Chapter Seven

For some child molesters, they like to take an insurmountable amount of precautions, measured by the amount of security on their homes, not the frequencies of pedophilic encounters. The majority of the elitists involved in the illicit behavior of prostituting children didn't worry about any of the children complaining. They knew the consequences of telling authorities about the prostitution ring, and it had to do specifically with the huge water pump that kept the place warm. The water pump machine had the ability to produce a noxious toxin in the air that killed everybody who took a whiff of it in seconds. The residents didn't know about the dangerous of the machine, so they went about business as usual.

Vivian, Buddy, and Ronnie sat next to the stream of water, and tried to catch a few catfish for dinner, and Ronnie continued to replay Jessica's birth in his mind. Vivian lamented about her abuser's heart attack, and she had to be the one to call the authorities. She didn't even know the man's real name, but he had her call him Curly. Curly hired her at least once a week for the last year to do unmentionable things to him, and when she hit him repeatedly with the leather whip, the man had a massive heart attack. She made the ominous call to the authorities, but wouldn't give her name under any circumstances. She could have used a fake name, but she had a hard time thinking of anything. The man lay on the bed with his eyes wide opened, not breathing, and most likely deceased, so she ran out of his apartment, caught the subway, and headed back to the sewer. The protection of the system was more important than one fat man dying of a heart attack. It was the law of the their world.
Unfortunately, she felt badly for leaving the poor soul on the bed to die. He had a gentle hand when it came to the way he abused her, and she learned to enjoy him on some level. When he picked her up to play, her face lit up every time because he always had well-prepared food, nice music, and he treated her with some semblance of respect. In a world of abuse, the recipient of abuse doesn't always hate the maltreater. The maltreated may learn how to love the abuser with all their heart; and when an outside entity or force tries to hurt the progenitor of pain, the afflicted will sacrifice everything to protect the abuser. The ill-treated will learn to repeat the abuse in time, and the cycle will continue for generations to come. The battered always batters, and it would take an unconquerable amount of education to stop that.
The children of the sewer didn't immediately recognize the abuse because many of them didn't have the ability to read. Ronnie and Buddy knew how to read, but Vivian and the rest of the kids didn't have that knowledge. Ronnie and Buddy knew the abuse wasn't normal, but protected the system for the good of the community. Vivian equated sex as payment for food, and thought the kids on the surface had more sex than anybody because most of them were overtly plump. She often wondered how much sex it took to be fat, and she couldn't fathom it.
"People die, Vivian," Buddy said with a caring voice. He put his arm around his sister.
"I saw a dead body once," Ronnie said, "Didn't know him, so I didn't care."
"Yeah … Carl was a good man," she said with tears rolling down her face. She wiped her face with both hands. "Just hate that I left him there."
"He'd have wanted you to," Ronnie said, "What if it got out?"
"Why's it so wrong?" Vivian asked.
"'Cause it's the law," Ronnie said with a grimace on his face. "Shoot, if the authorities find out about us, they'll kill us..."
"It's true," Buddy interjected, "That's what happened to Markus."