1/5/06

"Just a Stain on the Pavement"

The sun had been down for hours when Eileen finally got off from work. Exhausted, she wandered her way through the streets of Maelstrom, silently cursing her demanding boss, her uncomfortable shoes, and the varitable night noises of the city that were increasing the intensity of her headache.

She hated her job. She was the secretary for a man who, much like herself, hated his job, and was under the constant scrutiny of his superiors. He took out his frustrations with them by yelling at Eileen and anyone else who crossed his path, thus creating a vicious cycle. He was loud and irritable; always breathing down her neck. But a job was a job, and those were hard to come by in Maelstrom, at that time, especially for a young lady, fresh out of high school.

Of course, this wasn't what she wanted for herself. Farbeit from the childhood fatansy of growing up to become an acclaimed actress or singer, which she had created as a child, and nutured throughout adolescence. Now that she had graduated and was out in the real world, living in a loft apartment with four other people, she was beginning to believe she was on a downward spiral, towards a future as a penniless spenster. She saw herself fifty years later, as a filthy, old woman, driven to insanity by her loneliness; too poor to afford the medication to combat her psychosis and surrounded by mangey cats that she collected off the street for companionship. Eileen was a mellodramatic soul, of course; it wasn't likely that something of that nature would happen to her, and if it did, she shouldn't have been worrying about it then. After all, she was only eighteen and very pretty; it was unlikely that she would die of loneliness any time soon.

"No sense in worrying about all that now." She sighed to herself, as she dragged her weary body up the sidewalk towards her apartment.

Ahead of her, she spotted something lying in the middle of the sidewalk. It was dark out and the nearest streetlamp was dimly flickering--threatening to burn out--so she couldn't quite make out what it was. As she neared, she could see it was a person. In Maelstrom it wasn't uncommon to find someone lying lifelessly in the streets, so she only assumed it was some drunk who had passed out, or a sleeping vagrant, or some unfortunate soul who had crossed the Bellamy Corporation--which, more-or-less, controlled the city--and was killed. In any normal situation, Eileen would have stepped over the body and went on her way, unphased. But when she approached it, shesaw that it was a young man--younger than herself--lying in a blood of blood, unconcious, and she couldn't help but take pity on him.

"Well, are you dead?" Eileen asked, very matter-of-factly.

He made a sound that wasn't quite words, but signaled to Eileen that he could hear her. "I guess I'll take that as a 'no'."

So she gathered him up off the ground, threw one of his arms (the one that wasn't bleeding profusely) around her shoulders, and dragged him back to her apartment; it wasn't far at that point.