Jot-ober Day 1: Poison

I grew up.  I gave up.

I gave up on being the perfect child, or even the good child.  I threw it all away, ran away from home, found my niche among the grifters of the underworld.  I’ve made mistakes – of course I have, I was seventeen when I ran away, still a kid – but I’ve survived.  I’m still surviving.  I was an actor and a liar from childhood, conditioned from the poisonous home I was raised in.  It was easier to lie to rich men than it was to lie to my own father.  It was easier to flirt with men twice my age than it was to let a boy with soft, dark eyes love me.

Now I serve alcohol at my bar, and the absinthe I sell to my most loyal customers is a poison of my own.  The mobsters and criminals who fill my booths and stools don’t all share my story, but many of them have something similar; parents who hurt them, the promise of wealth, and now they’re just in a different sort of hell.  There’s a reason I retired as soon as I had enough money to keep my bar running for a good, long time.  Grifting’s seductive, near-addictive, but I knew that if I kept going I’d get caught. And I enjoy my freedom too much for that.

And maybe I just traded my parents’ poisonous words for a different kind of toxicity, but at least this is a toxicity I have the antidote for.

I’m the one with the power now.