3rd July 2012

Downtown Brooklyn.

Tanner Russel didn't know what he was thinking. Just a moment ago he was trying to get his breathing back to normal and then next moment he was rushing to get dressed and run away from the scene. Reason? The girl in the bed in front of him had fainted right after having her first blissful pleasure. He couldn't understand what had happened to her. She wasn't going to die from having an intercourse with him, was she? Sure, there was a stain of blood on the white sheet beneath her, but that's what normally happens when a girl loses her virginity. And he hadn't heard someone dying out of loosing their virginity. He was still alive, wasn't he? After all he had also lost his tonight.

He didn't have time for this, he had to get out of her house before he got in trouble. He jumped out of her window with his zipper open and pulled it up as he ran towards his junkie car. What a mess he had gotten himself into, he thought. He didn't want any of this to happen, never before he had thought that he would lose his virginity at the age of fourteen, that too to a girl two years older than her. And his luck? The girl – whose name he didn't remember, he wasn't paying attention to anything else other than her boobs – had to be a virgin. Throughout the night, the girl laid stiff as board beneath him. Even if she was a virgin, the least she could do was try to make him feel something.

Tanner pressed harder on the accelerator, combing his hairs back with his fingers as the wind naturally tried to do. He shouldn't have listened to those morons in the alley. 'Pipes', they called it; the place where people like him hung out getting high and doing things no teenager should be doing.

Pipes was one of the sketchy places that he had found out about a month ago from his older brother Jason Russel who was six years older than him. When Jason had mentioned about how that place made him feel wanted, how it didn't make him alone, how it made him feel happy, Tanner had just decided he would join him too. Not that Jason cared about his younger brother to warn him exactly it didn't make him feel 'alone', neither had he tried to ban him from following him.

He remembered the first time he had seen what exactly was going on, he would never forget that in his lifetime.

First, his eyes followed the place where his brother went. It was a group of five to six people, one hand holding a lit weed and other holding a bottle of cheap beer. His brother had taken out a packet, opened it and smelled whatever was inside, and Tanner knew whatever was inside.

Second, he saw, what scarred him for life, or rather intrigued him the most. Along a wall, there were metal boxes laying around randomly. There were girls naked, boys with pants down, going down on each other, having a threesome, one was tied and gagged, other was doing everything she could with her mouth.

After a week of testing waters, tonight he had tried to call out on a girl who had an eye on from past few times. The girl was petite and emo with pink hairs and piercings on her body. He was only trying to get into her mouth, but his brother had to tell everyone that he was still a virgin. Apparently, the people their had a rule, no virgins allowed. It was the embarrassment that made him go all the way out and do crazy things.

While he tampered his own anger down, he hadn't expected to see this girl walking around the neighbourhood looking all sluty and giggling to herself. She was clearly drunk. And when she threw up just behind his car, he had to take the opportunity. It became easier for him when the girl offered to take him to her house saying she was alone today.

But he didn't know that like him, she was too, trying desperately to lose her virginity, so she never even told him that she was a virgin until he had broken the shield.

The girl ruined the night for him, but at least he wasn't a virgin anymore, so, he could go to the pipes tomorrow and get his emo girl to go down on him.

17th October 2012

Tanner couldn't believe this was happening. He knew his brother was a lowlife bastard and would do anything he could keep his existence in the way he wanted. But he had thought that there was at least some limit to his cruel and heartless ways.

Given, they never considered each other a family, only tolerated each other because of name sake. They had a reason too. Their father wasn't the same, in fact, they never knew who their father was. It was their mother who had played with everyone's life and her children were still facing the consequences. When Jason was on the way in this world, their mother took advantage of his father's wealth. She had blackmailed him into giving her so much money that she could start a new life somewhere else, without any debt. But instead of making her life turn in for something good, she had ventured into darker parts of life and made the same mistake again.

So, when she had gotten pregnant with tanner six years later, she was at least sure that the father was some homeless guy and not a millionaire from whom she could extract money. But she didn't have money to have an abortion either. Although she had tried some natural methods to get rid of it, but that didn't work for her either. So, the cunning and manipulative evil in her made sure that she had further plans after he was born.

And her evil plan was, to get pregnant again immediately after Tanner was born and this time it was all planned. She manipulated the owner of drug ring and soon had gotten pregnant again. But, her plans didn't work out they way they had first time because the drug lord wanted nothing to do with her and her children and tried to get them killed. So, their mother had to flee along with all the two kids and a baby on the way.

Till date, their mother hadn't opened up about why she hadn't simply let them kill him and his brother. Obviously, she wasn't an ideal mother and she had nothing to do with the well being of her children from the beginning, they had all experienced that in past almost fifteen years of his life. And the siblings never bothered to ask her more, even thought they were grateful that she at least fulfilled her motherly duties when they were vulnerable.

And after eight months from the day Tanner was born, the new baby had arrived. And it was a girl. Growing up, Tanner always wondered from where his mother was earning so much money, which wasn't anywhere near an average income for the family of four, and he did find out from his brother when he was only eleven years old. Let say, there was also a sophisticated way of doing what she was doing before settling in this dark and sketchy place.

From that day, Tanner began hating his brother and looking up to him at the same time. His mother had slipped to ground from his eyes and he had no one older than him other than his brother. At first, Tanner had started noticing his brother sneaking in and out of the house. Whenever he questioned him, his brother brushed him off. That day Jason was high on some cheap weed and had blurted out everything about the Pipes. And Tanner considered it a blessing too.

Until now.

His bastard of brother had brought their sister in exchange of drugs.

Never in his life he had thought that Jason would become such a low life, to bring his sister into the Pipes ring in exchange for drugs. He even proposed a condition, as long as he got his Drugs, they can do whatever they want with her. Much to his horror, their sister, Gaby, agreed to his plan.

Although he knew his sister was more inclined towards their mother's way of living, but still, she was only fourteen. She didn't have to do this and make her life worse than it already was.

He had been behind the metal crates, having his emo girl do the magic on his manhood (how much ever he had developed at the age of fifteen), when this had happened. And he had tried to pull Gaby away from there. But Gaby was the one who shoved him away and told him to mind his own business.

He couldn't watch his sister serving the boys and girls here as he had seen the emo girl do and he couldn't understand how his older brother could watch her do that. Tanner couldn't. How much ever courage and boldness he showed in front of his brother was because he was his brother, not sister, that too, younger sister. He knew he couldn't do anything about it if that was her decision. They had never before meddled or crossed each other's path in this way.

The thought of telling their mother entered his mind and fleeted out the next moment. He got afraid that she would encourage her more than to pull her out and explain her that it was wrong. How much ever he put himself into the mess of their life, he never wanted his sister to get involved in this kind of life from the beginning.

He wanted to do something, anything, to get her out of there. But he knew he couldn't, not at this stage. In the world of Pipes, created by dangerous druggies who carried a gun in the front pocket, he knew if someone wanted to exit, it would be a life and death situation. If he tried to pull himself and his sister out of there, it be their end. They would be chased and killed.

His main concern was the nagging guilt piling up inside him. He didn't want to leave the Pipes. It was selfish of him, he knew, but as his brother had said, it was the only place in the world that made him feel welcomed. It was their rule, you are welcome as long as you are ready to enjoy along with them, they would welcome you like your own family, but they would be the one to decide when and how will a person leave. It would be very difficult, almost impossible to pull his brother out of the loop. He would die, even without the gangsters trying to kill him, he was that deep into addiction. He didn't even want to think about himself. At this point he didn't know if wanted to get himself out of there, or even if he wanted, how would he do that. He only wanted one thing right now, to pull his sister out of there.

He had angrily stomped out of that place few moments ago, when the leader of the pipes had groped Gaby's breast and instead of seeing some hesitation on her face he heard her moan. Now, as he was driving around in his junkie truck, that he had picked up from a dump and had it repaired in exchange of working at the garage for the payment, he started thinking about the ways he could get Gaby to leave the Pipes.

After brainstorming for about an hour, as the dawn felt only hour away, he parked his truck to the side of an empty gravelled road and let out an angry growl. It shouldn't be this way. This wasn't right. They didn't deserve this. None of them did. If someone deserved this life, it was only their mother who hadn't bothered to show any kind of motherly feelings since the time she took them all and ran away from the gang leader. At times like this, Tanner wondered if their mother had different plans for them. Maybe give them up for adoption or sell them to the human trafficking or maybe teach them her ways of living so that they could help her 'business'.

He had to at least confront his mother once about this, at least for Gaby.

With half rational, half fuming mind he swerved his truck and sped up to their one storey wrecked house.

The house had only one bedroom, living room and a kitchen along with a common bathroom. While their mother and Gaby slept in the bedroom, Jason and Tanner had to make the couches in living room as their beds. Their mother wasn't home to sleep anyways.

When he entered the house, he had doubts whether she was home or not, but then he heard shuffling in the bedroom. He knocked the door without thinking. Now was not the time to think, he thought, now was the time to act. It was like now or never, at least his adrenaline pushed him to do this.

"What…??", he heard her shout, or rather moan from inside.

His face twisted in grimace, but it wasn't new for him. Pipes had made him immune to these kinds of situation.

"Mom, I need to talk to ya, come out", Tanner snapped.

"Hold it, moron", she grumbled and Tanner walked to the sofa not wanting to hear his mother's audible release.

"What is it, dumbass, you had to just interrupt my release", Marceen, or Marcy as she liked to call herself, spat out as she walked to the opposite couch and sat tightening her robe.

Tanner's leg was bouncing, tapping continuously on the floor as he looked at his mother with annoyance. He was angry with her, much more right now than he always is. He wanted to accuse her of ruining all of their life. But right now, he had to talk about Gaby.

"Marcy, it's about Gaby…", he started to tell her.