Well, this is my first contribution to the site. I'm sorry it's so short. Well, read, review, throw rotten vegetables...you know the drill.

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"Blackmailing Pride"

There was no moon that night. Even if one had dared to shine, the sky would have shunned its light, building a barricade of pitch black clouds to keep the city swallowed in shadow. Darkness clung to every filthy crevice and cranny. The stench of death filled the air, proclaiming more loudly than any voice that another motionless corpse would soon lie among the refuse in the fog laden streets.

How long had she lain there, gasping for her last breaths, aware that her suffering would soon come to a close? Perhaps she should call out for help, for a priest or a last rite before she finally succumbed, but she was Isabel Avery. Despite her current state of destitution, her pride had not diminished in the least.

Her pride was still as firm as the day she left her homeland without giving way to a single tear. Her pride was still as solid as the day she refused help in lifting her mother’s pale, fragile, soulless body over the great fire. Her pride was still as unshakeable as the day she took her father’s place in that horrid factory because he was too ill to stand and the little ones cried with hunger. Her pride was still as strong as the day that caused this whole mess, and her pride was to blame.

Isabel’s eyes were glazed over, unfocused on the wet cobblestones beneath her limp form, but she saw the events of years past as clearly as if she was still living them. While a permeating chill grabbed hold of her body, Isabel’s mind wandered back to the catalysts of her misery.

They had not been in America a full year when a fever took Ma in the night, stealing her away as silently as a predator stalking prey. Pa had taken a job in a factory and was lucky to have it. Not all factory owners in New York welcomed the Irish in the early 1900s. They were thought to be a drunken lot, though Pa had never been naught but a God-fearing, sober fellow of the best make.

Then, the little peace the Averys still clutched to so fiercely was ripped from their grasp. Pa took to bed with a sickness. His face turned ashy and pale, and his skin seemed to shrivel and he shrank into half the man he had been. The doctors could do nothing. They could not even say how long he would live. Without Pa working, there was no money to be had for food or anything else.

Isabel looked everywhere for work. She applied for the most menial of positions, but she was Irish and had no connections to speak of. And she was a girl. There was no job to be found for her in the city of which God would approve.

Rather than turn heathen and risk the displeasure of her mother’s departed spirit, Isabel tied up her hair, bound her chest, and rolled up the sleeves of her father’s old factory clothes. As fortune would have it, young boys were in hot demand when she went to apply at her Pa’s old workplace. For once, Providence appeared to be on her side. Though Pa’s condition did not improve, bread was back on the table, and Isabel’s little brothers and sisters were cared for.

However, peace was not meant to be a staple in the Avery diet, or so it seemed. After an ordinary day of labor, scrambling about, fixing machines and such, Isabel left the factory and wearily made her way home. She opened the family’s apartment door to the usual babbling of young children, each eager to be heard. That day, though, they were all shouting about the same thing, for once. There was a man sitting at their kitchen table.

That man was the real beginning of Isabel’s problems. He had sat in the midst of their tiny, shabby kitchen in his tailored suit and polished shoes and pretended that there was no dirt coating every surface. He had smiled at Isabel, still dressed as a grimy factory boy, with a twinkle in his eye that inspired nothing but pure panic. After the little ones were shooed outside to play while Pa slept, Roy Elroc, as he introduced himself, proceeded to blackmail Isabel. He said he knew her “secret identity” and would reveal her to all of New York if she did not comply with his demands.

Looking back on it, the whole proposal was immensely silly. Mr. Elroc had handed Isabel a stiff cardboard box tied up with twine and ordered her to attend a party at his waterfront house the next night if she wished to keep her identity and her job intact. It was silly but simple. If she went to the party, her secret would be safe and she would keep her job. If she refused and did not attend, Mr. Elroc would ruin her life. He had left immediately as if suddenly aware of the poverty and squalor he sat in, the poor rich snake.

Isabel remembered well how she had debated with herself the next day, finding a beautiful, expensive evening dress of white lace cascading down in fold upon fold inside the primly tied cardboard box. How long she had stood before the mirror in her room imagining herself wearing something so extravagant!

But Isabel Avery had her pride.

“I will not be blackmailed. If he really intends to get me fired, let him. I’ll just find another job,” Isabel had told herself.

She had packed away the dress into its little brown container and tucked away in a far corner of her wooden closet. She would not be intimidated. She would show him that she was not afraid of him or anyone else who sought to play with her life.

She had been fired. Roy Elroc was true to his word. When she did not appear at any point during the festivities, he took up the issue of her gender with not only her current employer, but just about every other owner of a reputable business in the city. Her name and face, in male or female dress, was made known everywhere, and she could not find work again. Perhaps everything would have been fine if Isabel had gone to Roy’s party, as he had asked, or perhaps not. She would never know.

Pa died soon after. The doctors could do nothing. They never discovered the cause of his illness, and Pa died a mystery to them all. Without Pa and without work, Isabel sent her younger siblings back to Ireland, to their family in the homeland. It was not the “great land of opportunity” that America was meant to be, but at least they would not starve. Isabel Avery did not go with them. She had her pride.

With no work and no money, she quickly lost the family apartment. Perhaps some kind, charitable soul at a church in the better parts of the city would have given her shelter, but Isabel Avery had her pride. She refused to look down when she passed her “betters” in the street, no matter the disgusting state of her dress and body. She refused to see a doctor when she felt the same stirrings of pain in her chest of which Pa had once complained.

She refused to cry out when she found, one day, that she could no longer walk. She refused to beg for a small sip of water when she found, one day, that she could no longer bear to move. She lay where she was, unmoving in body and spirit.

Isabel Avery had her pride.

The night watchman patrolled the streets as he always did this late at night. It was a dark one, and the lamps along the street did little to keep away the strange, ominous feeling floating in the air. He half expected to see zombies come crawling out of the fog. No such thing happened, of course.

Instead, he saw a delicate, ghost white hand stretched out in the road. When he reached the body attached to it, he wished he had not. To see such a sight brought nothing but pity to his heart, but looking at the woman on the ground, he could see that she would rather he scorned her weakness than pity her plight. Even in death, with her eyes open in their usual hard stare and her mouth set in a firm, straight line, Isabel Avery had her pride.