Boys and Girls

Men Play With Girls

  I did the dishes, my hands guided by nothing but the starlight filtering through the window above the sink. Mother forgot to pay the electricity bill, again. Or maybe we just couldn't afford it, because it wouldn't be the first time. She's at work now, she never gets home til morning. She doesn't make much money, but she tries. I don't know what she does, but I know she doesn't like doing it, she's always so drained at home. Sometimes I wonder if I'll be like that when I'm old, and what steps will lead me there. The other children at school all have two parents, but I've never met father. I sigh.
As I finish the last dish and set it in the drying rack, I look out the window into the the sky. The stars shimmer, fuzzy and far away like the blue-black world above belongs to a dream rather than the reality of earth. I hear whispering in the very back of my head,  perhaps where my brain meets my skull. The whispering is fuzzy and far away too. My eyes become unfocused, like I've just tried on the glasses not meant for me. I gasp as the world tilts and swims, vertigo taking hold of me like a wave of thick oil, trying to knock me to the ground in a sickly tar-like grace.

  When I awake, mother is speaking to a man beside my bed. That means it must be morning. I smile as I sit up on my bed.
"Good morning Mother!"
I think my voice startled her, because she stopped talking abruptly, like she'd been shot. The man calmly turned toward me and smiled, though it held no warmth. Thin tears rolled down Mother's cheeks, and my smile tilted downwards. The man started toward me and Mother let out a sob, unable to tear her eyes away from my face, like a murder witness in one of the stories on the newspaper. I looked up at the man, and he smiled that cool smile right back.
"Hello, Miss Vivian Page." His voice was deep, thick with an accent I had never heard before. His long brown hair tickled his neck as the wind from the open window rustled the atmosphere of the musty room. I blinked at him, silent. His long black robe swished the ground as he turned to face Mother again. He flashed her that cold smile.

"It will do quite nicely. Pleasant day Madam, I will take it now."

A syringe was stabbed into my neck and the world went black once again.