Chapter 10 (Beggar)

Kylie and I are sitting in the kitchen. Eating two trays of mini Taco’s she ordered from this new place not too far from B-Street.

She likes to bring different food all the time. Even though she cooks up a storm.

I eat and don't complain.

Truth be, I think I have eaten more here than I have eaten my whole life. Even at the clubhouse I hardly ate anything extra than the three meals I was given.

It just didn't feel right to take their food and eat it when I wanted.

These past months since I have left The Satan Snipers I've lost a lot more weight than nI SHOULD have.

I know I look like a skeleton with flesh on bones. If I am honest I could say I have looked a lot more scary.

By Kylie's house, we are both always eating, buying food, or making it.

Well, she does the cooking and I just clean the mess. There is nobody else here besides Vincent, Kylie and I, so we have to eat it the and we do.

I know Kylie likes to eat, she isn't a skinny woman, but I know she eats more now and makes it a habit so I do the same.

I eat until my stomach pains from fullness everyday, my body is more used to it now. I haven't picked up much weight but that should change if I keep up this eating.

At first when I got here I wasn't able to eat. My throat was fucked. I didn't realize it at the Sanati Palace, but my shock collar was sizzling.

It burnt through my flesh around my neck. Not sure why I didn't feel it at the time. I was shot and stabbed.

The pain from the wounds on my body must've taken priority in my brain.

I don't know, don't care really.

It is just another scar to add to my long list of others.

The worst are the ones you can't see on the surface, those ones you are unfortunate if you get to see them at all.

I let her do my hair today, she said it wasn't perfect but it felt fucking amazing, light and fluffy.

“So, what would you like to do today?” She asks.

It isn't the first time that our resemblance is almost shocking. I am the beggar version of Kylie Bray. The damaged end of the stick. Our hair is both black and her eyes though dark brown and mine are black it is similar shape. Except for our noses, mine is sloped, showing my Italian heritage, hers is straight and perfect.

“What do you think we should do,” My dry, damaged voice answers with a question of my own.

I like her to have the options. It is the only time I get her to lose the frown. The last time I saw Kylie she was a few shades of lightness and an equal amount of darkness.

She had a constant smile on her face, and her brown eyes twinkled. Now she walks around here like the world is on her shoulders.

For a young girl like herself, who has all the luxury money could buy, she shouldn't have to carry such burdens.

I used to think that money was comfort. A false sense of comfort, but now, these weeks with Kylie, a young woman who has all the money she could possibly ever want I know I was wrong.

The money suffocates you, it deludes you to a false sense of acceptance until you start hating yourself.

You start to burn up and use it as a shield.

But only when it is too late do you realize that shield is weak.

It is just paper used to exchange for material things.

It can't offer you emotional solutions. And I think this is where Kylie is.

She is learning that material things are only comfortable when you accept that it will never bring you happiness only leisure.

“Ever played archery?” She questions with a smirk she could only do.

Her one eyebrow lifts, and the side of her face transforms to something akin to evil yet playful. Her eyes, they tell me so much and mine widens and it is the first time in a long time I smile.

Life has never been kind to me but I never complained I learned that it could always be worse.

Almost five months ago I took down The Satan Snipers, I betrayed them even if I was just trying to protect them.

Kylie mentioning archery it brings back memories. It isn't the first time I think about Zero, Killer and even little Aron.

I hope they are OK maybe soon I would be able to see them. And maybe if I'm lucky Zero and the others would believe me when I tell them that I was just protecting them.

I have never been lucky so I won't hold my breath, honestly when the time comes and I would have to choose between them and her- I would choose her.

It will always be her, that is why I will kill Thorn and why I would have to go back to Lucca and kill him too.

I hold my smile as I stare at Kylie and she smiles back, I like the way she smiles it is not forced it is natural, easy, simple- things that I would never have.

Natural for me was living on the streets begging for food. My simple was sleeping behind a bin.

And easy is something I've never had, everything in my life has been a challenge, a hard part, a never ending torture.

Now I have a reprieve and like all that I have known I take it with both hands, a smile filled with eagerness because I know like all the people still on the streets that I won't get this opportunity again for a long, long time.

My day went quick, Kylie and I spend it playing archery, lying outside by the pool. Everyday we talk and every day I notice Vincent melts Kylie's skin.

Our next week goes much about the same, Kylie feeding me, then suggesting we do the craziest of things. Everyday she gets weaker where my cousin Vincent is concerned.

I have told her to go for it, give him a chance, but deep down I hope she doesn't.

Vincent is not the man Kylie thinks he is.

I've just finished in the bathroom, and I head straight to the bedroom and jump under the blankets into my soft bed.

I close my eyes with my head on the pillow and I think. I pretend in my mind that Zero and I are together.

Imagine me as someone else, not a beggar on the street not a poor girl with no education.

I imagine that Lucca was a normal man that I ended things with, and my baby was with me, alive and well. The bedroom door opens, so do my eyes. I already know who it is.

“Today is one of does days, where I just want to forget. Here I brought you a glass of flavored water."

Kylie hands me the glass and slips into the bed next to me as I gulp the sweet melon flavor down my throat.

"I think if we forget, how would we learn,” I say in answer to her words, “Sometimes I wish I was not given the rough end of life, but then I think of Lucca. I think of all the other Monsters in the world that had life too easy. Then I think maybe if my life was easy I would be just like them. I don't want to be a monster. So whenever the thought comes to my head I think that I'm exactly who I should be, a worthless filthy dirty beggar. Rather that, I could at least look at myself in the mirror.”

Kylie touches my arm and my head turns to her as I place my empty glass next to my bed, on the table, which Kylie calls a nightstand.

“You are worth more than all the zeros in my bank account. And I have a lot of them. Maybe you were a filthy dirty beggar Sugar, but worthless is something you are not. No man goes through so much for something worthless, let alone a monster. And I never waste time with worthless people and these days you have all of mine."

I remain quiet, her words hit me somewhere deep inside me. It makes me feel weird, like almost somebody, somebody important.

It is hard to say I lack confidence, because I never really had a choice but to put myself out there, I had to eat, that meant begging most of my life.

But I feel like I have another kind of confidence, one that has me wanting to sit up in bed and put my shoulders back and lift my chin. It is weird but good.

There's nothing more to say, Kylie seems to have the same thoughts as I do.

We both switch off our sidelights. I close my eyes, my mind skirts from the past and the present, wondering if what she said and the feeling it made me feel is safe.

I've been burned too badly in the past to just change, or want to be different.

When I lived with the Satan Snipers I thought of a fresh start.

At first, it was alone, but as time went there was a small part in my mind that wanted to stay there with them.

The more days went by, the stronger that feeling became.

Damn what a wake-up call I got when Lucca took those women. It was a reminder that I wasn't born to get a new start.

My life on this earth is my torture.