Notes: *hums a little song* I had it stuck in my head the entire time I was writing this. It was oddly appropriate. Disguise, secret locations, danger... all wrapped up in a deceptive package.
Thanks to all reviewers. You people keep me going.
She was a skeleton with candy pink hair, her artificial thinness stimulated by a combination of drugs and surgery. She'd had her stomach tightened to the size of a walnut at age sixteen and had never looked back. What had initially been genuine concern for her health had become obsession. She lost sixty pounds, changed her face, and became a new woman for each new nose that she possessed. The pain was put into its place by addiction. Fueled with zydrate she could do what she needed to do to get through to the next surgery table, the next new look and the next new woman to inhabit her skin.
The Graverobber was peddler and God, a hated and beloved fixture in her life. He was there on that street corner, every second night, just like clockwork. The colours in his hair changed from time to time, but the Graverobber was a nice, stable figure in her ever-changing world. Unlike the other junkies, the other people in her world, the Graverobber never changed. He was a constant, and so when things changed, even a little, it was as obvious as a mallet to the face.
Tonight, when the candy-pink skeleton stumbled to his street corner, she reached the grimy little alley in time to see the Graverobber bidding a theatrical farewell to his pet schoolgirl. The man bowed over the girl's hand, pressing a perfect black lip-print into her skin. The girl giggled, swatted at him playfully, then shouldered her back-pack and flounced away into the night.
Schoolgirl pet, she thought, a frown on her face. She had always imagined him with some zydrate-addicted fashion slave; Not the too-innocent little catholic girl who kept turning up on the corner, and never to buy.
The Graverobber turned as she approached, a slick smile on his eternally smug face. "Nice hair, Joanie," he commented, hands hooked in his pockets as he looked her up and down. There was something indefinable in his gaze that made her feel uncomfortable. It was always there, no matter how many times she told herself that was stupid.
This time she had one up on him. "Who's the girl?" Joan asked, spindly arms crossed over her new chest.
"What girl?"
"The school girl," Joan replied smartly, uncrossing her arms to gesture with freshly manicured hands. "The girl who's always hanging around. The one with the fresh, innocent face. That girl."
"That girl," Graverobber replied, and if anything his smirk became even more smug than usual. "Is my girlfriend."
"You're kidding." Floored, that was the only thing Joan could think to say. "You can't tell me she knows what you do!"
"Oh, she helps," he drawled, withdrawing a hand from his pocket and twirling a tiny glowing bottle with his fingers. "I've even given her a district to sell from. She's quite the expert at avoiding detection..."
Joan, assuming that he was joking, still couldn't help but stare at him with open incredulity. "She looks like she's fifteen!" Joan spluttered eventually.
"Did you come here to gossip?" the Graverobber asked her sweetly, dangling the glowing blue from his fingers like a pendulum. "Should I put this away?"
"No!" Joan dug into her handbag, producing a wad of cash. "Here. Gimme the Z."
"Say 'please, Graverobber'." He actually grinned at her, then licked his lips. "I like to hear you beg."
"Please, Graverobber, gimme the fucking Z," Joan whined. She thought that maybe it was possible that the girl [i]was[/i] his girlfriend. He was perverse enough, and manipulative enough.
Money changed hands for goods and Joan left wondering whether the Graverobber was a pedophile. He was whistling a tune as she hurried away, too afraid to lose her source of zydrate to try and needle him further. It took her four steps to recognise the tune, a children's rhyme. She looked over her shoulder to see him watching her. The message was eerily clear. Don't mention the girl again.
Or bears would get her in the woods.