Part 13

The police investigator wiped Blue Death from the nostrils of his third, dead male prostitute case this week. Several police officers roamed carefully around the premises, keeping the curious motel guests at bay. His partner was questioning the sleepy manager below. They already knew it was an acrid stench seeping under the flimsy motel room door that first alerted the cleaning woman that something bad had happened behind it, that it would be a mess inside and a bad morning for her. She was used to drunken parties and vomit and stains in all sorts of areas in that establishment, so she did not hesitate much before turning the lock. Little did she know that she would be staring into the face of a once beautiful young man, deep blue eyes the color of secret, turbulent oceans, pale, silken skin with delicate highlights of rosy red, a slender, marked frame now draped over the foot of the bed. His head was turned to her, long, brown hair falling over one eye that still seemed to have a question in them. Was this always the way it would end?

An old fashioned radiator clanked in the corner of the room, complaining at the disturbance, dispensing no heat. The detective's breath floated in front of him in that cold space as he bent over the body. He put the sample in a clear bag, then checked the corners of the boy's eyes. The telltale signs were there - tiny, sky blue blood vessels, like webbing, near his tear ducts. He wiped at the moisture still remaining in his eyes - sky blue came off on his cloth. Blue Death had turned into such an apt name.

He didn't know who brought the drug. Maybe the junkie still had some left. Maybe the John made promises and street corner deals before the play. He could tell the client did not participate in the partaking, these older men, the overwhelming majority, very rarely did. It was just blue candy to lure the starving children.

He wasn't sure why it was heavily meth-addicted, male prostitutes that were dying from this plague of Heisenberg's formula. Maybe the stress of the games they played with their clients pushed them over some physical edge in their systems. Maybe because they were in such bad health to begin with and more vulnerable than the general populace. Maybe it was some reaction specific to males.

He looked at the emaciated boy-man on the bed before him. It's true he had been investigating the scene for the last hour, noting the position of the body on the bed, the bruising on wrists, legs, back, and face. He had picked through the vomit of the kid's last meal. They all looked for any evidence left by the John. Now he just wanted to step back and take an overall picture in his head. He tried to imagine how it felt being that kid, left purely on his own in that desperate, dirty, selfish, lethal world of addiction for decades. The despair he felt of never having anyone. The subconscious need for any connection, even a deadly connection, with another human being. The constant drive for another, escapist high.

There was $348 dollars in the bedside table drawer. $348 would buy a nice weekend of meth fueled, manic happiness. $348 would nicely buy an addict's body for a couple of hours. $348 was, in the end, all this youth was worth.

Teeth and frame notwithstanding, he looked like that guy they wanted to question many months ago. A grainy picture of him was passed around the office for a short time. There was some big hullabaloo about someone throwing thousands of dollars out a car window in some piss poor neighborhood. That lucky junkie probably found some secret, laundered stash, got Really high, and then decided to share. He disappeared, traceless. Everyone knew when that happened in the bigger, cartel world, and the cartels would be the ones with bags and bags of money, they don't even find the bodies after all was said and done. They just got mad at that kid, and *poof* gone. No fanfare, no one to miss him. Even his parents were surprised when the DEA came around once asking about him. The family didn't know where he was, they never expected to know again. They did ask about his empty house, though. The dead prostitute on the bed looked so much like… what was his name? Jesse? Jesse Pinkman? He remembered it was some color.

He looked at the cold remains in the cold room again. The boy just wanted some human warmth, didn't he?

Maybe these kids died because that is what you do in that toxic world. And no one cares or expects differently.

And maybe… maybe, there is just something horribly wrong with Blue Sky.

…

"They say if you fall in your dreams and you hit bottom, you never wake up." -Marie Schrader

The pit. (Darkness).

Jesse's hands were hurting him so much, but he couldn't turn and get them out from under him. He couldn't seem to move at all, and his chest throbbed with every, pulsing breath.

It's the manacles, they're caught and my hands have swollen. He tried to open his eyes even though he knew, with the tarp spread overhead, he could see very little, just a few slivers of light against the cement walls.

His eyelids wouldn't budge. How could he not move them, it was such an easy thing, an unthinking thing? He couldn't even see the translucent, half-dark, red shades of eyelids closed but merely resting, pupils still alert underneath. He was in complete, unrelenting night, and began to panic.

What's wrong with me? Am I paralyzed? Am I… dying?

He tried to move just a little bit, just to kick a leg or push slightly onto his side, some relief from the growing ache everywhere in his body. He couldn't seem to feel anything solid, though, a floor, a wall, the scrape of rough concrete against his face. Only the pain grew, and he could feel nothing through it.

Nothing.

His breath quickened in his terror.

What happened? I can't remember what happened to me.

He heard some scratching noise near him. Something was moving around over his head.

It's Todd, he's come down. He tried to move his lips. Todd. Even Todd. Please, help me. He called his name, but managed no sound except his own, panicked panting. Just move me, Todd, get these things off me. Notice something awful has happened. Please.

He felt fingertips gently moving the hair back from his temple. He still couldn't open his eyes at the touch. A cool cloth quietly swabbed his forehead, his cheeks, his eyes. Something small was put to his dry lips, soothing them. Every breath past them still bled.

Please, Todd, take these manacles off me. Please. The pain in his hands became unendurable. Please, I'll do whatever you want. Just take them off for a while.

He felt the cool cloth at his eyes again. Someone seemed to be saying something, but he couldn't understand the words.

"Anything?" repeated the voice in his restless, confused mind.

Anything. Just make my hands stop hurting, make me be able to see again. Bring me back.

Now in a nightmare, his mind mixing reality with, at least, a solid memory he could grasp, Jesse opened his eyes to Todd looking down at him, expressionlessly.

You said, anything.

"I want you to be Lydia. Would Lydia like this?" Todd bent over him again, forcing his lips painfully onto his own. After a minute, he let up. "That's right, isn't it?"

Jesse tried to move back, dig himself into the concrete to escape if he could, but there was nothing he could do to stop this.

He felt the chain of his restraints dig into the small of his back. He couldn't move his arms, even though there should have been plenty of give. He and the cell had been cleaned out, scrubbed, refreshed, and his captor, watching him like a prey animal, was awaiting his reward. His entire body hurt, though he couldn't remember what had happened to cause that.

Tarantula in a jar. This was another of Todd's experiments. Every day some part of Pinkman was being taken away. He stared up at the sky through the metal grate.

"Hey, answer me." Todd soundly struck Jesse across the face. The thin, grimy mattress below him did nothing to lessen the shock. "I want you to tell me what she would like."

"I don't know, Todd," he said softly, he didn't want to be hit again. "I'm not her."

"No, you know." Todd looked at him, frowning, disappointed. "I had other girls before, but they didn't like it, and I couldn't ask them why after."

Todd bent down again, and actually started chewing on Jesse's bottom lip. Jesse felt the pop as tender skin broke under the assault, tasted the spurts of blood. Then Todd moved on to his chin, and down the front of his neck. It felt like saw blades were cutting into him and he tried to pull away, but Todd trapped the sides of his head with his hands to quell his protests. Jesse tried to think of something, anything, to end it.

"Lydia wouldn't like this, Todd. Please… stop."

Todd sat back on his heels, looked at Jesse like he was deliberately being difficult. "Well, what would she like? Show me."

Show him? Jesse's thoughts retched at the idea of having to touch Alquist again, unless it was to throw these manacles around his throat and hear his bones crack as he strangled him.

Todd poised his lips a fraction above Jesse's. Jesse could feel his breath against his mouth, slow, rhythmic, without passion. Todd could just not feel what his victims felt. He could never understand the terror, revulsion, and anger coursing through the body beneath him. Pain to Todd was just a way to get someone to do a thing, an equation. He vigilantly watched what people were supposed to say and do, and imitated it the best he could. He was an uneasy automation in a puzzling world. An observer would have to say his greatest pleasure, or whatever emotion that came closest to that, was when the magical equations worked out to his plans.

"Go ahead," Todd calmly demanded, waiting. Anyone could tell he wouldn't wait for long.

Jesse lifted his head slightly the small distance to Alquist's mouth. He tried not to gag as he tasted his own drying blood on Todd's lips. He forced himself to gently kiss him, to imagine his past when he still had love, had family, had even cynical hope, to imagine a thing that was so very far away.