{Broadcast Mind}
The floor shakes, the house shakes, pottery and a colorful melange of costume jewelry rattling on the shelves, the table, as angry steps take over the cooking area of a cramped Firenze shanty.
The man is slick with sweat, shirt unbuttoned and clinging wetly to rolling, doughy skin, much of which is hanging strangled over a belt cinched just a little too tight.
Fastened in haste.
He's done, she's paid, it's time to leave.
Hollow black eyes stare up at him from under the table, the boy's vision blocked almost completely by a shag of wavy hair. Everything about the youth is dark, including the look he's giving his Madre's visitor.
He knows what this is all about. It's been going on as long as he can remember.
"What're you looking at? Eh? You afraid of me?"
The man snorts, dredging fluids up from his throat, down from his sinuses, the sound a sickening mix of burble and traveling slop. He expels the blob from pink, greedy lips like a bullet to the floor, flecks of it spattering up into the child's face.
He stares. He can't do much else. The silence only serves to anger the larger one.
The aggressor bristles, approaching the table with a step intentionally heavier than normal. Threatening. Such a small man {as Madre was likely thinking not long prior}, raising a thrill by intimidating someone so insignificant. Someone hiding, doing nothing.
"Y'know, if she didn't have to feed you, little bastardo, she probably wouldn't charge as much as she does."
He crouches down slowly. They're eye to eye.
"Maybe I'll kill you. Would anyone notice? I know you. You've no friends. You've no one. Who lets their baby play with a whore pet?" His breath is rank, soured by wine. He pauses, tickled by the trembling, fear-shocked creature in front of him.
"She wouldn't care. You know that, right? Maybe I'll kill you... " he says again, lower this time. He's leaning forward, all the stench of forced passion and street odor closing in, his body closing in, turning the former hiding spot into a suffocating trap.
But no.
The man rises to his feet, hooking two fingers under the table ledge and giving it a violent shake. The movement sends the boy into a frenzy, scrambling backward til his shoulders meet a wall. Far back as he is now under the table, he can't see the man anymore, but he knows by the fading steps that's he's leaving.
Gone. He's gone.
That went well. Any "visit" that didn't end in Madre's company kicking the shit out of him was a day saved from visiting one of the dottore.
At least they were kind.