Reminisce

After a week of training, Mateus was finally getting used to the routine of working himself and his beasts into exhaustion. Usually he was out like a light before his head even hit the pillow, but this time he lingered on the edge of sleep, staring into the darkness above and thinking about the past.

Remembering his life before meeting Danica - the life that ended with five bullets to the chest.

He focused, and called up a hazy memory. He was sitting on a hard camp-cot in the living room of a one bedroom apartment, staring into the open bathroom as his mother touched up her face. Her long hair was tied back into a curling ponytail, bobbing with each movement of her shoulders and head.

Scarlet lipstick on a lined mouth, crows feet buried in concealer, and eyeshadow so smoky she could have been staring up an exhaust pipe. A body so thin she looked like a skeleton monster. Experience and life had aged this woman to look twice her age. A child under foot, and male callers at all hours - she didn't have a good life, and was bitter when she thought of the future.

Mateus was tossed out to the street at six years old. He lived by charity at homeless shelters, and scrounging through garbage and filth. At eight he joined a small gang, and gained a safe place to sleep. Every winter night the kids would huddle together desperately for a trace of warmth, and wake each morning to see companions who had passed in the cold darkness.

At ten, Mateus was dragged in by the law for something he didn't do. Mateus might have been born and lived in the gutter, but he wasn't resigned to being trash. Mateus had a dream - he wanted to work in a bank. Banks had money, and power, and endless respectability. No one insulted a banker - at least no one in the small world Mateus knew.

Four people across the table stared down a small boy, trying to make him take a deal for something he didn't do. If he took the deal, he'd go to Juvie, and ruin any chances of getting a respectable job or education. If he didn't take the deal, Mateus didn't know what would happen.

Mateus was scared, but these big lawmen were not scarier than spending a day hungry. They weren't scarier than waking up in winter next to a corpse who used to be your only friend. So Mateus stayed stubborn, and didn't take the deal.

Hours passed, the evidence arrived, and Mateus was released. He thought he was free to continue his life - but those lawmen were playing him like a bug on a string. They were determined that Mateus must have done something wrong, and could not accept that he was blameless.

So, every few months, Mateus got hauled in by the law for something else he didn't do. Incidents could happen clear across the city, but Mateus was who they'd find.

It didn't take long before Mateus was bored of this. Sadly, the law wasn't.

At thirteen, the law finally thought they'd caught him for good, and those familiar four men started bragging. Right until the Feds turned up, and offered Mateus a new deal, and this time he couldn't refuse. That day, Mateus' dream of respectability was finally crushed for good.

The Feds sent him in as a Narc to the biggest drug gang in the city. He had to play informant and insider, and Mateus got nothing in return.

So Mateus joined up, and found his new boss, and tried a dangerous play - he was honest. He made a deal with the gang to pass mostly false info in return for safety.

Mateus lived his life on the edge of the knife. One side the feds, the other gang, and Mateus desperately caught between, trying to keep himself out of the filth they both embody.

At eighteen, an info leak went wrong, people died and Mateus took the blame. Thus his short life ended, with five bullets to the chest.

And now he has a future. An orphan in Florinad city gets more than Mateus ever could have dreamed. He has a sister, an education, and a chance to live a respectable life. It's hard now, following the guards, but nowhere near as bad as the past.

Just a few years, and he can go his own way - become a weaver of expensive Angora fabrics and earn a wealthy life for Danica and himself.

Mateus closed his eyes, and slowly drifted to sleep, deep and without dreams.