Blood of Youth Chapter 3: The Junkie’s Plea

Li Wei swung his leg over the sill, found himself in a bedroom. But he wasn’t alone.

Stretched out on the bed, in cheap, imitation lace-trimmed step-ins and the flimsiest of net brassieres, was a young girl with bobbed platinum hair and intensely red lips.

She seemed to be sleeping. One rounded arm was bent above her head. The other lay across her gently curved stomach. For a moment Li Wei watched her small, half-globed breasts rise under the brassiere cups. Her eyes were closed, their long, dark lashes brushing deep purple circles under them. At intervals the muscles of her cheeks twitched and her mouth worked.

Looking at her, Li Wei had hideous thoughts. Her young face was indelibly marked with all the signs of vice. The swollen lower lip, the circled eyes, the almost too-white body. Was that what Li Mei had walked into?

Li Wei crossed the room, gripped the door knob. As he did, the girl awoke, sat bolt upright. Her deep blue eyes were shot through with a feverish light.

“You brought it!” she gasped. “Give it to me!”

She was off the bed, her bare arms about Li Wei’s neck, her lithe body pressing close, shaking in an access of near hysteria. “For God’s sake, give it to me! I’m going crazy!”

Li Wei tried to push her away. Some of the blood from his torn fingers stained her alabaster shoulders. She cringed, loathing written on her face.

“Blood!” she screamed. “All I see is blood! Take it away! No more blood! No more!”

He clamped his hand over her mouth, his other arm mashing her writhing body steel-tight to him in an effort to squeeze the breath from her lungs. But suddenly he realized it was too late. Her maniacal shrieking had probably aroused whoever was in the house. The old, loathsome man! The wet-jawed beast! He dropped the girl to the bed, crossed to the door, turned the key in the lock. The girl sat up, her mouth quivering, one side of her face cruelly twisted.

“You did bring it, didn’t you?” she whimpered. “Say you did! He promised it to me!”

She came towards him again, arms outstretched, palms up. One of her brassiere straps had slipped off her shoulder. The upper rondure of a breast was visible where it dipped into the valley separating the twin mounds of snow-pale softness.

“I’ll do anything,” she whimpered. “Anything! Just give me one shot! Only one!”

Li Wei’s eyes flashed to the white roundness of her upper left arm. Dozens of tiny punctures marred the smooth skin. Now he knew what she was begging for. Dope! She was a morphine addict!

He had little time to think about it. Someone knocked at the door, turned—