His mother used to give him syrup for whatever ailed him; sticky sweet syrup that stuck on the cilia of his throat and gave him a sugar rush that for a short time blotted out the pain in his chest. She was quite insane his mother, but not so in the way of harming another creature - she was the complete opposite, and would love her only son until she killed him slowly, with hot smothering kisses.

Aaron's father was unknown. A trucker, who had, on the off chance to encounter his mother on a street corner, planted a child in her womb. A violent man she told him once, he would enjoy slapping her breasts back and forth while making dry love to her.

The trucker was to leave the following morning in a hazy cloud of cigarette smoke and morning breath. She was to lay on the mattress, hugging her fragile stomach with tobacco stained fingers. A picture was to be knocked off the wall, shards of glass glinting in the morning light. A delicate scene of beauty, birth, betrayal, she told him. A beautiful scene indeed.

He shut his eyes trying to blot out his childhood, sighed, and pushed back his chair with the balls of his naked feet. The clock ticked in the background, each small mechanical noise melting into the electric whirl of his small fan, the heavy air, and the fading sunlight that comes in slits through his window. The orange and yellow plays with the flesh on his back, telling stories and dancing while he dreams of Brian.

Dreams.

Though the plastic-flesh of Brian is nothing comparably to the real thing - or so his mouth and brain tell him - he is doing all of the things that real life has deprived him of. He touches his nipple, (and the still-recovering hole, where a ring used to hang through) with the tip of his finger. Then he rolls his head back, and sighs while staring at the white ceiling of his empty apartment.

And dreams.

The blonde 'deva' turned on to his stomach, and staring up into Brian's eyes, slipped his free hand around his sex. "What do you think they would do to me?" he spoke, dragging deep on the small white cigarette.

Brian knew he shouldn't be doing this. Molesting this child, straight out of his father's new Mercedes; only 18 years of age with golden hair and dark black eyes, jutting cheekbones and massive organ. What would Aaron think? He shook is head, tried to scatter his thoughts, gather his sexual wit, and manipulate the boy into giving him what he wanted.

Love in tongue; beautiful rough skin of spit, flapping wildly and erotically between teeth of bone and skin of silk. It was Brian's only weakness, his kryptonite since the seventh grade when his gym teacher decided to show him, and force it down his throat. But he couldn't even remember that now. He could never remember anything for very long, for it seemed that his mind held his memories under lock and key.

Ah but the tongue, he could remember that.

Brian took the boy's head in his hands, and guided him (smoke and all) towards the knot of flesh that rested between his legs. His tongue lapping up around tender foreskin, rough and cold; the boy's mouth never seemed to heat, no matter how hard Brian thrust It inside of him.

Tendrils of wispy smoke flew from the edges of the boy's mouth, made their way through his coarse pubic hair, and stung the inside shell of Brian's nose.

He reached for the limp tobacco and, plucking it from the boy's hands, put it to his lips. He never did enjoy the taste of cigarettes, but sex and pain always went hand and hand with him.

"I believe," he spoke to the ceiling and those lazy tendrils of smoke that wrapped and shaped around the fan above him. "That they, like any good parents would disown you - shun you. You will be the hushed talk of the town; at all those exquisite get-togethers they would gossip about what you were doing - and 'yes' they would say, 'he does like it up the ass', and 'oh yes, you know what they do in those bathrooms'. And of course you would be in a young republican's eye the spawn of Lucifer himself - taking over the world in a wave of one night stands and glitter.

"Then, you would then be forced to live on your own, with all of those filthy dildos that you queers keep around. You would live a life of leather and silver cock rings. Ever present will be the X on your chest from where the hard leather rubs you the wrong way. And of course, when you grew old and tired, and that sweet prostate of yours shrivels up into nothing, you will be forced to move out toward the street, and sell your mouth to willing young boys."

He smiled, twisting the boy's hair around his fingers.

The boy sat back on his legs. "Oh do shut up, and fuck me."

Brian grinned, and rocked back on the balls of his naked feet.

When they came, the dance started again, with another series of witty quips and the rocking of an uneven bed, dancing on the floor.

A mingling of bad techno and older suits, tourists, the kind of men and women who took advantage of another's pain, echoed from within the Pink Blossom. A drunk outside the door called to her, his dirty nails scratching the pavement. "Sugar," he yells. "I want some Sugar! Give me Sugar!"

It was her name. Most called her that. Some men called her Mistress; other men called her whore, tramp. Slut…

She sighed, hefting her short-cut leather jacket on. Her fingers trembling when she tried finding the zipper and pulling it up. She needed coffee. She needed heroin.

Her body looked like a spool of thread, twisted turning around her bones; skin jumbled together in her arms and back, yet thin and sparse in her waste and legs. Her hair was a series of muted purples turned pink under the neon glow of the Pink Blossom. It lay and felt like straw, the still harvested kind, raw and broken.

She had run away from home at the age of fifteen. She only thought of sweet things then, finer things that only her flighty mother and a father, who spent countless nights in her bed, would let her enjoy. Clean black velvet blankets, lace-crested pillows, fancy clothing, free food, and lodge, love. She saw life through rose-colored glasses, optimist to the fullest degree.

Life though, revolved around a small silver laptop, decorated with various dark stickers, and a 56k free wave modem. Her world lay in the small black and white keys that adorned its plastic body. Her soul turned on by the flick of a black-lacquered fingernail, the tapping of tender skin against sticky plastic black. Her old life, fast and blurred, composed and decompressed, digitized on five hundred megabytes of RAM.

When she ran, she went south from the prestige of Virginia. First to a small community on the outskirts of North Carolina, where she met a fine young boy by the name of Anthony, who introduced her to Hash, and told her of a fantastic City of Vampires and ghouls. A City that never slept, full of dark mystery, and always on the go; that's what she liked about New Orleans, a City on the move, like her own fast paced life.

She left again, (packing up her laptop and a small vial of sand for remembrance - which she lost on the trip) for all the shine and glamour that New Orleans had to offer her. She was hardly out of North Carolina though, when she met Skeleton, an older black man who gave her a ride in the back of his van for a piece of her skin. Brilliant white scars laced his body. They traveled the path of his bone, so that in the dead of hot-night, Sugar could still see his bones compress and decompress as he rested on the mattress next to her.

He taught her many useful things - how to shoot up, how to make a hit of acid slowly disintegrate in your mouth, furthering the trip, and how to lace marijuana with opium. Black Hash he called it. She smoked it up; deep inhales until her head spun her spine warmed with glitter and spice of a million firing neurons. He used to wrap his long legs around her waist, rubbing her spine slowly up and down while whispering in her ear, "Roll baby roll… just roll baby roll."

When they finally arrived, he left her deep in the French Quarter at a small Greek restaurant across the street from Café Du Monde. Left alone, with only her small leather backpack, a laptop shy one sticker, a small metal spoon, and a new addiction to feed.

And still she saw the world through rose-colored glasses. Her degree of perception blotched by the slow movement of her body, the jerky blurred figures that pressed down on top of her for money, even the polluted waters of the Lake and Mississippi beating against the side of a dock, riverboat.

But now, her computer bruised beyond her repair, (the stickers stripped to sticky residue) she only thinks of herself as an open book, the pages of her sex unfolding down her legs. Lace and ruffle on her thigh.

Although, today while taking off her clothes, and letting her skin rub against a twice-rusted pole, she didn't feel so tired, so old. Her eyes fell upon a boy curled in the corner booth, his knees to chest, his heart to shoulder. She watched, her eyes half-closed, as a tall Irish man came in and sat down next to him, stroked his hair, comforted him. A strange sight to see inside of a strip club.

She watched almost hypnotically, her eyes narrowing, taking on an almost feline quality; that of an animal ready to pounce. They cast the mirage of scorn, and reflected the blue lights around her. Time seemed to shorten, her skin to collapse around her jelly-thin bones; the lights flickering dead weight across her spine. She watched, purple hair around her sunken face as they tenderly spoke to each other, ate each other. The boy slowly lapping at the man's finger, talking into his skin. She seemed to recognize him from somewhere -

The music came again louder and louder, screeching through the worn speakers. The world returned to normal, her pace seemed to pick back up again, her heart to return to normal, her breasts to sag, her head to droop.

The Irish man left, the boy's lips parted in a farewell whisper. Her eyes intensified as the young man filled with tears, and he knelt back down on the red leather. It was only toward the end of her performance that the boy seemed to awaken, sit up straight, and stare at the door as if waiting for someone. Waiting. Unmovable marble flesh in a sea of melting red leather.

He only left after she had walked off stage, far into the back where the girls played with hair and clamps. She never saw him leave, but only imagined that his exit was with spine straight, head high.

"Fuck woman!"

She turned a corner, nearly slamming into a young couple with painfully slow stares. She sidestepped them, ducking her head down further until her neck-fat was crushed between larynx and jawbone. The man and woman muttered to each other on harsh breath as she walked further and further away, trying not to think of the young boy in the strip club with teary eyes and broken heart.