Taint

5. Her Name is Fontaine

Ginger Residence - In a Tree

The Night is Still Young!

Tyler adjusted his binoculars until the image of the girl in the window sharpened with scintillating detail. He gave a low whistle and lowered his hand to add a few more lines to his sketch. Tyler had turned peeping into an art form. He had spied on girls from every district in the city, in varying degrees of undress, and varying levels of attractiveness, all immortalized in graphite on the pages of his sketchbook.

His latest unsuspecting nude model was that delectable lady from the bar. No, not Miri, he was getting rather bored of her. Tyler idly sketched with one hand as he lifted the binoculars again and watched the buxom ginger framed in the window. Her slender arms wove through the warm, orangey light of her room as she slipped off her bodice.

It was as though a pair of stolen grapefruits fell from her chest. Tyler, caught in the middle of a swig from his bottle, was unable to contain his laughter. Whiskey surged back up the wrong pipe. The alcohol burned through his nostrils as his laughter quickly turned into tiny, pathetic shrieks of agony. Eyes watering, he heard the sound of a small scream and a window opening, which he connected with the shoe that then ricocheted off the side of his head.

Tyler groaned and rubbed his head as he sat up on the hard ground beneath the tree. Gathering his sketchbook, he still couldn't help a tiny snicker as he erased his ambitious curves and replaced them with much more modest ones.

He briefly wondered what he was doing with his life.

Tyler picked himself up and continued on his rounds of the city. There was something he was forgetting... Something important... He took another swig of alcohol to help him remember. He took a swig of alcohol to help with most things. It mostly worked never. Morabella Fontaine - it suddenly came to him. He'd never sketched a rich woman before.

Old, rundown signs flashed by: 12, 11, 10, Tyler counted districts backwards to nine. All the women in the Refugee Capital were the same. He wondered if being rich changed that. He wondered if money could save one from the streets. Strange places. Strange men. Strange new bruises. The same story. He sometimes thought that if he had one, he'd treat her right. Although, that thought was rare: his thinking mostly just extended to having one. Or two. Or ten.

The first thing he noticed about district nine was the sign. It was immaculate. From the pristine, unchipped edges to the words that were actually legible. It had to have been the most beautiful thing Tyler had ever seen in the Refugee Capital. That was until he saw the rest of district 9.

Tyler drifted through district 9 as if he was in a dream. It certainly felt like one. Or maybe like being dead. Every house - no, palace - looked like it had to be a fixture in heaven: the residence of a god. He half expected a host of angels to come strolling by!

The wonder didn't last. His mouth slowly closed again, lips pressed together in a grim line over the bitter taste. The rest of the city squabbled over crusts of dry bread and then there were these people. Who knew how they got there, but it brought back a memory so old that it seemed frayed around the edges in his mind: a memory of his parents on the night of the Incident. The apocalypse. The goddamned apocalypse, and they were still sitting in a plush carriage.

A sardonic smile curled Tyler's lips as he briefly entertained the possibility of meeting his father in this place. It was no stretch of the imagination. He could picture it now: his father was probably fat. Alcotts never starved. His mother... Perhaps more matronly in figure, but she'd have the same green eyes. He was willing to bet they even still had their fusty old butler, starched collar, oiled moustache and all. The thought made him chuckle.What was he thinking? He'd dodged a bullet! That overbearing family? When they weren't trying to engage him to girls he didn't know and enrolling him in boarding schools for terminally stuck up brats, they were always nitpicking over everything he did. Find them again? Ha!