Location - Saturn market place
It was a sunny day; the breeze was warm with moisture and the sky was bright blue. I had on a light jacket and, finding it too hot to wear, I threw it over my shoulder. The wind blew through my hair as I walked through the market place, dodging the daydreaming tourists trying to find something to occupy my mind with other than my thoughts.
I hated being here. It was too crowded with too many damn tourists for my visit to be enjoyable.
I sighed, still shaken from the dream the previous night as I played it over in my mind like a reoccurring pain in my ass. - Kind of like Faye-. It still haunted my every thought as I made my way passed the people and tried to let it go in the crowds of shadowed faces. .
Why couldn't I let it go?
Every now and again an image came to my mind from what I tried so hard to push away. Then my stomach would lurch a little and the image would pass, leaving me empty, cold, and sick. It was an unnerving disruption. I wanted to believe those images of last night had been nothing more then my imagination- my semi reality of my life, which gave me nightmares constantly anyway. And I wasn't the type of person who believed that dreams foretold anything, but there was that twisting feeling in my gut that told me to stay alert, watch for signs that nightmares and dreams meant something other than gruesome pictures of a semi crazy mind. The sad thing was, as much as I wanted to just forget it, I just couldn't seem to ignore it. It wasn't like Faye or the pain I got in my side. I just couldn't block it out. Every thought somehow seemed to drift back into the dream that wouldn't stay shoved back into my subconscious.
I passed a café, a girl in the window turned to face me as the reflection of her face shimmered. For a split second I thought it was Julia. I had stopped and shook my head, trying to clear it, trying to push everything that was bombarding my mind out of my thoughts. I needed a better way to deal with this, deal with all this excess depression. I was losing my mind.
Gotta' get a handle on this Spike buddy or you're gonna' end up in a nice room with padded walls.
I shook my head again. That thought wasn't going to happen any time soon, I refused to be locked away with only my memories and dreams to let me suffer. It made me laugh how that voice in my head just came out whenever it felt like bugging the shit out of me. Where had it been when I needed it to knock some common sense into me, or help me figure the sit in my life out?
Nowhere that was where.
But there had always been the cigarettes and alcohol. I reached in to my pants pocket, hoping to find just one more cigarette. No, I didn't have enough luck just to have one little inhale of smoke to calm my shaking nerves. But, as I reached into my pocket I found a few woolongs. I pulled it out and counted it. Not much but enough to by a drink, or a pack.
At the moment, a drink sounded good to me, and I knew the perfect place. The real question was: was it still around? It had only been nine years. I doubted that that many huge changes happened here. Saturn was slow but progressive. It moved with the times only when the people felt it needed to. Plus Tavern was the big hangout.
I walked past Briston Street to see if the old tavern was there. Older homes stared at me from both sides of the street, the clouds looming above my head threatening rain. For the most part it was quite; a few cars, some lawnmowers, and kids, and that was it. Quite? Yes, peaceful? I couldn't get enough grip of the deep melancholy that lingered around in the shadows.
I thought of the Tavern again. The old bar with the familiar faces of the people I hardly knew but felt comfortable enough with to think of them as part of a place I could call home. Before Vicious, before Julia, before desperation just to get away from the complicated life I had just wanted to forget. They were there- shadowed smiles tainted with alcohol- my foundation, perhaps?
Man, that place had a lot of memories. It brought a half smile to my face. It would be good to sit with some of the old timers and here their stories again and anyways a drink would calm my nerves. Besides I had time to kill anyway, hours in fact.
Jet was getting supplies for the ship and new parts for the Swordfish. He said it would take him awhile. Faye went "Gambling," and Ed well I guessed she was doing whatever she normally did. I figured that she was out wandering around somewhere with Ein at her heels.
I walked past Asrin Street thinking about how everything had changed. It's funny how you don't remember anything about a place till you're actually there. The old buildings seeped with forgotten pasts. Memories, some mine, some from the ghosts that never left.
I walked to the village plaza and stopped. The street was empty. A lone piece of crumpled paper blew down the dusty sidewalk. The buildings were shabby and falling into unbelievable disrepair.
Had it really been that long ago that this place was filled with shops and people?
I turned looking at both sides of the street as I walked; absolutely in horror and disbelief at everything I saw. Four streets down from all this was a life of tourists and trade. This place was nothing short of a ghost town.
What the hell is going on here?
At last I came to Bristin Street. The bar on the corner stood half fallen over. The shack out back was reduced to nothing but a pile of rotting wood. I couldn't believe it, and the smell was awful. It smelled like burnt flesh and rubber.
No, damnit! I can't believe this!
At that moment I thought of her again and that day we met in the same bar that once stood where only ashes remained now. I saw her face for only a moment.
I turned away I just couldn't bear it anymore. Nine years, it was only nine years ago and it was all gone just like that. How cruel time could be. Everything lost in that pile of ash and god knows what else, it was like looking at my life symbolically. Eventually I would become ashes just like the old bar, and would anyone remember where I once stood? But maybe it didn't really matter because, as of now, I wasn't going to die no matter how much I wanted to.
Everything of my past was ashes now.
But wait.
What about the factory? Should I go there to? No, hell no, seeing that place burnt to cinders like the bar would silence me for good. It would take too much of my spirit away to know I lived through time and they did not.
I wanted to go back to the ship; there wasn't any point for me to stay any longer.
I'm not going back there. I don't want to see what that place looks like. I'm leaving right now. I don't want to see that place in ruins too.
I decide to walk back.
Back where?
The ship it was all I had now. I felt as if I had been slapped in the face yet again. I always came back. Somewhere deep inside of me I always knew that this small piece of my life wouldn't stay physically standing. That it would be gone. Like I knew Julia would never be mine. But I still wanted her. I always returned to the things I couldn't have and saw it all die. Like I was supposed to see it was destroyed.
Well I turned my back on all the things that I had lost this time
I walked away.
The air around me was getting colder.
I swore as a dark cloud loomed over my head. I looked up at it angrily. It was going to storm.
Ha let it come. I hope it heard me. I wanted it to pour. I wanted to stand it and get drenched. I had no desire to fight anymore, whether I was fighting the rain or my own life, I didn't care. I was tired of fighting a loosing battle. And yet I refused to back from the challenge of trying. Hell I wasn't gonna be the one who ran away this time.
Come on you bastard of a storm.
Then it started to rain. I looked up at it. The sky had turned a nasty shade of black. For some reason I smiled. The irony of life; wasn't it great? You had to love it.
I laughed out loud. Then something moved in the corner of the declining building beside me. I wiped my eyes to make sure I wasn't hallucinating. But it moved again. With the wind picking up it was so hard to see what it was.
Damn. I can't see. Give me one good look, you bastard.
And I got one good look as if an answer to my unspoken thought. Just one glimpse, but it was enough to tell my instincts that whatever it was had to be human.
I couldn't tell you why but something urged me to chase it. If it was what I thought, then maybe that person could ask them what had happed to this area.
"Hey." I cried. "Wait I want to speak to you!"
The thing made a dash down the deserted street. One thought ran through my head, and that was to catch it.
I ran down street after street. The wind and rain whipped at my face. By now I was soaked to the bone, but I hadn't noticed. After all it was only water. I wasn't gonna melt. I smiled a wry smile. That notion had brought some humor to this insane situation.
The shadowy figure darted through a narrow tunnel of a collapsed shed. It took me too much time to get through it. It was a very tight squeeze. How the hell a person had gotten through this tunnel so fast was beyond me.
Either that was an animal or this guy was a good contortionist.
When I came through the tunnel I couldn't tell where I was. It was the same view for miles. All UI saw were black burnt buildings. Their shadows loomed in the distance. The area was more run down then the one before it. Nothing moved.
The person I has chased was nowhere to be seem, and I had no idea where I was. Briston Street was far away now. I thought about retracing my steps but I had no idea where I had come from.
Shit! Damn you, Spike. You had to follow that thing. What if it was a ghost? You're going crazy buddy. You're seeing things that aren't there. How the hell do you plan to get out of this one?
I laughed and turned around. But I stopped at what I saw. A tall black brunt building loomed before me. It smelled of charred coal and rubber even through the rain.
What was this place?
The wind picked up and a small metal sign flew into my leg.
Baker Brothers Parts
I almost fell to the ground. I had worked here. What the hell had happened? The first thing I was going to do when I got into town was to ask why every damn building in the district was burned to charred bits. I knew where I was now. The whole time I had chased that thing, I had thought I was getting further away from Briston Street. But all I had done was to make one huge circle.
And here I was.
I stopped raining. I turned down the side street to go back. This place was creeping me out. It was to depressing to think about all that I had known to be nothing more then ashes.
Oh well what else was new, right?
I put my hands in my pockets and started back for town, and left the images of a yet another broken past behind me.
I walked across the street to Grey Alley. It was the quickest way back into town.
All the buildings here were burnt too. Someone must have gone fire happy. I could see why I thought I was someplace else. Everything looked the same, burnt and deteriorated.
I went down the alleyway and stopped at what I saw.
What the hell?
A trail of bloody footprints lay upon the ground. Deep holes along with bits of torn bloody cloth were on either side of them. I guessed whoever had left these behind must have fallen once or twice. The puddles on the ground glowed red and the smell of the blood reached up into my nose and made me turn away.
I knelt down and felt the blood with my fingers. It was still warm. Warm enough to just have come from a body.
I looked for bullet shots in the burnt walls of the buildings but didn't see any. The footprints ran all along the alley in a stumbled fashion.
I stood up.
Should I follow them? Is the person alive?
What could I do now? The person was probably dead. That was hell of a lot of blood to be lost. What was I going to do? I was sure that no one was around to help that person.
I put my hand to my face.
I wanted to turn around the flee all of this, this nightmare of death that surrounded me wherever I went. I had, had enough of it.
But if I I'd go back to the ship and think of some person lying half dead in the gutter. I closed my eyes and then the thought of Lin lying there after he blocked the shot, came into my head. I opened my eyes.
No, I won't be the one to walk away.
I ran up the alleyway, the puddles of blood grew larger with each step I took. The person had obviously tried to flee, that caused more blood loss.
I ran faster, thoughts of that fateful rainy day ringing in my ears.
Vicious.. No I didn't save Julia but.
No not this time. I didn't save her but I will get to this person.
I came to the end and looked around me. The small path on the right was no longer passable. The charred bricks had fallen into an enormous heap. On the other side I saw it. Lying in the corner under some bricks was the thing I had chased dome way back. It lay in bundle of soaked rags propped up against the corner. The blood pooled at its feet. It was so tiny.
I pulled one of the rags back to reveal a face, stained with blood and cuts that zigzagged around the forehead. The head fell to the side. I pulled the hood off completely. It was a kid, a little kid. I had been chasing a little kid this whole time?
I put the hood down, I was sure the kid was dead. There was a lot of blood lost, too much for a person to survive. I felt so bad. I hated to see that. Poor kid.
I turned to leave when, the eyes flared open. Dangerous pain filled eyes stared back at me with a blurred vision. The kid held out a shaky arm and fell forward. The mouth moved but the words were so faint. Quickly I dove and caught the kid. I felt for a pulse and found a weak one. Then I heard the words again, soft but distinct.
Help me father.
I froze. The kid was delusional. I scratched my head and bit my lip. What was I supposed to do? I just couldn't leave the kid but I absolutely hated kids. Part of me said he was already beyond my help. But those eyes, if I didn't at least try they would haunt me forever. I acted without a thought in my head as to what I was going to do but I grabbed the kid anyway and ran back up the alley. The blood dripped on my coat and left puddles. I stopped and checked for a pulse again. It was getting weaker. I took off my jacket and ripped it into strips. I tied all the places where the blood was most and started to run again.
Where could I take the kid? Once I got out of the endless alley I ran down the street. I got to the old factory and looked both ways.
No one.
What was I gonna do?
The ship was all I could think of. But then something unexpected happened.
BAM!
A bullet landed in a puddle at my feet. I turned and saw a guy dressed in black crouched behind the shed.
"Give me the kid and you can go. Actually I should thank you. We've been looking for him for months." The guy stood up and looked at me.
I smiled mockingly, old sarcasm breaking through my worry for the kid on my back. "Whose we?"
He laughed. "None of your business. You do know that if you don't give me the kid I'll kill you too. You aren't worth shit to me."
I laughed. "Oh really, yeah well I expected as much. What do you want with him anyway? He's dead already." I shrugged and smiled at the guy with daring eyes. He could try to kill me but he never would.
The guy shook his head. "Yeah well if he's dead what are you doing carrying him around huh?"
I thought for a moment and laughed. I had a good line for this loser. I shifted the kid in my arms. "Actually I'm a cannibal. I haven't eaten in awhile and he looked tasty. I was just gonna you know roast him and make stew. You're welcome to have some." I smiled.
The guy was an idiot thinking I was actually a cannibal! He listened to every word as I went on about what I use as seasonings I used for 'fresh little kids. I had grabbed my gun while running my mouth and gripped the cold metal. Before he could speak I had shot both his legs out. Then I took off running. I ran around the old buildings, looking over my shoulder the whole time. I could have sworn I was being followed.
Before I knew I was back in living part of the town. I hid behind a building. There was no chance now that the kid could go to a hospital now. Those creeps would be everywhere. All I had left was the ship. I just had to get back there quickly and quietly. If someone saw me there would be trouble with the law and all that shit. I threw a large dirty sheet from the ground over top of me and smeared my face with dirt. No one would come up to a poor smelly person now.
I had no trouble getting around people at all. They all made room and avoided me as much as possible.
When I got back to the ship no one was there. I was relived and somewhat annoyed at the same time. I didn't want Faye asking stupid questions. But Jet was more of a doctor then I was.
Shut up, Spike and do something. The kid's dying and you're thinking about how other people would save him. Save him your goddamn self. Stop acting as if you're a fucking cripple.
I got the kid into the bathroom and took off the bloody rags. The kid was a mess. Blood was everywhere. I scrubbed the cuts clean. There were so many. But luckily there were no bullets to pull out or anything of that nature.
I noticed a chain on the kid's neck. At the bottom was a large flat square with a heart on it. I took it off and set it one the counter. I was tempted to look inside but I had more pressing matters to attend to and it really wasn't any of my damn business anyway.
After about what seemed like hours. I had the kid cleaned, treated, in clothes and lying on the couch breathing softly and contently. I was so damn tired then. I sat next to the kid. His pulse was back to normal now but all that blood loss worried me. I didn't mean to but I fell asleep next to the kid. All rational thought of disease, bombs or anything was out of my mind. I had just done the stupidest thing ever. I had taken some half dead kid off the street and taken him and whatever else with him home. Or the fact some guys were gonna be after me. It all was just too much. Once I hit the couch I was out.
It was a sunny day; the breeze was warm with moisture and the sky was bright blue. I had on a light jacket and, finding it too hot to wear, I threw it over my shoulder. The wind blew through my hair as I walked through the market place, dodging the daydreaming tourists trying to find something to occupy my mind with other than my thoughts.
I hated being here. It was too crowded with too many damn tourists for my visit to be enjoyable.
I sighed, still shaken from the dream the previous night as I played it over in my mind like a reoccurring pain in my ass. - Kind of like Faye-. It still haunted my every thought as I made my way passed the people and tried to let it go in the crowds of shadowed faces. .
Why couldn't I let it go?
Every now and again an image came to my mind from what I tried so hard to push away. Then my stomach would lurch a little and the image would pass, leaving me empty, cold, and sick. It was an unnerving disruption. I wanted to believe those images of last night had been nothing more then my imagination- my semi reality of my life, which gave me nightmares constantly anyway. And I wasn't the type of person who believed that dreams foretold anything, but there was that twisting feeling in my gut that told me to stay alert, watch for signs that nightmares and dreams meant something other than gruesome pictures of a semi crazy mind. The sad thing was, as much as I wanted to just forget it, I just couldn't seem to ignore it. It wasn't like Faye or the pain I got in my side. I just couldn't block it out. Every thought somehow seemed to drift back into the dream that wouldn't stay shoved back into my subconscious.
I passed a café, a girl in the window turned to face me as the reflection of her face shimmered. For a split second I thought it was Julia. I had stopped and shook my head, trying to clear it, trying to push everything that was bombarding my mind out of my thoughts. I needed a better way to deal with this, deal with all this excess depression. I was losing my mind.
Gotta' get a handle on this Spike buddy or you're gonna' end up in a nice room with padded walls.
I shook my head again. That thought wasn't going to happen any time soon, I refused to be locked away with only my memories and dreams to let me suffer. It made me laugh how that voice in my head just came out whenever it felt like bugging the shit out of me. Where had it been when I needed it to knock some common sense into me, or help me figure the sit in my life out?
Nowhere that was where.
But there had always been the cigarettes and alcohol. I reached in to my pants pocket, hoping to find just one more cigarette. No, I didn't have enough luck just to have one little inhale of smoke to calm my shaking nerves. But, as I reached into my pocket I found a few woolongs. I pulled it out and counted it. Not much but enough to by a drink, or a pack.
At the moment, a drink sounded good to me, and I knew the perfect place. The real question was: was it still around? It had only been nine years. I doubted that that many huge changes happened here. Saturn was slow but progressive. It moved with the times only when the people felt it needed to. Plus Tavern was the big hangout.
I walked past Briston Street to see if the old tavern was there. Older homes stared at me from both sides of the street, the clouds looming above my head threatening rain. For the most part it was quite; a few cars, some lawnmowers, and kids, and that was it. Quite? Yes, peaceful? I couldn't get enough grip of the deep melancholy that lingered around in the shadows.
I thought of the Tavern again. The old bar with the familiar faces of the people I hardly knew but felt comfortable enough with to think of them as part of a place I could call home. Before Vicious, before Julia, before desperation just to get away from the complicated life I had just wanted to forget. They were there- shadowed smiles tainted with alcohol- my foundation, perhaps?
Man, that place had a lot of memories. It brought a half smile to my face. It would be good to sit with some of the old timers and here their stories again and anyways a drink would calm my nerves. Besides I had time to kill anyway, hours in fact.
Jet was getting supplies for the ship and new parts for the Swordfish. He said it would take him awhile. Faye went "Gambling," and Ed well I guessed she was doing whatever she normally did. I figured that she was out wandering around somewhere with Ein at her heels.
I walked past Asrin Street thinking about how everything had changed. It's funny how you don't remember anything about a place till you're actually there. The old buildings seeped with forgotten pasts. Memories, some mine, some from the ghosts that never left.
I walked to the village plaza and stopped. The street was empty. A lone piece of crumpled paper blew down the dusty sidewalk. The buildings were shabby and falling into unbelievable disrepair.
Had it really been that long ago that this place was filled with shops and people?
I turned looking at both sides of the street as I walked; absolutely in horror and disbelief at everything I saw. Four streets down from all this was a life of tourists and trade. This place was nothing short of a ghost town.
What the hell is going on here?
At last I came to Bristin Street. The bar on the corner stood half fallen over. The shack out back was reduced to nothing but a pile of rotting wood. I couldn't believe it, and the smell was awful. It smelled like burnt flesh and rubber.
No, damnit! I can't believe this!
At that moment I thought of her again and that day we met in the same bar that once stood where only ashes remained now. I saw her face for only a moment.
I turned away I just couldn't bear it anymore. Nine years, it was only nine years ago and it was all gone just like that. How cruel time could be. Everything lost in that pile of ash and god knows what else, it was like looking at my life symbolically. Eventually I would become ashes just like the old bar, and would anyone remember where I once stood? But maybe it didn't really matter because, as of now, I wasn't going to die no matter how much I wanted to.
Everything of my past was ashes now.
But wait.
What about the factory? Should I go there to? No, hell no, seeing that place burnt to cinders like the bar would silence me for good. It would take too much of my spirit away to know I lived through time and they did not.
I wanted to go back to the ship; there wasn't any point for me to stay any longer.
I'm not going back there. I don't want to see what that place looks like. I'm leaving right now. I don't want to see that place in ruins too.
I decide to walk back.
Back where?
The ship it was all I had now. I felt as if I had been slapped in the face yet again. I always came back. Somewhere deep inside of me I always knew that this small piece of my life wouldn't stay physically standing. That it would be gone. Like I knew Julia would never be mine. But I still wanted her. I always returned to the things I couldn't have and saw it all die. Like I was supposed to see it was destroyed.
Well I turned my back on all the things that I had lost this time
I walked away.
The air around me was getting colder.
I swore as a dark cloud loomed over my head. I looked up at it angrily. It was going to storm.
Ha let it come. I hope it heard me. I wanted it to pour. I wanted to stand it and get drenched. I had no desire to fight anymore, whether I was fighting the rain or my own life, I didn't care. I was tired of fighting a loosing battle. And yet I refused to back from the challenge of trying. Hell I wasn't gonna be the one who ran away this time.
Come on you bastard of a storm.
Then it started to rain. I looked up at it. The sky had turned a nasty shade of black. For some reason I smiled. The irony of life; wasn't it great? You had to love it.
I laughed out loud. Then something moved in the corner of the declining building beside me. I wiped my eyes to make sure I wasn't hallucinating. But it moved again. With the wind picking up it was so hard to see what it was.
Damn. I can't see. Give me one good look, you bastard.
And I got one good look as if an answer to my unspoken thought. Just one glimpse, but it was enough to tell my instincts that whatever it was had to be human.
I couldn't tell you why but something urged me to chase it. If it was what I thought, then maybe that person could ask them what had happed to this area.
"Hey." I cried. "Wait I want to speak to you!"
The thing made a dash down the deserted street. One thought ran through my head, and that was to catch it.
I ran down street after street. The wind and rain whipped at my face. By now I was soaked to the bone, but I hadn't noticed. After all it was only water. I wasn't gonna melt. I smiled a wry smile. That notion had brought some humor to this insane situation.
The shadowy figure darted through a narrow tunnel of a collapsed shed. It took me too much time to get through it. It was a very tight squeeze. How the hell a person had gotten through this tunnel so fast was beyond me.
Either that was an animal or this guy was a good contortionist.
When I came through the tunnel I couldn't tell where I was. It was the same view for miles. All UI saw were black burnt buildings. Their shadows loomed in the distance. The area was more run down then the one before it. Nothing moved.
The person I has chased was nowhere to be seem, and I had no idea where I was. Briston Street was far away now. I thought about retracing my steps but I had no idea where I had come from.
Shit! Damn you, Spike. You had to follow that thing. What if it was a ghost? You're going crazy buddy. You're seeing things that aren't there. How the hell do you plan to get out of this one?
I laughed and turned around. But I stopped at what I saw. A tall black brunt building loomed before me. It smelled of charred coal and rubber even through the rain.
What was this place?
The wind picked up and a small metal sign flew into my leg.
Baker Brothers Parts
I almost fell to the ground. I had worked here. What the hell had happened? The first thing I was going to do when I got into town was to ask why every damn building in the district was burned to charred bits. I knew where I was now. The whole time I had chased that thing, I had thought I was getting further away from Briston Street. But all I had done was to make one huge circle.
And here I was.
I stopped raining. I turned down the side street to go back. This place was creeping me out. It was to depressing to think about all that I had known to be nothing more then ashes.
Oh well what else was new, right?
I put my hands in my pockets and started back for town, and left the images of a yet another broken past behind me.
I walked across the street to Grey Alley. It was the quickest way back into town.
All the buildings here were burnt too. Someone must have gone fire happy. I could see why I thought I was someplace else. Everything looked the same, burnt and deteriorated.
I went down the alleyway and stopped at what I saw.
What the hell?
A trail of bloody footprints lay upon the ground. Deep holes along with bits of torn bloody cloth were on either side of them. I guessed whoever had left these behind must have fallen once or twice. The puddles on the ground glowed red and the smell of the blood reached up into my nose and made me turn away.
I knelt down and felt the blood with my fingers. It was still warm. Warm enough to just have come from a body.
I looked for bullet shots in the burnt walls of the buildings but didn't see any. The footprints ran all along the alley in a stumbled fashion.
I stood up.
Should I follow them? Is the person alive?
What could I do now? The person was probably dead. That was hell of a lot of blood to be lost. What was I going to do? I was sure that no one was around to help that person.
I put my hand to my face.
I wanted to turn around the flee all of this, this nightmare of death that surrounded me wherever I went. I had, had enough of it.
But if I I'd go back to the ship and think of some person lying half dead in the gutter. I closed my eyes and then the thought of Lin lying there after he blocked the shot, came into my head. I opened my eyes.
No, I won't be the one to walk away.
I ran up the alleyway, the puddles of blood grew larger with each step I took. The person had obviously tried to flee, that caused more blood loss.
I ran faster, thoughts of that fateful rainy day ringing in my ears.
Vicious.. No I didn't save Julia but.
No not this time. I didn't save her but I will get to this person.
I came to the end and looked around me. The small path on the right was no longer passable. The charred bricks had fallen into an enormous heap. On the other side I saw it. Lying in the corner under some bricks was the thing I had chased dome way back. It lay in bundle of soaked rags propped up against the corner. The blood pooled at its feet. It was so tiny.
I pulled one of the rags back to reveal a face, stained with blood and cuts that zigzagged around the forehead. The head fell to the side. I pulled the hood off completely. It was a kid, a little kid. I had been chasing a little kid this whole time?
I put the hood down, I was sure the kid was dead. There was a lot of blood lost, too much for a person to survive. I felt so bad. I hated to see that. Poor kid.
I turned to leave when, the eyes flared open. Dangerous pain filled eyes stared back at me with a blurred vision. The kid held out a shaky arm and fell forward. The mouth moved but the words were so faint. Quickly I dove and caught the kid. I felt for a pulse and found a weak one. Then I heard the words again, soft but distinct.
Help me father.
I froze. The kid was delusional. I scratched my head and bit my lip. What was I supposed to do? I just couldn't leave the kid but I absolutely hated kids. Part of me said he was already beyond my help. But those eyes, if I didn't at least try they would haunt me forever. I acted without a thought in my head as to what I was going to do but I grabbed the kid anyway and ran back up the alley. The blood dripped on my coat and left puddles. I stopped and checked for a pulse again. It was getting weaker. I took off my jacket and ripped it into strips. I tied all the places where the blood was most and started to run again.
Where could I take the kid? Once I got out of the endless alley I ran down the street. I got to the old factory and looked both ways.
No one.
What was I gonna do?
The ship was all I could think of. But then something unexpected happened.
BAM!
A bullet landed in a puddle at my feet. I turned and saw a guy dressed in black crouched behind the shed.
"Give me the kid and you can go. Actually I should thank you. We've been looking for him for months." The guy stood up and looked at me.
I smiled mockingly, old sarcasm breaking through my worry for the kid on my back. "Whose we?"
He laughed. "None of your business. You do know that if you don't give me the kid I'll kill you too. You aren't worth shit to me."
I laughed. "Oh really, yeah well I expected as much. What do you want with him anyway? He's dead already." I shrugged and smiled at the guy with daring eyes. He could try to kill me but he never would.
The guy shook his head. "Yeah well if he's dead what are you doing carrying him around huh?"
I thought for a moment and laughed. I had a good line for this loser. I shifted the kid in my arms. "Actually I'm a cannibal. I haven't eaten in awhile and he looked tasty. I was just gonna you know roast him and make stew. You're welcome to have some." I smiled.
The guy was an idiot thinking I was actually a cannibal! He listened to every word as I went on about what I use as seasonings I used for 'fresh little kids. I had grabbed my gun while running my mouth and gripped the cold metal. Before he could speak I had shot both his legs out. Then I took off running. I ran around the old buildings, looking over my shoulder the whole time. I could have sworn I was being followed.
Before I knew I was back in living part of the town. I hid behind a building. There was no chance now that the kid could go to a hospital now. Those creeps would be everywhere. All I had left was the ship. I just had to get back there quickly and quietly. If someone saw me there would be trouble with the law and all that shit. I threw a large dirty sheet from the ground over top of me and smeared my face with dirt. No one would come up to a poor smelly person now.
I had no trouble getting around people at all. They all made room and avoided me as much as possible.
When I got back to the ship no one was there. I was relived and somewhat annoyed at the same time. I didn't want Faye asking stupid questions. But Jet was more of a doctor then I was.
Shut up, Spike and do something. The kid's dying and you're thinking about how other people would save him. Save him your goddamn self. Stop acting as if you're a fucking cripple.
I got the kid into the bathroom and took off the bloody rags. The kid was a mess. Blood was everywhere. I scrubbed the cuts clean. There were so many. But luckily there were no bullets to pull out or anything of that nature.
I noticed a chain on the kid's neck. At the bottom was a large flat square with a heart on it. I took it off and set it one the counter. I was tempted to look inside but I had more pressing matters to attend to and it really wasn't any of my damn business anyway.
After about what seemed like hours. I had the kid cleaned, treated, in clothes and lying on the couch breathing softly and contently. I was so damn tired then. I sat next to the kid. His pulse was back to normal now but all that blood loss worried me. I didn't mean to but I fell asleep next to the kid. All rational thought of disease, bombs or anything was out of my mind. I had just done the stupidest thing ever. I had taken some half dead kid off the street and taken him and whatever else with him home. Or the fact some guys were gonna be after me. It all was just too much. Once I hit the couch I was out.