(Wrote for fun. All characters are over 18)
To Hell and Back
There was trash in piles in the hallway. The stairwell smelled of piss. The only paint that wasn't pealing had come from a spray can.
Looking down I watched the huge rat waddle past. It paid me no mind at all, completely unafraid. Mind you, I've had smaller dogs so maybe it was right to not be afraid.
There were angry voices from the apartment next to the one I was looking for.
Gunshots in the distance. Sound of an ambulance or maybe a firetruck even more distant.
Standing for a moment, I looked at the tarnished brass numbers on the door. Looking to my left, I saw that someone had taken a can of red spray paint and written "whore" on the wall with an arrow pointing to this door.
The door handle turned without resistance. When I pushed the door I felt a weight against it. I had to really lean into it to get it to move at first. Stepping through the opening, I saw my sister leaning against her front door, passed out.
"Becca?"
Only silence answered me.
Squeezing past, letting the door close back, I instinctively locked it. Kneeling down, I looked my sister over. She was dressed in torn nylons and scuffed red shoes. Her skirt was mostly see-through lace and the rest was red vinyl. A gold belt and a gold tube top completed the outfit. I wrinkled my nose at the smell of her. Old sweat, stale perfume, old sex musk. Piss.
"Becca?"
I gave her shoulder a shake, she swatted at me, and grumbled a barely audible "Go Away..."
Standing up, I gave my sister's apartment a look. If anything it was worse than the hallway outside had led me to believe it would be. An old trash smell made the small kitchen unbearable. The living room, if it could be called that, was filled with a million variety of clutter. A pathway led to a bedroom and a small bathroom.
Leaning down, I moved my arms under her knees and behind her back and with a small grunt lifted my sister from the floor. She leaned lifeless into my chest with a bare murmur of protest.
Carrying her across the room, dodging past trash and detritus, I placed her on the end of her bed. She flopped like an empty sack, boneless. With a sigh, I began to get Becca out of her filthy clothing. Tossing it into the piles around the bed, not caring what went where.
If not for my time spent time in the military - surrounded by far worse human smells - the reek of her unwashed body would have been beyond nauseating.
Leaving her in the tube top and panties I went to the bathroom and found a washcloth that - while it wasn't clean - wasn't beyond redemption. The two thin towels in the room were a lost cause but I found a clean-ish cotton shirt by the bedroom door that would work for a towel.
Holding my breath long enough to find an unused and extremely dusty pan in the kitchen, I filled it in the bathroom sink and, with a bit of soap, began to give my sister's thin body a slow going over.
"God, Becca ... what have you done to yourself?"
I was debating removing the last of her clothes and cleaning the rest of her when there came a pounding on the apartment door.
"Open up, bitch, rent is due!"
An eye on the alarm clock by the bed told me it was close to midnight.
Again the heavy fist on the door.
"Bitch, don't make me knock on this damn door again!"
Crossing through the cluttered living room, my right hand went to the small of my back. When I unlocked the door with my left hand I turned the knob a large man pushed it open as I expected him to. He stopped when my 1911 Colt 45 barrel about broke his front teeth out.
"Whoever you are. Whatever you want. Walk away or die," there was ice in my voice.
His hands eased away from his body slowly. His eyes were wide as dinner plates. For a half second, he tried to look past me, then he refocused on me as my thumb clicked back the hammer.
Backing up a step, he made to speak but I shook my head and gestured with the gun for him to go.
He went.
Locking the door back, I moved back into the room where my sister was passed out on the bed. She had not moved since I left her, dead to the world. Clicking the safety on my pistol, I holstered it and went back to taking care of her.
The vomit-covered halter top and the piss-smelling panties I tossed into the bathroom.
It was an hour of washing her with the rag later before I accepted that she was as clean as I could make her without putting her in the shower. I now knew far more about my sister's anatomy than any brother should know, but I was not even in the least aroused by her nudity. The bruised skin of her ass, the dark purple-green marks of fingers around her wrists, ankles and throat. Sores from what were clearly cigarette burns.
There was nothing about her that was erotic. Pathetic, pitiable, and heart-rending, yes. Absolutely yes.
Covering Becca with a sheet that was not by any means cleaner than anything else in the place, I got to my feet, looked around at the mess, and - with a sigh - went to work.
** ** ** ** ** ** **
Stepping back inside my sister's apartment from taking the trash bags to the overflowing dumpster in the parking lot, I was not surprised to see that she hadn't moved while I was going. I was betting it would be noon before she slept off the drunk she was under.
People had watched me the whole way out and back. The morning pale reddish glow giving faces a demonic look. None made any moves toward me, they simply watched. Not even the big guy from earlier who I saw standing at the other end of the parking lot with a few other guys his size and general thuggish demeanor. For a moment one looked like he was going to but the big guy stopped him with a hand on his arm.
I looked back at their antagonistic gazes with a calm acceptance that I would have to kill a few of them before the day was over. That cold uncaring look seemed to make them reconsider.
For now at least.
The apartment wasn't clean, nothing short of a four-alarm fire would achieve that, but it was clean to the point I would consider sitting down on something.
A murmur from the bedroom drew my attention.
