wrist. It was every ugly shade of blaringly obvious issues. 

"It's not," I dismissed. Probably was. I had definitely not received a warm welcome home after I had been discharged from the hospital two weeks ago. Shitty things happen to people when money is involved, and for my foster parents, I was only meant to be a source of money.

"What happened?" 

"Fuck, do you always irritate people until they wanna choke you out?" I snapped, "I went home, that's what fucking happened. Any other questions, asshole?" 

"My Dad beats my Mom, I get it." 

No, the fuck you don't. I clenched my jaw. 

"Wanna go vandalize something?" 

That piqued my interest. "What and where?" There were parts of the city you avoided when engaging in illegal activities because the cops would get you. They think we're stupid but we've lived on the streets long before them, we knew the playing field. 

"South end," Dylan answered, "My Dad's fancy new business building, he just opened it today." 

"Shit, that's risky," I inhaled a lungful of my cigarette, and then I put it out on my skin. I didn't even feel it. I had only felt the bare minimum for two weeks, and I suppose it was a blessing considering how battered my body was at the moment. "Let's do it," I concluded. 

"That's what I'm talking about!" Dylan grinned. 

Nothing like a little fun to get my blood pumping. 

I hopped off the wall. 

x

"So, what's your story?" Dylan asked. He had a backpack stuffed with spray paint and he kept adjusting it over his shoulders as we navigated the streets of the city.

My jaw automatically tightened, "I don't have a story." 

"Everyone does." 

"Fine. I never met my father but he was a piece of shit," I said, crossing the street at a brisk pace, "My mother ran off and left me in the hands of a woman who despised me because I wasn't her own, and then I was handed off to foster care when I was two or three."