Deadliest of Sins
filled him. He got up and started pacing in front of his window, staring at Gudger who was still on his stupid cell phone. How he hated him! How he wished he could pound his stupid face into mush. But Gudger had at least a hundred pounds on him, plus he always carried that Taser on his belt. If he raised a fist at Gudger, the jerk would probably shoot him with that thing and then tell his mother he’d had a kiddie heart attack.
    â€œBut it won’t always be like that,” he whispered. “Someday I’ll be grown up. Someday I’ll be as big as Daddy.” He pictured himself tall, with his father’s big hands. He would be in the Marines, but he’d come home to visit his mother. There Gudger would be, sitting in his stupid chair, watching his stupid baseball game. He’d walk up and lift him up by the collar and punch him out. That’s for the swimming pool , he’d say. And for the time you put me on YouTube. And then when Gudger started to cry, he would hit him so hard his teeth would fly out of his mouth. And that’s for selling my sister, you bastard!

Four
    Samantha opened her eyes when the girls started leaving for the night. The black girls came first, their voices high and raucous. I ain’t going in that Bekins truck tonight. That white boy’s dick is like sucking on a straw! And then that little ol’ piddle of kum!
    That one came back what’s gonna put me in the movies … I’ll let y’all know when I get to Hollywood. They started to laugh, cackling like crows, then a rough male voice cut them short. You bitches shut up. At least them boys got dicks. All y’all got’s fat asses and big mouths.
    Others began to hurry past her room. The one who always cried for her mother went by, softly wailing mama, mama, mama as if it were a kind of prayer. The one they called Dusty came by full of piss and vinegar. You just get a load of me tonight, Clifford! She said, her voice coarse, her accent strange. I’ll bring you back two grand!
    I’m banking on it, baby, cooed a different male voice. You were made for that casino. We are one kick-ass team!
    Sam got out of bed and went to the bathroom. Afternoons, when the girls went out, weren’t so bad. They’d eaten and slept, been given their drug of choice. Twelve hours from now it would be different. Their footsteps would be heavy and defeated, much like her father’s mine crew at the end of a shift. The black girls would be angry, calling everybody a motherfucker. Dusty would bounce off the walls either high or drunk or both; others would come home crying about the trick who hit them or the cop who made them blow him for free. Always she waited to hear the one who cried mama, mama, mama . It surprised her that she came back at all.
    She flushed the toilet, then turned on the water to wash her hands. She knew that once the others left, Ivan would come with her tray of milk and cornflakes. In a month she’d never seen anyone else, never eaten anything but cereal for breakfast and a fast food meal for supper. Ivan had let it slip, though, why no pimp had taken her and herded her out with the others. “Word from the boss,” he whispered. “You’re special … you’re a virgin.”
    How they’d found that out, she didn’t want to think about. She assumed it had been when she was knocked out, after she’d gone to check out that car seat by the side of the road. She had a wisp of a memory of hands plucking at her clothes, but even that notion swirled away in a miasma of barely recalled dreams and sensations. When she finally woke up for real, she was in this small, boarded-up motel room with a bed, a bathroom, and a collection of old cartoon VCR tapes to play on a battered TV.
    She went back to her bed and waited. Five minutes later she heard a key at her door. Ivan stepped into the room bearing a tray of cornflakes. From Moscow, he had a lupine face and

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