Dark, dark, dark. Seriously, dark. Very adult themes and a bloody depressing thing awaits you below. You've been warned. Yes, it involves a daughter of Venus. Yes, I am laughing inside a little if you're worried you might have stumbled upon a Sue-fic. She's pretty damn far from perfect.

I guess I'm trying to explore what it might mean to be a child of a Roman aspect of the gods who stay aloof, are more militant and just seem to generally care less. I think love is a pretty sinister force when you are removed from it, you care less and are much more militant as I assume Venus to be when compared to Aphrodite. I don't know. I'm trying something here, anyway. So enjoy (probably the wrong word) or be repulsed. Or fall somewhere in the middle. I'll let you pick.

Marzipan.

It had started to drizzle, that horrible fine rain with drops that weren't even big enough to actually fall. Instead they swarmed in the air, fluttering down in a fine mist that turned into a gossamer sheen on the white, faux-fur bolero jacket ineffectually buttoned around her against the night. Her breath blossomed about her head in a white cloud and she shivered, clenching her jaw on the wad of pink gum in her mouth to stop her teeth chattering.

When she wrapped her arms around her body, the sleeves of the jacket slipped up slightly to reveal an ugly purple track mark snaking its way up her wrist. Already she could feel her stomach roiling and beginning to cramp with the need for her next hit. Suppressing a shudder that this time had nothing to do with the climate she looked desperately up and down the deserted backstreet, allowing a small moan to escape her lips along with another white puff of precious body heat.

God, how much did she want a long, hot soak in a tub right now? She couldn't, of course, because her hovel of an apartment only had a shower cubicle with the shower head long gone. A constant trickle of rusty water dribbled down the stained tiles from the broken fixture. Never had the term whore's bath been more appropriate than when dipped a washcloth into tepid water in the dirty sink and cleaned herself, stood there in just her cheap, synthetic red lace underwear. They were the kind Walmart seemed to sell in packs of about fifty for two dollars and yet she'd still had to steal them because between underwear and smack what was a girl going to choose? Especially when there was no five-fingered discount on heroin, not unless those five fingers belonged to the one she was stealing from and were coiled into a fist, all the better for knocking out a tooth and cracking some ribs.

What was it they said about there being no better teacher than experience?

Jutting hip bones, hollows above her clavicles and skin stretched so tight over her ribcage it looked more like the ribs had been branded into the flesh greeted her in mirrors nowadays. She thanked the gods that the one bulb over the sink that worked wasn't any brighter because how could she look at that, the thing her body had become whilst her mind had been clawing away at the inside, begging her to fix this and let it out of the wasted prison she was forcing it to live in?

And yet… with every painful struggle of a day it had got easier to look at; she had developed a special kind of numbness for doing exactly that and besides, her mind had quietened down now. Exhausted and hoarse from its attempts for freedom it had curled up in a corner and accepted that this was the body it was going to die in, not even trying to push reason into her anymore. She had gone too far.

It had always been an unmovable, certain fact that she was going to die early. It wasn't a morbid preoccupation with death and the cessation of life; it was just a feeling but a strong one, a good one, one she just knew wasn't simply yanking her chain. She was twenty-two now and seconds scattered chaotically from her like Trafalgar Square pigeons taking flight when a kid ran at them, all because there had never been a twenty-third birthday planned for her and she knew that. Caller ID had always told her who was there on the other end of the phone before she answered (back when she'd had a phone) and she had never seen tall, dark, handsome strangers in glorified, upturned goldfish bowls on behalf of those who would cross her palm with silver. She was not psychic or prophetic, but deep within her she had always had a deadline: twenty-two. Live your life by twenty-two and live it as hard and as fast as you can because by God you aren't going to see twenty-three.

This was how she had come home at sixteen pregnant after having rammed her life into top gear towards this point in time. She been disowned by her parents, banished to the wrong side of their wrought-iron electric gates. Locked away from the world of mansions and Miu Miu, ponies and Prada, AmExes (black, naturally) and Armani, needless to say she had made some rash decisions, one of which was not to keep the baby. There wasn't a day that went by when she didn't try to compose what her child's tiny little face would have looked like if she'd kept it and torture herself with all that might have been, but then she would catch a glimpse of herself in the mirror. That was reminder enough that she couldn't even manage to provide a decent life for herself, and so she was incredibly glad that there was no one here to suffer with her. You couldn't have a baby on the one-way, dead-end journey she had embarked on thanks to that little clock she liked to think dwelt somewhere behind her naval — it wasn't right, it wasn't fair. The clock's countdown never ceased, each tick was like a gunshot, reminding her to move on, to live harder, to touch and taste and feel and live and laugh and cry and just be alive because soon… soon it would all be over.

And she had pretty much reached her destination. It was here on the street, clenching her bluing knees together to try and prevent as much heat as possible escaping from her bare legs. She thought longingly of fleece-lined Chanel ski pants tucked into ski boots as she sat in a log cabin in Gstaad in front of a roaring fire. Before, all of her clothes used to have to be labels for her, even when she knew it wasn't necessary; she had just felt an affinity for designer stuff. Now the closest she got to couture was rolling up her skirts at the waist to flash more thigh or safety pinning a fold in the waist of her jeans because pants she had acquired just months ago were falling down as she dwindled in size.

Please just let someone come round the corner, someone that was interested. She was the only one here after all, so it's not exactly like they'd have the pick of the bunch, the ones with the fewest track marks and a sparkle in their eyes that hadn't yet been pinched out. That said, she had no friends amongst the other girls doing this every night, or every night they needed a hit at least; they wouldn't stand with her because she always got the john no matter what. Even when she had looked in that evil mirror of hers she kept coming back to and found bald patches on her head where the lank, limp hair, dirty grey with no other discernible colour, had given up trying to take root; when her waxy skin was stretched over features that had maybe resembled a human face, once; when her cheek and lips were split open and her eyes were blacked she always got the guy.

"Glowing," they'd often murmur or pant or moan or even sometimes sob to her in flagrante (that's fucking, she supposed, for everyone that hadn't had a Latin tutor like she had had back then, a million years ago, before the Flood). "You're just glowing."

The only way she saw herself glowing was like a beacon, guiding death towards her, but it kept coming back at her over and over again like some bizarre personal repeated epithet. So she looked harder in the mirror (that fucking mirror) and discovered poorly-matched foundation caked into creases around her eyes no face barely two decades old should have; yellowy eyes shot through with burst blood vessels; that gap where an incisor used to be nestled in the middle of thousands of dollars of childhood orthodontistry and she saw no glowing. Yet the other girls thought it too. They muttered about it, shunned her for it, asked her how the hell she had afforded her hairdo when she'd merely plaited it back from her face, all the better to hide the fact that she wasn't sure when she'd last washed it. According to the outside world she was a coiffeured, well made-up girl of model-esque proportions (did they not realise that she was five feet six in three-inch heels?) and she had no idea how she pulled that off but the fact was that apparently she did. So she worked it. Lack of knowledge regarding how exactly it came about wasn't going to stop her when she needed cash, needed to score.

She shivered again, bobbing her upper body up and down to try and create some warmth. Another moan escaped her lips; a desperate half-sob that tugged at her diaphragm, adding to the gnawing pains spawned from coming down. On the sidewalk, in the place of tumbleweed marking the desolation, sheets of newspaper flapped listlessly, weighed down by the damp. An oil patch had begun to crawl from the middle of the road towards the gutter as she watched, smearing a rainbow across the cracked asphalt.

The growl behind her made her turn quickly and she went over on her ankle in her stupid heels on the stupid slick paving stones. Her palms hit the sidewalk with a damp slap and pain shot up her leg. She swivelled herself into a sitting position and grabbed her ankle with bloody palms, whimpering slightly in pain. There was something lurking in the shadows huddled against the building behind her and she tried to get purchase on the slabs with her shoes to scoot away but there was no grip to be had. She felt behind her desperately, reaching for the kerbstone to yank herself away from whatever it was — and it was big, huge even — when suddenly she was bathed in a wave of blinding serenity. Her scrabbling fingers went limp as she realised that this was it. This was what she had been waiting for. She gently cocked her head with mild interest to see what it was that was going to kill her.

Out of the shadows stalked a massive black dog, bigger than a truck and with its gigantic teeth bared. Its growling was making the ground beneath her vibrate as it eyed her up. She stared back at it mildly, waiting as it readied itself to make the flying leap that ended her life. She broke her back and neck when the dog landed on top of her and bent her body backwards over the kerbstone. Life vanished from her in an instant as she met the destiny she'd always known was coming.

Before the hellhound could really set into her with its teeth and claws it was blasted into the air by a beam of pink hearts. It yelped, flipping over and over and burst into a cloud of dust at the level of the seventh floor windows looming around the street.

A woman melted into existence right next to the body. She had long, jet black hair that fell in gentle waves around her face and down her back. It was lifting and moving as if there was a breeze, as were the champagne-coloured skirts of the ball gown she was wearing. Her flawless ivory skin flushed faintly and perfectly at the cheeks and her green eyes shone even in the gloom of the street. The hem of her dress was floating above the dirty sidewalk as she looked down at the dead girl, strewn over the kerb and half in the gutter. She fingered the pearls at her throat and gave a small sigh.

Venus had been letting this particular daughter know her entire life that she was going to die young in the hope that she would do something with her life to make it worthwhile, to prove herself as a true child of hers. She had had all of the power of love and beauty on her side and yet this was what she had done with it. Disappointing. She had expected much more from her.

Not that the mortals could see the results of the years of abuse her body had suffered; children of Venus were born with a cowl of Mist that they never lost, not even when they had turned their back on love and were trading purely in lust. That was the one gift Venus gave her children before abandoning them to the world but really, what more did they want or need than beauty? Mortals found it devastating and how her children used that gift, that power, was up to them. Manipulation was the route most-often travelled, a technique she had used herself on so many mortals over the years, so seeing her children do so without any prompting from her was one of the few things she genuinely enjoyed about being a parent. They did so well at that.

And admittedly, some did turn to this life of selling themselves but when you were as captivating as her children were, well… the option was always there if they chose that path. She held a secret admiration for them of course, for their ingenuity and profiteering. When you are the patroness of prostitutes, the darker side of love, the side that's sullied by bartering lust then you had to sit back and watch your kids work if that's the choice they'd made. They were at least good at because of her, after all. That wasn't why she had been so disappointed with this daughter — these things happened. It was just that she had always seen a better future for her — not clearly, she wasn't Apollo — but she had known that there was something she could have done with her short life to make it worth something. There had always been a risk involved in giving her the sign that she had, that interpreting it could lead to ruin, but a goddess had to try these things sometimes.

She gave a tight smile as she looked down at the daughter who had been caught up in the shadowy side of love on her hard, fast and short journey towards death. The rain was starting to pool in the hollows of her open eyes and at her throat. It was seeping through the jacket, meeting gutter water and dirtily matting the fur together. Venus took one last look. So much potential, all lost down the drain. But the world was still spinning — it wasn't about to be derailed by one dead demigod who hadn't even know she was one. Given her life was about to be over, Venus had never claimed her. What could the child have done with a few months of knowing that her mother was a goddess who had had her way with her father in his marital bed one night? No. The world still turned and so Venus merged back into the air she had stepped out of, taking with her the luminescent glow that surrounded and leaving her daughter's body to the gloom and the silence.

Her name was Jennifer.

She was many things: sister, aunt, stepchild, prostitute, heroin-addict, a daughter of Venus.

She was twenty-two.

And her life was over.