Fire and Water: a Red Dead story

9

Chicago was the home to the wealthy, the upper class, and the elite. It bred affluence and oozed class. Women clad in silk, propped open feathery parasols, and swept along streets with carefully bustled skirts. Men with pressed coats examined carefully buffed watches and carefully folded the daily newspaper. 

Chicago was the home to the poor, the street dwellers, and the forgotten. It bred illness and oozed death. Women clad in rough cotton, tucked her children around her, babies clinging to the mother's breast, and swept across streets, begging for redemption. Men with misfit coats drank one, two bottles of beer, and carefully stumbled over to lie in the street. 

It was the home to the forgotten children. The children that slipped through the cracks of society and found their homes on the streets. 

It was the home to young John Marston. 

He was all of eleven, at least that's what he thought he was. He felt eleven. He was squatted down in the street, arms crooked around his knees. He was eleven years, and he had just escaped from the Chicago Orphanage for Troubled Youths for the last time. He had been forcefully brought back after running away and living on his own for a few months. 

He could feel his heart beat in his chest, and he unlooped one of his arms to feel the furious patter. He had slipped through the iron gates and had run for the inner city, a place he had felt relatively safer. 

But now he was alone, and he was cold, and he was hungry. "Shit, fucking shit." He paused a moment, pleased that no matron was descending upon him for his language and he let out a string of curses that even a passing drunk glanced at him for. He kicked his feet out, sitting on the mire of the ground. He'd have to start pickpocketing soon. 

A trap rattled by, and he got splashed with muddy water. Fucking damn it. His long hair that he got in so much trouble for at the orphanage now stuck to his face and he pushed it back as he stood up. "Yeah, fuck you too." He'd just make his way up to the market square, swipe a few things, figure out if the place he had made for himself last time he was out here was still unoccupied, and figure out what to do with his miserable life. 

John Marston was a determined little shit, or that was the general opinion of the caretakers of the city orphanage that he had been placed into after his father had died. He had done everything in his power to leave, to cause as much trouble, to make a name for himself in those overcrowded rooms. He would be found sneaking into the pantry, into the headmaster's room, into the courtroom, everywhere the little bastard wasn't supposed to be. Then he disappeared. But he was always brought back, two city officials talking to the headmaster, while it took three other officials to control John, always kicking, always twisting, always biting. 

John Marston was a goddamn feral wild child. 

He sat crouched now, chewing on a piece of stale bread, watching people walk right by him. Good god, were people always this oblivious? He scoffed and hopped out, scaring a well-dressed woman. 

"Oh, oh, go on, get," When he didn't move, but instead moved closer, knowing full well that he hadn't washed in over three months, and dirt was practically engrained into his skin and that his hair was clumping and sticking to his head. The lady crumpled her nose and moved a handkerchief up to her mouth, while moving to grab some change out of her purse. "Good heavens, here, now get, get!" 

She threw change at him, and he grabbed it up, flipped the lady off, and scurried away. Grinning to himself, he pulled open the little bag he kept inside of his pants and poured the change in, smiling when he heard the money clang together. He pulled out a cigarette that he had swiped from a store that day and lit it. His father used to smoke religiously, almost a pack a day, and he had first formed the habit when he picked up a still burning cig and huffed it, coughing on the bitter smoke. His pa had laughed long and hard at him and then offered him another.