Beauty and the Beast

Beauty and the Beast.

He stood at the corner of the muddy narrow street, watching as always in the darkness of his hiding spot.

There were tiny flames from kerosene lamps lining the streets on both sides. Each little lamp lighted a stall of one sort or other. Dried fish, fresh fish, chicken and cow innards, roast meat and soup, fresh vegetables and cereals. There was a stall for everything a slum dweller could afford.

The street smelled like what it was, a slum street. Food, smoke, people, and sewage. He was used to the smell now, at first he hadn't been so sure he could bear it. These days it hardly bothered him.

There were a lot of things he could endure today that he might not have endured before. Sometimes he was afraid that he was not just 'getting tough' but, dying up inside, too.

There were very few moments in a day that he felt alive. All those moments happened around this time of the day, as darkness fell in his new hometown.

Jet pulled his warm wooly jacket against his chest and hugged himself. It was a cold night. Before long, the slum villagers would retreat to their wood and iron sheet dwellings to warm themselves by their tiny charcoal and kerosene stoves. The less lucky would perhaps huddle together under thin blankets trying to ignore the rumble of their empty stomachs.

Jet felt a slow smile crawl onto his face, as the light of his life started walking towards his spot. He knew that she knew he was there, that he had been watching while she struggled to help her father serve soup to hungry men who stopped at her father's stall.

Now that her Father was busy counting the money he had made, cute little Suzy could steal away to spend a few stolen moments with her lover. Jet sighed, if she knew whom she loved in secret she would be so petrified, he thought.

She was young, nearly out of his league. But she had a lot of what a man could want in a woman; style, spunk and intelligence. She was easy on the eyes, too. But those weren't the reasons he was so interested in her. His reasons were far more complex than mere man-woman love.

His heart skipped a beat as she ducked behind a stall, going out of his line of vision, and then reappearing right next to him. He let out a low laugh when she pressed against his rib cage demanding affection that he so wanted to give her. For a moment he considered how complicated things were getting for him. But then a few seconds later he was lost in the ecstasy of stolen love.

She giggled softly as he led her into a mud shack just a few minutes away from the spot where her father was closing up shop for the night. They both knew how little time they had before she had to hurry off and run all the way home to her father tin house, making sure she got there before he did. He knew how little time he had before he had to produce information to his superiors.

Sixteen minutes after he first held her in his arms that night, he sagged against a mud wall watching her straighten up her worn out clothes. It occurred to him then, that no matter what transpired after this night, he would come back for the love of his life. He just had to find a way to keep her from ever finding out who betrayed her father, or how she had had a hand in it all.

He smiled as she kissed him passionately before running off. The smile died off as soon as she was gone off. He reached for the cell phone he kept hidden under the dusty rugs that he was wearing.

“Tonight.” was all he said into the receiver, and then he closed his eyes with a heavy sigh. He knew how it would end tonight. Suzy’s father would show up at the rendezvous with his accomplices. The police would show up and confront them. Most likely than not, someone would get killed. That someone could very likely be Suzy’s father. It was the rule of the jungle. He was just the beast in the dark that had used an innocent girl to get information to help enforce that jungle law. He loved his job, but this time he hated how low it had made him stoop.