Fear

He could feel the rough asphalt against his cheek, feel the broken skin of the street with fingers made long and slender not by time or maturity but by necessity and hunger. The hiccup in the wall was just big enough for his body to twist into, one knee pressed awkwardly against his ear and a shoulder wrenched painfully into a position it shouldn't have been able to acquire in the first place. He clung to the hope, to the idea that here they would not find him, that he'd be passed over for just one night, but in his inner heart he knew it wasn't true. It had never happened before.

He had too pretty a face.

It was too easy, when they'd have enough booze and couldn't find a paint-faced whore in time to satisfy whatever primal, carnal need it was that curled through their veins. A soft-faced boy would do, after all, if they turned him to the wall and ignored how he cried, ignored all the subtle differences in the motion. It even saved them money.

How easier was it, then, when they didn't even bother to think of their victim as a boy?

He could hear, now, hear the heavy stumbling steps draw closer. Low voices muttered in tangled languages, laughing at each other and lifting cardboard boxes to croon 'meeno-meeno-meeno' as if they were searching for a cat. He knew better, and knew, now, it was only a matter of time. He closed his eyes, swallowed reflexively, prayed.

It was the stench of absinthe that snapped his eyes back open, in the seconds before the heavy hand clamped on his twisted shoulder and pulled him sideways out of the niche in the wall to toss him unceremoniously to the alleyway's pavement. There were two of them tonight, two wide and burly men whose teeth glinted in light that fractured down from the cleaner street beyond. The second man frowned, briefly, and hope of salvation dropped clumsily from his tongue. "Hey, now, Pierre, wha's dis? 'S jus'a boy. Can' be eigh' years, hien?"

Thick fingers knit in his hair, pulled his neck back savagely until he was staring wide-eyed up at the even thicker faces. Features blurred with the pain, but the first man's words were clear. "Look at dose eyes, look how dey glow. Diable, oui? Devil. D'serves wha' we giv'em. Put de fear o'Le Bon Dieu in dis one, hien?"

The darkness closed, merciful, even as the first man drug him upwards by the hand wound in his hair.