A Weird Little Day

“Now, you must remember, don't let anyone catch you with this. The non-believers do not like our use of it.”

He closes my hand with his, and I can feel the plastic bunching against my palm.

“You remember where to take it?” His hands are still clasped over mine. I suppress multiple shudders.

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Now, be quite quick about it.” With a shove out the door, I am standing outside the Religious Ministry building, my fist in front of my, and I remember to hide it. I tuck the plastic package into the pockets of my skirt, and then make my way down Carly road. Out here on the fringe, the traffic isn't as heavy, but that necessarily isn't a good thing. Most of the people walking these sidewalks would gladly cut your kidney for you money.

So I keep my head down, seething inside at the government for having relocated our religion to this dangerous sector, and make my way towards city center.

“Hey, girl, where you gone?” a voice yells from behind me, and I turn back to see a white man, ghastly pale, his lips cracked, his eyes wide with drug fever, and his nails grimy and yellowed. He is making his way towards me, but judging by his limp and his mental state, I believe I can get away.

Setting down the street at a light jog, I lose him only after two blocks, when he turns his attention to a much older woman coming his way. Fearless, she shoves him to the ground when he grabs for her. “Get the fuck out of my way,” she says, turning a corner out of my view. I laugh lightly to myself, and am grateful that I won't have to come back here again today.

Down in city center, it is the usual mob of people, jabbering away on their devices, shouting over one another, shoving through one another, a seemingly coordinated mass of incredibly smart but still wild beasts.

Humans make me sick.

I try not to touch any as I make my way towards my destination, but when their flesh comes into contact with mine, I cannot help but grimace and move faster through the thickening crowd. It appears to be feeding time. A quick look at the sun tells me I'm right.

A hand clamps down on my left shoulder, and a shudder runs through me. “Hey, little girl.”

I spin around towards the voice, the hand coming free along with the motion. It is a police officer, a man with dark skin and two scars running down his sadistic looking face.

But his voice is rather soft. “Where are you off to, all alone?”

Staring down at the pavement pressed with old gum and litter, I answer, “I'm meeting my mother for lunch.”

His eyes narrow, and he lowers himself to be more level with me. Where people were once pressing against me to get through, they now left a wide berth. “You know, I really don't like older men having young girls do their dirty work for him.”

I panic. My instinctively goes towards my pocket, and then I realize just how stupid that is. His eyes follow.

“I don't understand what you're talking about, sir.”

He doesn't understand why I act so strange, but he suspects, especially when he lays a hand gently on my shoulder and I flinch away. “Is there something wrong?”

“I have Asperger's syndrome, sir. I don't like being about so many people.”

“And how old are you? Thirteen?”

“Fifteen!” I nearly growl in anger. He is holding me up, I am impatient now. “I have to go sir. My mother is waiting.”

He grabs my arm to stop me, and I nearly shriek. I can't do this.

“If you just hand me the coor, then I'll let you go, forget I ever saw you.”

“No,” I reply, and I curse my lack of social understanding. I've given myself away again. He doesn't even need to tell me; my hands are already in my pocket, retrieving the drug, the coor.

“There's a good girl,” he says, taking it from me. “Now run along, and try not to let those 'leaders' persuade you to do something stupid again, you hear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“A prison would tear apart a girl like you.”

I imagine the shrieking, the hands reaching for me, the stomping and yelling, the dirty looks that fly over my head. “Yes, sir.”

He smiles one last time at me, then disappears amongst the crowd, and I am alone.

Then, with animals shoving against me and spitting their words, I realize I don't know where to go at all.