They called her Evening on the streets. It fit, for she was a woman of the night- sort of. She wasn't QUITE a woman yet, although that didn't matter to most of the men. Actually, they liked it better that way.

Evening worked on the corner of Fifth and Huynh. There were two other women who walked there, but they really WERE women. Starr and Angel were their names and they had taught evening the business. They had shoed her the ropes, however frayed they were, and made her into the 'woman' she was today.

Both knew it wasn't that much of an accomplishment. The life was hard. You did things you didn't want to, with people you didn't know, let alone like. You pranced around in next to nothing, hoping you showed more than the woman next to you. It was a constant fight between your morals, the police, each other and most importantly yourself.

Almost all of them HAD to do it, though. They all had their addictions, including Evening. Some were alcoholics, most did drugs and all of them had grown accustomed to the flow of money.

Evening mostly sold herself because of her addiction to heroin, but sometimes she felt like she was doing it to feel loved. She had never gotten love from her mother as long as she could remember. Her mother had only been 15, the same age as her, when she had given birth to Chloe, Chloe being her real name.

When she was a child, Chloe's mother Trudy had always had endless streams of men coming through the house. Chloe would hear her mother having sex with the men from her bedroom, as the walls of the falling down apartment were paper thin. Chloe had learned the life she lived from the time she was small. It was all she knew.

At first her mother started on pot. The house reeked with the pungent smell of burning marijuana day and night. Later it turned to Hash. And then, one night after Chloe had had a bad dream she walked out into the living room to watch T.V. (she knew not to go to her mother by this time in her life. Her mother would yell.). To her surprise, the T.V. was already on and her mother was sitting in the worn out winged chair.

"Mummy? What are you-" her sentence was cut short as her mother finally came into full view.

Her mother had a rubber strip tied around the middle of her arm and was flexing her hand. Chloe watched as her mother plunged the shining tip into her arm.

Chloe was not stupid. She had lived in the slums her entire life. Although she was but a child, she knew what drugs were and she knew what addiction was. At that moment Chloe lost all faith in her mother. Her mother was a junkie, and that was that.

Over the next few years her mother sacrificed everything for her addiction, including her daughters happiness. They sold everything worth any money in the house, and soon they were living in shelters to support Trudy's $300 a day habit.

One day, out of spite and anger, Chloe decided to see what her mother liked so much about her Heroin. She shot up for the first time when she was only ten years old, and if she thought she was at rock bottom before it, she was on her way straight down to hell after.

At the age of 13 she became a prostitute, a woman of the night. The older hookers took care of her and guarded her from the cops. She made her money in the way she could. By selling her small self off to older men.

Chloe, or Evening as she would be known tonight, was in her bedroom. With the money she and her mother had made over the past 2 years, they had been able to afford a mouldy apartment in the basement of a department store. Chloe's bedroom was shared with her mother. There was a holey curtain strung across the middle. She had a beat up dresser with a mirror containing her few clothes, and a small bed.

She leaned close to the mirror and smeared on thick silvery eye shadow up to her brows. She put the same silver onto her lips, and stuck the silvery container into a silver handbag containing condoms.

From the dresser she pulled a pair of fishnet stockings with only a few holes in them, a black skirt and a silvery micro top. She didn't change into them yet, for she hadn't had her fix yet. Also from the drawer she pulled out what she called her "H-Kit". It had needles and the junk she had already purchased and rubber strips and everything she needed.

Moments later she was flicking the needle to get the bubbles out. She tied the rubber strip around her arm, just as she had seen her mother so many years ago. Chloe pierced her skin with the sharp tip of the needle, leaving a mark that would soon be lost amidst the other spotty tracks lining her arm.

About five seconds later she felt the rush. Her mouth went dry and she felt thick, the feeling she was so used to and that she had lost her childhood for. She gave a low laugh as the heroin surged through her body and to her brain. Bliss. Bliss in a needle, that's what it felt like.

Suddenly, a sharp pain penetrated from the middle of her brain to the edge of her skull and down her neck. A low moan escaped the bottom of her throat, for she was unable to scream. Again the pain vibrated through her body. Her body felt heavy- too heavy. Like lead was filling her veins. She slipped of the bed and fell to the ground with a thud and a gurgle.

"Chloe, what the f uck are you doing-" Trudy swept back the curtain, and her breath caught, ".."