The Moonwitch (girlxgirlxgirl)

Special chap 1; What i want

Somewhere far far away, in a distant reality...

⚠️ Guns, Alcohol, Drugs, violence, blood, kidnapping, murder, death, scared, intimidation, crying, gangs ⚠️

Scene 1

The cold mist lays itself over the dark night streets.

Tall houses cast shadows over the people that are still awake, aimlessly wandering down the road.

Somewhere in the distance, behind the gray clouds that always loom above their heads, stands the full moon in all its glory. It shines down at the earth, but it's hidden by the pollution.

The night is cold, the rain is slight but still very prominent. It drips down on the sidewalk and makes the cars who pass by splash water everywhere. Those who dare drive a car, that is. Those who are on the top.

In each alleyway stand people with black hoodies and broken gloves, staring at the people who pass by with their sharp and dangerous eyes. Every now and then, gunshots echo across the neighborhood, nobody bats an eye. Instead they continue to warm themselves over an open fire, throw trash to make the flames bigger and argue over the last piece of bread or the last bottle of alcohol. Sometimes the bottles crash, staining the streets even further with the yellow liquid and the green glass.

It's a poor neighborhood. Many of the houses are abandoned and ready to fall down at any second. Sometimes they do fall down, nobody seems to care. Those houses that still work are home to the many homeless or poor families, trying to make a living through the criminality and the violence and the cold nights. They cough when a car passes by. The pollution is already too strong. They laugh when someone gets hurt. Their lives are already over, no speck of happiness left. Especially the cold winters kill the most of them. Nobody seems to care, they don't know anything else.

Maryann is all too familiar with the neighborhood. She's lived here all her life, she's going to live here all of her life.

The alcoholics passing by, the cars splashing mud and dirt everywhere, the crime rate so high no cop has ever even tried to stop them. It's just a way of life here, it's just how things are supposed to be.

Even though Maryann has lived all of her twenty years in this part of the city, she also knows what is outside. The edges of the poor neighborhood are more clean, the cops try to keep them as separate from the rich streets as possible. There is not much crime there, some of the children go to school and most of the adults have so called "honorable jobs". It's better there, not good, but better. That's why her father opened a bookstore there, that's why he decided that it would be a good idea. Otherwise, the store would've been robbed a long time ago.

But the bookstore doesn't do very well. Maryann was sixteen when her father died, the one who opened the bookstore. Now she's all alone, and sometimes she thinks that there is nothing more to her life than that darn bookstore. It smells like dust and candle wax, she can't really afford the electricity bill for long enough. The books are all pretty old, she can only buy a few new ones per year. Not many people buy anything, Maryann doesn't blame them for coming into the store and just reading. Then they leave. It's not like they have any money to spend on books.

But somehow, she always manages to pay the rent in time. So the store has stuck around, for four more years after her fathers death. She gave up on her education just to work on it, just to be there every day and make sure that she never misses a customer. Of course there is no money she could pay for extra staff. But Maryann doesn't mind being there, it keeps her away from her own apartment, deeper into the dangerous streets of the poor neighborhood. And it also reminds her of her father. The man who tried his very best to make a good living for both her and him. It didn't work, but at least he tried?