Devil in a Red Dress

6

Jennie walked the village in haughty annoyance like she usually did. She always drew unwanted attention around the villagers and she never knew why. It's not like any of them actually desired to know her. They all wanted to take something from her, she figured. Everyone was poor and there was a war going on and her family owned a bakery so they just wanted to eat right. They wanted to use her for food because rations were low and the entire country was starving.

She was proven right, as usual, seconds later.

"We're all starving and here you are flaunting how skinny you are. On purpose? Are you mocking us for not being able to eat?" A man scolded her as he grabbed Jennie's arm.

Jennie rolled her eyes and shoved the beggar away.

He followed behind Jennie and she quickened her steps. She almost turned around to punch him but she really did feel bad that mostly everyone was starving right now. It wasn't his fault he was so emaciated and took out his frustrations on Jennie, like most of the villagers did. So she kept walking. Irritably to say the least because she was still human.

Her family had lucked out.

War broke out and her dad was a baker and as soon as the rations diminished as the war dragged on her family was suddenly being visited by royal envoys, asking them to produce as much food as possible for the troops in exchange for payment.

Suddenly they were rich.

Suddenly they couldn't provide for the village. Soldiers came to clean them out each time. They took priority. There was usually never anything left in their bakery once they left. The troops needed to eat. Whether it was hardtack or freshly baked bread. It was for the good of the country they said. To protect their small village, one of many they were taking care of during this war.

The village turned on them. They were slowly starving now. They couldn't afford to pay more than the envoys and the soldiers did and there was hardly ever anything left anyway. Not in the bakery or the farms or the butcher shop.

Jennie's father didn't care. He was dripping in gold now. He was happy about the war and he even hoped it wouldn't end because of how rich it had made him. He considered everyone else in the village peasants now. Beneath him.

Jennie did. She did care. She could hardly eat. She tried in the beginning. She reasoned that there must be a reason her family had lucked out. Maybe they had done something good in a past life. Maybe this was supposed to happen because their souls deserved to enjoy this lifetime.

Jennie's stomach didn't buy it though. She felt the bile rising any time she took a bite of anything a week in after seeing a dead woman on the street because she starved to death. She couldn't keep it down. Especially after seeing the children, the helpless children starving on the streets and begging for food too.

So Jennie stopped eating. She forced herself to swallow only when the black spots took over her vision and threatened to take her into the world of unconsciousness. Still. It was hard. She hardly kept it down despite her starvation.

She didn't have much energy to properly help with the family bakery and her greedy father and absent mother scolded her daily, neither of them realizing the reality of her situation. The predicament Jennie unwillingly found herself in. Though she pushed herself to work despite her pending starvation, she always inevitably made mistakes, unable to think straight because she was so hungry as she baked and got herself scolded by her parents.

She started stealing from them soon after that. From her parents. She would wake up a few hours earlier before they opened the store, usually at three in the morning to bake as much bread as possible on her own. She'd run out of her shop at around five and find as many children on the streets as she could, handing them what she had just baked so they could eat.