****** EXTREME TRIGGER WARNING******* DEPICTIONS OF DOMESTIC BATTERY AND RAPE

*4 months later*

I got my own place.
I loved my mom, but I had developed a bit of a coke addiction.
I didn't want her to catch on, so I moved out.
Nobody needed to know I was getting high, nobody could even tell.
I wasn't looking like the stereotypical addict all bummy and like a derelict.
I was what they called a functional addict.
I called it my "cope" addiction.

I didn't feel the loss of Sam, of my family, of MYSELF when I was high.

Tris and I had started seeing each other after we kept running into each other in the oddest of places.
We had hooked up, and he was my cope dealer.
He called me his girl, or his shawty and I let him because, hey, free get high!

I worked, I was a front office assistant in a North Philadelphia NAC (Neighborhood Action Committee)
I handled things like writing grants, Liheap and PGW applications, among other official things.
I made mean pots of coffee, did store runs, anything my boss, Maribelle, required of me.
I was also happy there, I got to create, organize and help people.
Three things I loved doing.

I didn't go anywhere near my old life.

Thoughts of Sam, places we'd gone, things we'd done, they lived in me!

I'd often space out remembering certain things that happened, fun times and beautiful memories.
Of course I still loved him and I knew I always would.
But I had done things I could never take back, at least that's what I convinced myself.

When Tris and I fucked it was always quick, so so, and most nights after he left I would have to go into my stash, snort some more, fantasize and masturbate.
Sam, of course, who else?
Damn shame, considering I had well, someone.
I couldn't call him my man
He wasn't a man to me, especially after he told me what he really did for a living.

I thought he was a drug dealer!
How dumb could I be!

He dressed sharp, he took care of himself, he drove an expensive tricked out Chevy Tahoe truck.

That was all a part of the image he put out to get young, weak minded females to go with him.

It confused the hell outta me because if I ever got desperate enough to sell the pussy, well, I damn sure wouldn't turn over my loot!

Tris schooled me on the ins an outs of his "bizness" as he referred to it.
I wanted no parts of it!
I told him if I ever suspected him of tryna recruit me, I'd be in the wind so fast it'd blow his fedora off!

He referred to the girls he had as his
Tricks, they were in his stable.
A STABLE, his hoes were nothing more than some mares to his stud.
They weren't shit to him.
He didn't care if they lived or died stayed or left, as long as IF they came back, they came with his money then he was cool.
If not, he'd beat them, and street them, or put them curbside.
Curbside, like in trash pick up!

They fell under a few categories:

Bottom Bitch: Sunny, his oldest and most faithful trick
Hanging around waiting for him to claim her, make an honest chick of her.
Would never happen, he kept her around, cause she knew too much.

Table Topperz: Torrie, Tema and Tara
They worked the strip clubs.
They were just above worker beez

Worker Beez: Tee, Topaz posted up in the Hotel Carlyle waiting for him to send Custiez their way.

Track Starz: Twinkle, Tink and Tinsel these were the average track bitches.
Nothing about them was remarkable and they were very expendable.

They were all in it because they believed the dreams he sold them, addicted to the coke, crack, and heroin he gave them.

The cope dulled the outrage I should've felt.
I wouldn't let myself feel or care.

I loved me a bad boy, and Tris was about as bad as they get!

We kinda fell into a situation-ship and if I couldn't call myself happy, I was at least content.

That didn't last!

Another month or so passed, and I was tired of him and his escalating verbal and emotional abuse, trying to keep me all to himself, away from my friends and my family.
He gave me a beeper, paged me on it constantly.
I better return his call with the quickness or he would not hesitate to show up wherever I was.
He was jealous over nothing, would show up at my job unexpectedly.
He never saw me do anything remotely shiesty.
I worked, I came back home, I cooked I cleaned, I called him, let him come over, sexed him, got high, locked up after him and went to bed to do it all again the next day.

That was it.
It was what it was.

I didn't know why he felt the need to do that, I never gave him a reason to not trust me.
He had all these females around him constantly, and I didn't act pressed or like I didn't trust him!
Well, maybe, cause by then, I really did not care.
If I was truly honest about it, I never did.
He was a means to an end and that was all.
I was with him because he supplied my need and that was it.

At least, that's what I told myself.

My inner me still was giving me the silent treatment, hadn't said a word to me since the night I first got with Tris.

My mom though, she absolutely could not stand him.
She met him twice and both times she warned me about him, telling me to watch him, that he was slicker than oil, that he was the type of man who would not hesitate to hurt a female.

I laughed when she told me that, my mom got a way with words.

She was so right, and I wish I had listened to her.

One night, I came home from work to find he was waiting for me, just as calm as you please on my couch.
I was freaked out because I never gave him a copy of my keys, yet there he sat, drinking and smoking from what looked like my stash.

"Why are you in my house?!"
I asked him, already aggravated because I was trying hard to quit cope and on edge.
I hadn't done it in a month and from all I read about it, I was almost free of the grip of addiction.
It was hard but I was doing it.
He got up, came over to me and said, 'I'm here cause yous my bitch and I wanted to see you! You got a problem with that huh, bitch?"
His eyes glittered with something I'd never seen in them, it wasn't anger or temper, it was far worse.
It was rage!
I should have backed down, shut up and let him calm down.
But he was in my space, in my face and I didn't like it.
"Well, I'm done being your bitch as you call me, I'm done with you, with this! You need to get out NOW!"
I screamed it at him, infuriated!

"Oh, yous done huh, bitch? Oh okaaayyy" he drawled out and then quicker than I could blink he smacked me across my face viciously.
The force of his hit sent me sprawling backwards into my coffee table, breaking it, the glass ornaments I kept there crashing to the hardwood floor.
A shard flew up, sliced my eyebrow in the same exact spot as I already had a small scar from me beating up Sam's ex, I would see later in the mirror.

He didn't let me get my bearings before he was right on me, kicking me in the ribs.
I felt the most horrendous pain I had ever felt in my entire life.
I couldn't breathe and he still wouldn't stop.
He punched me in my eye, pulled my hair, with it in his grasp told me, in a voice devoid of emotion,
"YOUS MY BITCH TILL I GET THROUGH WITH YOU! GOT THAT WHORE! YOU MINE!"
Without another word he threw up my skirt shoved my thongs to the side and raped me without even bothering to use a condom.
I cried, my tears mingling with blood and glass, laying under him detached, like it wasn't even me being violated, until he was spent.
He looked at me as he got up and told me he was hungry, to fix him some grub, but first to go fix myself up and clean up the mess.

I got up, went meekly as I knew how and did what I was told.

I loved me a bad boy!
Tris was as bad as they got!
I loved me a bad boy, a bad boy with a heart of gold.
Only problem was, Tris was a bad boy but missing one vital part.
A heart.
Gold?
No.
More like blacker than the pits of hell!
He, my own personal demon!

Later that night, I went to the Emergency Room, received care for the fractured ribs, lied to the staff and doctors, and said I had been jumped and didn't see or know who had done it.

I was afraid if I snitched, he would end my life.

When I returned, he was still there, coming up to me again, saying gently, "Damn shawty, you hurt yaself huh?"

He handed me some white lines, I gave up and relapsed.

Tris POV

She thought that us running into each other constantly was a co~ inki~ dink, yeah, no, it wasn't.
I stalked her, learned her routine and then just happened to be wherever she was.
I put my grade A mack down!
I was charming, funny, I ate that sweet pussy until i had her crying my name!
Then I would get her as high as the clouds in the sky, fuck her with my long stroke.
I'm a pimp!
We do that type a shit!
She was a good chick, but she was a square.
Ya can't turn a square into a hoe.
Hoes are born out of desperate times and heartbreak.
They were weak.
She wasn't.
They had a healthy fear of me, respected my pimp hand, because they'd all gotten a taste of it now and again.

She wasn't the least bit afraid of me!
I had never touched her in violence.
YET!
But oh, how I wanted to!
I wanted to see the fear invade her eyes, watch her cower.
I wanted to see my marks bruise her stunning face, put my scars on that tight little body.
To fuck her with violence, with no protection, feel her velvet insides grip me till I spilled my seed and put my baby in her.

That's what I needed.

She had an attitude, feisty as fuck, was definitely a bad bitch.
My bad bitch, the baddest!
The type of bitch that could make a player like me, retire his jersey, watch from the sidelines!
I was considering going legit just for her.
In my own fucked up ways I loved Nikki.
I had to keep my hoes, my bizness and my criminal enterprises mostly outta her sight.
She knew what I did, ain't have a problem as long as I kept handing her them pretty white lines.
I had enough of her one day, when I saw her helping that old dude fill out paperwork all laughing and grinning at him with MY pussy!
I was livid, seeing that from the window I had peeped into.
I had already, unbeknownst to her, copied her keys.

I went to her house and waited.

When she came back and tried to end things with me I lost my sanity, I flew into a rage, smacked the hell out her, my strike making her fly backwards, made her fall through the table.
Glass from that girly shit she had all around flew up and cut her face, cutting her eyebrow, made her bleed
I hit her again, this time in her eye, to make her stop looking at me like she hated me, yanked her hair, told her she's mine.
The blood and the fear I saw on her, made my dick get hard!
yesssss ooohhh yesss!
THIS is what I needed!
I threw her skirt up, yanked her thong to the side and beat up my pussy.

She was clear headed, she'd stopped getting high, and I knew I was losing my hold on her.
I had already lost my grip on sanity

Didn't y'all know, I'm a psychopath!
The medicine I needed to control my
schizophrenia wasn't working no more and how could it, when I hadn't taken it in months!

So what, I flew off the handle and beat her up, naw I did more than that, I broke her.
She deserved it
I knew I fucking cracked a rib, I felt it when I kicked her.
Made her think it was all her fault, made her clean up, cook dinner for me while I watched her like a hawk so she didn't poison me.

I let her go to the ER, waited for the cops to show up and cuff me.
They ain't come
She ain't snitch!

She knew what I'd do if she did.
Gotta love a square bitch!

When she returned, I looked at her, my wrath abated.
I gently touched the proof of my rage, asked her, did she hurt herself shawty?
I handed her some coke, she did a line,
Relapsed
Good.
I had her now.
The bitch is mine!