Malachi - Hedge-forts and Rocket Ships
Title: Hedge-forts and Rocket Ships
Verse/characters: Rare Birds, Malachi
Prompt: 007 - Days
Word Count: 824
Rating: R
Notes: Malachi is eighteen-years-old. He's been in the park for about 4 weeks, spending his time tricking to score drugs, doing drugs, wash, rinse, repeat. If this intro note sounds familiar, it should. I've been struggling with this portion of his story and re-tooling things a bit. Previously, Malachi made a very conscious decision to get off drugs and head home. (Home being his not-quite-boyfriend's place.) I've since questioned the likelihood of a kid with a 6+ year heroin habit being able to make that decision and force himself to travel all the way across town to a place where he knows he's going to have to detox. (Especially when he's failed at it once.) So! Things are a little different. He will go back, but he'll go back because he needs help and at this point in his life, he is still caught up in a cycle of using. (Using drugs and using people who will help him.) He'll make the choice to detox--but it won't be a choice he has very long to think about. He needs a little push--or in this case a heavily locked door. At any rate, here's a bit leading up to that. Warnings for violence and rape, drug use, and prostitution.






The last days chunk together like gum stuck on a shoe stuck on more gum. Ugly colors and soursweet residue. Rubber in the hot sun. Even the breeze off the distant bay smells mechanic, as dingy as the hoarse breath of the buses that run along the East side of the park.

His bag is gone. It went first. Snatched away in the hands of a tall kid on a skateboard that reminded him of a rocket ship. Pointed at the nose and flared at the tail. Noisy but fast. Knowing the boy needed none of the ratty old clothes or special rocks or knick-knacks, he followed the winding slope, peeking in every trash can. No boy. No skateboard. No bag.

The day after that, soup doesn't sound appealing. Nothing sounds appealing. The thought of a fix makes him sick and lurchy but not as sick and lurchy as not fixing so he backs into a toilet stall and tilts into the slow-motion routine just to catch his breath. Grateful for deep pockets, he stashes what's left, knuckles brushing against the candywrapper crinkle of condoms and the soft kiss of lint.

He avoids the rows mirrors, glancing only briefly at the corner of the third before the door, where the bottom right corner has blossomed with what looks like dried blood but is probably rust. The rust forms patterns and whorls that remind him of ink in the water from a startled squid. It's like something scared the mirror.

The night after that, hungry and angry at the sound of pine needles under his shoes, he doesn’t notice the other boys slinking away at the sight of a four door Accord and the sound of the hard rock radio station leaking out the dingy car's sunroof. He approaches stiff-legged and jerky, and when five boys pile out of the car he forgets to startle away, to fall back into the shadows and run along the paths that the high school boys and bad tricks never know how to follow.

They make their own path, dragging him along like a reluctant younger sibling. They are younger, he notices. They don't notice. He doesn't feel older than any of them, but his body feels a thousand years old. Too tired to fight back but awake enough to cry out softly when they push him around and call him names. Going limp doesn't help. Ducking his head doesn't help. But after a while most of them leave, and he's only grateful until he catches dark blue eyes that don't have the same helter-skelter glint of fear and excitement that the other boys' eyes had.

Oh, he thinks, disappointed that it won't be over. He knows where they are--a good place to sleep. Still close enough to the tennis courts that the streetlights from the parking lot cast a warm antique glow to the underbrush and the thick hedges that make nice beds. Forts. But it isn't time to puke out the hurt and find a fort and sleep off the bruises. Blue Eyes finds a tree, pulls silver tape out of his pocket. You don't need the tape, he thinks. I can stand, just get done.

When it hurts it surprises him. The bark scratches at his stomach and his penis and his chest and his cheek and it stings. The bark smells like sap, like a holiday or a nylon sock full of scraps of potpourri. It hurts enough that he cries a little, thinking about his bag full of scraps of paper and bits of stories and packets of crackers he's been hoarding and some spare socks and an extra shirt and an old rag and a spoon and his eyeliner and the last bit of silver-sparkled nail polish from the dollar rack at the drug store. He cries because he's tired and it's been too many bad days in a row and he's hugging a tree with his wrists taped together and the insides of his arms are already swollen and raw in places that don't want to be hugging trees, and some kid with a car and teachers and school books and friends is fucking him for free when he could at least pay up--he wouldn't say no. But he can't say yes because they taped his mouth. And his bag is gone.

After a while they're done, leaving the sting and stick of pulled-off-tape to add to the gummed-up wreck of time. The park is a swamp. The air is heavy and his bones are lead. He throws up the hurt and tries to wipe off before sleeping in the rustling cradle of a hedge where the Old Ones have left blankets that have been there so long the weeds grow through them and snails and worms and bugs whisper along the seams. Done with crying, he shakes to sleep thinking, I want to go home. I want to go home now.