Blood of Our Children

By Paul Wolfe

They are the hopeless, homeless, futureless, youth-less children of the streets. Anneke is the indomitable woman who looked at the kids the world had forgotten and said she would never forget them. As the young man known as Angel and his ragtag group of strays and castaways battle the streets, the pushers, the pimps and their own inner demons in the basements, alleys and deserted parks of New York, Anneke stands beside them. Even as it all spirals out of control to a breakneck conclusion. Not for the faint of heart, but definitely for the big of heart.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AbsolutelyAmazingEbooks.com
• Release date: Jan 4, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311739490

Paul Wolfe

Paul Wolfe has been an architect, songwriter and multiple-award-winning writer in advertising.  He currently lives in New York City.

Book preview

Blood

of

Our

Children

Paul Wolfe

ABSOLUTELY AMAZING eBOOKS

Published by Whiz Bang LLC, 926 Truman Avenue, Key West, Florida 33040, USA.

Blood of Our Children copyright © 2015 by Paul Wolfe. Electronic compilation/ paperback edition copyright © 2015 by Whiz Bang LLC.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized ebook editions.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. While the author has made every effort to provide accurate information at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their contents. How the ebook displays on a given reader is beyond the publisher’s control.

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Blood

of

Our

Children

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part One Uptown

Crushed Flowers

Trying is Lying

Dumpster Diving

An Artist

The Music Box

Nothing Can Grow Without First Being in the Dark

Nothing Always Means Something

In Death There’s Finally Order

Part Two Downtown

Broken Angel

The Hum of Traffic

It’s Always Easier to Fix Other People

Sometimes You Don’t Even Know What’s in Front of You

Sharks

You Unappreciative Bitch

A Bag of Bloody Clothes

Where’s Tyler?

The Word Wow

The Gardenia Tear

About the Author

Part One

UPTOWN

CRUSHED FLOWERS

Billie Holiday was singing her heart out, drawing from a well of pain inside few people could fathom. But no sound emerged because she was, in this case, composed of paint. A mural on the restroom wall of a playground, way, way uptown.

It was almost Christmas.

Tiny shards of broken bottle were scattered on the playground floor like jewels amid the asphalt. They crunched as Angelo de Cielo walked over them, determinedly, flowers in hand. He brushed away some foul debris and knelt before the wall of the restroom. Then he placed the new bouquet above an older one, and crossed himself.

Son of a bitch! If it ain’t the Angel of Heaven himself. The voice came from the man known as St. Lucifer, a man with wild gray hair floating to his shoulders, rolling past Angelo in a wheelchair. Angelo looked up to see a wheelchair laden with the garish paraphernalia of faith: crosses, icons, plastic roses, portraits of Jesus. It was a tiny silver church on wheels, and tinsel letters dangling from a cross bar read: All power is given to me in heaven and in earth.

"’’Sup Luce? said Angelo. You looks good"

You don’t look so bad yourself, Angel, the older man said. Your folks would be proud.

Angelo de Cielo, or Angel of Heaven as his name would translate from the Spanish, stared at a small figure: the Virgin of the Wheel Chair. You believe in all that? he asked, but St. Lucifer was already beginning to roll on. Angel, he shouted, Religion is for people who are afraid to go to hell. Spirituality is for people who have already been there.

Then he stopped. Two ravaged looking men approached him, money in hand, and after the exchange of currency, he pulled two syringes from the bottom of the wheelchair and handed them over.

Then he called back to Angelo. You seen Jose? Angelo shook his head.

"Little shit spose to be here twenty minutes ago, St. Lucifer lamented. Angel, I got a ten-minute, two hundred dollar trick waiting over there in that blue Nissan. Hey, you ... "

I don’t do that shit no more, bro, Angelo said abruptly, swallowing a deep gulp of sadness. But St. Lucifer was persuasive. "No nasty business at all, man. No nasty. All youse gotta do is speak Spanish. You hablo espanol, don’t you?"

Angelo felt a shift in his guts. It was a familiar bolt that sometimes rose to his throat and made him want to throw up. St. Lucifer detected the shift. Like a trained salesman, pressing the buttons of a human being with the nimbleness you choose a song on the jukebox, he went in for the kill. Hey. Just ten minutes. Two hundred big ones.

No kissing, no nasty. Right?

Swear to God. I’ll be right here ... waiting for my piece.

The flowers were forgotten, and Billie Holiday looked on. Angelo de Cielo, a handsome young man of 25, straightened his dark hair inside a red bandana and walked through the playground gates. He was half Italian and half Puerto Rican (The Puerto Ricans think I’m Italian. The Italians think I’m Puerto Rican. The black guys think I’m white. I can get beat up in any neighborhood!) The cocktail of genes created a soft, Mediterranean look much admired by modeling agencies downtown where, calling himself, Cielo, he had had some success posing in bathing suits, bulging underwear and tight T-shirts. But the mean, moody look he perfected before the hot lights of the cameras downtown was but the outer expression of a mean, moody interior acquired uptown, a cesspool of hells endured through a childhood in the projects and on the streets. At a certain point, the sweet oblivion of heroin had begun to lull him from the bad dreams that filled his daylight. And as the bloom of youth receded soundlessly into the background, the modeling jobs grew less and less frequent, until finally the trips downtown ceased altogether. He would find himself, as he did now, strolling up to a blue Nissan or its equivalent, with windows sealed tight as a tomb, windows that began, ever more ominously, to slide slowly down.

"Whaddsup?" he said to the driver, a middle-aged man of no particular description.

What’s your name? said the man.

Jose, said Angelo.

You’re really handsome.

Angelo eyed him coldly. Show me your dick, he said suddenly. The driver was startled. Show me your dick. In case you’re a cop. Don’t want no ‘trapment.

The driver nodded, looked around frightened, then did as he was told. Angelo hopped inside the car, slammed the door with ferocity, and the windows slithered slowly and soundlessly shut, as the gates of hell must surely do.

The driver reached over to touch Angelo’s face. Two hundred, said Angelo abruptly. The driver removed two crisp hundred-dollar bills from his pocket and handed them over. Now all I want you to do is lie back and open the top part of your pants. I’m going to lay here and touch myself and you’re going to speak Spanish, okay?

Angelo opened his pants, but as the driver went to touch him, he stopped him. Fifty extra, he said. I need three metro cards for next week. It was Angelo now, not the driver, in the driver’s seat. The man handed over two more twenties and a ten, and as Angelo lay back and disappeared into a cavern deep inside his own