The Viscous Hold of Jam

I wrote this earlier this morning, for the IP but adapted to fit something I need. 

The town was rotting like fallen fruit. The only place Tammy felt safe was at her grandmother's table, where the aroma of hot scones and sweet, sweet jam filled the air—but Grandma was dead.

As Tammy grew, she saw the decline of the well-kept surroundings. flats went up and gardens came down. The orchard where she’d skinned her knees was a drop-in centre for addicts. Nobody dropped-in, because innocence was beyond redemption. But hundreds had dropped out—of society—and more every year. Poverty and violence stained the pavements with every new covering of cardboard shelter. The up-market homeless had pop-up tents. But only, the new ones. Priorities my son, they’d learn. The majority weighed the cost of shelter against their begging’s take and bought what they needed to escape for another few hours.

She was fifteen and hopeless. In her search of a new way, Tammy envied the older boys. Seduced by the stench of weed because it stopped them seeing the rot, she joined them and a dark path opened. Jax was the leader—influencer—fool at the head of this lowest level gang, but there were others with equally stupid names if these brothers didn’t suit. They governed the city. Jax, a minor himself at seventeen, had the swagger and corrupted Tammy, replacing her innocence with a twisted sense of family. Grandma was dead—all hail New Grandma Jax.

Tammy ran with him and learned his art. She embraced the web of crime, seduced by the thrill of petty theft and low tier dealing. Success was fleeting, and soon replaced by a decayed aftertaste of regret. Tammy yearned for the love of her grandmother's kitchen and used a syringe to dull the pain. She still smelt her, among the urine and human rot, and pulp. Sometimes, she turned her head on the cold ground and Grandma was there, a waft on the stinking wind of sunshine and apples. But each time it was fainter, a fading memory.

A violent encounter with a knife—she lived—they died—shattered Tammy's fragile hold on owning herself, and she ran. Holed up at Jax’s, her heartbeat was a train that couldn’t take her anywhere. It was lost in the corrupt core of the city, like Tammy. She stared into the sunken eyes of her reflection— She was a hollow vessel, taken like a virgin by Jax's darkness—she realised the cost of her loss.

Tammy made a choice. She’d break free of the suffocating grip of Jax's world. Then she was going to reclaim the remnants of her childhood. She’d cling to redemption before it was too late.

One day she’d have a kitchen. But Grandma was dead.

Futility came with a bag of fruit—it was already too late.