The rain poured down relentlessly upon the urban Manhattan landscape. The weather was unusual for the planet, but the girl in the sopping rags wasn't surprised. The out of the ordinarily bad wasn't anything new for her. The rain ranked fairly low on the unwritten list of depressing events.
Her name was Devan. Long had passed the days where anyone spoke it aloud, however. There was no reason to. No reason to acknowledge such an existence, if one could call it that. If there ever was one speaking directly to the urchin, it was undoubtedly someone yelling over an attempted theft, or a property owner commanding her to leave what shelter she might have found.
The withering illness robbed the girl of the quality of life she might have once had. It had been too long a period of her mournfully short life that the figurative cloud had hung in its place. Too long for her to salvage the memories that once were. What those memories were, she couldn't say, but anything was better than the present. If only she could remember… maybe she could put herself in a better place, if only in mind. Hope had perished along with spirit. All that remained was animal instinct: Survival.
Devan slumped down against a graffiti plastered alley wall. Hunger was burning its way through her body, she hadn't slept in 2 days, the cough was too bad to allow her a rest, and the ancient clothes that did all they could do cover her frail body were ripped and disintegrated beyond repair, leaving her on borderline nakedness. She was tired. Not particularly physically, but all around, and emotionally. Tired of begging for scraps. Tired of the pain that rippled through her chest every time she took another breath. Tired of… everything. Times like this had come before. Times where ending it all seemed the wisest choice. But the young girl's willpower to do something so drastic wasn't enough. She could never take her own life, no matter how much a wonderful panacea it seemed to be. So the torment continued, and the rain came down.
Her head sunk between her knees, lamenting once again over the tragic state of affairs. She brought her bony fingers up through her hair to grasp her head in grief. Small, uncontrollable sobs forced their way up, only resulting in lancing pain through her chest and lungs. Crying was a futile action. It solved nothing, it only caused you to ponder over your plight further, and for poor Devan, it hurt like fire. She sniffed up a dribble of snot, trying to fight back the painful action. The tears stopped, she realized. At least that was something to be happy about. Happy…
The fragile heart jumped as the sound of a roaring engine blasted through the chasm of concrete and steel. What was happening, the thought shot through her weary mind. It was a cargo vehicle, a pretty big one, and it headed right towards the child. By quick, simple deduction there was plenty of room in width of the alleyway, enough to scurry off to the side and avoid the speeding lunatic. Devan pulled herself to her feet with only a slight wobble. Adrenaline flooded through her skull, telling her along with common sense to get out of the way. She braced her body to run, then stopped short. This was the answer she was looking for. Why should I, she asked herself with tears in her ice blue eyes.
She turned towards her unlikely liberator, forcing her eyelids open. She thought back upon her haunting life for a brief moment, but stopped as soon as she began. What was the use? There was no reason to remember the pain that was all she could recall, only the present mattered now. The present that would bring the pain to its final rest. The tears stopped. For the only time she could bring into her silent reverie, she was happy. Genuinely happy. Her life offered her no escape, so death was all that was left. With that final thought, and the roar of the engine drawing ever near, she did something she hadn't in as long as she could remember. She smiled.
The vehicle blared down the dingy side street with apparent assurance. It weaved not once, aside from carefully avoiding the occasional waste receptacle. No, this was no intoxicated fool, this driver had a purpose. What that purpose was never crossed the young girl's mind, but if it had, it would have clearly been wrong. At what seemed to be the last possible moment, the vehicle swerved into a quick slide, stopping just feet short from the thin figure, the sliding doors shuddered open with startling abruptness, and the gloved hands seized their prey with naught more than a whisper.
The event shot past in mere seconds, and Devan's tired psyche could do nothing more than close off to the world. The end was not near; this had happened before, men snatching the poor vagrant off to do as they pleased with her frail, unresisting body. She closed her eyes and let the fleeting abduction go forth. She hadn't the energy, or the will to make a stand to say otherwise.
A tear rolled down her ghostly white cheek, and then the blackness consumed her.
