Chapter Text
A crash resonated through the alley as the gales pushed over whatever dared cross their path. The sky, adorned in a thick, fluffy shawl, blanketed all below from the moonlight. She stifled a shiver. The corner shop closed thirty minutes, maybe an hour before, and most were safe at home. From the weather, of course. Nothing else to fret about, she thought, albeit unconvinced. The air past midnight sat on her shoulders, eerily still.
Still was never safe. She learned that from hearing her father’s drunken footsteps echo through the walls, his uneven snoring at random given moments throughout the day, the knives of his speech relentless against her mother whenever he was coherent and conscious. Sounds meant safety. Meant you know where everyone is. Where you need to put yourself so nothing that can hurt will reach you. Shut your eyes, ignore the sting of whatever hurled at you, imagine-
The sky lashed out, white fangs flashing –- no, slicing –- through the deceptive fibre of night, as well as her mind’s distractions. Hunger’s claw scratched at her guts, as if to taunt her situation. Or a retort at the storm.
Dark eyes followed the path of violently strewn garbage. The dumpster lid would make good cover -- cover from the storm, not whatever lurked in the shadows of buildings and brick walls, preying on whatever found shelter within its crevices. She watched two shaking arms, not unlike her own, pull at the lid of the dumpster, until the plastic escaped its grip and swung down, landing atop a dull garbage bag, forming a tent.
This will do.
The stench was expected. Not new, either. The skeletal man at that corner store always gave her a convenient lapse in his ability to sniff out shoplifters in exchange for sorting and tidying the dumpster behind the store that his knobbly joints gave him trouble for, and if his daughter was working the register that day she’d even slip her a dime or quarter, alongside a shy smile. Pity or gratitude, she could never tell. Not like it made a difference. Same way it didn’t make a difference if she was cowering in a trash-spot to keep safe from the storm or from the silence. It’s better shelter than whatever she had some minutes ago.
Her sigh curled in the air, wispy threads that floated free in the air wherever they pleased. She tried to let herself rest. Legs pulled close to her chest, shoulders leaning on the wall of the dump- she practically jumped several feet in the air when tiny shuffling sounds erupted from right behind her, a clang resulting from her head meeting the makeshift roof.
Rats.
Wincing, she glared back at the small black beads that sparsely glinted at her from the other side of the space. Fur standing on end, lingering under the comfort of old, weighed down newspapers no longer legible to the sane eye. She ran her hands over her own arms, flattening the raised hairs. Had she not cautiously left that sweater behind earlier that afternoon in compliance with the then oppressive heat, and had she not later on gotten chased out of that narrow little lane by a dog –- stray or whatever –- she would’ve been able to at least cling to heat a bit better. She broke the staring contest with the rat, adjusting her own hair to engulf herself in an attempt at conserving whatever warmth she made. The prospect of sleep dangled just out of reach, and no amounts of willful ignorance lightened the pangs of hunger.
A bystander wouldn’t notice the quick nod to the rat, a dip of the head disguised as ducking out from under the dumpster lid. It’s a rat. All that concerns it is survival. Did it ever reminisce of its early days, smothered in maternal affection despite the circumstance? Ever stopped to think of where its littermates have ended up? Another flash of light lit up the space, a half-eaten sandwich stuffed in a plastic bag wordlessly drawing her attention. Eyes locked with the rat once again.
Quick feet made their way to the treasure, not disturbing any other displaced item, before ducking back under the roof. Thin, weblike plastic fought her unfocused hands until she decided to tear it open, and, brought close to her face, provided a once luxuriant smell now stomped down by time and disposal. A burning feeling raged on in her stomach, threatening to spill out of her if disturbed.
She tore off a piece of the sandwich. If this was her roughly a day prior she would’ve already been nausea’s torn chrysalis, but there was no room for that now; it had been a solid month since she disappeared from her life, leaving little to savour her memory except the red thread currently tied on her wrist.
Had the situation been lighter, and her mind not burdened with where to sleep and how to eat, perhaps she’d have described it as her mother’s way of holding her hand. A reminder, a gentle voice in her ear, caressed by the wind, a whispered tu aan meri puri duniya, Ayesha. And she’d softly grin, fidgeting with the runaway strands of hair that never lay flat as Amma smoothened those dark, unruly waves into a thick braid.
Instead –- Ayesha ran her hands through stray hairs, dirt caked under her fingernails; she’d have to find a blade to trim them, or try her luck again with pickpocketing more than a few quarters off the well dressed people who leisurely walked with eyes vastly different to her own and buy a nail cutter – it was a bittersweet memory of who her mother was, she decided one day, not too long ago. Amma was pretty much her whole world too; giving up on herself would never just be about herself. But her mother giving up, if one would call it that, is what made her tense her jaw. Geeta, before leaving the country she knew and getting trapped in a house with a man who had the deep wrinkle of hate’s signature creased on his brow for reasons she never explained to her daughter, was…
She frowned. What was Amma like before her life turned into a constant prison?
The rat, almost as if it was able to extract the contents of her mind and comprehend human thought, flattened its belly on the ground, a fat pancake with tiny roughened paws and a head, tail neatly wrapped around her stretched out abdomen. As the moonlight slowly filtered through the clouds outside, her whiskers were more visible. Silvery threads poised towards the girl as if to push her to the answer.
Get out of my head. With slow, deliberate motion, she placed the piece of her sandwich an arm’s length in front of her, nudging it a few inches further.
The rat seemed unfazed. As each battlecry between the sky and the ground rang throughout the realm of their awareness, she lost track eventually of the number. When alertness came back to her, the sun’s aftercare reflected back into her eyes, and she could see now the distinct cracks in the old brick walls outside, recordings of the previous night’s war. The concrete, parched since hours –- how long had she actually slept? –- scalded her hand when she reached out to it. Nestled in the crook where her body had formed a tent against the dumpster’s wall, insulated by the swath of her unkempt hair, the rat from before was curled into a soft ball of tranquility and slow breath.
Stepping out of the dumpster, she squinted under the intensity of the sun’s rays. The stillness that threatened the alleyway was gone, replaced with the moderate bustle of traffic and people near the main streetways. She must’ve eaten the sandwich at some point; the strong heat, natural lasers stuck between an array of mirrors, didn’t sap away at her energy, and no delusions of the rat’s inherent purpose invaded her thoughts. Eyes swept over the old, fallen trash she’d salvaged from before, surveying the abandoned populace more closely, before snapping to the wrapper of a granola bar –- opened already, she noted as she approached it, but maybe a few bites were waiting for her discovery of them –- picking it up as if it might combust if she held it too tight, the plastic crinkled inward from her grasp.
Empty.
Devoid of meager expectation.
Crouching near the entrance again, her eyes adjusted until the rat, undisturbed still, was discernible from the shadows. Stay, she would’ve pleaded at her, but what grandeur of company could one allow themselves to sit with? Dusty fingers found themselves threading through the face of the mane once more, before she shook her head clear of that line of thought.
Discerning who’s pockets are worth rifling through seemed easy enough several years ago; the elderly who’s senses had gradually declined over the decades, the occasional smartly dressed office worker shut entirely away from worldly perception as if spiritual devotion to their bootlicking would bring them next to God Himself, things of the sort. But those elderly often never lost that iron grip over the openings of their bags, and the office people tend to stick in their herds, and one would typically notice something odd that the rest didn’t; caught red handed, they seemed to have the uncanny ability to seemingly summon whatever cop within the vicinity was previously too wasted to notice anything going on.
A knife would’ve helped in such situations, Ayesha had once believed. Given her visual appearance more of an edge, something that a dismissive height and scuffed presentation never complimented well. A voice with which to say Don’t scream, don’t say anything. Drop the cash.
But it also would worsen things tenfold, the more she later thought of the actual fabric of reality. The cards dealt to her from the beginning were never in her favour in this place; even the suspicion of being armed with a vaguely dangerous object purely kept for the sake of self defence would be enough to garner the bad sort of attention. The kind that made you get asked where you’re headed, what for, who you got that bread from, where that godforsaken smell keeps coming from.
A man, around 30, lightly balding around the top, a pristine white coat around him unbuttoned at the front, seemed absorbed in the contents of his flip-phone while egregious lounged across a bench that’s never seen the enlightenment of maintenance. Her eyes narrowed. The spine of a wallet was made visible where the back of the bench lifted treacherously to expose the contents of people's back pockets.
One foot in front of the other. Focus.
Only twice had she successfully pickpocketed someone. Approaching was always simple. Light steps, walk like you’re meant to be there; scrutiny and suspicion walk past, unnoticing. It’s just the swipe – the sudden absence of whatever lined their pockets – that they felt. Whipping their heads around, eyes locked on her, a scene already on its way. The only option then was to run.
That never needed any instructions. Adrenaline would tug sharp at the vessels of the heart, and before the mind had the energy to register what had happened she would already have found herself several blocks away, tucked safely into the depths without light once more.
This one, she realised with hesitated excitement, went unnoticed. Hiding the wallet from the potential gaze of anyone else, she unzipped it, only for a dime and an expired card to fall into her hand.
While throwing the coin into the street would be more fulfilling of a way to say what she wanted, she pressed her lips into a line, instead pocketing the precious metal - not before noting the lane she had paused in. Where she left the sweater. Her shadow tread first; ground’s mimicry of the silhouette leapt far into the space, and she followed shortly after, muscles tensed. The telltale sound of a canine failed to join the attendance of the scene.
The sweater was long gone, it seemed. Looted by someone who assumed it was up for grabs, or mistaken for abandoned trash needed to be rid of.
In her pocket, the lone dime howled at her mind’s focus.
Surely, she glanced up at the sun, leaving was a foolish choice.
But were things much better then than now? Has food ever been easy to come by? Did the gift of self agency ever come with her name on the tag?
Hesitant steps towards where the dog first tried locking its teeth onto her arm, the soft clunk of boots that never were her’s to begin with echoing through the space.
Lengthened rays of filtered gold, while most too worthy to fall on such a disgraced spot of the earth, illuminated the white scattered particles in the air in a yet decisive manner. Take a look, they’d say to each other, but don’t touch.
She walked into their conversation, basking in the seldom warmth of them while they stalled their exit. The shadow, first leading her here and now further to a specific spot, highlighted the subject of the rays’ gossip. Rusty, humble, but precisely what she’d once wistfully imagined coming across. Her fingers hugged the grip as if in a long awaited reunion, the weight of which balanced perfectly in the palm. Held higher where the light could see, the previously abused metal wielded a course, jagged edge leading up into a fine point, the danger of which concealed by generous articles of rust; which it quickly gave up after stubborn assault via a heavy rock.
Well after the sun’s departure, the bead-eyed creature who initially woke to find little trace of anything from the night of fury now passively stretched her paw out forth when –- albeit battered in red hatches and hints of purple blots scarcely visible –- covering up a grin, the girl walked into view, pulling out a handful of hastily crumpled dollar bills and some provisions; a portion of which was set down in front of her extended paw.