The road to Ithica(GENESIS)

Warnings: Adult! I'm not kidding. Don't read this if you're underage and/or easily offended. It deals with matters that aren't pretty. Frank language and discussion of unpleasant topics. That will go for the entire series. Graphic sexual descriptions so if you are not over 18 don’t read it.

Notes: I always was intriguing from Sara’s past and all the fics that I’ve read either start from her grads years or stop there. I wanted to do something different. I wanted to follow her from her early years till Vegas. This is not a CSI fic, this is a Sara fic. Once again, thanks Ace for her beta work.


Disclaim:I don't own CSI.

I
(The end is the beginning)

They say that when you die you see your entire life pass before your eyes. I don’t know if I’m going to die - I must be dying. A car hit me not a moment ago. My body is heavy, and my mind is fogged, so I must be dying. I mean, what else it could it be? I hear screams of panic and fear, and someone is calling my name, telling me to ‘hold on!’ However, I don’t know if I want to.

Don’t get me wrong, I love to live even if my life has more downs than ups. Yeah, I know, most people’s lives are like this- so fucking what? It’s not something new. I know that; I know. But it’s my life, damn it, and I only know that life. I don’t know, and I don’t care about other people’s lives.

I close my eyes since I can’t see anything else besides a bright white light. I never thought that I was going to die like this. I never thought that I would die in a car accident. Funny, isn’t it? I always thought that I was going to die from the gun of a suspect. You can never know with life.

They say that when you die you see your life pass before your eyes. That’s a lie.

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“You heard about Nicky, man?” Kate asks me and I nod my head. Yeah, I heard about him, who hasn’t? “The fuzz* caught him last night with ten bags*.”

“Ten, huh?” I say but I don’t pay much attention to her. I want to speak with TJ about something, and if I stay to hear her, I’ll miss him. It happened before, and I’m sure it will happen again.

“Snake said that it was two, but you know how the fuzz is.”

Truth is that I don’t know, but I nod my head affirmatively. I’ve never been caught because I never push. I only take; if I start pushing, soon I’ll start using, and I don’t want that. I don’t like what smack does to people. I smoke some pot, and I take pills, but that’s it. I don’t touch the heavy stuff.

“Have you seen TJ?” I ask her, and I pack my things from the table. I put my Pall Mall pack in my bag, and I’m waiting for Kate to give me back my stolen Zippo, but she keeps it. Once again, I don’t say anything. It’s the wise thing to do when dealing with Kate ‘Big Boss’s daughter’ Walker.

So I let her keep my Zippo, and I pay for our drinks since she never pays for anything except for coke, and I leave her talking with some poor guy that doesn’t know her, and I bet he wished he never met her. I go out in the rain. I love it when it rains; it makes people miserable, and for a while, they feel how I’ve felt for six months now.

I’m not fooling myself; I had to change. I could go to another foster family, or I could go to the streets. I chose the second; at least the streets have some honor. The last family I was in, they had four kids like me. They didn’t care if we had food or if the clothes were too small for our bodies. We were easy money for them - a business. The ‘father’ had a thing with boys too. Every night I heard him go into my ‘brother’s’ room. That went on for weeks until one night I couldn’t stand it anymore.

I had packed my things, not that I had much to pack - two old, ripped jeans and a few hooded sweatshirts, a sweater two sizes too big, and an old pair of Nikes. I stole three books from them; it wasn’t like they read them, and they were going to miss them. When I heard the door open and the drunken footsteps, I got out from where I was hidden, and with a baseball bat, I managed one shot to my ‘father’s’ head. I heard a small ‘thanks’ before I ran like hell from there.

I never looked back. I don’t know what happened to Mickey after that. I’m sure that when he was old enough to understand that people would actually pay to do what his foster father did, he’d be out on the streets. Why give it for free? At least on the streets it would be his choice and not some drunken bastard’s.

I check TJ’s favorite spot, but he isn’t there. Where he can possible be? I heard that there is a party going on Saturday night, and I want to be in on it. I need the money, I have to pay my part of the rent, and I owe Snake for his barbs. How the hell did I mess up like this? I shouldn’t take that shit; I shouldn’t, not when I’m a hundred bucks sort. But he knows me better than I know myself; he knows that I can’t say no while stoned.

I walked thirty minutes and then I remembered: tonight it’s the night of my best john, so I rushed home - if I can call this overpriced hole that I’m sharing with three others home. But it’s better than any of the ‘homes’ that I knew. I don’t have anyone to call me names or threaten to split my ass if I dare to sleep. At least here people don’t scream or hurt each other for fun.

So I go home and take a quick shower. Afterward I put on minimal make-up, he doesn’t like heavy make-up; he pays me to be his daughter not his whore. He is my favorite john; he never fucks me. He feeds me, he provides me a warm place to sleep, and he buys me books and clothes. Well, he only bought me clothes once, but that’s once more than every other john I had met.

When I ran from the foster home where I last was, I came here. I discovered two things that day: I could play pool, and I had a pretty face. At least that was what my johns said to me. I had a hard time accepting that. My parents never told me that I was beautiful; that was my brother’s job. He was the handsome one in my family - tall, well built, curly hair, and perfect teeth.

I hate my rabbit’s teeth, I simply do. I don’t smile often because of them; johns say that it ruins my angelic face; therefore, I never smile when I’m with a client. My parents were too stoned to buy me braces, and now I’m too old to have my tooth fixed; plus, I don’t have the money for that. I keep my mouth shut and everyone is happy.

I have a few hours to spend before my date. He never comes here; we always meet outside of the Modern Art museum, except for the first time that he picked me up; that’s our date spot, every two weeks at eight o’clock. I’m always wearing something nice for him, my best black jeans and a blouse that he bought for me. It’s not for my age, but it’s soft and warm, and I wear it anyway because he paid for it.

He has a thing with black; he only wants me to wear black. I put on black satin pants (his gift of course) and a black bra, which I don’t need since my chest isn’t very big, but it goes nice with the pants. I watch my reflection at the mirror - maybe a little more black mascara there and a little bit of black eye-liner here, just to frame the warm brown of the iris. Yeah, perfect.

Happy with my appearance, I walk out of the bathroom, and I crash to the broken bed. I remember the day that we found that bed with Loren; it was a cold, rainy day like this one. I put the blanket all around my body; it’s about forty-five degrees outside, and I swear that the temperature in the room is a couple of degrees cooler. We only turn on the heat when all four of us are in, otherwise we have to leave ten bucks more for heat - ten bucks that I don’t have.

I put my rings in the drawer; he doesn’t like rings either. My john wants me to look like your average teenage girl, so who am I to go against his will? He lets me wear my necklace though. I don’t know; he’s just weird. I mean, he pays me two hundred bucks for watching me taking a bath. People have asked me to do weirder things, like this guy who liked to jerk off in my legs.

My legs must be the best part of me - long, with the right curves in the right places and no signs of imperfection . Jena, one of the other girls, always curses about her legs, and when I’m in the room, she pinches mine, leaving awful bruises. The girl brings new meaning to the word ‘envy.’ I don’t like her at all, and if it wasn’t for the rent, I bet that none of the rest would want her.

“Hey, Slim,” Rebecca, our resident mom comes to the room, “What shitty weather, huh?”

“I dunno; I kind of like it,” I say, and I’m up for a smoke. I light a cigarette, and I open the small window, letting some cold air inside.

“You are a freak, Slim,” she bites her nails, and I know what that means.

“Tell the others that they’ll have my part by tomorrow, okay?” I say, really pissed off, and I start to get dressed. I wear my black jeans and my black blouse, and on top I wear an old leather jacket which is too big for my thin body. I took that twenty dollars from a garage sale.

“It’s not that…” she tries to say, but I don’t let her.

“I was sick last week, remember that? I haven’t avoided paying my share, and I’m sure as hell not going to start now. Got that, Jena?” I say, and I open the door to find her and Lucy behind it. She’s ready to say something, but with a ‘fuck you,’ I leave the house.

I’m so pissed off that I run into an old lady and knock her down. My cheeks turn red from embarrassment, and I murmur thousands of apologies while I help her to stand on her feet again. She just smiles, says that it’s okay, and continues her walk. As I watch her walk away, I realize that she was the kindest person I had met in two years now, and that makes me sad.

I catch the tram at the last second, and when I find a seat, I look at my watch. I’ll be early for my date. I watch the rain from the window. After my mother killed my father, I was sent to a foster home in Seattle. The family that had us, me and two other kids, had a house near the lake. Since I was the younger child, I had my own room. It was a small attic, and compared to my old room, it was smaller than a jail cell, but I loved it.

That was probably the last time that I felt like I was part of a family. The wife was a mother hen, always in the kitchen, always asking one of us what we wanted for dinner. The other kids were okay too - they didn’t try to hit me or anything like that. They didn’t even make fun of me when I first arrived there with my eyes puffy from crying. They left me alone to deal with it. Two months later and six failed attempts to find my aunt, and I was back in Frisco.

“Shit!” I say when I miss my stop. Now I have to walk through the rain; nice going Sidle. I get off at the next stop, and I walk. My stomach rumbles like crazy, but I only have few dollars. I need to have some money in case he doesn’t show up. I doubt that; four months now he’s always waiting for me. If there’s one thing that I learned from life it’s that life can fuck you when you least expect it, so I ignore my stomach, and I keep my money.

I look at the building, and I can’t help but wonder what exhibits are inside. I have never been inside of that museum, and I find that weird since I love visiting museums and galleries. Maybe in the future…I smile about that. Yeah, maybe in the future I’ll be someone else. I think a lot about the future. I know mine pretty well - I’ll be in the streets for the rest of my life, giving head to anonymous businessmen. And I’ll always have jail for vacation time.

I see the black Mercedes and I walk that way. I know that it’s him and not someone else with the same car. I learned a lot of things on the streets. I learned how to second guess the johns. Some of them look adorable and sweet, but like with books, it’s the inside that counts. I heard stories from kids that went with Santa Claus and faced Mr. Hyde. Second guessing is a life saver. I hate the fact that I have to do that, and I love the fact that second guessing someone will save my life - in that case my ass.

“Hey,” I say, and I look inside the open window. He just stares at me, and then I realize that he probably has second thoughts about me. I’m soaking wet, and he is probably worried about his car’s interior. It is a very expensive car, a car that I can only enjoy from a distance.

“Just tell me where to meet you, and I’ll be there,” I say quickly before he changes his mind and calls for a five thousand a night call girl.

“Get in the car,” he says, and I do as he wishes. “You lost weight.”

“Uh, I was sick last week, but I’m not now,” I add fast because I keep saying the wrong things.

“You need to eat,” and those are the last words that he says to me. Next time he speaks, he gives an order to a take-out McDonald’s. He didn’t ask me what I wanted, not that I have a problem with that. I’ll eat whatever he wants me to eat, a cheeseburger or rotten cheese, whatever he wants. He drives and takes our order. He gives me the one bag and he keeps the other.

“I want to eat all your fruits; you are too thin for your age, and I’m guessing that fruits aren’t on your daily diet.”

He’s guessing well. Fruits are too expensive for me. Instant rice and boxes of
macaroni and cheese are my daily diet. Coffee too. Gallons of coffee and milk. If I’m lucky and Rebecca isn’t stoned, I might eat a cooked dinner. She’s a great cook, but she loves to cook H more than food.

“Thank you,” I say because I haven’t forgotten my manners. My parents were lots of things, but boy, did they have manners! I always had to say ‘thank you’ and ‘please’ at the table - always standing up when an older person came into the room. Eat small bites and always use flatware, even when eating fish.

“You are welcome,” he says, and he smiles.

He’s older than me, maybe forty years older, maybe less. He had warm green eyes and lovely grey hair. He’s taller than me and a lot heavier. He’s not muscular, but he’s isn’t flat either. One time I asked him what he did for a living. He said that that was not my business and that he was a maestro. He never said where, and I never asked him.

“This will be our last time,” he says when he parks his car outside of his beach house, “therefore, I’d like for you to stay the whole weekend.”

“I’m sorry if I did anything wrong,” my voice is full of panic, “I promise, if you tell me what I did wrong, I’ll never do it again.”

“I’m leaving for Europe.”

He’s leaving me. I nod my head, and I jump out of the car. I shouldn’t feel disappointed, but I do. He’s just a client, just a fucking john. I was stupid to left myself feel something for him. I feel…safe when I’m around him, like nothing will ever happen to me. I will never let myself trust anyone again. Never! I wipe a few tears away from my eyes, and I’m leave for the bathroom.

I brush out the tangle damage from the windy rain; my hair and my legs are my best features. Natural curly, and not thanks to some telemarketing product. I check my face. I destroyed my make-up when I wiped my eyes, so I apply some eyeliner. Now it’s better. I’m starting to take my clothes off when he comes and stops me.

“Not tonight.” What the fuck does he mean by that? That’s what he pays me for. That’s my job. I don’t like it, but that’s my job. I put my blouse on, and I walk out. He gives me a glass of juice, and he nods for me to follow him. We are going to the veranda, and then he looks up.

“This hour on Monday I’ll be flying, just like those guys up there.” I look up to see the shape of an airplane. The lights capture my eyes, and I follow them until I can’t see anything but the black sky.

“I’ll give you three thousand to stay the whole weekend. You’ll do whatever you want to do, surf, skate, go see a movie, anything. But at the end of the last day, you will let me do anything I want for an hour. How’s that for a deal?”

I quickly nod my head. Mama raised no fool.

“Good, good,” he takes a sip from his whiskey, “What would you like to do now?” he asks me, and I don’t know.

People have a lot of time to ask me what I want. Usually, they order me what to do, so right now I am lost with this unexplained gift of freedom. And that guy will pay me? I should pay him. Okay, that doesn’t change the fact that I don’t know what to do. So I say the first thing that comes to my mind.

“Got any puzzles?”

“I can find some,” he says and together we walk inside, “Take the stuff off of your face. You’ll ruin it with all this make-up.”

I go the bathroom again, and this time I wash my face. I look younger than my age, and that’s something that johns like. I’m lucky with my body, seems that everyone finds something to like. My body - it’s not feminine enough, and it’s not virile enough, and I guess that people like me because I’m in the middle. Middlesex, I attract both men and women. Androgyny.

When I was eight, my mother decided that I was old enough to talk about sex. She told me about a very important man, Dr. Kinsey, and his work. She told me all about sex, and that I shouldn’t be afraid if things got nasty. It’s just sex, and if few slaps in the ass turned my partner on, I should do it. And I should do whatever turned me on too. Then she wrote down six numbers; from one to six and asked me how I felt about every classmate I had. I told her that I like Mary because she had toys and that I liked Lamar because of his brown skin.

She said that I was a three.

“I found one,” john says from outside, “I’m afraid it’s only 500 pieces, and I’m not sure, but I think that it is short of three or four of them.”

“I’m coming.” I look at myself one last time in the mirror, and I walk out.

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I was afraid of what he wanted to do the last hour, but I had agreed, and I needed the money. I’m a hustler; I give heads, blow jobs, ass fucks - everything the client pays me to do. The difference is that I knew from the start with other guys that it would be fellatio, and with that a blow job. With him, I didn’t know anything. He went from ‘bath boy’ to ‘Mr. Surprise’ in two seconds. The fact that I was alone with him, and no one knew where I was, scared the shit out of me.

I wanted to call Rebecca and tell her where I was, but I never found the chance. After putting the puzzle together, we watched television until the wee hours of the morning. He had cable, and we watched programs from every possible channel before I switched the channel to MTV.

I never sleep during the night, and this time wasn’t different. He told me goodnight and went to sleep, and I was left alone to watch video clips and eat chips. I drank a gallon of milk and two cherry cokes and went to sleep when the sun rose. I never was a morning person; I remember fighting with my mom when I had to go to school. The reason that I didn’t like to sleep at night was simple. There was yelling, and then the sounds of broken glass or the sound of flesh against flesh, and then my parents would wake me up, and we all drove together to the emergency room, hearing Jefferson Airplane or The Doors, but only the good albums.

And all of the town knew about the eccentric couple of forgotten hippies, but no one said a word. Kids didn’t play with me because I didn’t have any toys - my parents didn’t believe in toys. Nature was the biggest toy, and I should learn from her. The only toys that I had were puzzles, but puzzles aren’t fun when you are seven. So the other kids avoided me, and in time, I learned to avoid them too.

“Ohgawd…ohgawd…”

My body explodes, and I stop thinking for a moment. I never had an orgasm with a client, and the few orgasms that I had experienced, I was alone. And this man, I don’t even know his name, and he doesn’t know mine; we are ‘john’ and ‘jane,’ is giving my so much pleasure that I can’t take it.

“Please…no more, please…”

But he doesn’t listen to me. He keeps licking my clitoral hood and teases my clitoris itself. He stuck his tongue in deep and then licks around the outside of my swollen mound. And when he realizes that I’m getting close to release, he pulls back and just watches. My hips and pussy are moving about trying to find some way of achieving release.

"Please!” I beg him, “Please!”

"Honey, I'm just getting started,” and he means that.

He keeps me on the edge of ecstasy for twenty minutes; he would tease me to the brink but not let me cum. But after a point, I had stayed on the edge as long as I could stand to. All he had to do was insert a couple of fingers into my tortured pussy, and it was all over. It was like a dam broke inside of me, in more ways than one. My entire body was writhing in pure delight. My mouth was open and trying to breathe in as much air as possible.

The hour went on like that - me on a continuous orgasmic trip, him between my legs. I guess we are both happy. When the hour is over, he comes and kisses my cheek. He smells like me, and his mouth is full of my juices. I can’t keep my eyes open, I’ve never felt this tired before. He kisses me once more, and then he’s gone.

“You can sleep as long as you like.”

And with these eight words, he’s out of my life. When I wake up the next day, I feel sore. I have a hard time pissing; I’m just too sore in that area. I take a hot bath and wash my hair with the shampoo he always liked. He left the bottle for me, so I’m taking it. As I walk outside and into the room, I see a box. It says ‘Jane or whatever is your real name,’ and I open it.

One pair of sneakers, one pair of Levis, a black shirt, and a new leather jacket - all in the right size. I put them on quickly. The leather jacket fits perfectly, and the shoes are comfortable on my feet. There’s an envelope at the bottom of the box; the three thousand and a note.

‘I’m leaving with a broken heart, and yes, I know that I should be ashamed of what I did with you, but I refuse to feel this way. I hadn’t committed statutory rape, and if anyone says that, it’s a lie. It never felt that way, not with you anyway. So Jane here is what we had agreed to - three thousand dollars. I hope you had a wonderful weekend because I sure did (even when you heard that awful music from that asylum you call a channel). Please buy food with that money. Food Jane, not pot or beer or crack. Food. Take care.’

And that’s what I do. I buy some food, some real food with vitamins and all. I buy some fruits too, and a novel just because I can. I never had so much money in my hands, and luckily I’m smart enough to understand that carrying all that money with me is like screaming ‘steal me’.

I go to the bus station where I have a locker and put the rest of the money inside. I take three hundred with me. One for Snake, one for the rent, and one for shops. I buy a few books and a new pair of boots, and when I walk out of the last shop I was in, I see myself in the mall’s mirror. I look like a normal girl with my new clothes, without my ‘fuck me’ make-up, and I smile.

I have the same smile when I walk though the halls of the Modern Art museum. People don’t look at me like I shouldn’t breathe. An officer nods his head to me and kindly tells me that the museum will close in half an hour and asks if I would like him to call my parents to come to pick me up. I tell him that I came here because there was this guy outside that kept bothering me and that I have a date with my mom in twenty minutes. He smiles and says that I did the right thing, and he would check this guy out right now.

People hear what they want to hear and see what they want to see. I used the word ‘mom’ because it’s much warmer than the word ‘mother,’ and he believed that I am a sweet girl. If I used the wrong word he would be on my case in no time. I know stuff like that; my father taught me well. He taught me that the most important thing in life is to look the other in the eyes. I don’t know if he was looking my mother in the eyes when she killed him.

On my way home, I buy some Chinese food and a bottle of Alley Juice*. The owner, an old Japanese guy with firm characteristics, doesn’t need an ID, so I take the cheap wine and two packs of non filtered Pall Mall’s, and at the last minute, I take a six pack for the others. They will know that I have money, but they can search me all they want. All that they will find will be food, clothes, and booze.

“Where the fuck have you been?” Lucy screams when I open the door, “God girl, we were ready to call the police.”

“And what you would say? That a hooker had vanished? They would throw a party,” I say and give her the six-pack.

“Sometimes I feel that way too,” she says and drops down the beers. I bite my lip. I did it again. She’s a good person, and I hurt her. Lucy has a heart of gold and people like me take advantage of that.

“Believe it or not, there are people who care about you, okay?” she’s pissed off and she has every right to be, “Forget it! Stay alone Ms. “I’m too good to be a hooker. Just because you went to school and can say big words doesn’t mean that you can fuck us all.”

She leaves, and I stay alone. Lucy never made it to high school, and she feels kind of dumb with me. She can’t understand that maybe I was a hot shot back in Tamales, but here I’m as shitty as every one else. And the fact that I had passed two classes doesn’t make a fucking difference here. The only thing that makes a difference here are the bucks, the dollars, the smackers, and I’m not the one holding them.

So I’m home alone, and I feel like shit.

“Big words don’t save my ass from being fucked!” I scream at the door, and then I fell to my knees. What I really want to say is ‘Don’t leave me’ but they all leave me. My brother, he was the first to leave. My dad, my mom, my fucking aunt. Sylvia, my social worker, she could help me if she wanted to. And now he left me too. The closest thing that I had…he left me. And I’m alone.

Again.

NEXT: II (NEEDLE AND THE DAMAGE DONE)

June 2005.

Fuzz-police
Bag- packet of drugs, usually a standard amount for sale
Alley Juice- very cheap wine, "Grapes"