Saving Greer ((Prequel to "Red on my Ledger"))

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Greer

Someday you come face-to-face with death. And, in that moment, everything changes: your goals, your morals, your sanity. All that is in your mind is one precious thing: survival. That is what you strive for. Nothing else matters. Greer came to face this too early.

She once thought that she had too much pride for begging, yet when her fists could barely lift an empty can, she was forced to hold up the cardboard sign. She had never forgotten the name of the man, despite the fact that she was forced to eat the thin paper sheets long ago. Every night before she went to sleep on the corner behind the bridge, covered by the rain-covered shrubs, she would run the name in her head over and over again.

She had grown, her body becoming matured, attracting dangerous men alike. After many dangerous situations, she had come to learn something: men are naturally stronger than women, but that doesn't mean they are tougher. Greer had escaped many situations with simply her brain to guide her way into safety.

She had grown too weak to fight, not able to get herself away from certain situations by simply running. She had begged and pick-pocketed many, buying herself food. However, when she looked into the plastic cup she had dug out of a garbage bin, the rain only filling the cup about an inch, she took a small ragged breath that wracked her hollow, empty ribcage and she felt as though she was dying. And when she had been forced to resort to cutting off her long, beautiful locks that had finally reached her knees with a dull knife, she felt as though she had lost a part of herself.

She had once blamed her mother--blamed her mother for losing the fight that took her life. She resorted to blaming the father that had abandoned her and her mother. Then she blamed this Fury man who had moved her from foster home to foster home, never telling her father that she even existed. She was always looking for someone to blame her troubles on.

Until she met the man with snake-like eyes.

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Greer's muscles had weakened, causing her to stumble as she made her way down the wet sidewalk. As she stepped into the knee-deep snow, she felt as though hundreds of pins were scratching at her nerves. Her body had numbed and Greer could feel hypothermia tire her organs. She knew that she needed to find a place warm to settle in, perhaps even die from the cold that had already filled her insides as her small perch on the corner of 7th and maryott street had piled with snow, destroying any begging signs, blankets she had stolen from a gas station, and the cardboard signs it took her hours to find the supplies to create. Now all that she had left was her only warm jacket, in which she had scavenged off of an old man who had died of heart attack, waiting for the bus stop. This, however, was not enough to keep her frail body from chilling.

She had survived multiple winters before this day and she had always felt the same thoughts of death and exhaustion. Yet, today, it was somehow different. If she had tripped into the snow, she could do nothing but let the blizzard bury her as she would be too weak to stand up. When she allowed herself to find a state of relaxation, allowing herself to close her eyes, she would no not of how to find herself to move.

The cold felt as though it was biting away at her cheeks and bare neck, causing her to now regret cutting off her long, warm locks. Her surroundings were bare besides the busy highway to her left, leading into the city a few miles away. There seemed to be nothing but a failed structure to her right, which stood a few hundred feet away, though it seemed like miles and may as well have been. Praying that she could make it to the small structure without her legs failing her.