Fire In Her Eyes (A TMNT Story)

I Go Grocery Shopping In A Dumpster

My eyes snap open to a dim light illuminating in front of me. It's now morning and the sewer isn't dark anymore, thank God. I stretch my stiff muscles and my eyes come into focus; the light is coming from outside in those rectangle "windows" that I don't know the name of. My clothes are dry now but it still smells bad. Whatever.

I stand myself up, ignoring the soreness in my muscles and I spot the manhole cover ladder that led to outside. Hugging myself tightly, I trudge down the sewers to the ladder. After popping open the lid and finally getting out of the sewers, I expected to get a good whiff of a more refreshing smell from the stink that was the sewers. But instead, I get the smell of trash from the garbage dumpster.

One would think that living a month on the streets would make me used to that smell.

A month. Four weeks. Twenty-eight days and counting. I've been running for my life, living on the streets, surviving off left over McDonald's (you'd be surprised how many people throw out perfectly good cheeseburgers), and trying hard not to incidentally burn down every building in New York for that long.

I think about my family and how much I miss them. I miss the days when my family and I went through the drive through to get a McDonald's cheeseburger and we would argue on what to get, when I didn't have to walk half a mile to get some water, when I wasn't smelling like a bathed in sewer water. I miss my mom and her warm hugs that I never thought I missed so much— even her scolds were starting to sound appealing. I would do anything for a fun round of harmless bickering with Leigh-Anne. I wonder what she'll say to me now if she saw me like this.

"Girl, what happened to you? You look a mess, you need to go bathe." She would tease me.

"I would if I wasn't running for my life 24/7," I would snap back.

"That don't mean you gotta smell like that."

I chuckle at my sister's sassy response. Well, what she said in my head anyway.

I think about Charlie and his adorable smile that always made me want to hug him or give in when he wanted something. I miss the days when I sang him lullabies and he gave me that toothy grin. Man, I miss that kid. I wonder how he feels about me being gone. Or dead.

I remember a few weeks ago, a couple days of me being out here, I saw the news. It was about a family in Pennsylvania who lost everything to a fire that burns down their house. Including their father and their second oldest daughter. I remember seeing my mother's face on the TV screen in the window of a store— eyes red and full of tears.

"Ezekiel was a good man, a man who cared about his family and even though he had a past he did whatever he could to provide for us. And now him and my daughter is..." she then broke down in tears while my big sister Janice held her.

"I was supposed to come home for Thanksgiving, you know, to come see my family. And when I get here, I see our house on fire, my mom and siblings outside, Andrea and Dad nowhere to be found," Janice said into the mic. "I was, like, 'What is going on?' Then this big explosion happens and I'm like, 'Where's Andrea? Where's Dad?' And then they tell me they got caught in the explosion..." The scene cuts to her saying this, "... Andrea, she was a great kid, she was smart and funny— she always tried to make us laugh, you know, with her jokes and her playing around, just like our dad, basically... and now she's gone." I could see that she was on the verge of crying but kept it in to try and comfort Mom.

"On Thanksgiving!!" My mother cried. "My baby and her father died on Thanksgiving! How could my baby die on what should be the happiest day of our lives? Why?" She then covered her face in her hands as she sobbed and my sister lead her away from the camera.