Sell Some Lives

Bear

6 years later

The funeral. The questioning. The crying. The anger and scolding and glaring. The banishing. 

Ellie got to live with her aunt. She moved into the estate and brought her five children with her — identical pale yellow kids with the same height, faces and staring amber eyes.

i had to leave because her aunt didn't like me. She thought i was a bad influence on Ellie. I probably was.

"Write to me!" Ellie thrusted a piece of paper into my hand the day I had to leave. She had scribbled her address on it.

"We're partners in crime forever now. You can't get rid of me." I said, giving her a quick hard hug.

I let go just as fast and stumped off.

I could walk again now, but I still limped a lot.

I decided i needed to learn to fend for myself so i got a job in the same place where my mother had once worked. The Comptoir général de la photographie,' the camera manufacturing and photography supply company my mother no longer worked at. It had been purchased by Léon Gaumont now and no one knew where my mother had gone.

I stuck it out at the company and lived in a hostel at night.

I didn't reach the success the abortionist said I would as an independent woman but it was still a peaceful life.

I wrote to Ellie twice a day but she didn't write back to me anymore. She got married at seventeen (to the snobby heir of a small fortune) and had a boy called Oscar who I met only once and he creeped me out. His father was rude and barely acknowledged my presence. Ellie never invited me again. 

One day, I suddenly decided to go back to the abortionist. I was getting older (twenty) and so was she and probably Mister Buscarino. I wanted to see him too. I missed him a lot. He was the only father figure I'd ever known, even if he did use me to make money and then abandoned me like an old toffee wrapper when he thought I'd be a burden to him instead of help. But it was ok, I wasn't mad anymore...

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I climbed up a steep path, up the slopes of a mountain. Houses were no longer visible. Undulating ridges and endless forest spread by the road like black lichens on the yellowish surface of the mountain. An eerie silence dangled from the sky, immemorial from the sudden spring sun shedding a silvery smile over the side of the summit, a reflection from another world.

A mirage.

I'd been climbing this mountain for three days, on broken stony road drenched in mud from the rain. The forest took me deeper and deeper - a scaly oak greenery. Through the trunks, here and there were glades with tender autumn grass, shrubs of blackberries, dark noisy gullies and a rustling fern. A long, thin sagging stick had stretched out between the two eaves. I decided to grab it in case I needed protection from wild dogs or wolves or even a bear. In the early twilight it looked black and far too long, a never ending stick. No, a snake! I jumped away as it moved. It was a lizard, hanging between the branches and dozing, frozen in the morning chill. A long lizard that looked a lot like a snake. Glass lizard?

The silence of the forest was broken by a scream. I saw a woman in a bloody shirt and ankle length skirt, running out of the trees and a grizzly bear bounding after her. The sight made me go numb with fear. We were both going to die. I saw blood around the bear's mouth, on its hind legs, as it stood on two legs. It looked like a cross between a lion and a bear, and its fur was stuck with blood to its skin. Blood was running from those sharp claws and trailing in a streaky red river down the path. The woman suddenly slipped on her skirt, straight on the muddy ground and fell almost at the monster's feet. It turned its huge head towards down, eyes burning with the fire of hatred and hunger.

I took hold of the lizard and threw it at the bear. It landed on the bears head — a bad omen meaning death — and bit hard!

The bear swiveled around on its back legs, lost balance and fell. I waited to see what it would do. It didn't move. Perhaps the lizard was a snake.

I ran towards the woman and tried to pull her up. She moaned loudly. I saw her shirt was torn and her left breast and left side of her stomach were chewed almost to the bone. 

I picked her up and ran with her in my arms. 

"Hey, lady! Can you hear me?! Are you ok?" I called.

She didn't reply right away. 

Then: "You need to... go towards the hill. Opposite way." 

So I immediately swiveled and started running the opposite way.

"No, do you see a tree? Growing lichen."

I looked around but I couldn't see anything. We ran blindly through the woods, until we finally reached a clearing and then I set her down on the ground and leaned her head on a tree. There was a little river with a rickety bridge. I went to wash my face in the cold mountain water and I took off my shoes and went in up to my ankles because they hurt from being rubbed raw.

"DO YOU WANT TO FRESHEN UP AS WELL?!" I shouted. 

She said nothing. I decided to put on my shoes (they got a bit muddy unfortunately) and squidge wetly back to the tree. She wasn't there. I saw she was running out of the woods, towards a strangely familiar house in the distance.

The abortionist's house.