Read Moral Zero for Free Online Page A

the world.
    Red finished his cigarette and stubbed it out on the wall. I’m gonna go man, gonna find another bar, another home, y’know?
    The man watched him leave through blurry eyes, and pulled the pieces of cardboard closer around him.
     
    Red found another bar and made acquaintance with it. He ordered more drinks and the bartenders served him placebos, non-alcoholic drinks disguised as alcohol, but he was in too much of a carefree state to realise. He left his drinks after only a few mouthfuls and forgot to go back to them for the rest of the night, engaged as he was in smutty conversation with a giggling gaggle of teenage girls, dressed as near to his satisfaction as he could reasonably ask for. They found him entertaining in his casual crudeness and clustered around him, prompting him for a good hour for more obscene answers to sexual questions, which he was more than happy to provide. Whether they thought him a mere clown or not did not much enter his appreciation of the scenario, delighted as he was with their exposed cleavages jiggling as they laughed, and watching their pert and fleshy young rears protruding from their tiny skirts and skin-tight pants as they left the throng to go to the bathroom.
    Eventually, though, most of them got bored with his words and antics and wandered off to entertain themselves elsewhere. Most, not all.
     
    A shadow appeared on his right, and Red sensed some presence of something not quite human, or at least nothing like him. He turned his head drunkenly, his cock still lodged in the girl’s asshole. Standing softly lit by an overhead lamp was a cop.
    It was wearing the unique badge and insignia of the district, nothing interesting, no artist’s design. Black on black and numbered, robotic. Its uniform gleamed, polished, em otionless. Faceless. Genderless. Red assumed there was some expression behind the faceplate, but it was a difficult idea to keep a firm grasp of. The form before him betrayed nothing. It did not shift on its feet or tap its fingers or fold its arms. It did not seem capable of sympathy, did not seem like it could be reasoned or bargained with. It would be like pleading to a machine. Such was the intended effect.
    How old is this female? The question was barked and the voice artificially distorted and processed, as though talking through a computer.
    The girl span her head, shocked out of her own pleasure. Her form twitched and it made Red’ s cock jump inside her. She quickly drew breath in a manner not completely dissimilar to being anally penetrated but she said nothing and they stayed locked together. It was too late to pretend otherwise. Red thought, perhaps, objectionable goods were best hidden.
              Seventeen, he lied calmly.
    The age of consent here is twenty-five.
    Tha t’s what I said, twenny-five.
    The cop raised its stick and put its black gloved hand down to its gunbelt as if anticipating trouble. I’m taking you under arrest.
    I’m on board with you there, officer. Red spun his cat grin and his head lolled back.
    The cop approached, hands moving to its belt to withdraw handcuffs. Red pulled out of the girl, relishing as always in the sigh as she was evacuated, and moved his hand to the end of his cock as it came out into the shadows and he curled his fingers and threw something at the cop which hit the faceplate and stuck. The black gloved hands went up and Red was off, dodging gunshots, his jeans held up with one hand and his half-erect cock still out, pointing and swinging like a broken signpost into the darkness.
     
    Corners after corners turned, backstreets run down, hiding in the gaps in old buildings and inside porn shops and moving again, furtive and paranoid, and hiding in a dumpster and then out, walking until he felt safe, safe enough, and here he was, tired and drunk and denied his sexual release. The adrenaline was wearing off and he felt a little sick.
    He lay in a gutter, on his back looking up at the stars.