CARSON ESPENSON
SLOTH
The night before
The sun had set some time ago, leaving the suburbs dark and quiet. Carson reached inside his chest pocket for his smokes, pulled one out and put it in his mouth. As he lit the cigarette, he looked at the neighborhood passing him by. Seated on the bed of a speeding pickup truck, Carson felt the cooling air ruffling his clothes. It was a good, sobering night, but Carson had no interest in being sober. Muttering a curse under his breath, he banged his knuckles on the truck and turned towards the front.
"How long am I gonna fucking sit here, Al?" He had trouble making out the answer, but he thought he heard
a couple of minutes, Jimmy-boy. Carson turned back and sat down again. He wouldn't have minded sitting there for another couple of hours if it wasn't for his raw throat coupled with the severe lack of alcohol. Allen Stewart and his wife Mary Ellen had been gracious enough to offer Carson a lift out of some shithole that had turned to hot for Carson to stay in, and while stopping at a gas station, good old Al had told Carson that they were heading upstate, to the only city of note in these parts, were they had their business. When Carson, quite honestly, answered that he didn't know upon Al asking him where he was heading, Al - who had clearly taken a liking to Carson - asked him to tag along to the city. While initially reluctant, Carson had quickly turned around once he learned that the aging couple ran a brothel in the outskirts of the city. Sure, it was probably more of a homeless gathering than a brothel judging by how this junkie couple looked and behaved, but Carson didn't mind. It had been quite some time since he had a release, and pussy was pussy.
However, as they had gotten closer to their destination, Carson grew a mighty thirst. Rather suddenly, the car swirved around into a parking lot and stopped. Carson's thinking was similarly parked for now, and he looked around as he jumped out of the bed.
"You better have some booze, Al." he said, smiling.
"Jesus, again? Like I've said; we got it all, man. You know, you're not very trusting." the old man answered thoughtfully as he scratched his thin beard. It was as if he was taken from some crappy movie.
And you're not very fucking sane.
"Well I'm here, ain't I?"
Al had no answer to that, and the trio left the parking lot while Mary Ellen started mumbling about needing a fix.
Carson wasn't right about the abandoned house part, but he might as well had been. The neighborhood had, hopefully, seen better days and the so-called brothel turned out to be a basement storage area were the storage lockers had been repurposed to fuck rooms, sheets providing modesty. Al and Mary Ellen was the proprietors of the building, and every tenant was either a whore, customer, drug dealer or several of the aforementioned. Carson and Al left Mary Ellen in their apartment before heading down to the basement, where Carson was shown the merchandise after sharing a bottle of bourbon with Al and some other old junkie called Geoff. There were four different women to pick from, though Carson was unsure as to whether two of them could be called women since there was no way they had hit puberty, and one of the other two was an old hag who looked more man than woman. Still, any of the three might've done if it wasn't for the fact that the forth, while being in her forties, looked positively fine by comparison. She was clearly high as a kite, but that was of no consequence. She called herself Jade, Al explained, and she was supposedly the best fuck in town.
All of them probably are if you ask this guy, Carson thought while settling with a snort as response.
"She'll do."
An hour later, Carson sat on Jade's bed, while the owner lay on the floor, face up and sobbing. Carson reached for his shirt and found his cigarettes, lighting one before turning his eyes towards Jade.
"So. How about I take you out tonight, eh?"
The woman hesitantly stopped sobbing and looked at Carson with what he thought was disbelief.
"What, you don't think I can treat a woman right? Pretty sure you've had worse smackings than that." He got up and Jade instinctively edged backwards. Bending over the prostitute, Carson put his cigarette in her mouth. She didn't resist. "See? Look, I'm sorry I got a little rough with you, but you gotta see this from my point of view too. It can be very frustrating when you refuse someone something, you know? The shit flings both ways." he said, as he pointed his fingers back and forth between him and her. "Now, let's get fucked up!"
Present
He didn't know what time it was, but it was clearly daytime, as light shone through the little window above him. Carson sighed heavily and lifted himself up on the bench he was leaned back towards. His head was ringing. What had he done last night?
Right, the whore. He remembered they had gone to some filthy bar close to the brothel and gotten wasted, but beyond that Carson's memory was a blank. Speaking of which, where the fuck was he? He looked around, but there wasn't much to see. He was sitting in some kind of booth, a tiny wooden booth.
What the hell? His memory flashed, and he suddenly remembered staggering into some church.
I passed out in the fucking confessional. At least he was still wearing his clothes; a pair of pale blue jeans, a tank top and a white-striped blue flannel shirt. Suddenly he heard what must have awoken him in the first place; voices. Someone was shouting, soon followed by other loud voices, echoing throughout the empty church. Carson rose to his feet and pushed the door open, stepping out into the church. He saw a handful of shades, his eyes still getting used to the light.
"You mind keeping your fucking voices down?" he shouted, rubbing his temples.
