by V. C. Linde
A group of animals. A pack of vicious creatures. A warehouse basement packed with baying testosterone. And the poor dogs that they dragged along with them.
A knock at the door. Scarlet unplugged her headphones and went to the door. A young blonde woman stood in police uniform, her head tilted in an unasked query.
“Good evening, I’m Sergeant Jenkins. Can I ask you some questions about the warehouse next door, please?”
“Sure.”
“Could I come inside?”
“Can I see your warrant card?” she showed it to Scarlet with a smile. “Sorry, I live alone.” Scarlet stepped aside and let Sergeant Jenkins in, gestured her towards the sofa and sat down next to her.
“It’s always better to be safe.” Sergeant Jenkins spoke with a smile, opening her notebook.
Each question seemed to lead to more - it was like being back in therapy. She talked through everything she could think of. The people who had been around and when things had changed. Scarlet answered as much as she could and wondered just how much she missed by living inside The Other City.
“Did you get the dogs out safely?” Scarlet asked.
“Some of them. Not all of them,” Jenkins replied. “It wasn’t good in there.”
“Are they going to get away with it?” Scarlet asked a question of her own.
“It’s not easy to prosecute for dog-fighting or keeping illegal breeds, but we should be able to do something. It’s a tight-knit world, not a kind one but certainly a loyal one. One of the gang hid all of the documents that prove how many of the dogs are illegal. There were records of fights going back almost twenty years there, notes about bloodlines and owners as well as details of the gambling that went on. It’s a bit of a treasure trove, actually,” Sergeant Jenkins explained. “It’s usually hard to catch people who have been involved in this, but someone let us know when the fight started yesterday. Along with all of the documents, that means we have far more evidence than usual.”
So much talking, and strangers and questions still left her completely drained. Scarlet ran through the conversation in her head again, and again. She went over the mis-steps and her words, mistakes and tone of voice. Scarlet found out all of her flaws, which she’d now shown to another stranger. She rested her head down by where she had first heard the voices and thought about the Doberman. The dogs were gone, but she could still hear them barking. Howls calling to her through the night, across the walls and seeping into her dreams. They had been taken away but they never left her.
Scarlet stretched. Five minutes to pack her bag. Five minutes to make sure everything was off in her little apartment. A ten minute walk. A fifteen minute bus ride. Five minutes to go into a shop and buy something. Almost an hour. She was going to be late. Her hands automatically went to her hairline. The familiar tug and release helped to calm her. Not quick and not easy, but she almost knew what she was doing.
She had slowly whispered what she needed to say. Time dragged and then rushed. Her head ached and she was scared to go outside, but she did. Bills were paid and work was done, but it wasn’t simple at all. It wasn’t easier, it wasn’t fair, it hadn’t changed.
She wasn’t the same, she wasn’t hiding and she wasn’t going to pretend that everything was fine. She knew what was wrong, what wasn’t as it should be and rather than putting all of that behind barriers in her mind, she was going to tell people and let them see it. She was going to show on her face what was happening rather than letting it all play out in a city inside her. She hurt. She was exhausted.
Her hand punched her thigh and her fingers curled into fists - regrown nails digging deep into the soft flesh of her palms. She flexed her hands and tried to relax, starting at one muscle with one joint and moving on. Keep feeling the pain and eventually it will be released.
The routine was as it always was: new faces and the same coins. Ink and pencil on her hands, with sketches covering the desk. Books piled on faces, on drawn landscapes of cities that she knew existed, that she visited but didn’t live in. Hours of a day.
It was perfectly sunny. Dark glasses covered red eyes. Tears and tissues scattered among the crowd. Young friends and old relatives. They stood wondering, waiting for the words to stop or for the words to start. Twenty three years alive. She couldn’t hold on. Life was too painful to be afraid of death.
One step beyond where she had been before. A bridge familiar from an inside dream, found on the outside. Reality followed her mind’s buildings. She had walked all the way, travelled the route she knew and gone just a little further. Wrong decisions seemed like the only choices. She couldn’t see beyond the instant pain to find a later relief. A last hope. A white stone building with a faceless black clock, counting down instead of marking time. She was in the older city, the one she knew nothing about.
The bridge was just the same, the same water flowed below her feet, a black blankness seen through all of the cracks under her feet. She had known that it was here, planned out before her, not an escape, just a built-up dam full of all of the things that everyone throws away. She could feel all of it. One hand on the top rail. Cold steel curling towards her, towards her feet standing on the safe ground. She faced out, looking down and not seeing the world around. Diagonal slashes marked the path she had taken, scars made in metal, by metal. No warmth, no weather, no breath. Feet and toes. Let your hair down, drop your shoulders, lower your head, spin and fall. A promise fulfilled.
A temporary marker put in place – three names, two dates, one very small line between them.
Shoes left behind on a summer bridge. Socks tucked neatly in. She was wearing new shoes now. Tucked in and laid down. She was watched over, no one seeing her anymore. Never seen again. A boy who had kissed the sugar from her lips. A friend who would always keep questioning. A survivor, the last one, who saw her future. Platitudes spoken, promises heard, memories exchanged. A trade of comfort and pain. Scarlet had gone to her own city, one world for another. She had found the walls and bricked herself inside. Finally quiet as the waves tugged and pulled, blocking out the noise, the voices and the shouts, from a city she had never quite called her home. She had lived in two worlds and now there were no paths between them.
Walls crumbled all of the time and where things were destroyed, new buildings took their place. Urban life moves in seasons, just like the rest of the world. Black clouds came back, home and lives were lost, forgotten. People were locked up and locked out. Dogs barked and bit. Roads were built and streets crowded and pathways overgrown. Friends were betrayed and found ways out. The battle and the war. One day to the next, they all look the same from the outside but most of the time the city doesn’t change, it can’t.
