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A Night in an Alleyway |
| Two in the morning. Who in their right mind would be taking a walk outside at two in the morning? Alice Harley would. She had been every week for the past five months. She was the stereotypical ‘neglected girl’ in college. Pretty, unassuming, shy, into books, that kind of person. Except for that one quality, she was an extra in the play of life. She would graduate from college, find a job that she thought might pay high, maybe find someone she could love and marry, and then die. How was not a question she thought of often, even on that night, as she was too frantic at that moment to have a trace of coherent thought. Alice had been taking her walks every week for the past five months. And not once had she encountered a single problem. She had estimated that it was sheer luck. Then someone had dragged her into a backstreet, threw her very harshly against a dumpster, pointed a gun at her face, and told her to give her everything valuable on her person. Had Alice not had so much faith in living beings in general, she probably would’ve seen this coming. She probably would’ve never started taking walks during the middle of the night. And she most definitely wouldn’t be in fear for her own life, with someone holding a gun and threatening to blow her face off. She was also quite naïve. Instead of standing up angrily, cursing loudly at whoever was robbing her, and handing over her wallet, she stood up slowly and shakily, and broke down in a bout of hysterical crying. It was a rather pathetic sight, watching Alice cry while at the mercy of a teen with a hardened heart and a Desert Eagle. The 15-year-old behind the gun frowned deeply. “C’mon, just give me whatever you can, and I’ll leave you alone.” This was not what she needed right now. What she needed was some money for a good meal for herself and her little brother. Fate had handed her too many bad times in too short of a time, and had caused her to mature far too soon. It also turned her into quite a cold little monster. She lowered the gun, and unloaded a slug into Alice’s right leg. She collapsed, stopping her hysterical sobbing for just a second. She pleadingly looked up to her assailant for just a second, as if asking ‘What was that for?’ Her crying then began anew, more hopeless than before. “Would you stop that?” The girl’s arms dropped to her sides. Might as well let the terrified little bitch finish crying before taking all the things she had on her... The sidewalk outside the backstreet was decorated with many a faded drawing, all in chalk. Some had melted away in rain, some had been swept away by the brush of the streetcleaner or the foot of the passerby, others were mussed from children irritated by their errors who found that chalk lasted, and they could not sweep away the errors they had made like the could do to pencil. Some were scribbles, some were true drawings, and only one or two select pieces had been done with enough painstaking detail to attract anyone’s attention, and cause them to step around it... With a complacent smile on his face, and the light from the streetlamps illuminating his path, Durante walked along the sidewalk, gazing at the few pieces that were truly worthy of consideration. Chalk and stone. He used to do that when he was little. It was sloppy, and his parents often got angry at him for it, but it was fun nonetheless. His attention was caught by a gunshot, and the sounds of a strange, warbly song that followed from a nearby alley. He stopped for a second, wondering who it might be. He decided to check for himself. Durante looked down the alley, to see a teenage girl, no older than sixteen, look to the heavens to question why she was having such a hard time mugging tonight. He stood there, and evaluated her. Yes, she would make a wonderful subject. He would just surprise her. He had not brought along the Paralyzation Node, but that didn’t matter much to him anyway. Yes, he knew what shape she would look best in. He walked up to the teenager, and reached out for her arm... She had been looking to the sky, wondering why she had been having so much bad luck all of a sudden, when she felt a pair of hands grasp around her arm. She didn’t get a chance to react before she felt her forearm snap, or something like that. It was hard to tell with the incredible pain. The Desert Eagle dropped to the ground. The pain was stark, like all the nerves in her arm ripped apart, though the bone didn’t break. She gave an agonized scream and staggered just a little before reaching to brace her arm with her free hand. Then she felt her arm. The pain intensified as she touched it, but that was overcome by the fact that her arm bent in two places now. She looked, and saw that it was bent at a perfect 45° angle. She raised her arm in front of her, stared, and continued to scream. Durante smiled. Oh, that wonderful song. She had a good voice. Alice didn’t see any of it, but she knew it involved a lot of screaming. At least until Durante pulled the girl’s jaw farther out, and rolled it like a carpet. She had continued to lie there, her hysterical crying soon lightening to frightened sobs, and then to quieted weeping. She was very lucky Durante hadn’t heard her, or in fact noticed that she was there at all. She suddenly felt very alone. She took her head from out between her knees, and looked around from her position on the ground. There was no one there, the only sign that there had been an attempted mugging at all being that the gun was lying in a pile of trash. It was quiet, save the sounds of footsteps slowly walking away, which she couldn’t hear over her own breathing. Her terror slowly began to subside... The first thing that kicked in was her first aid lessons. She had to stop herself from bleeding, and there was no spare cloth around. She bit a sleeve on her t-shirt, just to break some of the stitching, and slowly tore the sleeve off. With the situation of having no bandages of gauze available remedied, she tied it very tightly around the wound. Now to get to the local hospital. It wasn’t too far away... She very slowly got up onto her good leg, pushing herself up with her arms, and bracing herself against the dumpster she had been thrown against. She guided herself from the dumpster to the wall of the building it was up against, and began to hobble out of the alleyway... Alice peered out, not being able to help but look, just to check... Immediately, something caught her eye. It was something, a pile of some sort, in the middle of the road. She wasn’t able to recognize it at first... ...until she saw the eyes of the girl she had just been at the mercy of, staring directly at her, with tears rolling down her cheeks. She was currently lying on her pelvis, as her legs had been stretched, pulled around her head, and tied into a bow-like knot around her shoulders. He spine had been twisted, into the pose a snake takes when it stands ready to strike. Her arms had been pulled back, and curled around her knees, with the fingers turned into a mass amount of knots and curls and twists. But she was still alive, and she could still move, if just a little. She was trying very hard to say something, but it wasn’t very coherent, due to the fact that her jaw didn’t permit her to speak anymore. But, if she could say something, it would be a request, two very simple words... “Kill me.” By this, she meant that she wanted Alice to retrieve her Desert Eagle and blast her brains out, effectively ending the enormous amount of suffering she was in currently. However, as Alice had never seen a human body twisted in such a manner before, she was not quite mentally prepared to comprehend and fulfill such a request. Not that she had comprehended the request at all, as the girl’s jaw had been rolled up and pushed back nearly into her throat. Since she was not prepared for seeing this poor kid, who had just minutes ago tried to mug her and had been threatening her life, Alice merely curled up slowly, vomited at her feet, began to scream again, and collapsed on the ground. Durante stopped in his tracks for just a second. He could hear it, he could hear her singing for him again. His skin tingled; another satisfied subject. His ear twitched. That was a different voice. Another woman, probably not old. She was calling him, wanting to become a subject. Tonight was a good night. So he turned around, and began to walk towards the screaming. He had dragged his latest work out into the street, for all to see when morning came. He really should’ve thought about negotiating with a museum, and get a few of his works put on display. Maybe he could manage it through the Fallen Council... What he saw when he stepped up to his latest creation was not what he had expected. Near the alleyway his subject had been standing in, he saw the source of the singing lying on the ground, arms outstretched to her sides, legs curled up, and shaking terribly. Why was she shaking? Then he saw the gunshot wound to her leg. He took his hands out of his pockets, and kneeled next to Alice. “Are you alright, Miss?” She looked to him very frantically, only moving her head, and screamed a single word that indicated, no, she was not alright, and that she would in fact have an intensely hard time trying to burn the image she had just seen out of her memory. It was such a resounding scream of ‘No,’ that it can’t quite properly be shown on any medium, save sound itself. But, for the full effect, you must have been there to realize exactly how much anguish she was in. Durante pursed his lips. Without another word, he scooped Alice off the ground, and began to run to the nearest hospital. She had bandaged herself up just a bit, but it could still get infected. She could lose her leg, maybe even her life. Death was such a horrible thing; it deprived people of the ability to view all the beauty around them. It also deprived them of being beautiful, or being able to come to him if they weren’t already, and relishing in it. It stopped them from their livelihoods, and Durante found that the most harsh aspect of death. So he would take her to the hospital, and perhaps save her life, or just a massive amount of pain if she didn’t die. Then maybe he’d come back to grant her his gift. Art was his life. But life itself came first. Especially if it was that of others. Written by Ren Start - 04/30/2002 End - 05/05/2002 ...Okay. This is one of those things where people should be glad that their mental imagery doesn’t kick up right away. Or did it? Whoops... |
The C. Force © 1996-2002 Matt Laskowski --- The R. Force and other assorted crap © 1995-2002 Ren