The Girl Behind the Ink

The Girl Behind the Ink
[working title, also considering “Shadows on the Walls” or “Skirts”]



         Around nine o’clock, the sun finally penetrated the gaps in the sharp buildings that shadowed the alley were the boys had been sleeping. It picked at Billy’s eyes first, and he squinted and covered them groggily. He was too sleepy to think of rolling over, even if he wasn’t he was too hungry to move. Actually, Joel was the first to wake, right when a roach bit at his ear. He jumped up pretty quick. He wasn’t used to roaches in his old part of the city. In the crowdedness of the alley he accidentally stepped on Pant’s feet.
         “Hey!” Pants shouted, more angry from the dissipation of a dream than the actual pain in his toes. But the dream… about fish… and maybe... blue
         “Sorry, kid.” Joel had a habit of calling those younger than his nine years “kid” – he’d picked it up from his time with the Bloody Loaves. Now he considered himself the leader of a group of boys that called themselves the Grubbies, all around the ideal and mature age of seven.
         “Hey, hush up. It was enough with that baby crying last night, don’t you two start,” Billy murmured.
         Greg, by Pants’s feet, mumbled something about how it was finally three in the morning when she’d stopped.
         “How would you know?” Joel snapped, but Greg was asleep again. He turned back to Pants. “I’m thinking the docks-” he began to suggest when cries from the building above interrupted him.
         Billy, Greg, and Pants groaned in unison. For the past day the open window on the third story above them had been emitting the wails of a neglected child. Hip, always the last to wake, wondered aloud what was keeping the baby’s folks so long, and suggested someone go hush it up.
         Joel rolled his eyes, but Pants realized the opportunity. “If its folks don’t notice it, they won’t notice a few missing loaves, will they?” he said. The other boys murmured in agreement and sent Pants (the best climber, after all), up the building to the window in the roof where the crying continued.
         As he gingerly stepped into the room, a baby girl looked up from where she sat, outside of her cradle, next to a pair of soiled panties she must have removed herself. “Want mama,” she told him.
         “Want quiet,” he said snidely.
         The baby’s lip trembled and she started to cry again.
         “Shh-shh-shh!” he attempted to hush her. “I’ll find your mama if you show me the kitchen, okay?”
         She sniffed, in one year she had not been prepared for this kind of bargain. “Want mama!” she repeated, he voice cracking.
         “Where’s your food?”
         “Mama!”
         Pants gave up and walked out the door into the other room. The table had some dry bread on it and there was a little water in the pot on the stove, so he sniffed for anything else – but there in the air was the sticky smell that floated outside the real bad bars. In the corner leaned a man who’d not shaven in two days, an empty bottle at his feet and a drooly pipe hanging out of his mouth. Pants held his nose and collected the contents of the kitchen. He reentered the bedroom where the baby was.
She cried louder when he came in. “Mama!”
         “Hush, your mama’s not here.” This made her yell more. “I can take you to your daddy,” he suggested, adjusting the bread. She continued indecipherably as he left the room again.
         “Mister,” he prodded, knowing well how little danger he faced. “Mister, your baby’s crying.”
         The man opened one bloodshot eye. “Mm?”
         “She wants her mama. Do you know when she’s coming back?”
         “She-” he cleared his throat, “She gone to a party.”
         “When’d she go?”
         He didn’t reply. “Hey, Mister!”
         The man raised his brow over still closed eyes. “When she gone?”
         “Yes sir.”
         “She gone when she went,” he said with a phlegmy cackle.
         Just then the girl peeked out the doorway, where she crinkled her nose and called to the boy, “Find Mama?”
         “Amy don’t wanna be found, babe,” the man said, inhaling deeply.
         The girl burst into another bout of tears. Pants heard the boys outside the window calling him faintly, wondering where their breakfast was.
         “I think you should feed your baby, sir.”
         “Why don’t you feed her, son?” he said, feeling very clever, both eyes open this time.
         Pants looked at the girl. She had wispy brown hair and a sniffy nose. And an empty stomach.
“…Alright,” he said.
         -----
         As could only be expected, the boys elicited groans when they saw pants climbing down the side of the building with the baby on his back.
         “Aw, man, put it back!”
         “It’s alright, guys, she’s not gonna cry anymore, I fed her.”
         “You fed her?” Joel asked incredulously.
         “Yeah, she’s gonna stay with us now.”
         “What? Do I look like a mama or something?” Joel said, offended – he was the leader after all.
         “You got the hair,” Greg jabbed, cheered up already ripping into his loaf. There was a round of laughter as Joel self consciously tugged at the ponytail he’d been growing out with the Breads.
         “Babies are good luck,” Billy added. “The ladies are nice to you – they just like ‘em for some reason,” he said through stuffed cheeks, trying to find the appeal in the worn out child, sucking her thumb, in her quickly attained sleep.
         “Well, they are kinda cool,” Hip said, shyly entering the conversation. “Whatcha gonna name him?”
         “Him is a she, and she has a name,” Pants said.
         The other boys waited in silence.
         “Well, I don’t know it,” he said.
         “What’s she wearing?” one of them said.
         “It’s called a skirt.”
         “That’s stupid,” said Joel.
         “Let’s call her Skirts,” Greg grinned.
         ----------------

[This is a super sketchy dialogue with much need of improvement]
At a carnival – the Grubbies see a couple making a marriage pledge on a “book”          
Greg - I pledge to never get married.
Pants – Why not?
Greg – Well, wives always get bossy. At least after wedding night, you know.
Joel – Don’t get too excited skirts. You won’t get to be a bossy wife anytime soon – Men only marry you if you have money or a baby.
Billy – And ladies only marry men like their fathers.
Pants – Skirts, you’re not getting married.
Skirts – I don’t even want to get married!
Pants – Do you pledge it?
Greg – Pledges don’t mean anything. What’s the point of promising on a book, when books just get ruined or burned?
Joel – Don’t be an idiot, Greg. That’s why streetsmen pledge with tattoos. The pledge is gone only when they’re gone.
Greg – Well you got any tattoos then?
Joel – I got three. But you can’t see them.
Hip – Bet he doesn’t even have one.
Billy – My first tattoo is that I’m gonna be the first to discover the Wooly-noos.
Hip – You can’t tattoo-pledge something like that. It’s gotta be with another person!
Pants – No, it doesn’t.
Hip – Well, what’s you’re first tattoo gonna be?
Pants – (thinks) I’m gonna keep Skirts my baby sister forever.
Joel – You can’t stop being a baby sister.
Pants – Well she started being one.
Greg – She’s not gonna be a baby forever.
Hip - Just pledge to protect her.
Skirts – I don’t need no protection!
Joel – (pushes her, she falls) See? Yes you do.
Pants – Hey! Now I have to duel you!
Skirts – No you don’t, I will! (socks Joel and gives him a bloody nose)
Pants – Where do you get tattoos anyway?
Greg – Streeties give them to other streeties.
Joel – (holding his nose) Dare you to ask one of those painted backs for one.
Pants – I ain’t going near them.
Greg – Me neither.
Skirts – I will!
Pants – No, It’s my pledge.
Skirts – Hey, both the man and the lady pledged on the book. I’m getting a tattoo too!
Hip – Well either way you can’t get one from one of them. Only painted backs give painted backs tattoos. They won’t give you one unless you become one.
Pants – Well I’m gonna have my own gang anyway.
Skirts – Can I be in it?
Pants – You can be the queen!
Billy – I thought she wasn’t getting married.
Skirts – Yeah!
Hip – You can make your own rules in a gang. If you’re queen, you can say you can marry every man in the city if you want.
Pants – I’m making the rules!
Joel – (recovered) Think we can pick his pocket?
Greg – Think you can pick his locks? That’s the duke! He has his own dungeon and bodyguards that would you throw you there soon as you look at him. Stop looking at him!
Hip – You really don’t know anything, do you?
Joel – Sure I do. I can tell you where to get tattoos, can’t I?
Skirts – Where where where? Joel…
Joel - Give me one reason to tell you.
Skirts – (holds up fist)
Joel – (glaring) Fine. Try the opium bar on the next street over, north 10 blocks.
Pants – We’re NOT going in there.
Greg – Bwak Bwak! Chicken!
Billy – Leave him alone, you idiot. Don’t you know anything about opium…?
Greg – Ohh…
Pants – Plus we’d need money any of those places.
Hip – Why not do it ourselves?
Skirts – Will it hurt?
Billy – Are you a boy or what?
Greg – We just need some ink.
Joel – But you don’t know how to do it!
Hip – Bet you do…
Greg – It can’t be that hard.
Hip – Wait, how does it stay?
Greg – You have to use a knife.
Joel – No, you use a needle.
Billy – Like what the ladies sew with?
Skirts – I’m not a lady!
Pants – No one said you were.
Greg – Let’s just use a knife.
Joel – It’ll be messy..
Billy – Then you do it!
Pants – I’m doing it!
Joel – You still need ink.
Hip – That painter’s tent probably has some…
Pants – Skirts, you are not going.
Hip – I’ll get it you wusses…
--
Pants – But it’s red!
Skirts – That’s my favorite color!
-------
(A lot happens in between here and the next section. Pants’s ambition is to become a gang leader, but gets involved in the drug trade and Skirts gets caught with his drugs and taken to the city prison. The prison guards also think she’s a boy.)
         -----

         “This is death row,” said the big man, unlocking the massive wood and iron door with his ring of more keys than Skirts could count.
         Skirts scuffled along behind the guard, carrying a sloshing bucket of water. He has a basket of old loaves. It was so dark in the hall she couldn’t see the ceiling. The torch the guard was carrying threw orange fingers of light around them, revealing cells upon shadowy cells that were either eerily empty or even more eerily not. In the western half, an occasional sunbeam fell upon the cold stone floor where it froze.
         “You’ll be feeding thirty-six, forty-three, and eleven,” he pointed to the weak carvings in the stones.
         Skirts stared blankly at him. “But I don’t know any numbers.”
         He groaned. “Course you don’t. These two lines are eleven. Give him his water.” She picked up the cup between the bars dipped it awkwardly, and held it out to the man inside. His eyes flickered in the torchlight. There was something very aware and intent about those eyes, but he made no move to take the water.
         “Just leave it. You’ll never get him to take it from you,” the big man sighed, and tossed a loaf through the bars at the man, who caught it without seeming to move.
         “Right, you see these numbers? They’re thirty-six.” Skirts eager to finish and get out of the tunnels of cells, scooped up the water hastily and spilled some as she set it down. The man inside, a painted back, growled and rushed forward to steady the wobbling mug. “Watch it!” he yelled, and took the loaf unceremoniously from the guard. Then he noticed Skirts, standing ashamedly, for the first time and raised an eyebrow.
         “Kids these days, eh?” he said to the guard who was ignoring him and already walking off to forty-three.  “You, refill this.”
         Skirts gritted her teeth as she took the mug from him. He held her gaze as her retreated and laid back down in his sunbeam.
         The next day she made the round alone, with the three keys she needed to open the doors. She found 11 alright, but couldn’t figure out 36. “Over here! Hey!” The man in the sunbeam gestured to the overladen, totally confused girl. She gave him is food and turned to go, but he grabbed hold of her wrist as he took his bread and held her back. “What’s a little kid like you doing in here anyway?”
         She slipped her tiny wrist out of his grasp. “I’m not little, I’m eleven years old, and I’m taking dirt for my brother.”
         He raised his eyebrows. “You sure don’t look like eleven. You shouldn’t be taking dirt for anyone – they should be taking it for you. Who’d do this to you?”
         She rubbed the back of her neck and looked down. “I can take care of myself,” she said, and edged away.
         “Look kid, you’re not leaving until I’m done. My fellow sentenced are no good for conversation.” He sat down. “My name’s Breid, Painted Back class three.”
         She kept completely still, perhaps hoping he’d get bored of her. Painted backs always scared her. They had the most elaborate tattoos of all the gangs, a tree with their personal symbol at the heart, branching with their accomplishments, the men they’d killed, the women they’d had, who their father was, how long they’d served… secretly, she wanted to see his but still refused to show her curiousity.
         “Come on, what’s your name? I do have the rest of my life to wait, you know.”
         “I’m Skirts.”
         He snickered and she tried to wiggle free again. “Oh come on, be nice. ‘M sorry if I bothered you. How’d you get caught anyway – lookin’ into some gang?”
         “My brother’s makin’ his own.”
         “Well best of luck to him – least he won’t end up here like us, takin’ dirt for some ‘fficial. Don’t worry, you’ll get out of here soon, become his second hand man…”
         She paused, and said, “I’m not a boy. That’s why they won’t let me out. They said they don’t want it to get out that they whipped me.” [should this be included?]
         She kept quiet and looked over at her flickering torch. Breid was going on about something, but she couldn’t pay attention to him. The fire made a pop every now and then, and it smelled like burning maple and mold. She imagined its reflection in her own eyes right now, how many it would take to light up the hall enough for her. If the keys they’d given her would be the right ones to get back…
         “Hey, Skirts, you okay?” She was biting down on her tongue hard enough to taste the blood. Breid waited awkwardly. “Come on kid. Look, do you wanna go now?” He let go of her wrist, but she didn’t get up. He saw a tear splatter on her arm and glint in the torchlight.
         “Aww, kid, I didn’t mean it like that…” He ruffled her hair and picked her head up to look at him. Her eyes were streaming, and she looked down. They sat like that for awhile.
         ---
         There was something sticky in the air today. Something wasn’t right. It made breathing hard, it slowed her blood and hurt her heart. She fed eleven and forty three without looking in through the bars and made her way nervously to thirty six, not daring to expect what’d she find.
         He wasn’t in the sunbeam. The next day, he was also gone. The beam looked cold, looked like all the other ones in all the other cells, just pale interruptions in the same shadow.

         The cell stayed empty for five days. Skirts wouldn’t let herself believe he was dead, she would have heard from the guardsmen, the cook, the prisoners who had views into the square. Then again, if he wasn’t dead, he was in the chamber. Skirts wasn’t sure which was worse. Sure, she’d been there herself, but she’d only been whipped, she didn’t even want to think what the rest of the things in the room were for. She had nothing they wanted, so why go to the length of using anything else on her? But Breid was a class three a painted back. So much inside knowledge. What they didn’t want from him was the question.
         On the sixth day, he was back. Wrapped up in himself in the corner, like an injured cat, afraid of basking in that open rectangle.
         She saw him only by her torchlight. “Breid?” she called. He stayed silent, but made his way over to the bars where she stood, heart beating like a soldier’s march.
         She scrambled to give him his water and bread, and he took a tentative sip.
         “Skirts,” he whispered. “Have you got a rag to spare?”
         Skirts nodded. She’d brought one for the occasion, in case he’d come back and needed… cleaning up. A bit of the precious water sloshed over the side of the bucket as she got it wet and then handed it to him. Breid winced as he cleaned off his chafed wrists, then his ankles as he lowered himself to the ground. He handed the rag back to her, and she had trouble deciding whether to wring it out or get it wet again in the bucket. She wrung it out.
         “Now, how ‘bout my back?” he asked in the same gravelly whisper.
         She bit her lip as he turned so she could reach through the bars to get at his back. It was terrible. Day old gashes mixed with six day old gashes, and she shivered as she ran the rag down his spine. His tree tattoo was ruined. All the black branches obscured by red lines, and dried trails of blood. The sun at the center, his symbol, was crossed right through by three deep lines. Her eyes got wet, but she bit her lip and refused to cry. Crying was for girls.
         “I didn’t tell them anything,” he said quietly, but with a sense of pride. “So they’ve given up on me.” Skirts’s heart beat faster. She knew what he was saying. “They’re going to hang me on Monday.”
         Skirts said nothing, trying to control both her eyes and her hands, she didn’t think she’d be able to control her voice.
         Somehow, Breid managed to laugh. “Of course, what does Monday mean to us, stuck in here?” He seemed to find it genuinely amusing. “Well, they gave me a break three days ago. That must’ve been Sunday. Four days left, girl.”
         She let out a sob. He turned towards her and with a pained smile. “Oh, come on. You’ve known this was coming since before you met me. At least I’ll get a chance to be outside again, in the sun. How am I supposed to keep my composure if you don’t keep yours?” Skirts gave him a sniffly sort of laugh.
         “Breid? I’m gonna get you out.”

         ----
         (I need a passage here for their escape attempt… and then capture.)
         ----

         “Skirts- Skirts, don’t you go crying on me again,” Breid said carefully.
         But her eyes were dry, and so was her voice. “Get off me!” she grunted as she ground her heels into the guard’s feet.
         The warden entered the hall, dignity betrayed by sleep tossed hair. He gazed from Skirts to Breid, and clucked his tongue. “I must say, I always do find resourcefulness an admirable trait. Though, I’m afraid tonight you have cost the keymaster his life as well as your own.”
         Skirts spat at him and fought to get at Breid, who had checked out and was breathing steadily. The warden moved into the light where she struggled.
         “Permission, sir?” The guard with the sword asked, pushing Breid onto his knees and pulling his head up by his hair, gazing at the glint of the metal in the torchlight.
         The warden sighed. “It's a pity, I was looking forward to the hanging tomorrow. But yes,” he said with a yawn to the eager guard, “permission granted.”
         Skirts caught a glimpse of a smile on Breid’s face before she shut her eyes. A thump echoed through the hall, and the warden turned her away.

         ----
(dream sequence)
         It’s dark. I have to find the way out. There’s a way, I just can’t find it. I know there’s a way. At the end there will be sunlight, that’s how I’ll know.
         But there are so many turns. So many keys. I can’t count the keys. There are six, then twenty, then too many to carry. I try to figure out which one I need, but there are too many notches, too many sides. There are too many halls. They’re all so dark. Some are dead ends. Some aren’t. I don’t want know what’s at the end of the hall. I can’t get there. I took a wrong turn, I can’t move. I can’t pick up my feet. They’re stuck. The floor is sticky with something thing. It’s black, it’s red, it’s too dark to tell. The whole floor is one branching black river, one huge red tree. It’s blood. It’s ink. It’s on my feet. It’s on my hands.
I wake up. It’s still dark.
         -----

         “So, honey… what should I call you?” He said to the pale girl who brought in their drinks and pipes. She wore a loose, simple dress, had loose, honey colored hair, and extremely pale, delicate looking skin.
         “Oh, I don’t think you’ll get anything out of her. She’s not very conversational,” the warden chuckled as he took his cup. “Thank you.” She smiled shyly at the master – it was obvious she had eyes only for him.
As she bent over, her hair fell forward to reveal a circular black tattoo on the back of her neck.
Pants shot straight up and almost knocked his chair over in the process. The warden was more than just a little bit startled, and he nearly dropped his pipe. Pant’s own clattered to the floor.
“What’s gotten into you now?”
But Pants wasn’t paying attention to him.
“Skirts, is that you?” He stumbled around the table to her and turned her toward him. She shied away, but he held on to her. “Skirts, talk to me kid!”
“Are you under the impression you know my servant here?”
“Know her? She was my sister! -Come on girl, look at me. Hey, it’s me, it’s Pants, come on!” he snapped his fingers in front of her face a couple times, but she only flinched.
“Was your sister? What happened?”
“You fucking tell me! What’s wrong with her?”’
“There is nothing wrong with her. I’d rather you not insult my wench, I like her as she is.”
“Skirts, girl, don’t tell me he’s serious. I know you!”
“And when did you get a chance to know her? She’s been here since she was a child. I believe she was apprehended for drug trafficking, at perhaps ten, eleven years old.”
Pants dropped his hand and turned to look at the prison warden who raised his eyebrow knowingly. “What in hell did you do to her?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, - I did nothing. After she’d been here a few months, she tried to break out a Painted Back on death row. My guards killed him on the spot and she’s stayed with me since.”
Pants was silent for a rare moment, and finding it difficult to look at either Skirts or the warden. “Let her go.” He said slowly.
The warden scoffed. “What, are you planning to take her in? Do you actually think she’ll want to come with you? You think you can guarantee her anything? Shelter? Food? Happiness?” To prove his point, he took Skirts, who was still standing dutifully by, onto his knee and she smiled adoringly up at him, in total content.
         Pants simmered darkly. “She’s not happy here. I don’t know why she thinks she is, but she’s not…. I’m not leaving without her.”
         They stared each other down for a moment. “Captain (????), I’d really like secure this deal. Are you still prepared to make it?”
         He reached instinctively towards Skirts, but stopped himself. “You’ve complicated things. No. Not with her here, not with what you’ve done to her.”          
         “I suppose the only way I’ll get this done is if we include her in the bargain. But I have grown rather fond of her…” He curled his fingers through her hair. Pants bristled. “And what do you have left to bargain with?”
         “You filthy bastard! You don’t deserve her...” he trailed off. “You don’t even deserve to live.” he muttered under his breath, seething with a protective anger he hadn’t felt in a long time. The warden remained surprisingly calm. Perhaps it was the opium he’d been having… Pants noticed his own pipe, cracked, on the floor. What a waste… he was already getting jittery, having waited to long for a fix. But maybe the clarity he was feeling meant he had the upper hand if it came to blows.
         Suddenly, he lunged at the prison warden, knocking him to the floor and covering his mouth with his hand. “We’ll both be better off this way,” he said, pulling his knife out of his boot. The warden struggled weakly, eyeing the terrified Skirts. Pants looked at her too. She’d clapped her hands over her mouth, eyes wide with fear for her… master.
         “P…please.”
         Pants faltered... he knew that voice, dry and unused as it sounded. Was this really a good idea? …Could he actually hurt her even more? He sighed, and slipped the knife back into his boot.
“Skirts, listen to me,” he said very clearly, hoping desperately she’d understand. “This won’t kill him. He’ll just go to sleep, I promise.” It hurt him to talk to her like a baby again. With a look of utter hatred, he turned back at the warden, and struck him in the temple so his head snapped to the side, knocking him out.
----
She didn’t speak anymore. She wasn’t even looking at him. She was focused only on something inside her head. He hoped once they’d made it out of the dungeons and into the sunlight things would start coming back to her.
         At first she resisted his grip as he pulled her through the halls, but as the warden’s chamber grew further from her view her resistance got weaker, as she noticed the warden wasn’t coming back for her. He wasn’t sure if this weakening was a good or bad sign. She also seemed to be having more trouble the further they went. She flinched at every leak in the ceiling that hit the floor, and avoided the range of every torch that hung on the wall. At one point, just as a brighter light beamed onto the floor through the door at the end of an intersection, she sunk to the ground, tears streaming and wordless weeping. He shuffled around awkwardly, now not even sure he should have taken her out of this place.
He looked at his little sister, on the floor, whimpering like a dog. His eyes stung. He wished now he had killed the prison warden and not shown him mercy for her sake. Well, there was no leaving her here now, so he pulled her up and out into the stairway, struggling not to be revolted with this broken woman that was his sister.
         ---
She stayed silent, but with eyes wide open her whole way to the room was renting over a bar. He worried that he’d broken her further, given her totally stoic air.
         On their way up to the room, one of the regulars at the bar gave Pants a congratulatory whistle. “Can I have her after you, mate?” he laughed drunkenly.
         Pants punched him in the before the man realized he’d made a mistake.
The barman, stronger than either of them, was quick too, and got in between the two before a bigger fight could break out. “Anyone who so much raises a fist in here gets kicked out!” he said with authority. They bar quieted, and the barman pulled Pants aside. “If you take out my customers I’m taking you out of your room too. And I know you won’t find another place that’ll be as lenient as me on rent. Which is due tomorrow, by the way!”
         “I know, I know! I’ll get it to you,” he said absentmindedly, looking back to where Skirts stood, staring at him. The barman something else, but Pants wasn’t listening. He waved his hand in front of Skirt’s face to get her attention, and her eyes did follow his hand. Then they lost focus, and she stumbled back and crumpled to the ground. “Perfect,” he said, noticing the man’s blood on his hand. He picked her up and took her upstairs, ignoring the quiet of the room behind him.
         
         “Now I remember why we had you looking like a boy,” he muttered, wiping her forehead with a wet rag. “I wonder if you could still pull it off if we dressed you up again.” He wasn’t sure why he was talking to her now anyway. Especially when she didn’t even listen to him consciously. Well, who knew? This might even work better than when she was awake.
         Suddenly, he had a thought. Could she even dress herself? It wasn’t a problem if he had to when she was two. But now she was… how old was she anyway? He counted on his fingers. Twenty. She was twenty years old. He stared at her and shivered. He was looking down at a woman, a pale skinny woman with a grey-blue dress that was still somehow too bright for her. He checked the back of her neck just to make sure he hadn’t hallucinated it there. No, it was absolutely there. It felt there. No hallucination. In fact, he hadn’t even gotten around to the smoke with the warden by the time he’d noticed her.
         “God, I need a smoke.” He picked up his pipe from the table, put the precious white powder in it, lit it up, and took a drag. Immediately he felt better, watching the smoke take the shapes of buildings, dogs, flowers, little girls, gang masters…

----
“What are you doing, just playing with your hands and sitting there like that, kid? Come have a try.” Skirts looked over at Pants, but didn’t say anything. He took a drag and climbed up onto the bed opposite her, putting the pipe into her hand. “Come on, chicky, you need to take it easy. I can’t believe we never thought of this before.” He gestured holding the pipe up and sucking in, then handed it to her. She followed his example, raising her eyebrows at him. He exhaled with her. “There, that’s better, isn’t it?” he said, taking the pipe from her, taking another drag himself. He waited intently for the effects to sink in. Skirts swayed backward, taking in a gulp of fresh air. “Watch it now, stay balanced,” he advised, steadying her. “The first time’s always the strongest,” he smiled with a wry jealously. He gestured at the grey wisps in the air. “These are the best part… finding the shapes – here’s a horse… and a tower…” he closed his eyes.
Skirts tried to see them, she actually tried. The miniature, feathery clouds and ribbons. Melting into the air like present into past, like ink into water. She traced a swirl. A grey little swirl. A black little swirl… a black little river, a black little web, a black spiky tree, a red tree a red river a hot red black sticky spiky tree

A metal glint. A drip, drip. And a wide, wide black room.

“Hey kiddo, look at me.” Cool hands shook her tiny shoulders and her eyes snapped open. Bloodshot eyes stared back at hers, and she snapped them shut again, whimpering, unable to bear seeing more red webs. “Skirts, come back. Can you hear me?” She nodded, keeping her face in her hands. “Can you look at me?” She shook her head back and forth and kept shaking until he stopped her. “Hey, it’s okay now, we’re still here, we’re still in the room. Stay here now. I’m gonna keep talking so you stay with me, okay? Here, I’ve got a glass of water for you, do you want it?” He pressed it to her hands, and she took it with one, keeping the other tight over her eyes. After tasting the first sip she started to gulp up the rest, and he tried to slow her down.
         “You must have had one hell of a trip.”
He saw her eyelashes brim with tears.
         “God, what did you go through?”



(the rest of the story, which is not yet written, will consist of Pants (who's name needs to be revised) trying to help Skirts recover, and his realizing that his drug use is a real problem getting in the way of that (which we'll also see examples of) and his struggle to help change both of them.)