Friday, February 22, 2013

Tanya Free for five days 2/22/2013

Tanya



She was running for her life, exerting every ounce of strength, her pursuer right behind her. His footfalls on the plas-crete sidewalk beating themselves into her consciousness as they steadily caught up to her. She had no time to look back to see but had reached the place to which she was fleeing. It was a rotten gaping hole in the mortar foundation of a massive tenement building. One of many thousands of such entrances throughout the ghetto that let into the old sewers below, the warrens as it was now known. Tanya jumped straight into the opening with the footfalls of her pursuer right behind her, she slipped and slid, gouging out a long deep patch of meat along her lower thigh on the rough edged opening in her frantic hurry. She hit the ground and instantly turned with the scrap of carbon in her hand to slash at the hand which was reaching in for her through the opening.
Her pursuer had not expected the beautiful, frightened, filthy slip of a girl-child to turn on him. Nor had he expected the razor sharp scrap of carbon. He had not expected the raggy street urchin to turn and attack, like a crazed animal rather than a human being.
Tanya was a thirteen year old ghetto-vagabond who had already seen the worst life had to offer and clearly understood what this one had wanted with her. She had seen him before, with his girls, and now apparently he had seen her. There was no law here in the tax-free zone, so whatever could be taken and held was property, to be sold or bartered to the constant stream of those who frequented this place. Whatever could be taken and held was the property of the holder. That was the only law of the ghetto, the tax-free zone. That was the only law Tanya knew, so she would struggle just as ferociously to escape the jaws of a predatory lizard as she would this man, or the many others like him who thrived in these places. The outcome in both cases would be the same.
Showing the coordination of a trained gymnast, the ferocity of the gladiator, or maybe it was only her utter terror that drove her, Tanya spun as her feet hit the ground, slashing at the hand reaching in for her. The piece of carbon was sharp, its edge only one atom thick, but of this or anything else which would be learned in an educational institution Tanya was unaware. She knew there were places where people lived normal lives, but of those place’s inner workings she knew nothing. She could neither read nor write nor even spell her own name.
Tanya knew only that the merest touch of the scrap would sever anything of flesh and bone. She took off the last three fingers of his left hand with a desperate stroke, the fingers leaving the hand to flip almost as in freeze-frame through Tanya’s vision. Before the first squirt of arterial spray had even left the severed ends of newly shortened fingers, she was running again while he screamed his agony and despair, and then she was gone into the darkness of underground passages she knew better than the streets above. Better than she could remember her own mother, now seven years gone, and a killing ground for anyone foolish enough to attempt to follow her. Many had followed. They all wanted the credits she could earn them, or her alone. They wanted her blond hair and her blue eyes, because she was different, because she was beautiful. She stood out in a now nearly homogenized race. Her mother and father had come here from someplace else, but they hadn't survived long once they had gotten here. Her father had simply failed to return the last time he had gone out, the victim of a violent social structure he had not been able to adapt to quickly enough. Tanya understood intrinsically what had occurred, her father’s sad but smiling face still in her memories, sad with the knowledge of his failures but trying to put a brave face on it. Her mother had worked as a prostitute at the end, but there was little else she could remember of those times. They had not been good times. As a thirteen year old girl, Tanya was now well acquainted with the lusts of men. Those who had pursued her recently had met death in the underground warrens, the scrap of carbon flashing out of darkness too Stygian to comprehend, then Tanya fleeing like a ghost while the predator turned prey pumped his blood out onto the thirsty plas-crete.

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