Meeting the Mafioso

He waited in line, hands shaking. He did not know what to expect, and he knew exactly what to expect. What they would do to him, he did not know. He knew what they would do to him. There were sobs, there were steely determined faces with fear lining the creases. There was the smell of piss and defecation. And of desparation. Beautiful, glimmering sunlight streaming in from the moth eaten cloth that only barely covered the outside world. He fixed his gaze on the windows. After it was done, things would change. He would be able to help them.

His mother was a victim of abuse, his father had left them many years ago. After that, she had had a constant stream of visitors, men coming at all hours of the night. Almost always at night. Sometimes they came during the day. His mother had been beautiful. But her hair was starting to grey, her temples decorated with constant lines of worry, her once lustrous eyes now blank, a canvas that was filled only with exhaustion. His house had started to smell of home once. Now it smelled only of sweat and piss and bodily fluids.

He rubbed his fingers together. The fan croaked with every revolution, swaying dangerously above him. The carpet felt soft, almost of heaven. The girl next to him sobbed.

She was getting old yet she never let them show it. Copious amounts of make-up, color in her hair, she could do nothing about the eyes though. They were always open, always expressive. Expressing nothing. The men that visited sometimes lingered for far too long, staring at his sister, and it was then that he imagined his hands around their necks, screaming like they would make his mother scream. Or did she scream on purpose. Either way, they liked it, when they came out, it was with puffing chests, pride in their smiles as they tousled his hair, satisfaction in their eyes.

His nails were long, dirt underneath them, his fingers calloused. He looked around the room, all these people desperate, having to come here. Lives in shambles, he imagined what their stories were like. He could almost feel the desperation in the air, like the thick water of the river he sometimes swam in, trying to drown. Drown he could no longer.

Enough was enough. She was getting older, he had to step up. She should never have had to do this. Yet here they were.

Here he was. A man in a beard, a white muslin cap walked out, slowly, measured. From the inner sanctum. He looked around. Silent eyes on him. Sobbing stifled. Sounds stifled. All was silence. Hissing, whimpering silence. His robe was a mellow dark brown, clean, flowing, his sandals were light brown. His beard was colored red, his teeth yellow. His skin pale. His eyes gleaming. He looked around, eyes scanning the room. The boy didn’t realize he had been holding his breath until those dark eyes passed by him. Then they circled back. With a growing dread, he realized it was his turn.

He had come to shake hands with, to make a deal with the devil. And the devil summoned him in. The man in the robe nodded. And he got up and followed. The girl behind him sniffled. Inside, there was a prayer rug, a man just finishing one of his five daily prostrations. The man in the cap of the religious looked at him in silence, sizing him up and down. The other folded his rug and got up to do the same. Together, they looked at his hands.