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His mother is laughing hard in the background. Some silly comedy on the telly – not that she can say, there's one too many bottles on the wobbling coffee table, and she's sprawled on the dirty rug beside it. Probably as much comfortable as the old sofa is, at that, given all the springs that come out of its by now flattened entrails.
His hands are up, elbows crossed in front of his face. He's screaming his throat raw, even though he knows it never helped him before, it won't help him now, but it's all he can do. The blows keep coming, in between the drunken curses and rambled filth.
His mother always intervenes, at some point. Usually when she's tired of hearing him crying, or when the neighbours start banging at the thin walls, or when she realizes the last bottle is empty and they need to go out and replenish their supply.
At the last house they were in, it was the cabinet underneath the sink, alongside half empty bottles of cheap floors cleaner liquid soaps and dirty rags. But then, he was little enough that he would fit in there. He's grown, recently, and this is Joe's – Bill's? Hank's? - place, so she drags him by his hair, kicking and yelling, and throws him in the old boiler cabinet under the stairs.
It's dark, and smelly, and he punches the closed door until his hands hurt.
He can hear the music in the other room, when they come back, the loud clicking of glass, and then, later on, her moans and his heavy grunting. Knees tight to his chest, he presses his hands on his ears, closes his eyes tight.
~
The boy is younger than him, only a few years, but even that small a difference at that age is significant. And he's grown so much lately, hair in his eyes, a smoke almost always in the corner of his mouth. His mother slaps it out of his mouth when she sees it, but he puts another in as soon as she's distracted, or drunk enough not to pay attention anymore.
The boy is a small, pretty thing, with wide eyes. The boy's father – Ted? John? – barely remembers that the kid is around most of the time. The boy goes to school quietly, tries to be unobtrusive.
"What's your name?" he asks him the first day they take up in this house, all their belongings in a couple of suitcases.
"Davey…what's yours?"
There's a Jaws poster on the wall behind the boy, one corner torn, a few black marker's scribblings here and there. "You can call me Sharkey", it's his answer, and since then, that's the only name he answers to.
When the boy comes back from school, in the afternoon, Sharkey is almost never home. But when his mother is downstairs drinking, when Davey's father slap his fat hands on her flanks and her shrill laugh echoes in the house, when both boys can hear them grunting and rutting, Sharkey enters in Davey's room, closes the door behind him. Sometimes he uses his fists, sometimes a belt.
Davey learns to swallow as well as he learns how to get detection at school.
It doesn't last long. Davey's father kicks Sharkey and his mother out of the house soon enough, and it's a trailer park for them, for a while. Sharkey doesn't like it, it makes him suffocate, and he has to stay outside most of the nights when his mother's steady refill of men spends the night.
There are a couple of girls living two trailers away from his mother's. Sharkey sees them going out together, coming back late. They look at him weird, and he doesn't like it. He corners one on her own, one lazy summer afternoon. He's grown some more, he's tall now, his hands are big. He covers her mouth, fumbles with his zipper, pushes her into a quiet space and keeps her down long enough for him to come inside of her. It doesn't really take that long at all. She snarls at him, tries to scratch his face, and he slaps her around then, makes her cry, and that really makes him hard. That really feels good.
"C'mon, c'mon," he picks her up, pats her hair. "You're my girl, now, it's okay." He walks her back, lets her kiss him and waits until she's inside her trailer to wipe his mouth of her.
~
He stays the night a few weeks later.
It's another girl, another trailer, after that. And the one after that, too. And then another.
It's almost a year before he thinks of his mother. He doesn't even remember the name of that first girl.
~
The music is loud, crashing loud, thundering. Sharkey's pockets are well filled, he pays drinks all around until he can barely stand. His girls are all back home, this late…or this early, whatever. He's got his money, earned on their backs. That guy at the end of the bar counter has been looking at him way too much.
Sharkey is up and into his space in the matter of seconds. "What the fuck you looking at, uh?" He's got a knife out already, the flat of its blade pressed between the guy's legs, none the less dangerous.
"Hey, hey, Sharkey, c'mon. Let me close in peace, hey? C'mon, man…" the bar tender knows him. They all know him here, and in other similar places, gutter-like as they are. Dark places where people go to find what they need, and pay for it. One way or another.
The guy's eyes are wide, and his skin's gone grey in the bluish lights. "N-nothing. N-nothing."
"You're just a stupid fuck, ain't ya? You cunt. Shoo, go home. Shoo!" The knife is waived in mid-air, vaguely aimed towards the exit. Sharkey stays tall and looming as the guy scuttles away, and it leaves a sick taste in Sharkey's mouth, a tightness in his guts. He's breathing too fast. Too hard.
"Why's so fucking dark in here!" His left hand swipes the bar counter, a couple of glasses and a bottle crashing on the floor, sounds of shards like tinkling bells, drops of sweat on Sharkey's brow.
He strides out in the night, the tension in his muscles making his steps jumpy, wide shoulders and frantic eyes making people side away from him.
He screams and yells at a bum in a dark alley. Kicks him until he hears the cracking of bones. Spits on him.
Sits on the dirt against the link fence of a car-park not far away. Shakes for a while, knees tight to his chest.
Crawls on his hands when the boots appear in front of him.
Opens his mouth and uses his tongue and takes it like a good boy, face wet and palms gritty.
Rolls with the rhythmic motion and squeezes his dick hard as he's fucked up the ass, again and again.
Covers his head with his elbows when the blows arrive.
Puts a smoke between his lips with trembling fingers and soil-dirty fingernails at the first lights of sunrise.