Down on Your Luck

[Gaz]

 

At a glance, the times of a young and desperate young man down on his luck.

 

 

LB was born to Felicia and Mark Ledbetter in the heart of Idlewood in cheap housing. The family didn't have much but they did their best to keep their heads above water, no matter how much the world around them made its best attempts to drown them in the sea of poverty. He attended school and with the guidance of his loving parents, he seemed to have a bright future ahead of him. He would grow up to have a better life than his parents ever did. The young blonde-headed boy dreamed of being on television or on the radio, where his voice could be heard, his face could be seen, people the world over knowing his name and face. It was late middle school as the boy was entering pubescence that the real world began to bare its fangs in hopes of sinking them deep into his neck. All around him, Kieran witnessed the darkness that the world had to offer: rape, murder, theft, crippling addiction, homelessness. With every month that went by, it felt as though the world around him was closing in, and that sinking feeling was growing all too strong. It was when a red envelope sat upon the dinner table one evening, his father unable to take his eyes off of it, that things began to change. From that letter in his father's hands, his eyes rose to his son and began to weep. He was laid off from his job. Any sort of progress the family had made in recent years crumbled to dust within moments. One by one, the utilities are turned off, until the house is lit by candles and they get water from water bottles that Kieran has to shoplift from the gas station. After teachers from Kieran's school begin to hear about his living conditions, they report his parents to the government and within a week, Kieran is taken into state custody at just the age of fifteen.

 

 

From here, Kieran is placed in a shelter with other teenagers facing similar situations. He continues to attend school from here, but the trauma of losing everything and being forcefully ripped away from his parents molds his mind in an unfortunate way. Many of the other young people at the shelter are delinquents, some representing gangs despite being as young as fourteen years old. These habits and mannerisms make their way into Kieran's personal psyche, further changing him to fit a similar image as the rest of them. By the time his parents regain custody of him two years later, he is no longer the young man they knew him as. He was rough around the edges and held a total lack of disrespect for them, perhaps even hatred. He had lost a lot of weight as he had begun taking drugs, mostly opioids and similar prescription medicines. After a few months of living home again, it is clear that he is incapable of residing under the same roof after police either escort him home in the early hours of the morning or drag him away into the back of a cruiser. He becomes emancipated and picks up two jobs - gas station clerk and factory line worker - in an effort to make rent in his grungy apartment in East Los Santos. Now, at eighteen, he spends his time either locked up in his room doing drugs, thinking about the long lost dreams he held of being famous, or out on the streets in search of an opportunity, be it legitimate or not.

 

[Gaz]

Call me WeatherMan, I'm wherever, man
It's so hard trying to keep some cash in
Now I'm sending ice out of all directions
Why this world gotta work like this?

 

 

PCP runs rampant through the streets and is easy to get your hands on. LB scraped enough cash together to buy himself a little bit in hopes of making rent this month from a street dealer on a corner in East Los Santos. He knows better than to conduct business in his home territory and sets his sights to Idlewood, a bustling hub for all things illicit. When he lived with his parents, he often hit the Val-Mart Idlegas on Winona, tucking whatever he needed into his oversized coat and walking out the front door with it. He decided to do the same thing now. He makes his way through the front door, avoiding eye contact. He goes straight to the shelf loaded with all sorts of over-the-counter medication - ibuprofen, acetaminophen, dextromethorphan, loratadine - and snatched two bottles of off-brand ibuprofen, careful to not rattle the pills about as he sets them delicately into the pocket of his coat. A few more moments of idle browsing helps trim off any suspicion the teenaged clerk behind the counter might had, if he even cared. With that, LB makes his way out the door and to the parking lot to get into his car.

 

 

LB sits in the front seat of his car, back arched over and head hung low as he fumbles with the tiny pill bottles in his lap. The bottles of ibuprofen only contained ten pills each and were shorter than his thumb. They worked perfectly. He jerks his shoulder to get his small backpack into his lap, and pulls out the Ziploc baggy given to him, filled with five small yellow pillows. He takes them out individually and drops two into each small bottle for easy transport and distribution. Some small part of him wants to give in to the temptation and try them, but he knows that this small bundle of pills might make rent and, if he's lucky, his car note. He leaves the last pill in the baggie, tucked away into the glovebox, and he sets the two tiny pill bottles into his backpack. He locks up his car and does what he's seen people do all his life - he mans the corner and hopes that someone needs what he's got. Given the neighborhood, it might not take long.