Tevun-Krus #10 - TKX: Best of 2014

The Little Girl from Minerva
A spunky heroine short by @sigrist

Somewhere in the furthest reaches of the city of Minerva, in a house that had long ago been abandoned, a young girl stood with her arm against a doorframe. It was an awkward sort of stance, with one leg half bent and her feet splayed like a duck. As her skirts were picked up in the wind, a woman approached her. "I said don't take that off. 

"But I don't like it!"

"Well I don't care. You can take it off when we're out of the city."

The girl turned to the golden towers. Hadn't they left the city already? It seemed so far away. "It makes me scratchy!"

"Put it on!"

"No, Celia!"

"What did I say about calling me that? You need to call me mom!"

The girl rolled her eyes and pulled away but Celia persisted. As they argued, a tiny sound rattled from somewhere behind them. Celia saw the intruder first. The girl followed her gaze and noticed a figure in the shadows. The figure tried to back away, but Celia moved too quickly.

The girl leaned against the wall as Celia wrestled with the stranger. She couldn't help but think that the noise of their struggle was what sex sounded like. She'd only heard sex once before but it sounded angry and a little sad.

"Well now I've gotta clean up before we go." Celia's heels clicked as she stepped over the body. She came back with a handful of individually packaged moist towelettes and a strange look of satisfaction. "Everyone makes fun of me for carrying so much of these around. My own mothers told me I was being obsessive, but look who's laughing now!"

The girl poked at the brains with her shoe and twisted her face into an unreadable expression. Some combination of disgust and bliss, no doubt.

"Come help mommy clean up...now, sweetie!"

The girl rushed to Celia's side and tore open one of the packages. "Did you have to kill her, too?" She asked as she scrubbed Celia's arm. 

"Yes. I told you, if anybody sees you without it on, they're going to get suspicious. And what do suspicious people do?"

"Talk."

Celia smiled. "You're such a good learner."

It took a long time to get Celia clean enough to get back on the road. "Now let's get going. We should stop at Gayle's before we hit the wasteland, she's the last merchant for miles and we'll need more food."

The girl didn't know how long they walked to get to Gayle's, but it seemed like a long time. Celia kept saying things like, "stand up straighter, would you?" Or, "could you stop fidgeting with it?" Everything came with a 'would you' or 'could you' like it was a request, instead of a command, but the girl knew better.

"I wanna go home." 

"Well you can't," Celia snapped, "your drunk mother made sure of that."

"When we get out of the city can I wear pants?" The girl revelled in the idea of trading her layered skirts for pants. It excited her in a bad way, making things move that hadn't moved before.

"If we reach the wastelands, you can wear what ever the fuck you want." Celia lit a cigarette as she walked. "The rules aren't the same out there."

While Celia picked through Gayle's meagre offerings, the girl browsed silently through the darker aisles. There was a beaded curtain that separated the small storefront from a smoky room. As she pushed through the strings of beads she found that the contents of the room made her feel that familiar, unsettling tug beneath her skirts. There were magazines everywhere covered with naked women, their legs splayed and their breasts hanging lopsided on their bellies.