Prick
June. 2011. Twenty-five year old David Bostic of Bloomington, Indiana, pleads guilty to 66 charges of producing, receiving and distributing heinous images and videos containing child pornography. His victims of exploitation ranged in age from 2 months to 5 years. Babies to toddlers.
Her tongue, as she wiped it across the front of her teeth, peeling away bacteria from a long day spent sleeping, was thick, and her flattened premolars went unnoticed as they bit down on its pink, sticky flesh. Her heart slowed then jumped noticeably as her right temple twitched, then settled once more. Her eyes turned a vagrant, dusty hue, like leaves turning brown at Falls end, hiding the grey-greens, oranges and yellows beneath branch clippings and the snow of winter. She used to be unmissable, wonderful and entrancing, something grown men could hardly unlock from their gaze. Her eyes, burning, lingering reminders that woke them at night while their wives slept beside. Yet today she was someone different, something different, a friend of strangers, a hint of the beautiful girl she once was.
The thin needle slid easily into the plump, blue vein of her limp, left arm. Past the spongy, white flesh of her fragile epidermal coat, the needle, its contents now emptying into the organic abyss beyond boundaries of self-applied tanner, lumpy eye liner and cheap, purple pumps, pricked the girl gently as she closed her eyes and breathed in through her slightly opened, soft-lavender lips. Her body, once innocent and fresh, able to run, jump and roll in the wet, green grass of spring–brown earth beneath, grinding and gritty between her young, unpainted toes–showed no resemblance to her current physical stature. Now sixteen yet just a shell of a staggering teenager, head tucked low into her chest; long, black hair shielding her face as if to run inside herself, hide within the confines of wishful memories. She could almost feel the viscous drugs rolling through her arteries like a mud slide trudging down a hill, destroying every home and child in its path, numbing her nerves, blocking every impulse as her fingertips and then her arms and then her entire body turned cold to the world and the screaming voices inside her head.
From 2004-2007, Wachovia Bank (now Wells Fargo), based out of Charlotte, North Carolina, helped launder an estimated $380 Billion for Mexican drug lords, financially assisting the cartels drug traffic to the United States. The cartel lords in Mexico have murdered more than 40,000 of their neighbors and fellow citizens since 2006.
The needle pulled out of her flesh like a baby emerging from the womb. She watched the prick as it fell to the ground, the cracked asphalt of an alley only a select few ever ventured down. The normal tourists and their shopping bags full of plastic, Chinese-made, battery operated devices designed to distract their thoughts and gazes from the reality of world’s like hers, were far from this alley. Walk the floor of her world and venture a threatening path; each step a different needle, a different drug, a different disease poking into the foot’s sole, creeping its way into your circulation, hiding itself within the inner confines of your cells, striking and destroying in due time. Strut through her alley, come into her home, walk the proverbial plank as sharks wait for the meat of your body to break the oceans salty tide. Their shiny new toys would be of little use here; incessant texting and updating, she could show them something worth talking about. The empty syringe hit the ground with a splash and a few drops of puddle landed on her pink toenails poking out the end of her purple pumps strapped sloppily to her bony arches. The puddle, as if it were a pool and she were 13 again, swimming with her older brother and father just three summers prior, engaged her memory for a moment and then it was gone, her hand quivering slightly at the memory.
She wiped away the crisp, maroon strip of blood drying on her thin forearm, tied her hair into a neat pony tail, and stood against the wall, dazed, supported by the brick and mortar as if God himself were holding her in place, and if he let go the whole world would crumble down upon her, crush her beneath rubble and soot.
Ten minutes later a black limousine with tinted windows bridged the gap between the alley’s two walls.
