Streetlights flickered and coughed as she passed. For a while, hope was a euphoric drug that changed her subtly, slowly - the rhythms of breathing, the flow of blood in her veins falling into a pattern that was in harmony with the world's. For the first time in her life Leah was beginning to feel as though she belonged in the world - and in herself. Was this the transmutation she'd hoped for?
Yet hope is a fragile thing.
The girl was younger even than Leah had been the first time the chemical highs had pooled and congealed into venom in her veins, causing her to collapse in the street under the self-righteous stares of the virtuous. She'd been exposed as a pariah. She'd wept. This one had crawled against a wall, hugging its concrete coldness like a lover. Her sluttish dress was torn and smeared with puke.
Leah skirted around her, wanting to pity the girl but finding that any hope she'd been given was too fragile to allow for compassion. Dead eyes glared up at her. She frowned and looked away, but not quickly enough to avoid seeing the nasty, deliberate, rictus grin that twisted itself over the junkie's lips.
: What can you offer me? :
Her rhythms broke, shuddering into discordance.
"Leave me alone!" she snarled.
Something moved in her belly. It kicked against her. Afraid, she clutched at her suddenly bulging gut. The Junkie's Stone, the unliving thing inside her, was no longer unliving.
: How much life can you give me? :
This wasn't the transmutation she'd wanted. This wasn't what the hope she'd felt had promised her. The Stone drank her, licked the corners of her womb, grew on the shattered detritus of her soul.
No innocence. Without life, innocence can't exist. And once you have lived, innocence is dead.
She doubled up, agonised by a rhythm of pain that had begun to wash over her. It felt as though the Stone were scratching at her uterus.
Leah sank back against the wall that was the junkie's lover. Slid down onto the filthy pavement. Felt her cervix dilate. The dead junkie watched her, still grinning.
Pain erupted as a bloody mucus flow.
Something - she had no intention of branding it a child - began its inexorable crawl into the world. She let it come, desperately turning her pain into a scream that echoed around the buildings. If anyone heard, they didn't emerge to help her. The street remained empty except for ...
The dead junkie's hand reached out, clawing into the cracked cement. That hand dragged the corpse closer. Its cold eyes fixed upon her.
Leah involuntarily spread her legs, allowing the Stone to be born. She felt it come, glanced down the length of her body, past the bloody, torn clothes. What she saw stifled the cries building in her throat.
Unnaturally long arms ... and skeletal fingers reaching toward the dead junkie's extended hand.
(Robert Hood)
0 comments:
Post a Comment