Angsty April: Stray Dog Freedom
Prompt: Day Seven
Verse: Monsterbabies
Warnings: Violence, hints of drug use
A sharp kick in his back is his wakeup call. He scrambles up before his eyes are even open, because somewhere in the back of his mind he knows that it is imperative he gets away, now, even though pain is exploding in his spine and his ribs and it hurts to move. He feels the grit of concrete under his hands. Smells asphalt and stale urine. Hears distant sirens and dogs barking and a man shouting at him to get the hell away from his storefront before he calls the cops.
He is cold and stiff, having slept with only a heavy winter coat to keep him warm. The doorway of the store had served as a sort of shelter from the smattering of rain last night, and it was far enough from the downtown core that he had not had to compete with other homeless for the spot.
He stumbles blindly away before the man decides to get physical again, ignoring the shouted abuse as he does.
He needs to pee, and though the city is still cast in early morning darkness, his domestic upbringing won’t allow him to do so on the street. He desperately needs to wash his face, too, to scrub away the city sticking to his skin. Hot showers are a luxury he cannot dare to dream of, but a quick splash in a public restroom sink would do. In the cold early morning, he slowly makes his way to the nearest convenience store, hunched small into his oversized coat.
***
”We’ll escape together. You and me.”
It was Sasha who made him dream of freedom. Those intense green eyes gazing out the window. He sat on the floor between Jaden’s knees, sketching things that were twisted and horrible. Monsters that resembled the ones in Jaden’s dreams. Bodies blackened by fire. They made him feel a bit sick to see, but Jaden had to put up with them, because Sasha put up with the new chord he was trying to learn.
He liked the feel of the other blond’s shoulders resting against his legs as he plucked the same two chords over and over, forcing past the cramps in his fingers and the sharp pain where he needed to build up new calluses.
“If you’re smart, it’s easy to live on the streets. I’ll sell my art and you can play your guitar. I heard buskers make a killing over there.”
Sasha’s hair, pulled back in a thick ponytail, was like a river of fire over his lap. Jaden paused in his practice to twist his fingers through the copper curls. The two of them together, they could do anything. They could conquer the world.
***
Libraries used to be his kryptonite. Jaden’s grandmother had made the mistake of bringing him to a public library once when he was seven, resulting in an entire shelf of periodicals toppling on top of him. He was banned from the school library within his second week of freshman year for being too noisy and possibly making a dozen paper airplanes out of a copy of Huckleberry Finn and also carving a rude word into a table. He has long since determined that libraries, with all their rules and silence, are not for him.
But now the Seattle Public Library is his secret paradise, and he is too tired from running for his life to get himself kicked out. It offers him free warmth, free reading materials, free safety. He has never been a big reader before, but now he spends far too much time in his own head, far too much time thinking only of food and shelter and food again, far too much time.
So he devours stories of lost princes, stories of future utopias, histories and biographies and descriptions of deepwater fish. He learns that he can learn. Maybe he never really failed high school. Maybe high school just failed him.
And that thought should warm him, the way that the heating vent over his head warms him. But he knows that it’s too late for do-overs. School requires parental support or money, and he has neither. Seventeen years old, and his life is already one of regrets and “what ifs.”
And survival. Everything is about survival.
***
Hot breath. Hot tongue at his throat, hot fingers at his belt. They were masters at avoiding detection of the adults in charge, and he wondered whether this was not also a secret power, same as the flame hidden in Sasha’s eyes. It was fear and anticipation and the biting, god, the biting.
He realized now that he has spent seventeen years as an incomplete being, as half of a whole.
Now his body folded into another’s, and together they were unbroken.
***
He wakes with a dream of a heated body still sticking to his skin. Freezing spring rain slips beneath the collar of his coat onto his neck, so cold against the warmth of his dream that it feels as though it burns him. The park where he made his bed is still pitch dark, but the bare tree that he made his bed under makes for poor shelter. He sits up, and through the darkness he thinks he sees the flicker of a white cape billowing before him.
Jaden scrambles to his feet, pulse racing. But now he sees nothing. Nothing but indistinct shadows, and the rain glimmering slightly in the city lights. He needs to run. He needs to keep moving.
But for all he knows the danger is now behind him.
He stands there, with his back to the tree, shivering with cold and listening to his heart race in time with the rain, until dawn breaks.
***
Timing was everything. They had to wait until the spring, when enough snow had melted to make the mountains passable. They had been impatient, of course, and in places the snow drifts were still so deep that they would step onto what looked like level ground and find themselves knee-deep in it.
They had to wait for the rain. They knew from stories of other failed escape attempts that the police would use dogs to track them through the woods. In the rain, they had a hope of escaping.
Ten minutes into their trek, Sasha looked wilted and miserable. Jaden paused to take his gloved hand. “This won’t last forever. I promise.”
***
He is being tracked. Sometimes, he thinks he catches the edge of a white cape in the corner of his eye. Sometimes, the air feels just a little bit colder than it was before. He stops visiting the library. He is too anxious to stay in one place for long. He keeps moving. Not even staying put long enough for a full night’s sleep. He nods off for a few hours at a time, only to wake with his heart racing.
The big van that parks on the street every afternoon laden with sandwiches is the only thing keeping him downtown. He has to eat, and soup kitchens are too enclosed, too full of people who are potential threats. So are shelters, and anyway, shelters don’t serve minors. Not without calling social services, as he’s learned the very hard way. A tired, dispassionate lady eyed him up, asked him his name and whether he was 18. He ran away, and never tried another shelter again. The price of freedom is wet socks and no bed.
He nervously looks up and down the line at the van, skittish at every movement. He hates that he has to wait patiently in this line, surrounded by so many people. It’s not just the man in the white cape that makes him nervous. He once believed that he could survive these streets if he played his guitar well enough. But how well he played didn’t matter, not after it was ripped from his hands on the third night he was here. He watched them smash it to pieces in front of him.
Anyway, now he wonders how he could have kept it dry out here. Probably the wood would have already warped the way his toes feel warped from being wet all the time.
But at least he would have something to hold onto. And he would not be losing the callouses on his fingers.
***
They ran together through the woods, feeling at last like their destiny was rising to meet them. And in a dark forest clearing, it was waiting for them.
A man in a white cape, with eyes like steel. “I will give you a choice,” he said.
***
He is shivering violently, and no matter how he twists into his jacket, no matter how small he makes himself, he cannot make it stop.
The blood on his face is going dry and crusty, so that it is hard to move his lip without feeling like he’ll rip it open. He tried to move his arm once, and was met with only blinding pain. Everything hurts. Everything feels broken.
He doesn’t even know why they beat him. Because he looked at someone the wrong way, because he was in the wrong part of the sidewalk, because he was breathing. They checked his pockets once, and found nothing, and kicked him a few extra times for being unprofitable.
He remembers crying for help once. He remembers that nobody came. Not even the man in the white cape.
***
He knew that he had never felt so small or so helpless until that moment. Suddenly the police, the wardens of his juvie prison, his parents, seemed like ordinary, childlike fears that had no real power over him.
This man did. Darkness seemed to coil at his feet. Moonlight, peeking for a moment through the clouds, feared to touch even his pale hair, sinking timidly away from the clearing. He knew that there would be no running from this man. Nothing they did from this moment would occur without this man’s permission.
He took Sasha’s hand, feeling strength in numbers. Whatever happened, they would face it together.
Why run, he asked them. Why run toward an uncertain future when they could embrace destiny instead.
Jaden wanted to know what sort of destiny that was.
One of greatness, the man told them.
He was certainly a great man, a powerful man. But Jaden did not know that he wanted that sort of greatness. He did not want those chilling eyes. He did not want the moonlight shying away from him.
He wanted his music, and his freedom, and Sasha’s burning eyes. He squeezed the hand in his, and he said no. No, thank you, he wanted nothing to do with what this man was offering.
Sasha pulled away from him. “I do.”
***
He knew which corner to go to because he had always studiously avoided it. Anybody who spent any amount of time on the streets knew where to get a hit.
And the first one was always free.
He always thought that he had to keep fighting. If he kept fighting, he would survive. If he survived, he would find a way to make this better.
Now he saw that he could not.
Now he saw that there was no surviving.
Now he no longer cared to.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw a glint of white cape, and knew the man was watching him from the shadows.
Verse: Monsterbabies
Warnings: Violence, hints of drug use
A sharp kick in his back is his wakeup call. He scrambles up before his eyes are even open, because somewhere in the back of his mind he knows that it is imperative he gets away, now, even though pain is exploding in his spine and his ribs and it hurts to move. He feels the grit of concrete under his hands. Smells asphalt and stale urine. Hears distant sirens and dogs barking and a man shouting at him to get the hell away from his storefront before he calls the cops.
He is cold and stiff, having slept with only a heavy winter coat to keep him warm. The doorway of the store had served as a sort of shelter from the smattering of rain last night, and it was far enough from the downtown core that he had not had to compete with other homeless for the spot.
He stumbles blindly away before the man decides to get physical again, ignoring the shouted abuse as he does.
He needs to pee, and though the city is still cast in early morning darkness, his domestic upbringing won’t allow him to do so on the street. He desperately needs to wash his face, too, to scrub away the city sticking to his skin. Hot showers are a luxury he cannot dare to dream of, but a quick splash in a public restroom sink would do. In the cold early morning, he slowly makes his way to the nearest convenience store, hunched small into his oversized coat.
***
”We’ll escape together. You and me.”
It was Sasha who made him dream of freedom. Those intense green eyes gazing out the window. He sat on the floor between Jaden’s knees, sketching things that were twisted and horrible. Monsters that resembled the ones in Jaden’s dreams. Bodies blackened by fire. They made him feel a bit sick to see, but Jaden had to put up with them, because Sasha put up with the new chord he was trying to learn.
He liked the feel of the other blond’s shoulders resting against his legs as he plucked the same two chords over and over, forcing past the cramps in his fingers and the sharp pain where he needed to build up new calluses.
“If you’re smart, it’s easy to live on the streets. I’ll sell my art and you can play your guitar. I heard buskers make a killing over there.”
Sasha’s hair, pulled back in a thick ponytail, was like a river of fire over his lap. Jaden paused in his practice to twist his fingers through the copper curls. The two of them together, they could do anything. They could conquer the world.
***
Libraries used to be his kryptonite. Jaden’s grandmother had made the mistake of bringing him to a public library once when he was seven, resulting in an entire shelf of periodicals toppling on top of him. He was banned from the school library within his second week of freshman year for being too noisy and possibly making a dozen paper airplanes out of a copy of Huckleberry Finn and also carving a rude word into a table. He has long since determined that libraries, with all their rules and silence, are not for him.
But now the Seattle Public Library is his secret paradise, and he is too tired from running for his life to get himself kicked out. It offers him free warmth, free reading materials, free safety. He has never been a big reader before, but now he spends far too much time in his own head, far too much time thinking only of food and shelter and food again, far too much time.
So he devours stories of lost princes, stories of future utopias, histories and biographies and descriptions of deepwater fish. He learns that he can learn. Maybe he never really failed high school. Maybe high school just failed him.
And that thought should warm him, the way that the heating vent over his head warms him. But he knows that it’s too late for do-overs. School requires parental support or money, and he has neither. Seventeen years old, and his life is already one of regrets and “what ifs.”
And survival. Everything is about survival.
***
Hot breath. Hot tongue at his throat, hot fingers at his belt. They were masters at avoiding detection of the adults in charge, and he wondered whether this was not also a secret power, same as the flame hidden in Sasha’s eyes. It was fear and anticipation and the biting, god, the biting.
He realized now that he has spent seventeen years as an incomplete being, as half of a whole.
Now his body folded into another’s, and together they were unbroken.
***
He wakes with a dream of a heated body still sticking to his skin. Freezing spring rain slips beneath the collar of his coat onto his neck, so cold against the warmth of his dream that it feels as though it burns him. The park where he made his bed is still pitch dark, but the bare tree that he made his bed under makes for poor shelter. He sits up, and through the darkness he thinks he sees the flicker of a white cape billowing before him.
Jaden scrambles to his feet, pulse racing. But now he sees nothing. Nothing but indistinct shadows, and the rain glimmering slightly in the city lights. He needs to run. He needs to keep moving.
But for all he knows the danger is now behind him.
He stands there, with his back to the tree, shivering with cold and listening to his heart race in time with the rain, until dawn breaks.
***
Timing was everything. They had to wait until the spring, when enough snow had melted to make the mountains passable. They had been impatient, of course, and in places the snow drifts were still so deep that they would step onto what looked like level ground and find themselves knee-deep in it.
They had to wait for the rain. They knew from stories of other failed escape attempts that the police would use dogs to track them through the woods. In the rain, they had a hope of escaping.
Ten minutes into their trek, Sasha looked wilted and miserable. Jaden paused to take his gloved hand. “This won’t last forever. I promise.”
***
He is being tracked. Sometimes, he thinks he catches the edge of a white cape in the corner of his eye. Sometimes, the air feels just a little bit colder than it was before. He stops visiting the library. He is too anxious to stay in one place for long. He keeps moving. Not even staying put long enough for a full night’s sleep. He nods off for a few hours at a time, only to wake with his heart racing.
The big van that parks on the street every afternoon laden with sandwiches is the only thing keeping him downtown. He has to eat, and soup kitchens are too enclosed, too full of people who are potential threats. So are shelters, and anyway, shelters don’t serve minors. Not without calling social services, as he’s learned the very hard way. A tired, dispassionate lady eyed him up, asked him his name and whether he was 18. He ran away, and never tried another shelter again. The price of freedom is wet socks and no bed.
He nervously looks up and down the line at the van, skittish at every movement. He hates that he has to wait patiently in this line, surrounded by so many people. It’s not just the man in the white cape that makes him nervous. He once believed that he could survive these streets if he played his guitar well enough. But how well he played didn’t matter, not after it was ripped from his hands on the third night he was here. He watched them smash it to pieces in front of him.
Anyway, now he wonders how he could have kept it dry out here. Probably the wood would have already warped the way his toes feel warped from being wet all the time.
But at least he would have something to hold onto. And he would not be losing the callouses on his fingers.
***
They ran together through the woods, feeling at last like their destiny was rising to meet them. And in a dark forest clearing, it was waiting for them.
A man in a white cape, with eyes like steel. “I will give you a choice,” he said.
***
He is shivering violently, and no matter how he twists into his jacket, no matter how small he makes himself, he cannot make it stop.
The blood on his face is going dry and crusty, so that it is hard to move his lip without feeling like he’ll rip it open. He tried to move his arm once, and was met with only blinding pain. Everything hurts. Everything feels broken.
He doesn’t even know why they beat him. Because he looked at someone the wrong way, because he was in the wrong part of the sidewalk, because he was breathing. They checked his pockets once, and found nothing, and kicked him a few extra times for being unprofitable.
He remembers crying for help once. He remembers that nobody came. Not even the man in the white cape.
***
He knew that he had never felt so small or so helpless until that moment. Suddenly the police, the wardens of his juvie prison, his parents, seemed like ordinary, childlike fears that had no real power over him.
This man did. Darkness seemed to coil at his feet. Moonlight, peeking for a moment through the clouds, feared to touch even his pale hair, sinking timidly away from the clearing. He knew that there would be no running from this man. Nothing they did from this moment would occur without this man’s permission.
He took Sasha’s hand, feeling strength in numbers. Whatever happened, they would face it together.
Why run, he asked them. Why run toward an uncertain future when they could embrace destiny instead.
Jaden wanted to know what sort of destiny that was.
One of greatness, the man told them.
He was certainly a great man, a powerful man. But Jaden did not know that he wanted that sort of greatness. He did not want those chilling eyes. He did not want the moonlight shying away from him.
He wanted his music, and his freedom, and Sasha’s burning eyes. He squeezed the hand in his, and he said no. No, thank you, he wanted nothing to do with what this man was offering.
Sasha pulled away from him. “I do.”
***
He knew which corner to go to because he had always studiously avoided it. Anybody who spent any amount of time on the streets knew where to get a hit.
And the first one was always free.
He always thought that he had to keep fighting. If he kept fighting, he would survive. If he survived, he would find a way to make this better.
Now he saw that he could not.
Now he saw that there was no surviving.
Now he no longer cared to.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw a glint of white cape, and knew the man was watching him from the shadows.