Grey City Rhapsody

XI: It's Not Easy

Ash couldn't stand being in that house a minute longer. She bolted and brushed roughly past Mikhael on her way to the garage. She hopped into the beat-up rental still making the clunking sound and tore off of the property and drove around aimlessly until she was nearly out of gas and tears. She cruised to a stop on the side of a highway 700 miles away from Allemand and her family home.

Her breathing was loud in her ears, streaks of salty water drying on her cheeks and in her damp shirt collar and the valley between her breasts. Her jacket sleeves were crusted in mucus and her lashes clumped together.

Ash didn't remember punching the dashboard but judging by the throbbing in her hand and the dent in the cheap plastic, she must have.

Exhausted for what felt like the millionth time since she arrived, the woman's eyes slid closed and her head slumped against the steering wheel.

Ash found herself standing barefoot in a shallow creek. Her toes were completely numb from the cold and eyes still wet from crying. She moved to wipe her hair from her face when she brushed her swollen stomach. Looking down, she felt no alarm, only sobriety. On her wrist were faded white lines, four of them. Her black tresses and sallow skin reminded her o the vision in the grocery store. A kick from her stomach had her out of the creek, and through the back door of a seafoam green house. Ash dug through the purse on the counter and smudged lipstick as neatly as possible onto the mirror, then curled up with the new body on the couch and drifted back to black. 

Now awake, Ash rubbed at the sharp pain in her neck. She was not half as startled as she should have been to see her brother in the passenger seat. Her mouth refused to open, so she flipped the engine instead. Looking into Mikey's mirror eyes, she saw deep wells of her own sadness and decided she desperately needed a drink. 

...

Sitting at the Dumphrey's Saloon on Royal Avenue and Second, she caught herself searching for something. Mikey had the courtesy not to initiate conversation since they had arrived at dusk, instead choosing to take baby sips from his beer. He did not protest when Ash swiped the drink from him and finished it off. Hours passed, and the most interesting thing to happen so far had been a minor squabble over Duck Hunt in the arcade section. Ash and her brother had been moved from a table to the bar when a group of three came in. She kept her buzz light in the event she decided to go home tonight. 

Her eyes swept the room from the reflective glass behind the row of spirits and recognized some faces. At a table near the front sat a small group of teenagers, one of them clearly a Malloy if the bright red shock of hair had anything

"You know I expected at least one of these idiots to come up and hit on you, but you're pulling a pretty hard bitch face," Mikey commented. The sister merely replied with a display of her middle finger. "I'm sure the bloody knuckles help."

She swiveled around to put her back to him and caught the eye of a woman entering the building. Ink poured from her crown in a graceful fall over her shoulders and her rotund belly stretched the seafoam cotton of her coveralls. Their eyes met and both widened ever so slightly. The Asian beauty made her way to the half-Hispanic one alone at the bar. The woman sat on the neighboring barstool and order a water.

"We need to talk, Bekkr."