The looks

Eli stands at six foot and carries himself with an air or arrogance and self-righteousness. He is well built and very toned having spent hours training and perfecting his athletic and fighting ability. He wears his black hair at about shoulder length and is usually swept back behind his ears. Despite being only 17 he already has the beginnings of two armfuls of tattoo with his upper left arm being decorated with a variety of unlucky symbols. His upper body is also heavily scarred with cuts and abrasions however most obvious are three bullet wounds two in his lower abdomen and one in his chest on the right.

Eli is usually always casually dressed in jeans and a piece of sports clothing however has been known to throw on a shirt from time to time. He wears a silver band on his right ring finger and a silver locket around his neck.

The History

It’s been so long I’ve forgotten. Forgotten if I was left on the street or left them to be on the street but that hardly seems to matter now. Now that Daniel has moved me to LA. It’s a very different place to Chicago. Almost seems alien to me, fancy estate, fancy people and fancy talk. I still don’t quite trust him. In this kind of town he’s the kind of person who ends up in a glossy mag or a body bag. Depending on how his luck went. He asked me to write. Said it may help with my anger… We’ll see how long that lasts.

Eli came from a downtrodden area of Chicago, an area not quite good enough to even be considered a slum. Unemployment was damn near 100% although people did have jobs. Whores, thugs and thieves, jobs which had been around since the beginning of time, jobs which keep people fed and warm. Eli’s choice of career came not from want or desire but from that basic human need of food. Stealing what he could and swindling the rest.

Daniel has asked me to write more about my time before I came here. I suppose I can amuse him. I don’t remember much about my childhood. Either I forgot or I just chose not to remember. My past is like pieces of a broken mirror. I try to pick them up but I only end up cutting myself. I spent a while trying to find out why I was alone. All I found was people who wanted to make my life hell. So I gave up. Threw the rules out of the window and went that way too. No surprises when the police finally caught up with my and sent me to that home.

Eli spent three months in a local children’s hospice. Constantly at ends with the other children who Eli saw as making fun of him rather than getting to know him, he didn’t last long there. Eventually he was sent to a juvenile detention center after a fight got out of hands after six months he was released. Supposedly back into the care of the hospice. That didn’t last long and he soon left. Checked himself out the only way he knew how by running and not looking back.

The past is a gaping hole. You try to run from it, but the more you run, the deeper, more terrible it grows behind you, its edges yawning at your heels. Your only chance is to turn around and face it. But it’s like looking down into the grave of your love, or kissing the mouth of a gun, a bullet trembling in its dark nest, ready to blow your head off. I’d always wondered about my parents. What made them do what they did to me? Were they just not ready? Was I not wanted? Or was it just some other sick non-caring socialite who thought a child could ruin her life of suntan oil and stale margaritas.

Living on the street Eli took up a life of crime, finding a natural talent at pick pocketing and subterfuge. Maybe he just convinced himself that what he said was true in some vague hope that for a moment everything was normal. Eventually the police caught up with him. Gave him the warnings they have everyone and tried to put him back to the hospice. That lasted about as long as the last time.

Life knows two miseries; getting what you don’t want and not getting what you want. I have experienced both far too much. What I wanted was a normal life. I used to watch the kids going in and out of school, saying goodbye to their parents at the gate and running to hug them at the end of the day. What I got was a life of running from the cops, starving and sleeping wherever I could find somewhere that wasn’t blown away by the damn wind. One day was different from all the others although it started out very similar to some others. I had just been arrested… again. Being led away in cuffs had become a rather trivial occasion for me only this time I never made it to the back of the police car. I remember trying to slip out of the cuffs. Hoping that the mechanism may just come lose just a fraction so I could get my hand out, lady luck shone that day and the cuffs came loose. I ran. For nearly two months I was free and I enjoyed it. Then for two years I wasn’t.

Eli was eventually recaptured. Wrong place wrong time and he spent two more years in juvie for that. During this time he learned more from the people inside. Actually learning how to slip cuffs and about some targets on the outside.

I’d found out that Lady Luck was really a hooker, and I was fresh out of cash. I’d gone to see my usual fence to unload some gear which I had just lifted from some rich stiffs house only to find death. Something had happened and they were all dead. Single bullet holes exposing the inside of their heads. The trick in my situation was that there was no trick, no matter what the movies tell you. No rules, no secret mantra, no road map. It wasn’t about how smart or how good you were. It was chaos and luck, and anyone who thought different was a fool. All you could do was to hang on madly, as long and hard as you could and what I wanted to hang on to was freedom. So I did what I do best I ran and I hid. Unfortunately I was eventually found. Apparently those few moments I had spent in the house had left enough evidence to be found. Thankfully after a few days in detention I was released. No evidence of me actually having done the crime. “Too clean for a kid” they had said. So once again I was back on the street.

Eventually Eli picked the wrong mark. A well to do businessman by the name of Daniel Morgan the man’s keys seemed to have floated from his coat pocket into Eli’s hand. Eli thought nothing more of it, just assume it had been a very good bump and grab. Unfortunately the next bump had been into a police officer who just happened to have been watching. As he was brought into detention the man was waiting for him and offered Eli a choice. Two roads, one led to LA. Food, a home, a life, a future and the truth about who he was. The other led back to the cells. Back to the darkness of denial and hatred.

Eli chose the only real choice…